The Devil in the Flesh Read Free

understanding her. She reminded me of a female pirate captain alone on the deck of her sinking ship.
    Wearying of her, the crowd dispersed. I would have liked to stay on with my father, while my mother, to satisfy that need children have for making themselves feel sick, took the others off to the roller-coaster. And it was true, I did feel that peculiar need more keenly than my brothers. I loved it when my heart beat quickly and erratically. Yet I found this performance, which was deeply poetic, more enjoyable. “You’ve gone quite pale,” said my mother.I made out it was the Bengal lights. I told her they made me look green.
    “I’m still afraid it’ll upset him,” she told my father.
    “Oh, there’s no one more impervious,” he replied. “He could watch anything, except someone skinning a rabbit.”
    My father only said it so I could stay. But he knew that I was overcome by what I was seeing. I could sense that it had deeply moved him as well. I asked him to lift me onto his shoulders so that I could get a better view. The truth was, I was about to faint; my legs were giving way.
    By now there were only about twenty people there. We heard trumpets. It was the torchlight procession.
    All of a sudden the madwoman was lit up by hundreds of flaming torches, as if the soft glow of the footlights had given way to the glare of flashbulbs, photographing the latest star. And then with a farewell wave, either believing it was the end of the world or simply that they were coming to take her away, she threw herself off the roof, smashed through the awning with a terrible crash and landed in a heap on the stone steps below. Up till then I had been trying to withstand everything, although my ears were ringing and I was devoid of feelings. But when I heard people shouting: “She’s still alive,” I fell off my father’s shoulders, unconscious.
    When I came round, he took me down by the Marne. We stayed there until late, lying on the grass and not saying anything.
    When we got home, I thought I saw a white figure through the railings, the ghost of the maid! But it was Old Man Maréchaud in his nightcap, gazing at the damage, his awning, his tiles, his lawn, his flower beds, his steps covered in blood, his ruined reputation.
    If I dwell on an episode like this, it is because it helps to understand, more than anything else, what a peculiar time the War was, and how I was struck less by what was picturesque than by the poetry of things.

III
    WE HEARD ARTILLERY FIRE. THERE WAS FIGHTING near Meaux. People said that some Uhlans had been captured near Lagny, fifteen kilometres away. While my aunt talked about a friend of hers who had fled at the very start, after burying her clocks and tins of sardines in the garden, I asked my father how we were going to take all our old books with us; they were the things that would cost me the most to lose.
    But in the end, just as we were about to leave, the newspapers announced that there was no need.
    My sisters now went over to J … to take baskets of pears to the wounded. They had found a form of compensation, admittedly not much of one, to make up for all their plans that had fallen through. By the time they got to J … their baskets were almost empty!
    I was due to go to the Lycée Henri IV, but my father thought it best to keep me in the country for another year. During that dismal winter my sole source of amusement was rushing to the newsagent to make sure I got a copy of
Le Mot
, a paper I enjoyed and which came out on Saturdays. It was a day when I never got up late.
    Then spring came, which brightened up my firstescapades. On the pretext of collecting for charity, several times that spring I went for a walk in my best clothes with a young lady. I carried the collection box; she had the basket of badges. After the second time, my fellow collectors told me how to make the most of these days of leisure that brought me into contact with a girl. From then on we rushed to collect as