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space

To conclude this episode from which I had so much
pain and disappointment, an article by Mirbeau appeared
the day of the première of "Pelléas et Mélisande". He com-
miserated Maeterlinck and, without naming me, very obviously
blamed me for all the poet's troubles. He closed with this
quotation from "Pelléas" : " If I were God I would have
pity on the hearts of men".

I was miserable. This time I would have liked a word
from Maeterlinck to Mirbeau, vouching for my conciliatory
role. But I asked nothing and he did not feel it necessary
to take action.

Long tortured by the accusation of Mirbeau, I wrote
him the following letter which, after all, I did not send.
The fatal "What's the use?" - that phantom of neurasthenia
- had begun to attack my will to act.

Sunday morning. May it at least be allowed
me to protest, to defend myself, to proclaim the
truth with all my strength, with all my life which
is horrified by your opinion. You think it is I
who incited Maurice against his success, against
his own interests. It is not strange that most
people believe this - they don't know me at all
and I don't waste time in suffering over inevi-
table calumnies. But you, Mirbeau, who are just
and generous!

When I saw him at the beginning of
this affair that I was powerless to change Maur-
ice's attitude, when I had tried everything, im-
agined everything, summoned every aid; when I

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saw all the influences on which I had counted, I anticipated danger, a possible duel, and seeing myself approaching a catastrophe, I fell ill. During my illness I felt only one regret, almost a haunting remorse - not to have guessed last summer when rehearsing with Debussy what could happen as a result. I knew Carré's hatred, I should have foreseen events and lied to Maurice by telling him that the role did suit me. This is my only self-reproach. I might have divined the possible complications for Maurice - but it is difficult to believe in the continuation of a hatred which nothing justifies.

My season has been poisoned by the threat which hovered, which still hovers, over my beloved, and yet this is the moment when our best friends seem to insinuate through their smiles, "We love Maeterlinck and we promise him a triumph in spite of you."

Recently in a salon I was almost amused by the conversation of three women who thought to torture me by prophesying the triumph of "Pelléas", and I asked myself which feeling was the stronger in my heart - the bitterness of being so basely judged or the joy of feeling that for once at least the enmity that I inspired in certain people would actually help to augment the success of him I loved.

I cannot hope that you will believe this letter. I even think you will be astonished and a little shocked at the exaltation which has dictated it. And you have passed judgment on this affair and you have misjudged me without attaching any more importance to the fact than was necessary. The gesture in itself is insignificant, the result cannot be for the one it affects. I am accustomed to such wounds and ordinarily know how to accept them. But you

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are among the few people whom I esteem, therefore I
cannot be indifferent to your opinion.

Lugné Poe told me the other day that you asked
him how I could play the third act of "Monna Vanna",
which would be difficult even for a trained tragédienne
Oh, most certainly it would not be with métier, since
I am totally ignorant of the art of the speaking stage.
But today I can give you your answer, my dear Mirbeau.
I assure you I should play it with all the power of a
heart which has never yet seen its image mirrored ex-
cept in one sole and unique mind.

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space

After "Ariane" in 1907, the hostility under which I laboured at the Opéra-Comique ________ was reverberated once again. The following petition with over a thousand signatures had been sent to the management

To Monsieur Albert Carré, director of
the Opéra-Comique

We the undersigned, patrons of your theatre, grateful for the pleasures which we owe you, beg you to favorably our sincere desire inspired by the beautiful performances of "Ariane", to see Madame Georgette Leblanc in a revival of the role left vacant by Mademoiselle Garden in "Pelléas" - a work which is precious to us for many reasons.

Despite the unusualness of such a request, no answer was made. I sang Mélisande for the first time before a foreign public at the Boston Opera, in 1912.

In spite of my difficulties with the Opéra-Comique I still retain a memory of that theatre which is very dear to me

the park gate, but suddenly it darkened. There was no point in hurrying. I muffled my footsteps and entered quietly. Alas, how I should have loved to live in a rhythm that was natural to me without disturbing his.

....

As Maeterlinck grew older, contrary to most men who have spent their lives in work, his appearance gained in harmony. By the time he was forty-five a balance had been

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A memory of a group of fifty enthusiastic young opera-goers who took the title of the "Knights of Ariane" as a mark of enthusiasm and protest. It was not unknown that although Dukas had forced me on the Comique, the Comique had retaliated by subjecting me to a hundred petty irritations. The Knights came to all performances and rioted their enthusiasm.

At Saint Wandrille, where we lived from 1907 until 1919, I gave a party in their honour - an Ariane Day. We gathered in the capitulary hall while one of the Knights, an excellent pianist, played Dukas's score. Night fell, the great vault of the room filled with shadows, on the piano two candles glowed, two fallen stars.

Afterward I took my guests across the fields to the station and hurried back to the Abbey. Certainly the echoes of our fête must have penetrated to Maeterlinck's room, and furthermore tomorrow there would be disorder all over the house - disorder which he loathed.

I listened... the small voice of the church bell had not yet struck ten. His window was still lighted when I passed the park gate, but suddenly it darkened. There was no point in hurrying. I muffled my footsteps and entered quietly. Alas, how I should have loved to live in a rhythm that was natural to me without disturbing his.

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established between his body and his mind; health and serenity
had modified his hyper-sensitivity. He acquired a sort of beauty.

In my memory the young Maeterlinck was the living image of incertitude. Despite his square build and strong peasant hands, his features appeared as if seen through moving water. The clear glance of his eye dimmed, his skin paled, his grey voice faded. How could this sturdy man be so unsure of himself? Was it the maladjustment of his personality that caused his uncertainties? — a poet's nervous organism in an athlete's body, the living energies of the imagination locked within [illegible] race and heredity? Or did he still unconsciously harbour those errors imposed by the Jesuit Fathers on the receptivity of an exceptional child?

I feared that he could not go on living if he remained as he was. But gradually his sensitiveness was to become nervousness, then his nerves were to be stabilized by the strength of his maturity.

One fundamental trait remained the same. He was always in perpetual flight before emotion, before disturbances, before the unexpected. Each time we found ourselves before a beautiful landscape he said almost at once, "Come, let's go". The first time was in the Vosges. A heavy sun lay dying, barely touching the line of the horizon. I should have liked to see it set but he pulled me away as if something urgent called him elsewhere. The same experience recurred throughout our life. "Why?" I would ask him. "Because it's enough . . . What more do you want to see?"

105

Economy in all things - in sensation, emotion, admiration, enthusiasm; fear of seeing the end, of exhausting beauty . . . Also dread in all its forms - that of people and of words, that of misfortune which might arrive and of blows that fall on unawareness. He would never sleep without several weapons by his bed - a revolver within reach of his hand, a Corsican knife, a loaded shotgun.

Maeterlinck was not cowardly, far from it. His relation to the soil made his strength and sometimes, perhaps, his weaknesses. He could be influenced by his fear of being attacked, duped or robbed. Those who do not know him will be astounded that I say this of him, since in his essays he displays a perpetual serenity and a perfect calm.

No one ever spoke less about himself. He barely expressed his strongest impressions and then only in a few brief words. During our first three years together he seemed in his extraordinary letters to free himself of all constraint in order to project an unsuspected intensity; then as time went on we entered into a veritable zone of silence and solitude. Nothing of the outside world could reach our isolation. Whenever I went away from him I called it "going out to get our supplies". On returning I related, only what I knew, would interest him of all that I had seen.

I have seen him hurry but I have never seen him rush. The necessity to protect his nerves gave him all the manifestations of egoism. I often observed in him a terror of suffering. I have heard him say, "I don't understand how unhappy

106

people continue to live - I would kill myself".

Despite unchanging habits, in my mind I see two Maeterlincks - the man of the first and the man of the last period. His work plainly follows the evolution of his organism: at first unsettled and fatalistic, from the tragedy of "The Blind" he arrived finally at the optimism of "The Blue Bird".

Perhaps one can see Maeterlinck more clearly through a letter which I wrote to Maurice Leblanc in 1907, during our first summer in Saint-Wandrille :

We have just lived weeks of solitude and we have seen, alas, that Maurice still cannot work. He is beginning to be profoundly troubled by it. I feel that he is at a difficult turning. It also seems to me that he needs a new current. Ten years ago I was the first turning-point, my drawing near to him occurred at a favorable epoch, it marked the second phase of his life. This is the third. I recognize it by the halt in his thinking, by the constraint he feels at the idea of getting to work again, to "continue". "Why 'continue'?" he asks. And he is right.

I agree with him that for some time he has done nothing but repeat himself - it is not yet evident to others but it will be soon. To make another attempt is merely to encourage his indecision; it will leave him again at the same crossroads and deprive him of his desire to choose his way. If he goes back to writing essays he is surely marking time. The beauty of his philosophy lies in the fact that he has not had time to fix its limits; he is right in not having come to any final conclusions. If he continues writing philosophical essays he will finish by answering the questions he has raised, and that will be the end of his greatness.

107

Therefore I encourage him to become more conscious of his dilemma in order to emerge from it more quickly with the impetus for an important work.

The fact that he is not working casts a shadow on my present life. I know that in spite of the happiness, the youthfulness, of his days here (he plays all the time like a child, he plays at fishing, at taking care of flowers, he cutting paths in the underbrush, he picking the fruit, he painting the furniture, he carpentering), there is in him an important, an essential machinery which, in not functioning, must somewhat impair his physical and moral equilibrium. How strange . . . because he does not work he has never been so charming to me - in the common sense of the word. He will put himself out to bring me a coat, he will think of a thousand little surprises to give me pleasure. Alas, how eager I am for his sake to lose all these small attentions which are in my eyes the signs of a dispersal of his thought, of a concentration going to seed. I am eager to go back to the more active life of the two companions we almost always are - absent-minded, absorbed by work which is formulated in the afternoon for production the following morning. The best I can do is to set an example, and in doing this for him strength has been given me to begin writing again. I have come to it very painfully.

Our most perfect understanding did not have its base in life but in the emotions which beautiful prose or poetry produced in us. Sometimes in coming out of his study he would say, "Listen to this". Then he would pull hard on his pipe to keep it going, place it on the corner of a table and, lifting the forefinger of his right hand, begin mysteriously to scan the lines. He would turn pale. His eyes would leave the book to

108

follow the flow of words and, darkened with emotion. would
return to the page. His finger would design vague forms which
he would leave with a brief gesture to mark the rhythm. In
this communion there is a magic that makes visible the counte-
nance of the mind.

Only poets know how to say poetry, and they all recite it
in the same unique and inimitable way. A few years ago when
I was visiting d'Annunzio, I found in the Italian poet's
manner of reading the identical intentions of the Belgian
poet, despite their completely opposite temperaments. Both harboured
the same cult of the word. Maeterlinck's sombre and veiled
voice heightened the brilliance of the verse. D'Annunzio's
colourful diction, his artless theatricalism and his high
voice were completely extinguished by reading what he loved
above all - the words of Saint Francis. One day I saw him
so deeply moved that his hands, lifted in the form of a chalice,
began to tremble under the weight of the perfect words.

We had one of the first automobiles, one of those long-
legged vehicles which seemed to be running after its horse.
Maeterlinck, perched on the seat, gripped the coffee-grinder
which acted as steering-wheel and we set off at a great pace
—thirty kilometres an hour — jolting, straining, aware of
the smallest pebbles on the road. I was cruelly seasick
from this diversion, but the worst part was the absence
of a wind-shield. Such a barrier would have prevented the

109

driver from communing with the road and enjoying his speed.
Maeterlinck would not have one at any price.

In order to have a sporting air, I wore a huge sailor
hat, but in spite of the enormous hat-pins which skewered
at the first puff of wind
it, it reared on my head like a begging dog
and neuralgia assailed me.

Soon I constructed a sort of chicken-coop which I
placed on top of my hat. It was completely swathed in silk
and in front an isinglass window opened at will for food or
conversation. This contraption made a sensation, ~~friends~~
friends begged me for the formula and Maeterlinck declared
that new sports should create new styles.

Our departures were triumphant. The rattle of scrap
iron that announced our passing attracted the neighbors.
Handkerchiefs were waved, chickens that had not yet grasped
the idea were bewitched by the hood. But before long every-
thing would go wrong. By the end of the day there would be
~~at an inn or~~
the irreparable breakdown, the night a barn, and the
farm horse which would take us pitiably back home the next
morning.

Despite the poet's cleverness - he was an expert mech-
anician - the breakdowns were always a mystery to him and
our auto wheelbarrow a devouring monster of obscure inten-
tions. Once he undertook to go from Normandy to Belgium
for the birthday of an old uncle. Every day he sent me
bulletins about his journey as if it had to do with a flight
through space.

Tuesday, from Arras, he wrote that the monster had

110

acted not too badly, only three breakdowns and a few eccen-
tricities on the part of the carburator. Also he had lost
the back of the car, unaccustomed as it was to paving stones.
At the time of writing he was ten kilomètres from the place
where that precious part had disappeared, but he would in-
quire about it on his way back. There were still 115 kilo-
mètres between him and his uncle's dinner party, he would
get up the next day half-past five - but with one puncture
all would be lost.

On Thursday he wrote that after terrible tribulations
which had almost made him give up the whole idea, he had
arrived by a miracle just as the family was finishing the
soup. A delirious reception. There was no hope of getting
away the next day, the car had to be entirely gone over.
He added a postscript to say that the damage had been re-
paired and that he would be at Gruchet soon the monster
did not behave too monstrously.

