I


I was living with my mother at the time, in a small seaport town. I was
just turned seventeen, and my mother was only thirty-five; she had
married very young. When my father died I was only seven years old; but
I remembered him well. My mother was a short, fair-haired woman, with a
charming, but permanently-sad face, a quiet, languid voice, and timid
movements. In her youth she had borne the reputation of a beauty, and as
long as she lived she remained attractive and pretty. I have never
beheld more profound, tender, and melancholy eyes. I adored her, and she
loved me.... But our life was not cheerful; it seemed as though some
mysterious, incurable and undeserved sorrow were constantly sapping the
root of her existence. This sorrow could not be explained by grief for
my father alone, great as that was, passionately as my mother had loved
him, sacredly as she cherished his memory.... No! there was something
else hidden there which I did not understand, but which I felt,--felt
confusedly and strongly as soon as I looked at those quiet, impassive
eyes, at those very beautiful but also impassive lips, which were not
bitterly compressed, but seemed to have congealed for good and all.

I have said that my mother loved me; but there were moments when she
spurned me, when my presence was burdensome, intolerable to her. At such
times she felt, as it were, an involuntary aversion for me--and was
terrified afterward, reproaching herself with tears and clasping me to
her heart. I attributed these momentary fits of hostility to her