Long TextExercici 1 de 81

At the close of a friendly evening, the Marquis de la Tour-Samuel, eighty-two years old, rose and leaned on the mantelpiece. "I, too, have witnessed a strange thing," he said in his quavering voice, "so strange that it has been the nightmare of my life. It happened fifty-six years ago, yet there is not a month when I do not see it again in my dreams. For ten minutes I was a prey to terror, and ever since a constant dread has remained in my soul. I am afraid at night." "I would not have owned up to such a thing before reaching my present age, but now I may tell everything. That affair so upset my mind that I never could tell it. I kept it in that corner where we conceal our sad, our shameful secrets, all the weaknesses of our life which cannot be confessed. Unless I went mad for one short hour, it must be explainable. Yet I was not mad, and I will prove it to you." It was July 1827. I was quartered with my regiment in Rouen. One day, strolling on the quay, I came across a man I seemed to recognize. He looked at me and fell into my arms: a friend of my younger days, of whom I had been very fond. He seemed to have aged half a century since I last saw him, his hair white, his walk stooped. A terrible event had broken him down: he had married a young girl in a dreamlike ecstasy, but after a year of unalloyed bliss she died suddenly of heart disease. He had left the country on the day of her funeral and come to live in his hotel at Rouen, solitary and desperate. "As I have come across you again," he said, "I shall ask a great favour. I want you to fetch some papers I urgently need from the writing-desk of our room. I cannot send a servant or a lawyer, as the errand must be kept private. I want absolute silence. I shall give you the keys, and a note for the gardener." His home was an hour away, and I promised him that slight service. At ten next day I breakfasted with him, though he scarcely spoke; the thought of my visiting the room where his happiness lay shattered seemed to torment him. At last he explained what I was to do, then added, "I need not ask you not to glance at them." I was almost hurt by his words, and said so rather sharply. He stammered, "Forgive me. I suffer so much!" and tears came to his eyes. I set out about one o'clock. The day was radiant, and I rushed through the meadows, listening to the song of the larks. Then I entered the forest and set my horse to walking. Branches softly caressed my face, and now and then I would catch a leaf between my teeth and bite it with avidity, full of the joy of life, an almost indefinable happiness. As I neared the house, I took out the letter for the gardener and noticed with surprise that it was sealed. I was so amazed and so annoyed that I almost turned back without fulfilling my mission. Then I told myself I was being over-sensitive: my friend, worried as he was, might have sealed it without thinking. The manor looked as though it had been deserted for twenty years; the gate stood wide-open and rotten, grass filled the paths, and you could not tell the flower-beds from the lawn.