For me tragedies in connection with sports never ended.
After the bicycle and the automobile came the terrifying
motorcycle. One day I witnessed the first performance of
this new machine. It took place on the Boulevard Maillot,
in Paris. Maeterlinck assured me that he would be gone only
five minutes in order to test the ~~engine.~~ engine. I saw him
disappear rapidly through the wooden gate. He didn't come
back. At the end of a half-hour he suddenly burst through
the same gate, passing before me at high speed and without
saying a word.

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Alarmed, driven to safety against a tree, I didn't have the strength to move. A few moments later I saw him return a second time. He made elaborate gestures, trying to make me understand something incomprehensible. I thought he had gone mad because he came back again and again, making more and more incoherent signs. It was two hours later that he finally dismounted and came toward me, dragging his machine. I fell into his arms. "I couldn't ever make the brake work", he cried. "So I had to go round and round until I'd used up the gasoline".

"Monna Vanna", "The Life of the Bee", "The Double Garden", "The Buried Tample" and "The Blue Bird" were written in our peaceful presbytery at Fruchet-Saint-Simon. After the publication of "Monna Vanna" it was sometimes said that Maeterlinck had descended to the level of the conventional theatre, and that this was obviously due to my influence.

When he had conceived the character of Monna Vanna I had no more thought of playing her than I had had of playing his dramas for marionettes or "Aglavaine". I was a singer and I did not think lyric art compatible with dramatic art.

Maeterlinck discovered the Monna Vanna episode in a history of the Italian Renaissance. He told me about it, saying that he saw material there for the creation of an

112

interesting woman. It was only two or three years later
that he began to write this play.

One morning while I was cutting flowers in the garden,
he leaned out the window of his study:

"Listen, she's just come into the enemy's tent".

"Really? Then what?"

"Well - what would you do in her place?"

"I would not speak. I would walk in like this", and
I began to walk automatically toward a cluster of sunflowers
as if I were going to the scaffold. Maeterlinck smiled

"But she ought to say something".

"Impossible, she's too moved, she can't". The poet
closed the window and continued writing the poem.

Later in the day he told me that Vanna had finally
consented to pronounce six words: "I have come as you
wished".

space

Every day I watched Vanna brought to life without
dreaming that I could portray her. But one day Maeterlinck
said, "Your speaking voice is so beautiful, why don't you
create Monna Vanna?" I answered that I could only see
Bernhardt in the role.

Therefore Lugné Poe gave her the play to read. She
was enthusiastic and said she would take it immediately
if the author would expand her role in the first act. Of
course Maeterlinck refused and again urged me to try, say-

113

ing that the very fact of my inexperience on the dramatic
stage would make me all the better in the role.

passing

A little frightened at first so precipitately from
from opera to the drama, I went to consult Mounet-Sully,
the great classicist of the Théâtre Français. I was shown
into a salon that looked like a tomb. The walls were
overloaded with faded wreaths and a mortuary odour hung
in the air. As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I
distinguished on the wreaths enormous ribbons with gilded
inscriptions, all singing the praises of the master. He
appeared, draped, Greek fashion, in a black-and-gold robe;
his step, his movements, his welcome were all equally
grandiose. He listened to me with perfect attention, head
bent, gaze fixed, forefinger against his temple. At my last
question he drew himself up, dilated his nostrils, inflated
his tragic lungs and with all his breath let out the wail
of a departing steamboat, to which he added a superb gesture
toward the ceiling.

"My child, my child! What are you getting into?" His
nostrils palpitated and in a voice that ran the gamut of in-
tonations, he magnificently declared that if I wanted to
work three years with him he would make me the great-
est tragédienne in France. He predicted too much and asked
for too much time. The play was to be produced the following
month.

I went to Coquelin, the elder. His abdomen preceeding
him, his nostril in the air, his two hands extended, he

114

hurried to greet me. I had scarcely begun to speak before
he interrupted me by trumpeting, "You love him? He loves
you? You love each other? Then act the rôle with your
heart. What more do you want? give everything you have
without hesitating. I'll be there to applaud you". His
parting words were : "Love, love is the only teacher. With
that, one has genius".

The première was a great success and in the emotion
and enthusiasm of excessive work I was carried through the
first evenings. Coquelin had been right - in my case the
character of the woman who had been created under my eyes
lived in me spontaneously. Technical difficulties presented
themselves little by little as I became experienced, and it
was then that I understood the words of Duse : "First one
works alone, through the ~~mind~~; then before the public
through experience". It was also Duse who told me much
later, "To play 'Monna Vanna' I had to refrain from all
that I had hitherto done".

I made a tour of Europe with "Monna Vanna". It would
have been a period of radiant joy had I not been anxious
about someone far away . . .

Of this tour two great emotions surpass others in my
memory : the shining life of the Acropolis under the moon-
lit sky of Athens, and the steppes under the snows of Russia -
that blanched infinity, that repetitive space, those slow
trains which abolished time as they sped through the immac-
ulate silence. On a folding table in the train I lit an army

over

115

of candles. Into the pale night they brought a little day -
drops of light, pink and opaque.

I wrote to Maeterlinck for hours and hours . . .

space

While I was on tour with "Monna Vanna" Maeterlinck brought a place in Grasse. He no longer wanted even a pied-à-terre in Paris.

From this moment I rushed incessantly from Paris to
Grasse and from Grasse to Paris. I spent days and nights
in the train, accomplished the impossible and felt it wasn't
enough. Maeterlinck was often alone, he grew impatient
and I was wretched. I chose my engagements badly, or rather
I did, I choose them at all. If I wasn't offered a good
contract that took me far away I would drag out the nego-
tiations. I hesitated, I would and I wouldn't, and if
everything fell through I was delighted in spite of the money
I lost.

Sometimes when I felt that Maeterlinck was too lonely
at the Villa des Quatre Chemins in Grasse, I gave up my life
in the Paris-Lyons-Marseilles trains and spent weeks with him
in solitude. While he was locked in his study I prepared
lectures on "The Blue Bird", on "Pelléas" and the heroines
of his plays. I even worked on programs which would never
be given because they would have taken me too far away from
him.

Two people who love should follow the same path. The one

116

who goes away is always wrong, even if his activities add to
the glory of the one who stays at home. It was necessary
that one of us suffer and I was heartbroken without being
able, as I wished, to take all the pain for myself.

Although my absences were never long I always felt the
same amputation. If Maeterlinck were cold at the last moment
it meant that I would be sad for the entire sojourn. If he
prolonged his farewell I was even more unhappy because my
anxiety was the greater. Wasn't his sadness an omen? Why
had he looked at me so fixedly, why did he tremble, why were
his voice and gestures different?

Once especially our parting was truly anguishing. We
were going together from Grasse to Paris, and I was to
leave him at Avignon where I would take the train to Brussels
for a concert the next day.

We said goodbye on a hillside near the Palace of the
Popes. A stormy dusk, slow church bells, a sense of omen in
the atmosphere pressed upon us. I felt in his pain and re-
sentment the unconscious desire to say reproachfully, "You
wanted this". I hastened down the steep slope. From below
I turned. He had become a dark silhouette against a red sky.
I waved my handkerchief, called a last tender word. He re-
mained motionless, without replying.

I travelled all night with a sense of foreboding. On
arriving in Brussels I telegraphed for news of his safe arri-
val in Paris. I waited twelve hours, stifled, as if enclosed
in a coat of mail. At the theatre I was feted with a rain of

116-

flowers. A bunch of white violets feel at my feet. Indiffer-
ently I picked it up . . .

At last a telegram reassured me. I went to my hotel happy
and at peace. Nothing had happened - at least nothing that I
knew about.

Seven years later, during the first days of the war, I
met the man who had thrown the violets. He was to play a vital
in my life.

rôle

...

During all our life together I left Maeterlinck free in
his slightest wish, as well as in his most important acts. He
did not abuse this freedom but used it like a spoiled child.

By the air with which he entered the dining-room after
his morning's work, I knew exactly what he was going to say. He
held his pipe differently, he laid it differently on the mantle-
piece, or, looking bored, began by stating that he had not
been able to write a line. I always rose to the bait, I plied
him with questions until the moment when he sulkily revealed
the cause of his preoccupation.

blonde

And whether the cause was or or brunette, whether she had
black eyes of blue, there was only one way to help him out of
his dilemma. "We'll ask her to tea", I would say, to which he
he would add carelessly, "And I'll take her home afterward".

The lady's home was never very far away . . . Only rarely
did they live at a distance. . .

...

117

As I had promised Maeterlinck at the beginning, I held
at bay the people he did not wish to see. It was often an
ungrateful task.

At Grasse the villa gates which were always open allowed
access to the garden. If anyone came he would approach from
the end of the avenue and at once, according to our pre-arranged
signal, I would call "Danger! "Danger!" There was an old
wall not far from the thicket where Maeterlinck smoked his
pipe. When I heard a step I climbed on a mound, through the
branches of an olive tree my eyes questioned the passer-by
and if he was suspect I gave the alarm.

One day an American reporter appeared at the villa. As
usual I received him alone. He had come from New York ex-
pressly to interview the poet and he was equipped with an endless
list of questions and a kodac. He would wait in his hotel as
long as necessary, but nothing on earth would induce him to go
away without the interview.

Such energy didn't appeal to Maeterlinck. He said
brusquely, "Never, tell him, never!" I softened the mes-
sage and promised the reporter to intercede for him. But
nothing could be done.

The crisis lasted for two weeks. Every morning I talked
over the wall to the reporter and gave him a pessimistic lecture
through the protective olive tree. But he always answered,
"Thank you, madame, I'll try again tomorrow".

On the fifteenth day I went to lunch in Nice, leaving

118

to the servant the task of repulsing the enemy. At four o'clock when I came back to the house I was astonished to see in the arbour, where Maeterlinck took his coffee, two cups and two liqueur glasses. Two armchairs facing each other bore witness to a friendly conversation. I questioned the servant. "It was the American. Monsieur invited him to luncheon. Then they took a lot of photographs and went off together in the motor".

Space

Grasse is associated in my mind with anxiety. Anxiety - Instrument of torture that holds the body in a vise. Maeterlinck would leave early in the afternoon on his motorcycle and often would not be back by dinner time. When I think of such moments as those I passed waiting for his safe return, I regard love as the most horrible, the most brutalizing, of maladies. I wandered about without being able to do anything but wait. When I forced myself to sit still my body became a vibroscope. I saw nothing, I felt nothing, I no longer thought

I listened. As dusk fell, the intolerable waiting drove me from the garden, an irresistible force pulled me toward the village I needed to talk, to hear noise. I questioned the shop-keepers, taking the air on their doorsteps after dinner.

"But you mustn't worry, madame . . . it's only a delay, it's not serious". Or else, "It's a puncture . . . the butcher's boy came in the other night two hours late, and anyhow the baker said the roads were washed out by the storm" -

120

pages of the "Portrait of a Woman" which appeared in "The Double Garden".

At eleven o'clock I started rehearsals and continued them until time to take the train for home. At the station in Grasse Maeterlinck waited for me with our super-bulldog, Golaud, who lived with us for fourteen years.

We strolled home on foot, through the shimmering mist of olive trees and the rose and jasmin fields. On the road we met great flocks of sheep - black sheep with blue eyes and high foreheads such as one sees in religious pictures. Lambs of a reddish black pushed against their mothers. Their quick little steps sounded like a rain shower smothered in dust.

At the end of a lane bordered with roses was the white shelter of our house. In its peaceful face a little green door was waiting.

...

Not being able to make my twenty years of life with Maeterlinck live in a single volume, I have wished to record above all else the beginning and the end of this love which for so long - almost fifteen years - did not change.

Was this perfect peace always real? As I reread old letters I see that often, in spite of everything, I maintained it superficially in order not to disrupt his work. Searching carefully, I have discovered that a rift appeared

121

in our happiness in 1902. It was caused by material conditions of his life, which he was able to arrange perfectly only later on, thanks to his great wealth. In the meantime he often suffered despite my efforts.

It is always the infinitesimal that attacks a great thing. Domestic worries, though I took charge of them, were insupportable to him. He would often go away to avoid them, and they feel remorseful. To that family mansion in Ghent which he had so joyfully deserted, he would return without pleasure in order to find a domestic organization which functioned without his being aware of it. But he wrote that life weighed upon him there when he thought that I was having nothing but annoyances. In one of my notebooks of 1902 I wrote: "My life is splendid as regards my mind, divine for my heart, but difficult on the material side". Can it be said he did not have his share of worry? Certainly not. But he never concealed it from me. He was grieved to think that he left me all the weight of a burden he could not carry, and he would return again. But the new cook was impossible and soon he would leave again. He was miserable. He wrote, "We are going to have a poor and tattered winter".

So far as domestic discomforts were concerned, I suffered for him, but personally my sense of the fantastic made an adjustment to them. As long as love and the mind were not touched, I laughed; I looked beyond, I could not take seriously the fact that a bunch of radishes had cost too much or that a servant insisted on having Sunday off. In the

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course of my life I have lost several small fortunes without
giving five minutes attention to such incidents. I under-
stood later that this attitude offended Maeterlinck's sense
of economy - "They would take the hat off your head and you
wouldn't say a word". I laughed. Obviously I would think
they needed it more than I did.

One day he discovered in me some trouble I had hidden
from him and gently reproached me : "Are we to go through
life together as if it were a holiday? I wish you to complain
- you who never complain. And I shall always regret the
troubles which you haven't told me". I was touched to tears
by these words. I answered, "Yes, the next time I'll tell you".
But I Knew I would not. A holiday! A holiday of peace, of
true loving-kindness, yes, that was exactly what I wanted life
to be for him, for his work.

During one of his absences he wrote that he had thought
of a subject to write about which would represent me. It eas
to be an essay on happiness, since I was happiness itself. I
answered, "You are mistaken, my Maurice; one does not possess
happiness, one must have chosen it as an image from among all
other images". But this letter was never sent. I could not
willingly bring a shadow to his face.

Yet I did not entirely lack perspicacity, as is proved
by the following letter, found among my papars :

Sunday, 2 a.m. Yes, Maurice it is two o'clock
in the morning. You disapprove of me? But what do
you want me to do? I am stifling, it would be impos-
sible for me to stay quietly in bed. My day has been

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filled not so much by events as by the exaggerated
way I've looked at them. I don't think this is wrong
at long intervals it is good to look at things
through a magnifying glass. That is why I do not
want to flee from my present state. I prefer to
discuss it with you.

There is something both true and good in your
instinct for perpetual peace, but that does not in
the least prove that the contrary instinct lacks
reason, and I think that I do wrong when I
suppress it in me for too long a time.

It is this constraint which I often impose upon
myself that sometimes unbalances me physically be-
cause it burns within me like a corrosion.

Why am I condemned always to make efforts? Why
are there lives to which nothing comes naturally?
An effort over circumstances, an effort over others,
an effort over one'self. There are moments when I
let my will relax and I feel so tired that I lose
my strong desire to live.

Nature has not inclined me toward humility,
life on the contrary constantly forces me to it.

Oh, I do not want all of a sudden to show you
secret griefs and spiritual tempests. No, thank
God, such moments are rare, but for that very reason
they are perhaps more intense.

Little by little circumstances seem to exact
of me further effort of a new kind. Chance showed
me that clearly this afternoon. I have had a great
deal of unhappiness, I've had so much that I won't
accept another restriction and admit it in silence.
Today I've seen our life through a magnifying glass
and I'm talking to you tonight because I know that
tomorrow my reason will dominate and silence me.

Listen, my Maurice, in your horror of love com-
edies you have deprived love of all manifestations.
Well, you are wrong.

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I am convinced that you love me. If I were not I would say nothing, but for some time now it has been only my reason which assures me and, no matter what you say, love cannot live solely by reason.

I am young, I am very sensitive, very elated even, and also very feminine. All this is governed by pitiless perspicacity, it is true. But if I am willing to kill. I don't want to stop being human. I will come to that if I have to live for long on this diet of silent love. I know, I'm going too far, I exaggerate. Is this true? I think that I see ahead. I am horribly suspicious of the imperceptible slopes down which descend all lives that are lived together.

This is the incident which hurt me so. Monsieur and Madame X. called today and for some time, changed without embarrassment at my presence, tender words of love. Certainly I don't want to be loved with an idolatry so blind and so totally crushing. But it appeared to me clearly that you and Monsieur X. are at exactly the two opposite poles of love, and that there should be a medium climate where my instincts and my wisdom could live equally happy and satisfied.

We have known this climate. Has it disappeared? No, but it will unless we react.

Undoubtedly I am worrying too soon. But it was I who first conceived our love. By that gesture I took its responsibility. I must watch, foresee and warn.

Had I sent this letter . . . who knows?

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Chapter Six

One of the greatest joys of my life was the acquisition
of the Abbaye of Saint-Wandrille. Because I had loved it
from childhood I took Maeterlinck to see it. By a happy
combination of circumstances he was able to give for six
thousand francs a year, and we spent our summers there for
over twelve years.

The Abbaye is the only material thing which has ever
become a part of myself. In this monument of beauty, out
of proportion to human needs, I lived beyond the world. The
tourists who now visit it cannot imagine what it was in our
time, for the love it inspired in us and the care we bestowed
on it impregnated its magnificent austerity with charm.
I should say my love, for although Maeterlinck admired it he
never loved it as I did. I adored its every stone.

The immense Abbaye had been partly destroyed and recon-
structed many times since the laying of its first stone in
the fourth century. Like human grandeur, it had acquired
through its misfortunes a greater nobility and beauty.

The first big portal is simplified baroque, of great
charm. On the lintel one reads "Abbaye de la Fontanelle".
That is the gentle name of the river which crosses the park.
A little farther on one passes a second door. Of the purest
Louis XV, it opens on a large terrace, also of this period.
It was magical to wander thus through
centuries and styles. One passed from a chapel of 1000 A.D.

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to the grace of a seventeenth-century salon. On the walls of
the great refectory, in the interlacing of rather heavy Roman-
esque arches, one saw the birth of Gothic inspiration.

It would have been as desecrating to "furnish" the vast
rooms and halls of the Abbaye as to put divans and lace curtains
in a cathedral. We respected their proportions by using only
enormous tables and great gothic armchairs. We evaded all
material complications by preserving our simplicity, our rhythm
of life. With us were only two servants and the dogs. A wood-
cutter served as gardener. He was never asked to do more than
pull up weeds, bring in the geraniums in autumn, put them out
again in spring and replenish the woodpile.

I do not know which aspect of the old Abbaye most
strongly lives on in me - sounds or silences, perfumes, colours
or outlines. The enormous edifice throbs in each of my senses
and when I close my eyelids I hold it intact in my eyes. In
speaking of it today my heart trembles as if for a lost love.
I hear again the murmur of my abbess robes on the paving-stones
and the sound of my step, rising and falling, under the arches.
I see the monks' staircase, at the end of the wide corridor of
cells, as it looked at noon, bathed in sunlight. The first rays
touched the ramp, mounted the steps, mounted again and reached
the white stone columns which burst into light. Each day the
miracle began anew. But now each day no heart stands there to
beat before its glory.

I can still smell the dampness of the big stones in the
chapel and in the galleries of the cloister. They seemed in

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places to have retained the imprint of footsteps. I saw all the prayers as if they were fastened to the walls - vows and gratitude for blessings hanging aloft like invisible ex-votos. I remember the Sainte Anne whose head had long disappeared, and the secular fresh moss of emerald green scintillating on a summer morning. And ah, we had planted small nasturtiums, a whole colony of red and yellow faces around a marble basin, in which a humble waterspout whispered to itself at the twilight hour. I put goldfish in the yellow water - they all died, no one knew why. The big door of the kitchen - a kitchen as high as a cathedral - opened on that side. Through it Maeterlinck would come in to give the cook fresh trout from the river. They were difficult to catch, he said, being too artful and too lively. An old vegetable garden lay in terraces to the right of the Abbaye and Maeterlinck liked to pick the vegetables and fruit himself. A dilapidated greenhouse concealed some stubborn and dusty petunias. When the door was opened a smell of vanilla died away upon the air.

I knew all the echoes of the old domain, each play of light - all that little world of shadows which awakened with the night and animated in secret the lace of the capitals and the pointed arches. Often after nightfall I would put on a black cape and creep as silently as a cat among the ruins and vines so that I might hear the sweet sorrow of the owls and sense the drowsy rustlings of their wings. Motionless, hold-my breath, I felt my body become a thing among many things. At ten o'clock the bell in the church tower called me and I

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would run back to the white room where Maeterlinck would still
be reading in a big bed by the light of a candle. Ten minutes
later I would not have found him awake. He slept with that
convinced and profound sleep that only a man knows, and into
which he seems to sink even in his darkest hours as if to remake
his life substance.

In the Abbaye Maeterlinck followed his usual routine -
work in the morning, siesta after lunch, letters, walks and
exercise until dinner. Only our evenings were different here.
After dinner, instead of reading in a brightly-lighted
salon as in Paris, we sat in two circles of lamplight and
mountains of shadows surrounded us. We were alone in a world
of shade and silence. Sometimes a bat or an owl flew into the
room, for the ruins communicated with the habitable part of
the Abbaye.

space

In our first days in Saint-Wandrille we used to make the
rounds at night - at the slightest sound we started out. We
even went into the park and near the river where poachers set
their nets to steal the trout.

"This way", Maeterlinck would murmur and, revolver well
in advance, he would penetrate the thicket. But we would find
nothing and our courage grew. One very dark night someone rang
the bell in the tower - three quick peals that sent us flying
to the window. The next day it was said that a ghost had come

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to ring the Abbaye bell.

With three hundred cells for monks, its dependencies, its park, fields and woods, the Abbaye constituted a domain so vast that it was impossible to find each other without a system of signals. We would a bell or give a rallying-cry. This was also an excellent means of hiding from intruders. Once an archeologist whom we had purposely lost passed his afternoon hallooing to us, which merely helped us to keep out of sight.

Sometimes Maeterlinck would go hunting, a gun on his shoulder, his dog at his heels. The bull-dog beat up the game but the poet was never quite ready to shoot. He was always thinking of something else and it was his notebook that became filled, not his game-pouch. At the end of the day I would go to meet him, entering the forest through an alley of old pine trees. Almost always we met at a wooden loggia built against the western wall by the Benedictine monks. A little higher up through the woods, near a regiment of old pear trees, there was a little cabin of one room which bore a chiseled inscription, "O beata solitude". Often I waited there or was plunged deeper toward the center of the forest where there was a pavillon built by the Marquis of Stackpole, who had lived for a long time with the monks after the death of his wife.

In this pavillon I wrote "The Children's Blue Bird". I would come from the Abbaye on my donkey and leave him out under the trees; but he would follow me into the pavillon and close the door after him with his nose, to keep out the flies. He remained philosophically in the dark for hours on end while

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I worked upstairs. I adored this little donkey, but he was a bit too intelligent and this angered Maeterlinck. When autumn came and there were log fires in the immense Louis XV salon, the astute donkey would climb the eight steps that led into the house and worry the old door-lock until it gave way. Then he would stretch himself out on the carpet and expose his round little stomach to the fire.

When the Normandy rains closed in on us we lived in a prison of water. Then Maeterlinck would put on roller skates and race the length of the corridors at top speed, his pipe in his mouth, a book under his arm and his dog behind him. The noise reverberated through the high vaults, an appalling racket that resounded from one end of the monastery to the other.

Often as I walked in the cloister, sight-seers appeared and I would hide in a niche or behind a door, furious at hearing their stupid comments, while the guide chanted, "Here you see a basin of the purest Renaissance style"... The tourists' comment was always the same: "How can anyone live here? How depressing. It's enough to kill one". And I recalled all that I had heard of the monks' lives. Some had died of melancholia and almost all of them were neurasthenic. Were God and all this beauty not enough for them?

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During our first weeks in the Abbaye we were almost ill with exaltation and admiration. "Will we be able to live

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here?" we asked.

Maeterlinck quickly established an equilibrium. He knew how to flee from the cloister, the ruins, and find health in the forest. As for me, I refused either to abstain from the danger of exaltation or to become accustomed to it. Each day I became paler in the shadow of the heavy stones, feeling through them the experience of time and climate. And then suddenly my imagination was seized by the idea of using this background as a theatre for a great play.

[ ] It would not be a question of gathering together an audience in one of the huge halls and enacting a tragedy before them. No, the tragedy would enfold under the sky and in the natural settings which the Abbaye provided. A limited number of spectators, hidden by the night, would follow the action of the scenes from place to place, coming upon them like intruders.

Of course I had to find a play which would do justice to the setting. Every scene had to be adapted to its frame, and in a sufficiently logical order, to prevent the audience from having to move more than a few steps. I soon discovered that all the marvels of Saint-Wandrille seemed to have been made for "Macbeth". The day of this discovery I feverishly surveyed the halls, the terraces, the smallest corners, fearful of being suddenly stopped by some invincible obstacle. I found none. I laid my plans but said nothing to Maeterlinck until later, fearing an objection I would not have wished to over-ride and which the exigencies of his work and rest would have justified.

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First of all I had to have a new translation - that of
François Victor Hugo, the best we had at that time, didn't
satisfy me. I began by begging Maeterlinck for corrections
and alterations, then with a little diplomacy I obtained a
complete translation from him. He followed the English text
while I read aloud the different French versions. First he
would speak the phrase in English, constructing it almost
according to French form, then re-say it, divesting it of the
form which was unsuitable; then he would repeat it again,
breaking up more and more the first easy efforts. Finally,
above the many words that fell at random like empty shells,
the real thought of the poet would spring forth, immense,
overpowering.

When the translation was finished I went to see our
friend, Gaston Calmette, who was at this time the director of
*Le Figaro*. He generously offered me the publicity that was
indispensable. We agreed to ask two hundred francs a ticket,
a large sum in those days; after deducting expenses, the pro-
fits were to go to the poor of the village. I could easily have
accommodated an audience of a thousand, but I preferred to limit
the number to a hundred and have them well hidden. Thus the
drama would be given over to the Abbaye and its powerful
accessories - solitude and shadow, silence and space.

Finally Maeterlinck gave me complete latitude on condi-
tion that he would see no preparations, that he would be con-
sulted about nothing, and that in my announcements and re-
hearsals and in every detail of the enterprise I would

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respect the singular pronoun. It would be "my" affair, not "our" affair.

I was delighted. But at the moment I was without funds, not having accepted any engagements for months. I began negotiations with actors, ordered the printing of programs and initiated all preparations with only faith as fortune. Then I saw the moment arriving when I would have to pay for costumes, assume train fares for the actors. . . I trembled a little. The *Figaro* began the publicity announcements. Suddenly a telegram arrived from the Princesse Murat, reserving four seats. It was followed by scores of others.

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The problem was to make the tragedy live, to awaken it between the high walls where it seemed to be sleeping. There was only one possible way - a plan of campaign. I divided the Abbaye into sectors, established a general headquarters, created officers to take on special responsibilities. Naturally all the men of the army had to be in period costume, which would allow them to come and go freely. Some of the soldiers would be alloted to the audience as guides. Lady Macbeth's ladies-in-waiting would be at the service of anyone who, having come in travelling clothes, wanted to change. In case of cold weather, braziers would be lighted everywhere.

Three hundred Benedictines had once lived comfortably in the Abbaye, and the fifty actors who lived there, the three weeks of rehearsals were able to work without being seen or

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heard. But a week before the dress rehearsal, when Maeterlinck met by chance an actor and a director who were lurking in a corridor, he came to find me to complain, "I'll not tolerate any longer this underhand invasion of the Abbaye, I'll shoot the next actor I meet". One day when I was especially busy he told me that he had appendicitis, and a headache made him fear an attack of typhoid fever - all because of "Macbeth" at Saint-Wandrille! The worst was that, after having refused to participate, he was overcome with curiosity; he spied on the work from every corner and enjoyed himself immensely without admitting it. On the day of the performance I sent a costume and ticket to his room, saying that of some extraordinary circumstance forced him to pass through the crowd he might welcome the disguise of a costume. I didn't suspect that he would be the first one dressed...

The impression of that night constitute the greatest art emotion of my life. Was it really art? No, it was more... moments of life glorified, of humanity raised briefly to a higher plane. It was truly a performance as Shakespeare might have conceived it. Maeterlinck, reconciled, honoured the evening with these lines :

> The beauty of the night with its effulgence and magnificent shadows attached itself to the garments, the words, the gestures, the thoughts of the protagonists, and in this way the two fathomless nights - that of human consciousness and that of the earth - mingled together their gloomy fires.

...

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... For the entrance of King Duncan the spectators were grouped as if in boxes before the high windows opening on the court of honour. From afar sounded a fanfare of trumpets and at once the great gates of the castle swung on their hinges, servitors armed with torches ranged themselves on the steps. Above and below, the façade windows lighted as if preparation for the reception. One heard faintly the thin sharp music. Lady Macbeth appeared in the door with her husband and the inmates of Dunsinane, awaiting the arrival of King Duncan. Guards rushed forward, sentinels cried from afar. The darkness of the hillside opposite was brightened with small lights which came and went, descending among the trees. One heard the sound of hoofs. The cavalcade approached. The king crossed the bridge above the river. A mist enfolded him, he drew nearer and at the moment he spoke of the "temple-haunting martlet" the swallows, deceived by the brilliance of the torches, rushed out on all sides and wheeled above the cavalcade. As Lady Macbeth I bowed before the king, the village bell pealed nine times, a dog barked. . . Never will I forget the intensity of that moment. Thus all through the evening the gods were with me.

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Three months of work for an evening without a tomorrow!
But, in spite of all precautions, Maeterlinck had borne with
difficulty the activities that he sensed were going on, and I
felt I had no further right to impose upon his privacy.

I should have liked to make a French Bayreuth of Saint-
Wandrille. It would have made an incomparable art center and
the fortune of the countryside. Besides the plays of Maeterlinck,
which were almost all adaptable to the Abbaye, I wanted to
revive the medieval mystery plays with Gregorian chants sung
by the choir of St. Gervais. What the audience found unique
and wonderful in "Macbeth" was in my opinion only a first
attempt. I wanted the human machinery, which had functioned
like clockwork, organized, amplified and endlessly perfected.
New young talent would be discovered and, logically, a school
of free tradition could be founded. I remembered the words of
Stanislawski, director of the Moscow Art Theatre, when he came
to see us at Saint-Wandrille: "Lectures, lessons and rehearsals cannot give as much as you can offer here: a continuity of atmosphere and an intellectual life in a beautiful frame.
I envy you this Abbaye".

In spite of my anxiety for Maeterlinck, I wrote to my
brother a year later:

> I am going to give "Pelléas" at the Abbaye.
> I think of it night and day - ever since I have
> seen that Maurice is not displeased with the

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idea. It is difficult and fascinating because "Pelléas" lends itself to irreality even more than "Macbeth". I shall have to change it, add to it and complete it in order to recreate the atmosphere and keep the dream from coming to an end. Fortunately Maurice gives me every liberty.

My first gesture was to write to Sarah Bernhardt, asking if she would play Pelléas to my Mélisande.

She came at once to the Abbaye to see us, appearing like Phèdre leaning upon the arms of two serving-women - it was just a year before her leg was amputated. Her head was wreathed in wistaria, a mauve veil encircled it and fell to her feet, a pale grey fur entirely enveloped her. She was adorable. She turned a sad smile on the Abbaye and said, "I could never walk through these enormous halls, it is not to be considered. Perhaps we could put it on in Paris". The following winter I had the joy of playing Mélisande with her in her own theatre. How sad it was to watch the medical care that had to be given her during the performance, and with what heroism she supported these tortures. A doctor and two nurses were with her, and before she went on for the "Pelléas" death scene they took off her long cape and I saw that a dozen small hot water bottles were attached by safety-pins to her tights to ease the pain in her injured leg. The nurses refilled the bottles with boiling water, the doctor gave her two hypodermics and a stimulant before she was carried on to the stage. With infinite precautions - certain postures were forbidden her - the nurses helped her to sit down on the edge of the fountain. From there she could permit herself one gesture - that of rising when she

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stretched out her arms to Mélisande. The end of the act was
tragic : the audience stamped and shouted its appreciation,
the curtain rose and fell many times, but Sarah, who had been
struck down by Golaud, remained lying on the stage. Lou
Tellegen (Golaud) and I stood in the wings, not wishing to
acknowledge the applause without her. She had forgotten to
tell us that she would not be able to get up again. She
finally called to us to help her and, supported between us,
responded to the curtain calls with her ineffable smile.

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The performance of "Pelléas" in the Abbaye was as beau-
tiful as "Macbeth" had been. Even Maeterlinck was enthusias-
tic - which did not prevent him, at the end of the dress re-
hearsal, from shooting off his gun in the air so that everyone
would hurry to bed. Réjane and Sacha Guitry came and afterward
made Maeterlinck an interesting offer to produce "Pelléas" in
Paris. "Unhappily", I wrote to Maurice Leblanc, "Maeterlinck
won't open his mouth. I shall be forced to answer that he is
absent. Ah, the terrible sore of the world is the
nature of most human beings. It terrifies me. What is this
evil which, suddenly, without a real reason, makes the heart
that loves close up, the mind become deaf, and a kind of blind
force set people against each other?"

...

When Maeterlinck wrote "The Blue Bird" he did not dream

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of the world-wide fame it would achieve. A newspaper had asked him for a Christmas story and he contrived a tale of two children who were to search afar for happiness, only to find it at home within themselves. He became so interested in his idea that he decided to develop the little story into an elaborate fairy-tale, without even thinking of it as a stage production. Stanislawski, however, saw its possibilities as a play and was the first to produce it, in Russia.

When we decided to stage it in Paris I went to Moscow to study the smallest details of the Stanislawski production. In colour and form the *mise en scène* was exquisite, but the spirit of the tale had been altered by Russian mysticism – the character of "Light" (which I was to play) had taken its on the aspect of a saint. Later, in England, she resembled a nurse; in Germany, a fairy; in New York, a Liberty enlightening the world. In Paris we wanted her to be a pagan statue.

Maeterlinck kept away from the theatre during the weeks I directed the production, but he promised to be present for the last rehearsals. It was the only one of his plays that did not bore him to watch; indeed he took a positive pleasure in the comedy scenes, sitting in the orchestra, his opera glasses trained on the stage, his shoulders often shook with silent laughter.

Among the hundred odd children in the cast was a young girl of eighteen or nineteen. She was scantily clad in a short Greek tunic and looked so small that she could have been mistaken for a child. Because we noticed in her a maturity that

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did not correspond to her appearance we gave her two small roles to play. Between the acts she joined the children who playfully clustered around Maeterlinck, climbing on his knees and looking in his pockets for bonbons.

One day she brought one of his books and asked him to autograph it. That evening we took her to dine with us. She came from Nice. Her parents, before settling in Paris, had lived in the old part of the town where her father had tended the bar in a little café he owned. In spite of her background she was well-mannered and amusing. I told her that she must dine with us whenever she felt lonely, and little by little she attached herself to us.

In the spring of this year Maeterlinck's mother, who had been ill for several months, died. Stricken by her death, he had become melancholic and this condition contributed largely to the young girl's entrance into our intimate life. "He must have distraction", the doctors said, "something that will take his mind off his grief". I invited the young girl to spend the summer with us. She filled Saint-Wandrille with her laughter, vivacity and the songs of Paris. I rejoiced to see Maeterlinck smile again, never dreaming that the consequences of this gesture would be the destruction of our life, our work and our great love.

For eight years she was to live with us almost continuously,

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and in 1919 Maeterlinck married her. From now on I shall
refer to her simply by the initial "R".

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The following year, 1912, found me in Boston where
Henry Russell had asked me to create Mélisande at the Boston
Opera, of which he was the director. He had overridden my
horror of the ocean and my reluctance to leave Maeterlinck for
two months by promising an exceptional production of "Pelléas",
with two great musicians, André Caplet and Walter Straram, as
coach and conductor, and with Vanni Marcoux as Golaud. After
a month of the opera performances I was to act both "Pelléas"
and "Monna Vanna". For the first time I would realize one
of my great wishes - to sing and act the same roles altern-
nately.

Caplet's art and his love of perfection enchanted me.
We would spend hours over the slightest phrase, to make it shine from all its facets. There is no music perhaps
that so lends itself to infinite research and discovery as
Debussy's. It is an ascension in the mountains. Caplet used
to say, "Debussy claims that I am more debussyist than he
himself." Indeed there has never been a deeper and, above all,
a more creative devotion. It is well known that after Debussy's
death Caplet entire nights in orchestrating his friend's un-
finished "St. Sebastian". At the piano Caplet had the special
touch of Debussy, the same warmth and lightness.

I often think that my two deepest emotions as an

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artist were these : in "Macbeth" the arrival of King Duncan in the court of honour at St. Wandrille, and the overture of "Pelléas and Mélisande" in Boston. Before the curtain goes up Mélisande is knявling beside the fountain in the forest, and one cannot imagine with what intensity the singer, alone in the dark, listens. The first measures fall in the slow and heavy silence like certain phrases of Monteverdi's "Orpheus", but with a grandeur and simplicity more intellectualized; then the themes of all the characters enter and blend, flowing into Mélisande's death theme - the most poignant page of music I know. Hidden from the audience, frozen in immobility, after a few moments my knees trembled so uncontrollably that I was forced to grasp the edge of the mirror-fountain; my hands became icy as if they were lying on snow.

I have never seen a performance of "Pelléas" that could equal the one given in Boston. But in spite of its success, and of my wish to remain in America for other engagements, I returned to France as soon as I could. During the entire time I had had no word from Maeterlinck, but had to depend on cables from one of the servants who assured me regularly that all was well. No sooner was I away from France than he began to register his resentment by a silence that poisoned my days and nights. The truth was that he did not oppose my activities; but he was opposed to them.

After the Boston representations I sang in several New York salons; other engagements were proposed, and

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and after five or six weeks I would have returned to France
with a small fortune. But I hadn't the courage to prolong
my absence, I didn't even choose my boat, I took the first
one that was aailing. It was a small one, the "Provence", and
a tempest dislocated the upper bridge. I felt nothing . . . I
was returning . . .

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When I arrived back in Nice I found a changed atmosphere
awaiting me. The young girl, R., had succeeded in changing
Maeterlinck's life-long habits. He was now surrounded by new
faces which had replaced those of our familiar friends.

I had always thought that the disparity in our careers
was without importance in respect of an emotion which, for me,
could neither change nor perish. But now life had gradually
widened the distance between our lives which had seemed to us
unimportant at the beginning of our love. I tried to believe
that it was still unimportant . . .

In the summer R. accompanied us when we went back to
Saint-Wandrille. Everywhere in the woods and in the gardens
she wrote her name, spelling it out with flowers on the paths.
Autumn leaves swept away the last traces of the petals, but
the name continued to resound in the spaces of our life.

...

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I loved the Abbaye too much to think that I could
ever leave it of my own volition. I cherished every part
of it as if it were human, with tears and a beating heart.
I have wept before a gate which a <u>vandal</u> had stripped
of its old ivy; I have caressed certain stones, watching
on their surface the drought of summer, the glow of autumn;
I have walked in all this beauty, praying the gods never
to take it from me. Therefore it was necessary for me to
lose it, since it is <u>ordained</u> in my "law" to pass on, not
to remain. To have lived on in the Abbaye would have been
to live my end deliberately, for I dreamed of dying there.
I listened to the <u>little</u> broken bell in the church tower,
thinking that it would toll for my last hour.

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Chapter Seven

For a long time I have asked myself [>] shall I or
shall I not relate the unhappy ending of our story?
Yet how reveal the history of such a happiness without telling
of the disaster which followed it like a shadow? The more
superb and disproportionate to human joys such a happiness
has been, the more inconceivable and disorderly will be its
destruction, as if a supreme, a convulsive diffidence of the
soul were operating there.

It will be difficult to describe lucidly what was to me
an era of incomprehension, a long chaotic nightmare in which
I lay without voice or strength. I have begun my story
three times and each time stopped myself, fearing to caric-
ture the experience I had lived with such authentic pain.
It seemed to me that since writing was not my profession I
was attempting the impossible. I thought that I could never
adequately depict an enigma in which even today I find no
point of reason, no trace of logic.

On Maeterlinck's side, an aberration distorted his
vision, created and welcomed hate - and he increased the
dose the more quickly to poison love. On my side, I was un-
prepared and unsuspecting. I was open to disaster and my
spirit fainted beneath an intolerable shock.

There were no words, almost no words. This beautiful
love which had been silent, as if jealous of its own expression

145

died under the weight of infamous accusations. I heard them
in a state of torpor that was beyond all feeling. I was as
still as if I had just seen a precious crystal shattered,
without uselessly troubling to gather up the shining
fragments ... stars falling in the night ... in a moment,
twenty years of life extinguished. In such a moment the mind
has but one choice: space or prison. It takes flight or it
struggles, depending on its caliber.

I did not understand and I left without a word.

space

How retrace the evolution of this love which during
long years resisted change, held in place by the mind, by the
consciously chosen attitude, by the force with which the lovers
projected its image. And how illuminate the influences at work
against this love - influences which worked in ways that I,
who see only in the light, never envisaged them. My nature
is not made for intrigues. I am not clever enough to make
them or intuitive enough to know when they are being made
against me. And I do not care to reveal them here.

It is customary to say, "Life is like that". But life
is unjustly confused with people's ignorance of how it should
be lived. We had the security of a love greater than love
: two beings who considered themselves intelligent, twenty
years of life together, of thought in common, of high effort
and perfect memories.

Maeterlinck once wrote me this touching phrase : "You

146

have changed my ideas. I no longer believe in destiny".

And in that hour when I was to feel myself submerged
as if by a wave of indomitable destiny, the hour when every-
one would say, "This sorrow is your fate", I would have pro-
tested, "No, no, it is not destiny, it is ourselves, it is
the scaffolding of our exalted existence that has collapsed.
Lucid thinking could have saved us. Nothing would have
happened, or at least the same events would have transpired,
but quietly and in order".

No, I cannot illuminate what I do not yet understand.
I have been able to follow the general outlines of the
drama, but its details escape me and I remain astonished
as will be those who read me.

Finally I came to the conclusion that a literary
talent which at first I desired for this book, would have
disguised rather than clarified events; and that on the
contrary my very ignorance of _métier_ would allow me to
write more authentically.

One feels in general that in stating precisely what
has happened, one reveals all the truth. What an error.
That which happens is often but a crude distortion of our
intention. Between the intention and the deed, a whole
world lies. I had never realized how insignificant events
are in lives lived for inward rather than for outward mean-
ings. I had never realized how important it is to unseal
those obscure adventures of the spirit of which we ourselves
are but dimly aware.

Even though events have to all appearances →

147

shattered my life, I see in them only the fulfillment of an
interior evolution - that is, a life long suppressed must
 explode before it can become conscious of itself.

One might think that if a third person had not been
living with us for several years - someone coming from a
world different from ours, bringing with her interests, am-
bitions and desires of a type utterly opposed to mine - there
would have been no tragedy. It is possible. But except that
it would seem to me out of place to describe literally the
role of this third person, and no matter how convincing that
role may seem to the ordinary point of view, it did not count
on that plane which to me is the only essential one (": the
transformation of love. A man and woman living alone together
can order their common life by their individual laws. But
when a third person enters into their intimacy, these laws
are no longer applicable. I did not understand this. I con-
tinued to be the same in a situation that was no longer the
same.

space

In examining the circumstances that surrounded my birth,
I have understood the kind of child and woman I was. A child
is usually born as a triumph. For my parents I was a mis-
fortune. They did not want a third child - I was, as they
say in Normandy, an afterthought. During nine months the
idea that represented me was rejected. I imagine that the
undesirables of the world are born like this - rejected

148

before they live. If my hypothesis is correct, the child
bears the consequences of this refusal and his destiny retains
a stigma. He will always obey the necessity of arranging for
himself enormous compensations, he will invent for himself a
marvelous model that all his strength will strain to imitate.
Subconsciously throughout his life he will have grown up with
the fear and the apology of his own existence, I have spent
all my life winning the battle I innocently lost by being born.

I arrived at my appointed hour and yet as if unexpectedly.
In the house, nothing was prepared for me over the
earth, a winter dawn, in the heavens Jupiter, Saturn and a
reflected light from the helmet of Mercury. Inimical influ-
ences - a crown of contradictions. But Jupiter was to be the
most powerful, having implanted in me a spirit of latent valor
and an aptitude for conquest.

I was not one of those fortunate children whose first
graces are solicited and applauded. My favorite retreat was
behind the long curtains of Utrecht velvet that hung in the
salon. Behind them, protected by the general indifference to
my existence, I lived the shapeless fairy tale of childhood.
The curtains also served as a post of observation. From this
first survey of the world was born my first preoccupation :
is there another world? The one I was observing was called
"normal". In it I saw people moving about in anger and hate,
their egos in collision and their respective liberties de-
royed. Certainly the adorable element of a fairy tale was
not present here.

When the suppressed impetus of my childhood found a

148-a

path for movement, it was in secret. And when the time came
to leave my childhood's hiding-place I needed no help, for my
individual life had already been established. Since that life
had to continue in isolation, I lived outwardly as a reflected
image of myself - an image that everyone praised for its passi-
vity. Children often have a strange protean instinct. I man-
ipulated my image and my reality, setting my image the task
of meeting the formidable realities of life - a phantom which
took my place in the world. For years and years I lived the
life of this phantom rather than my own life.

And suddenly, when reality at last overtook me, I realized
why I had not known how to protect my perfect love from dis-
solution and why I remained paralyzed at the moment I foresaw
its loss.

space

The first cycles of our love had been lived, its grandeur
had gradually disappeared. A despair had evolved in me and
I lived in its desolation. Yet I could not surrender my
heart to the evidence, I did not wish to admit what must be
admitted in love - that time and custom slowly pull it back
to earth. One refuses to be resigned to one's inevitable
resignation. As the eyes accustom themselves to night, so
the soul grows used to its isolation. All my emotional
energy continued to expend itself in preserving Maeterlinck's
peace. He had implanted in me such a respect for silence

149

that I was obsessed by it. A door that slammed, an object that
fell, an unexpected ring of the bell made me quiver from head to
foot. Had he heard, had he been disturbed? I no longer dedicated
my attention uniquely to our happiness, our love; our very life
seemed less important to me than the silence he demanded.

I had developed the habit of walking on tiptoe. People
would ask, "Is anyone ill?" I would answer "Yes" to assure my-
self of their cooperation. I would have asked heaven and earth
to help me.

I did not realize what, for a long time, had fixed the
division between us - silence. The silence that had been a
first bond between us was in the end to become a fatal barrier.
Once it had made of our love a dream without sound and without
end. Each could contemplate himself in this silent dream in
the manner of his own dreaming. Silence had married us as a
poem is written.

But the usage of the years had slowly altered the en-
chantment. Less lovely and less true, the silence which was en-
veloping and isolating us seemed by an invisible and insidious
movement to descend between us, hiding us from each other and
revealing to us a world hitherto divinely unknown. Love was in
suspension and silence gave us beck to ourselves.

space

Certainly there is always some cause which hastens the
decline of love. This need not happen if both have followed
the same evolution. We had not. My organism was off the rails

150

of time - I was retarded in the flowered fields of my
twentieth year. "Sooner or later a beautiful thing dies
of its own beauty", Maeterlinck had written to me in one of
his first letters. No. There is no beauty without the
will to beauty, and it is the bridge between the mind and
the mind's creation which bends beneath the weight of time.

I did not know that love's coming of age demands an-
other kind of vigilance. I have a talent for constructing
but not for preserving; I do not establish what
Valéry calls "the table of correspondence between our acts
and phenomena". At the moment when I should have acted
upon the situation, I could only affirm with stubborn faith,
"Nothing can separate us". And if anyone had contradicted
me, I would have evoked the image of the exalted humanity
we thought we represented, and proclaimed, "He is he and
I am I, and each carries the thought of the other in the
very center of his mind".

space

We never had what are called lovers' quarrels because
our intellectual understanding had preserved us (too much
perhaps) from the usual conflicts. There never passed be-
tween us those small reproaches frankly spoken or badly
disguised, which destroy the harmony existing between
lovers. But who can predict the evolution of love's mys-
terious chemistry? Romantic love had had its decline and
had crystallized into friendship. Furthermore, little by

151

little throughout the years, my love for Maeterlinck had
become maternal. This substitute maternity is a tragic aberra-
tion - a trick of tenderness; the most authentic instinct of
humanity - the organic bond which attaches mother and child -
cannot be copied. For a long time I had needed, I had been
searching for, some great motive to reanimate our disintegrat-
ing existence. I did not realize that in sometimes fleeing
from our closed and methodical life
I was fleeing from an obscure oppression. As one snatches up
objects of value in time of danger, each time I went away I
carried off with me what I could of my initial energies.

space

It is difficult to define precisely the mystery of certain intervals in life which later seem like a slow and heavy preparation for unhappiness. They are comparable to the uneasiness which hangs over the earth before a storm.

In my troubled memory of these years an event detaches
itself with clarity.

One day in the street we stopped before the window of an
épicerie. While Maeterlinck stood looking at the fruits and
vegetables I looked at him. My eyes often studied his face - a
healthy face which the blood calmly coloured and which was
beginning to be outlined in white by his thick hair. For two
or three years I had noticed a few vertical wrinkles near his
ears, as if the flesh of the cheeks in becoming heavier had
slightly tired the skin. I watched over these slight signs

152

of age with the impression that my vigilance could hold them
at bay.

He turned to me and declared that he no longer had any
pleasure in work, that rest and food were now all he
asked from life. I took his words literally and they caused
me a real anguish. They seemed to announce the end of something.
I did not understand that they expressed a whim of the moment
and that he would always be, as he had always been, a great worker.

Somewhat later, when he was away for a few days, I wrote
him a letter revealing what was tormenting me. I pointed
out the division that was defining itself from day to day. He
reassured me by return post : "We will always love each other
above all others and above everything".

I only asked to be reassured. But what was this feeling
we had ended by having for each other, at once indifferent and
affectionate, which satisfied his orderly nature and left me
with a tormented heart.

Silence descended again between us - this time definitionally.

I did not say anything, but I felt a little lost and needed some help.

And then upon the chaos of my own life there fell a
world chaos - the war.

We were still at Saint-Wandrille when the news came that
war had been declared. The next morning Maeterlinck came into

153

my room. I was standing before the fireplace, I saw his
face in the mirror. It was different. I turned to him in
surprise.

He said, "I am leaving . . . soon. I am going to
enlist in the Foreign Legion".

I stammered a few frantic words: "It's madness,
my God, it's madness".

He shrugged his shoulders. "There are things that
women can never understand".

I tried to protest. "You - in the trenches! You-
killing men! Exposing your own life!" We stood face to
face, motionless, speechless for a space of time that anni-
halated me. Then he turned his back and walked out.

I ran to my car. . . An hour later I was at the
office of the Mayor of Rouen. "You would never accept a
man like Maeterlinck! Let him help with his pen, that is his
role!" He assured me that everything would be done.

Before long the Belgian government installed itself
at Le Havre. This was what I had feared. I decided to go to
Paris and draw up a petition addressed to the head of the
government.

The trains were disorganized. My chauffeur had been
mobilized, and to go from Saint-Wandrille to Paris was not
simple. I managed to slip into a train carrying soldiers.
But in the night toward the middle of the journey an official
discovered me. He put me off the train in the open fields,
saying that I would find a shelter nearby. I walked for hours

154

in the darkness in shoes that sank into the ploughed earth. I went at random, seeing nothing, pushed on by fear and penetrating cold.

Suddenly a sentinel stopped me. I explained what had happened. "Follow the railway line", he said. "In another kilomètre there's a military post".

When I opened the barracks door I saw two men. Straddling a bench, surrounded by empty wine bottles, they were playing cards in a cloud of smoke. Their manner alarmed me and I fled. Exhausted, I waited for dawn at the foot of a tree. At daybreak I saw that I was not far from a town. I walked toward it and a van full of soldiers took me to Paris. With the help of friends a petition to safeguard Maeterlinck was drawn up, hundreds of signatures were collected and sent to the Belgian government in the name of the writers of France. It was favorably received and shortly afterward Maeterlinck's offer of service was declined. He spoke no more of going to war.

...

When a catastrophe breaks over the world, every prescient human being finds in it an illumination of his own interior chaos.

Mine terrified me.

In this terrible year, as if to intensify the tumult within me, it was destined that I should be swept into a new and overwhelming emotional experience. I met the man

155

whose violets had fallen at my feet seven years before in a
Brussels concert followed by my sad farewell to Maeterlinck, and it was
he who offered me a human motive for living again. He was
a man of multiple gifts, whose rich articulate nature and
torrential emotions were in absolute contrast to Maeterlinck.
I was free to accept his love and I would have been happy in
it had I been able to feel free. Since I could not, my hap-
piness became a storm of suffering in which I was blown about
like a leaf. The truth was that nothing could deliver my
mind from its fidelity to Maeterlinck. Passion overwhelmed
me and yet I did not want, I could not accept, a new love.
I was jealous of the first, of its intact image and its
eternity.

An anger grew up in me, I hated my heart because it
had betrayed me, I no longer knew how to meet the distress
of living. On all sides I saw images of death - war and
death, love and death. For the first time in my life I cried
for respite, I wanted to be exempt and consoled - sustained.
If only I could have turned to Maeterlinck for counsel.
But what can one do, what can one say, in the fixed gloom of
silence?

All that was ardent in my nature urged me to resusci-
tate my vitality which had been frozen in years of concentrated
idealism. The attraction I felt was irresistible and yet,
at first, I did everything I could to kill it. My judgment,
warped by a false morality, did not find the only solution
worthy of Maeterlinck and me - that I should simply go away.
I could have left at this time without seriously disorganizing

156

his life, but this solution never crossed my mind. "We will always love each other above all others and above all things", he had said. I began to live these words, and painfully, without understanding that life does not sustain the prophecies of love.

space

During all this time the incredible war continued. I offered the Abbaye to the Red Cross as a hospital. But at that moment the enemy was rapidly advancing into France and we were advised to leave Saint-Wandrille - sunken ferries and guarded bridges would have closed us in. We made hasty preparations to leave before the possible German occupation. In spite of danger and sorrow it was amusing to watch Maeterlinck save his wine cellar. All day, his pipe in his mouth and followed by the determined <u>bulldog</u>, he walked through the Abbaye in all directions, clasping bottles to his breast with a serious air and murmuring with a malicious smile, "Here's another bottle the Boche won't drink. See if they can find my Château Neuf du Pape, 1902". And he would disappear into the winding depths of the monastery. He even hid bottles in a furnace that was out of commission.

We hurried past each other in the corridors. I gathered together manuscripts, notebooks, a few precious volumes and Maeterlinck's letters. Taking them to the garret, I pried up the flooring and hid my treasures there. The next morning we left - the poet, R., and I - in Maeterlinck's car. My

157

chauffeur, back on leave from the trenches, drove my car,
overloaded with luggage. We were going to live in my sis-
ter's château on the other side of the Seine near Verneuil.

This was a strange and lugubrious period. Horror and suspense brought together under the same roof people who did not know each other but who were united by a similar agony. The women passed long days knitting sweaters, the men went out to fetch the news . . . Ah, the news! — we lived only for that. In the morning we waited for it, in the afternoon we went to get it, afterward we talked about it and the next morning the same routine began all over again.

One hardly knew that the late summer roses were flowing out of season in the park. I recall having picked one without intention and then not knowing what to do with it. Its full-blown grace was offensive everywhere.

In October we passed a few days in Paris at my little house in Neuilly. Then we left again by motor for Nice. Long weeks passed. At our villa, Les Abeilles, Maeterlinck's work and the habit of it again governed the movement of our lives.

...

Who has ever been able to check a passion, and even if one has succeeded for oneself, how does one find the courage to impose such a decision on the other person?

Often a telegram called me close to the front. He was wounded several times and I went to him no matter where,

Italia

Maeterlinck had now sold the villa in Grasse

158

through any danger. Everyone knows the desolation of the
railway stations during the first months of the war. I was in
them often, waiting for a chance to depart or return. The con-
fusion and filth kept me standing for a whole day surrounded
by soldiers snoring on the floor. Others played cards, drank
and slept.

Then there were the interminable rides, the long
waits in the middle of the countryside. Sometimes convoys
arrived to join our train and in spite of the overcrowded
cars hundreds of men climbed in, piling up to the top of each other.
I would shrink into a corner, trying to think of nothing,
forbidding myself to suffer from my own discomfort in the
midst of so much real suffering. One night I stood from eight
in the evening till eight in the morning, crowded against the
wall of the corridor.

I would arrive in one of those little French villages
not far from the front, where life seemed suspended. I would
camp in an inn near the military infirmary. Hours and hours
rolled by, inactive, mournful, as I waited for the regulation
visit. At the appointed time I passed between grey hovels,
following the only existing road, muddy and full of holes
from being constantly tramped over by horses and troops.

In the infirmary, the rain flattened itself against
the casement windows, the air smelled of drugs and disinfec-
tants, the atmosphere was ominous. The wounded screamed ...

Afterward I would return to the inn. The autumn was
icy. To escape from loneliness and cold, I would sit near

159

the stove in the bar. Without being able to read, I held a book open. I spent the minutes listening. At the bar old men and women discussed the war news. At ten o'clock everything closed and I had to go upstairs to my room, go to bed by candlelight and lie sleepless, waiting, waiting, for the next visit. I can never forget one of these interminable nights which I passed reading Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" by the light of a single candle.

space

Sometimes the hospital was near a city and life was lightened when I could give pleasure to the wounded soldiers by singing or reciting poems. It was touching to hear the peasants, moved without understanding why, say after a poem of Verlaine's or Mallarmé's, "C'est gentil, oh c'est bien gentil".

Then I would return to Nice, passing through new horrors, and, my memory filled with visions of blood, arrive at the Villa des Abeilles.

There I took off my cloak of madness.

While I unpacked, I would rediscover one by one the familiar objects of life . . . the rustling of a dress on the stairs, a high voice raised in laughter, a penetrating perfume floating up to me. Alerted by his love, our old dog would some to scratch at my door.

In the garden beneath a sky of permanent blue, old Père Gris, the gardener, would be planting sweet briars for the

160

spring grafting. The wind piled up dry and scented leaves
under the big eucalyptus trees.

Maeterlinck would come down the path, his papers under
his left arm, his pipe in his right hand. He always wore a
frogged coat, a little short behind, and an old felt hat,
turned up in the back and down in the front to shade his eyes.
His walk was unvaried, neither slow nor hurried, the walk of
someone whose path is always open and who has measured once
for all its possibilities and its limits. Sometimes he stopped
before a plant, bent over it and examined it attentively. He
would call the gardener. The hand which held the pipe would
move as he gave advice, and then he would walk on. It was ex-
actly half-past nine in the morning. The postman would already

actually half-past nine in the morning. The postman would
have passed. Maeterlinck would turn toward the letter-box and
take out his mail. Close to the iron gate was a bench, shaded
by a pepper tree. He would sit there to read his letters, then
go back to the house for work at ten. When I wished, I could
always find him at any exact point of his day's itinerary. He
looked well. In my absence nothing had happened to him. To-
gether we would walk up a path which cut the small orange grove.

It was there to the right of the trees that I had wept one day
on reading Oscar Wilde's letter of farewell to Douglas. Every
time I passed I remembered his suffering and saw again the lilac-
coloured cover of the *Mercure de France* in which I had read
the letter.

We would go up the seven stone steps which led to the
upper terrace. Then Maeterlinck would leave me to go to his

161

Study

on the second floor.

Motionless, I watched the gay light play on the flowers
and listened to the quick buzzing of the bees.

I heard the screams of the wounded . . .

space

Anguish, exhaustion and my unsolved personal problem aug-
mented an illness, at first insignificant, and I had to be oper-
ated on. Gratefully I breathed in the cloroform which was to
give me a moment of forgetfulness. The surgeon told me afterward
that when I opened my eyes I sighed, "Am I still alive? How sad".

In the white and simple days of convalescence I lay
motionless, repeating the prayer of Corneille which gave me
enchantment and repose :

"Sainte douceur du ciel, adorables idées..."

(Sainted gentleness of heaven, adorable ideas...)

Compassion invaded me - pity for our insensate living,
pity for women to whom love is "pain and beauty, never friend".
A deep need for solitude filled me - but I was too undecided,
too tired to decide . . .

In the tension of those awful months, only once did
I have the courage to break our silence. One night we went
to dine in a restaurant with Paris Singer. While he was de-
scribing his exploits in his new airplane, why was I suddenly
overcome by a suffering so great that my glass fell from
my hand? . . . I began to weep uncontrollably; nothing

162

on earth could have kept back my tears. Paris Singer bent over me with questions, I do not know what I would have said if Maeterlinck's voice had not broken in, "Never mind - it's nothing - absolutely nothing".

That "nothing" fell upon me - so weighed with everything - in a tone so cutting, so rigid, that it gave me the strength to rise and leave the room. An open window, rain in the street, a noise of dishes, voices from the dining-room, brought me back to the comedy of life.

Nothing, nothing . . . there was nothing the matter. My great love was lost and I did not want to live.

I put on fresh powder and a mask of tranquillity. I returned to the table.

That night I determined to break down the barriers between us, and all night I waited for morning, my hands pressed against my temples, hoping with every minute to regain my self-control. When I heard Maeterlinck moving about in his room I rushed out of mine, choked by the words I had to speak : "Listen, Maurice, listen to me. We must talk, we must. . ." I no longer remember my exact words, which fell between us like stones, but I know their meaning as exactly as one knows the place of an old wound by the scar.

Standing before the window, he finished lighting his pipe. He turned in one movement and interrupted me : "It's no use for us to talk". And after a pause he added, "You should be able to manage your own life". Then he left the room quickly and I heard him shut himself in his study.

163

I should have stopped him, held him, forced him to remain. I should have said, "Maurice, you shan't go without listening to me. This is the time to talk. You must listen and try to understand. We must realize that our lives have drifted apart. Nothing can stop me from talking, because today I need you. In twenty years this is the first time I've ever asked you for your advice. Don't evade. Just for one moment forget that I'm upsetting you and talk with me".

I, who have emancipated myself from so many things, have never been able to free myself from the inertia that paralyzes me when I must enter into a struggle with someone I love. Rather than struggle longer, I decided to break with everything - separate myself from one man and never see the other again; go far away, and alone.

I dressed and went down the hill to the telegraph office. I wrote a message of farewell and sent it to the front. There was no important fighting going on at the moment and that made my decision less difficult.

I went back up the hill, breathing with free lungs, walking quickly over the white road, between two walls - a symbol of my life, bounded on both sides. But there was an open place before me, and on the top of the hill against the blue sky palm trees moved in the wind and the bright morning light.

Then I saw our villa and stopped short - the study window was wide open. I hurried to the kitchen - "Where is monsieur?" "Monsieur has gone out". "Is he coming back to lunch?" "Monsieur didn't say".

164

He was not working! It was the hour of work and he had gone out! By my fault he had lost a whole morning - perhaps the whole day. And all because I had been selfish enough to disturb him. One does not wake a sleeping child. One does not talk to someone who demands silence.

Solicitude for him again invaded me. After all, of what importance was my happiness or unhappiness? How small they seemed in comparison to his work to which I had dedicated myself. Only one thing mattered - to repair at any cost the damage I had done. I hastily scribbled a note and left it on his desk. He came back for lunch. He seemed the same. We did not speak of what had happened.

space

Days and weeks passed. Calm and immobile, in an isolated room, I seemed to be reading or writing. I even seemed to be living. Sometimes a song of Montmartre was heard in the garden.

And then I received an alarming telegram from a hospital at the front. I took a train and my lacerated existence began again. To live is often only to have a choice of several despairs.

I had to have help. But only someone with a faith could have helped me. It does not matter what faith, what religion, what duty, if kindness and responsibility are its solid foundations.

Until now I had always thought that which we call the soul, does it really exist? Throughout these

165

cruel years I lived in such suffering that it seemed to me I
was living my "soul".

Man (I mean most men) with his facile conquests, his
egoism, his self-pride, his physical vigor, his instinct for
domination, is lawless if he does not acknowledge the responsi-
bility with which his strength endows him. Neither man ack-
knowledged the responsibility of the love he proclaimed. Neither
had pity or kindness. Both met my need of them with "love's"
unfailing substitutes - resentment or hate. I had the impres-
sion of having spent so much of my life's capital that I had
nothing left to live on.

Going back through Paris I fell ill in a hotel. When
I was able to travel again I went to Saint-Wandrille where I was
completely alone, without even a servant. My days were spent
on a chaise-longue in front of the little fountain which had gone
dry... days of milk, eggs and elementary care given me by
the peasant care-takers of the Abbaye. For two weeks I remained
there, lost, inert, not even able to read, and so weak that I
could not walk around the cloister without down several times.
I slept in the "Bishop's room", now empty of its white muslin
and pompadour ribbons but bathed in sunlight. I was not afraid.
I did not even close the doors at night and the bats were my
companions.

Then I went back to Nice and took up again the ordered
rhythm of our daily life. Sitting in the garden I amused myself
by writing and illustrating a book about our dogs. The days
were long and serene.

166

space

Quite unexpectedly one afternoon Henry Russell came to tell us of his project for the production of "The Blue Bird" at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Maeterlinck's presence would be necessary for the première, I would appear in the role of "Light", and Maeterlinck would make an extensive lecture tour throughout America. Russell asked me to go to Paris and organize the committee of patrons, which was to include the greatest names of France. For two months I devoted myself to this task, living in a milieu of drawing-rooms and state functions, absorbing numerous luncheons, dinners and suppers.

I finished the work with eagerness in order to return to Nice and await there our departure for America, happy that after so many years Maeterlinck and I would be alone together again. I made a reservation in the train for the sixteenth of December and sent a telegram to Maeterlinck announcing the hour of my arrival.

Nothing could have prepared me for the telegram I received the next morning from Nice :

"Do not come. Maeterlinck furious against you. He knows everything". R.W.

I read it again and again. Nothing could explain its insolence, it was devoid of sense, there was nothing for Maeterlinck to know that he had not always known. I at once telegraphed him, confirming my arrival.

The next morning I received another telegram :

"Useless to come. Everything finished between us".

From that moment began the overwhelming rush of events which was to separate me from Maeterlinck forever.

Space

167

state of total incomprehension, incapable of imagining what
could have been the progression of events in Nice while I was
preparing our trip to New York.

When I arrived at the villa I went directly to the
dining-room where Maeterlinck and R. were finishing dinner.
Before I could speak Maeterlinck rose and left the room with-
out a word.

For the next two days I was aware that I was playing
a role in an unknown drama - in reality a melodrama of such
grotesque and vulgar content that it would be unbelievable
even if I should recount it.

I lay ill in my room, unable to relate myself to the
mystery of what was taking place. On the third day Maeterlinck
came to see me. He no longer bore any resemblance to the man
I had known. He had a travelling-bag in his hand . . . he was
going away "to put R. out of the reach of your vengeance". I
could only look at him. "You were seen last night hidden be-
hind a column in the hall with a revolver in your hand". I
continued to look at him, I could not imagine what to say to
a man in this state.

It was only when I heard the garden gate closing
behind him that I came out of my trance. I was in a dressing
gown, I threw a fur coat around me and found a victoria. I
knew he must have gone to the station. As I approached I saw
him standing on the sidewalk. He was alone. I went up to
him and touched his arm.

"Maurice, I ask you only one thing. Don't act on
impulse. Wait. I don't know where you're going. I shall go

168

to Royat, to Dr. Deschamp. I'll wait there for word from you".

My anguish must have touched him. He pushed open the
door of the café in front of which we were standing and said,
"Come in here".

I could no longer stand. We sat down at a table. He
said sadly, "How could you have sent a telegram like that to
your sister?"

"What telegram?"

"The one you sent yesterday".

I tried to think. "But it was a very simple telegram.
It said: "Understand nothing. Utterly despairing".

He looked at me and said with emphasis, "I saw the
telegram. I had it in my hands. You said. . . " — and he
repeated the text of a telegram so fantastic that I could not
restrain my sobs.

There was a clock facing us. The hands pointed to
five. He looked at it, took out his watch and said gently,
"Come, calm yourself. Don't leave yet. Stay here for a while".

He paid and went out. Slowly I fastened my coat. I
would go home . . . As I walked out the door R.'s parents
appeared. They said, "Stay here a little longer. He'll come
back. Our daughter will arrange it. Don't worry".

I stayed there for a long time, inert, without saying
anything. After Maeterlinck's train had gone, they went away, and I
sent home.

It was dark when I climbed the path that led to the
villa. When I knocked at the little door the cook ran to open
it for me. She walked across the garden with me to the salon.

169

As I looked at her agitated face she threw herself, sobbing,
into my arms. To my questions she could only gasp, "Pardon,
madame, oh forgive me, forgive me".

I tried to calm her. "Yes, yes, I forgive you - but for
what?" She looked at me with dismayed eyes, then fled to her
room. My room was beneath hers. Late into the night I heard
her stifled sobs.

For hours I lived in a nightmare. My thoughts terrified
me. Seated in the middle of my room, I stared at the objects
around me and named them aloud to save my sanity. When I had
finished their enumeration I began all over again, emphasizing
each syllable as one does in spelling unknown names. This I
held my mind in place by linking it again with things. Some-
times the communication broke and fright routed memory. I
would search for the word, trembling. For a long time I
counted and recounted the brass nails in the table. I had put
them there myself one day, one next to the other, to fas-
ten town the green oilcloth. I had been in the garden. A
little sun had shone from the center of each nail. I counted
them again . . . ninety-nine . . . He had gone away.

One does not suffer much when one suffers too much.
Dawn found me in the same place. I went down to the garden.
The cold morning revived me and brought back my distress. I
saw myself standing alone at the other end of my stupor and I
was someone I did not recognize. I had never before seen my-
self without my love. Now that was finished. Only one life
for each human being. I saw mine cut down. All the trees of
all my springs were lying beside my path . . . the woodmen
had passed.

170

I had lived in a dream, my head swarming with illusions. I had sung and loved. I had lived a paradise of vibrations. I would rather not have lived at all than to have lived otherwise. How can anyone die without having lived like this? Almost all people do. And now I was like them - empty-handed in an empty life. I had slipped into the depths of despair as I had once, when a child, sunk into a lake. Glaucous weeds had slowly closed over my head. . . Now I perceived above me the confused and luminous gestures of an existence I was leaving.

In the garden the white frost had spread a veil of ice over the lawn and the belated flowers. They were pale and stiff. There was the main path which today he would not walk upon, holding his pipe and book . . . The garden became insupportable to me. I went into the house.

....

For two days I remained in Nice and then, as an animal goes toward sympathy, I went to an old family friend, Dr. Deschamp. He was the director of a sanitarium housed in an old convent near Royat.

A little room had been reserved for me. There I found the silence that I love - the silence of things, of people one does not know, the silence of respect and indifference. The chapel was next to my room; in the morning I heard the sound of chanting and in the evening of prayers. Every day I went to talk to Dr. Deschamp. I was not ill but so weak I could scarcely

171

cross the park to his house. My conversations with him were
my only comfort.

At the end of the day he would come to the convent to
say goodnight to me. Every Thursday and Sunday I went to
Clermont-Ferrand, Pascal's native town, and wandered through
the narrow old aristocratic streets where the houses with
their closed windows seemed to protect the noble and aneamic
lives within. I would go into a lugubrious cinema, then
return early to the convent, for the regulations fixed meals
at eleven and six o'clock.

Every two days the doctor permitted me to write a
letter to Maeterlinck. As twenty years before I had written
to him so that he might know me, I now wrote that he might
rediscover me.

For twenty years I had never imagined my life de-
tached from his, and it was in this identification that all
that is "stronger than love" existed. One knows well that
love is not everything. One knows that no man is
a god. For years a human being with his little failings had
taken the place of the god I had imagined him. What then was
indestructible in my attitude toward him? The certitude that
he would always remain for me, as I for him, a special being;
and that nothing, nothing human, could ever attack this
allegiance.

I have said several times in this book, and I say it
again because it is the thing which has haunted me - because
for months and years after our separation I thought I should
die if I did not receive this message from him : "I am the

172

same and I know that you are the same". This message, which would have changed nothing in his personal life, would have changed everything in mine. In the moment it would have taken to read it I would have found again my strength and my belief. Our mutual recognition of each other - this was our bond. Its acknowledgement in our life's crisis would have been an absolution for the two human beings whose weaknesses, alas, had been stronger than their strength.

I can now see with deep remorse to what degree I failed his love by failing to remain its infallible guide. Maeterlinck trusted my judgment to solve all his dilemmas. He was sure that I was always right. "She never makes a mistake", he used to declare. Little by little other influences had come to rule him. Their accusations and his fear of ridicule did the rest. And when I went to Nice, instead of guiding him through a difficult situation, I could only stand, inert, uncomprehending and aghast.

## space

The first of January came, and snow. That day at lunch-
eon I found in my glass a sprig of mistletoe with an affection-
ate note from Dr. Deschamp, reminding me of my "wisdom" !

In my two months of seclusion I had freed myself of many things. I reacted less. I had begun to emerge from the destructive realm of negative emotions which ruin most lives; but I had yet to cross a desert. That crossing is sadder than sadness, more painful than pain. For a long time my life was still to be without words, without form, without hope, without even despair.

173

January, February passed. In March I received a note
from Maeterlinck sent through my sister - he did not even know
my address. In a few lines, still coloured by the infamies I
had heard at "Les Abeilles", he said that he would not be able
to endure my presence at Nice . . . "As time passes we will see
what we can rebuild on the ruins". No date, no address, no sig-
nature.

Great philosophers often know little of life. They live
far from any discrimination of the quality of people or the
meaning of their acts. And when such a man does not understand,
he condemns.

A few days later I received a telegram from my family,
asking me to come back to Paris. They were then living in the
Pavillon des Muses, the beautiful "balsis" that
had once been a pied-à-terre of Louis XIV, and which in recent
years had been the home of Robert de Montesquiou. I was lunch-
ing with friends in Passy, when my brother telephoned me. His
words were vague and spoken in that ominous tone that announces
news of import. They hesitatingly, he pronounced Maeterlinck's
name. I had a vision of accident, of death. "What is it, what
is it? What has happened to him?"

"Nothing has happened to him. But last week I heard
certain rumours that I wanted to verify and which I have just
now confirmed".

"What?"

"He is married".

"Oh, is that all?"

Loos

174

space

That same evening I wrote to Maeterlinck

Sunday. You are married... For me only one thing counts in all this - your happiness. You will doubtless be astonished at my calm, since, alas, you have ceased to know me. This is my essential grief. The rest is secondary.

Would you like to see me sometimes? If so, I will come. We will see how the situation can be managed, however strange its elements. After twenty years, to see each other no more would seem to me an inexpressible sorrow.

Don't worry, preserve that peace which I did so much (too much perhaps) to preserve for you.

I have confidence in time which arranges and clarifies everything.

I embrace you.

I decided to leave the next day for Nice to get my papers and letters from "Les Abeilles".

Tha Marquise de M., for years a great friend, was asked by my family to fetch me at the station. I stayed with her at the Hotel Ruhl and sent word to the villa that I would come for my things on a certain day and hour.

The Marquise accompanied me. We climbed the Baumettes hill in a victoria at a snail's pace. The gate was opened to us and before I could speak the concierge told me that monsieur et madame had just gone out. Our carriage slowly crossed the garden. My friend held my hand. I tried to see nothing around me, but the air, fragrant with mimosa, affected me painfully. In the salon on the table was a letter from Maeterlinck addressed to me. My friend begged me not to open it before I returned to the hotel. In a few minutes I had gathered my papers and packed them in a little English desk, a plaything of my childhood which held many memories for me.

175

The little desk was placed in the carriage. The cook ran to me with sprays of mimosa. She was weeping. I knew her hypocrisy and pushed away her flowers. I looked for the last time on the path bordered with roses, the orange and eucalyptus trees and the oriental grill of the iron gate# which was closing behind me.

I read the note in Madame de M.'s room. Maeterlinck said he was astonished that I should have gone to a hotel. "Your place is here", he wrote. As far his marriage, he referred to it as an insignificant piece of paper.

For a long time he had not spoken to me so humanly. I could think of nothing else. I fainted...

When I woke it was nearly night. I was lying on my bed. I turned on the light. I had to reflect, to explain to myself that note which had so moved me and so eased my pain without, however, altering it. I admit that in my bewilderment I was ready to go back to him, to begin again an existence contrary to my new judgment. But I did not want to be guided any longer by instinct. I did not want to yield to that organic distress which is the most painful element in the separation of two people who have deeply loved.

This marriage would in no way change his personal life. His words, "Your place is here", sprang from a rooted instinct. Such a love does not die suddenly. The alteration of love is an incoherent process in the mind of the lover - he himself does not understand the dark state of his psychological turmoil. In the emergency of his unexplained pain he suddenly

176

sees the object of his as an adversity. Then a flash of justice intervenes and the sanity of memory. He wants to tighten a little the bonds which he has unlossed. He wants separation but does not want it to be complete. He has said farewell - but perhaps not forever. I knew so well the mind in which this debate was taking place and I understood that it had finally ~~concluded~~ "Your place is here". That signified, "Come back, because I know that with your understanding of life no false pride ~~will blur your vision of~~ how to reconstruct our lives".

My God, not to wipe out everything of your former life - not to lose all I had created and preserved for so long. But would I be able to preserve it now? I realized that only he and I considered his new legal tie insignificant. I knew that all my efforts would be useless, that I would be expending my strength in a futile struggle. Why not save this strength for myself and for the life that had been given back to me? Should I who had been called Aglavaine resign myself again to the role of being absorbed? Especially now that I had no defense against reproaches and quarrels and calumnies? That would be an error; I saw how wrong it was for my immense love to have accepted the ambiguous situation of a third person in the house. Why had my complaisance become so exaggerated? What had contributed to this disintegration of my character? I had become like Mélisande - a child.

Lying on a hotel bed in Nice, I tried to explain myself to myself. From the depths of my memory appeared a portrait -

177

a medallion framed in black velvet. I had carefully saved
it because my mother had written on it, "Georgette at seven
years of age". Hair pale as straw, questioning eyes, a mouth
determined to say nothing.

To say nothing. That was the trap into which I had
fallen. My childhood had experimented with silence when all
my being wept. For fifteen years I had lived in silence by
Maeterlinck's side. And when the cruelest moment of my life
"saying nothing" arrived I could not break the habit of silence. In the hours
of that hard clear night I understood that I must
choose between the old pattern of my nature and a new motiva-
tion which I could not yet discern but which would become my
"reality".

When the night ended I had made my decision.

A friend who knew Maeterlinck offered to deliver my
answer to him into his own hands.

Wednesday. Maurice - I am very touched by your letter, but it is not possible.

If there is in our situation anything that is
"unconceivable", it is my grief...
But since I have passed through it...

In spite of everything I have faith in the
future ... that faith, unfounded and absurd
but a little marvelous, which is almost always accord-
ed those who have nothing else left.

Let us wait.

I embrace you in all confidence.

If anyone had told me that night that I would never
see him again, if anyone had told me that misunderstanding
would increase in absence, what would I not have done to
shield our love from an end so obscure and so unworthy
of us. I did not foresee it and I precipitated what I most
fear in life - the death of love in misunderstanding.

178

I knew that my life would be difficult. After the war, like most artists, I had nothing left. My future held uncertainty and material struggle. Maeterlinck had offered nothing, and although my family wished to intervene in my behalf, I refused. I could not consent to the liquidation by money of a love that had been as great as a great legend.

I was ill when I went back to Paris. The doctors said I was threatened with tuberculosis, but I was merely at the end of my strength. However I had no time to rest. One morning as I was getting out of a taxi in the avenue Victor-Hugo, a friend stopped me with the news that she had just read in the papers of the sale of the Abbaye of Saint-Wandrille. I ran to the nearest news-stand. The Abbaye had not been sold but Maeterlinck had offered his lease for sale. I remained leaning against the wall of a house for a long time, unable to breathe. Then I resolved to do everything in my power to obtain possession of my Abbaye. This was not impossible, as the sale only concerned the thirty-year lease, which would have given me the Abbaye for the small sum of six thousand francs a year. I tried to find the money, but, by the time I had it, it was too late. A business man from Le Havre had already moved into the monastery. He was to turn the countryside into a factory for airplanes.

Our furniture was still there. I went to Saint-Wandrille to take away my personal belongings. This letter to a friend shows what I felt more exactly than I could describe it today :)

179

Easter, 1919. Thank you for your letter. Did you know I had been to Saint-Wandrille to fetch my things? You can imagine what that meant to me. No longer being able to stay in the Abbaye, I lodged in the peasants' inn. Happily, the window of my little room opened on the cabbage field behind the Abbaye. That spared me the sight of the beautiful entrance. But unhappily I heard the church bell as of old.

I really feel as if I had been crushed under too heavy a weight. Anxiety fills my mind. Then there are problems too, problems so serious that all my imagination fails to find an answer to them. Because I know little more about it all than you do.

space

I went back to Paris. I had no money. I needed air and a
balcony facing the sun. My friends collected a dozen pupils
so that I could give singing lessons twice a week. I realized
that my career as an artist would be difficult in the future
because, having been so closely associated with Maeterlinck's
career, it was almost impossible to separate mine from it. What
would be offered me would always be a part of his fame, and I had been
warned that he would refuse me authorization to appear in his plays.

I sold some furniture and my sister found me a furnished
flat near the Porte Dauphine. By an odd coincidence it was
near the Rue Lalo, two doors away from the house where Maeter-
linck had had his first studio and where he had begun to write
"Wisdom and Destiny". It was on the same floor as his床
fifth, and I had exactly the same view over the Bois. Thus I
found myself again in the same place, facing the same landscape
which we had looked at together when our life was beginning.

Now for five hours a day I was to look at it alone,
swathed in blankets, forbidden to read or move. I could see

180

roofs and, farther away, trees like motionless water. Here
were the coulors and outlines of old days, identical despite
the passage of time. But they evoked in me words of which the
form only remained; the meaning had changed. The word "wisdom",
as facile and radiant in the past as a coloured picture, had
become dark and heavy with significance, while the second word,
"destiny", had faded until it was nothing more in space than a
line which one could bend into any shape. I wondered what geo-
metry of time and space had brought me back to this place . . .

Now between my contemplation of yesterday and that of
today there was our whole life - twenty years. The years did
not seem to me like a block of memories, more or less clear. My
imagination ranged them in the form of a triangle, and I knew
that it would take all my effort to turn the apex toward the
future and keep it pointing there.

space

I hoped I had succeeded in disguising my physical weakness
and financial straits. But my family saw and became alarmed. One
day I received a postal order from Nice for a thousand francs.
Without my knowledge my brother-in-law had gone to the Villa des
Abeilles. He had asked for and finally obtained from Maeterlinck
the promise of a thousand francs a month for
me, with the reservation that this allowance would be stopped
whenever he should see fit. He also obtained for me the rights
to "Sister Beatrice", the charming legend that Albert Wolf put
to music. Unhappily circumstances prevented it

181

it from being produced.

I was forced to accept this money momentarily, but
determined to free Maeterlinck as soon as possible from the
obligation. He did not give me the opportunity - a few months
later he freed himself. As soon as I was strong enough I had
gone to Belgium to give a few concerts. The title of my
concert lecture was "The Belgian Poets". After having spoken
of Emile Verhaeren and Charles Van Leberghe, naturally I had,
as always, talked about Maeterlinck's poetry. Soon afterward
I had a letter from him, saying that he considered my program
an illegitimate exploitation of his name and that had he known
of this earlier he would have suspended my allowance.

This letter was the last I ever received from him.

....

In the autumn of 1920 I accepted a proposition to go
to New York made by an American manager whose appearance in
my life at this moment caused me to see him as a saviour. He
was an agent for William Randolph Hearst's newspapers and
claimed to wield an influence in big American enterprises -
moving-pictures, magazines, theatres, concerts. The contract
he offered me was for five years, with a ~~fee~~ to himself
of thirty ~~one percent.~~ percent. His proposition seemed logical
and reasonable. He would begin with the publication of my
memoirs and counted on them to bring an enormous publicity
which would serve as a basis for all my subsequent activities.

182

I stipulated that no material concerning Maeterlinck could be
added to my manuscript except by myself. Unfortunately, in
my eagerness to go, I took no other precautions; I signed the
contract without making the slightest inquiry about the Hearst
newspapers or my agent, Véral D. To leave for a new world was
the beginning of a new life.

My brother became solicitous and urged me not to go,
warning me of the difficulties I might meet in America.

"Your life has been wonderful", he said. "You have
had everything - great art and a great love. Why not stay
here and enjoy some peace?"

"What peace?" I asked.

I tried to tell him that my spirit was too young for
my life to stop, but he still tried to dissuade me.

"Your life is over", he said.

I rose. "No, Maurice, my life is just beginning".

space

A few days before sailing I received a letter from
Brussels containing these simple words: "Je suis bien peu
de chose, but the thought that you are leaving alone and
going so far away tortures me. I have no one left in the world.
Accept my life, I give it to you". The letter was signed
"Monique".

For twenty-five years, since I first sang in Brussels, dear Monique had been my friend. She was a schoolteacher and was now retired. I hesitated - should I allow

183

her to leave her peaceful corner and share my life? She over-
ruled my scruples and arrived in Paris a few days later. More
than ever she looked like the mother of St. Augustine in a
stained glass window. I love the way time works on the faces
of good people. The shadows that softly covered her face made
it still more calm, the lines of her nose and chin and the oval
of her cheeks were gently curved, her pleated hair was coiled
around her head. Beneath this ordered gentleness could only
exist a nature without edges. In her voice, as in all her ways,
there was not an angle. When she appeared at my door in Paris
and looked at me from her quiet eyes, I felt that all the peace of
the Flemish convents was going with me to the new world.

We sailed in October on the "Olympic" - the same boat I had taken ten years before when I sang "Pelléas" in Boston. I took with me all I possessed - my costume trunks, a tiny goldfish and, in a bonbonière, a little earth from the Abbaye of Saint-Wandrille.

The day before we left I wrote to a friend:

You understand that I must go on struggling, that I must find an outward expression in order not to die of sadness. I have to work at something, even though uselessly.

After I've tried hard, if I find it has been in vain, let us hope that hope will be dead with the effort and that then I shall be able to accept solitude and silence.

I know it is slightly mad to go to America without anything. But does it matter? If I die, it is not important. If I succeed, if I manage to reconstruct my life, that will be interesting - at least for me

END OF Vol.I
"Souvenirs"

Reviews, by the most eminent French critics, of two of GEORGETTE LEBLANC'S books (1) "My Life with Maeterlinck, and "The Courage Machine" (with a Preface by Jean Cocteau).

A book so tragic, so moving, constitutes an extremely rare event. Nothing so beautiful, so strong, has appeared in many years. - Pierre Descaves, *L'Avenir*.

Georgette Leblanc is a lyric poet. She can introduce all the mystery of human destiny in a gesture, a word. A vast tragic novel of the heart and the brain. Ernest Charles, *Le Quotidian*.

A feminine mind perhaps the most interesting of our time. - *Nation Belge*.

There is perhaps no other example of such profound self-analysis presented with such literary and psychological genius. - *Le Travail*.

A genre without precedent in the history of letters, and which finds us unprepared for the multiple new problems it suggests. - Fernand Vanderem, *Genius* overflows in this book. - *Politique Francaise*.

Stendhal would have loved these "Souvenirs" for all that they contain of the true and the rare, directly preceived. Maeterlinck appears to owe Georgette Leblanc not only thought but formulas and inflections of thinking to which the critic of the future will pay the tribute of attentive study. - Eugene Marsan, *Comoedia*.

The nobility of Georgette Leblanc's confessions is prodigious. - *Le Temps*.

One closes this book literally overwhelmed. All Maeterlinck's best work is marked with the imprint of this astonishing inspiratrice. - *D'Artagnan*.

How pale other books appear when compared with the problems which this one presents - the problem of the irremediable incommunicability of human beings - Frederick Lefèvre, *Les Nouvelles Littéraires*.

A woman who would sacrifice her life to conquer a little of that which does not die. - G. de Bawlowski, *Gringoire*.

Georgette Leblanc's style possesses a magic of form. - *Le Temps*.

One sees nothing that Maeterlinck can oppose to this evidence; one feels even that the weakness of his later work is explained by his rupture with this generous and imprudent woman who presents him not so much as he was as he would like to have been, as he almost, in rare and supreme moments, became. - Gabriel Marcel, *L'Europe Nouvelle*.

This book is the event of the season. André Delacour, *L'European*.

Many tributes by her friends Mallarmé, De Gourmont, Anatole France, Pirandello, etc., which I can't put my hands on at this moment.

Vol. II de
"Souvenirs", de
Georgette Lieblene

# PREFACE

by Jean Cocteau

What a magnificent title! The only one that expresses this astonishing woman whom we mourn.

Reading this title, I see her equipped with wheels and hands of mystery like the mechanisms of Ezekiel's dream; whirring wheels, tongues of fire, hands, wings, exploding stars. And this incomprehensible machine thunders and flames in order to produce courage, sacks of courage, bales of courage, miles of courage, masses of that courage with which man defies destiny and by which he changes the lines in his hand.

Hers was a great epoch. In it there still existed those monstres sacrés who scorn public opinion, who do not even know it exists, and who move through the crowd, headless and armless, propelled only by the power of their souls, as immutable as the Victory of Samothrace.

How can ordinary women, dreaming of fashion and furniture, prevail against the winds of fate?

Georgette rode a bycicle in a lace dress, under a burning sky, up and down dusty hills in the train of the tireless Maeterlinck.

Like Phèdre, piercing the laurel with her golden pin, she hid in the groves and overheard the bargainings of life. To her they were incredible. She braved ruin and disaster. Her goal was the great glory, the terrible battle of the angel : to resist the temptations of beauty.

Always along her way she found companions who cherished her, protected her and made her task a little easier. But she was alone. Alone she was born. Alone she lived. Alone she died. She was to furnish a model for a saint of lyricism.

Where one lives - does it matter? She lived in soul-destroying villas, cruel hotels, abandoned lighthouses. From morning to night her trailing gown swept aside the dead leaves of daily events. Her inner goal was little concerned with these sweepings. She strode

卷4

ahead. She advanced, she challenged, she sought to convince, she
struggled. She met ingratitude, laughter, the silence of hard
hearts. She was a courage-machine, fed by a secret electricity. I
lift a smoke-screen, such as conceals the movements of ships.

Unseen, all-seeing, slow and yet swifter than lightning, she
disrupted the traffic - that quadrille danced by solemn feet, in
which the pre-arranged patterns do not admit of the slightest dis-
order - the disorder that rejects dead order. It was order
of a kind - her order, the order dictated by her voices. The order
that kills.

It is impossible to think of her without evoking the legend of
the Phoenix. She flutters her vivid feathers. She sends forth her
cry. She touches a flame to the pyre, mounts it and is consumed.
Her ashes vibrate. In them she finds the force with which to re-
invent her substance.

Who tells us she is dead? Death has little power over a courage-
machine. Georgette is born again from her ashes. In her cloud of
smoke we see her regain her lovely form and, with wings thundering,
spring with a great cry straight into the heaven of high enterprise.

Ever faithful to our rendez-vous,

Jean Cocteau

PARIS, October 1945

5

5

## Foreword

Our planet today is covered with ~~courage-machines.~~
This prompts me to explain - to excuse, rather - the title of this
second book of "Souvenirs".

To begin with, the title is not for myself alone. It applies
to the lives of all artists. When I say "artist" I mean something
outdated - that romantic race destined to disappear in a world which
I have always called "monde-matière". I belong to this race. It is
a misfortune and it is all the beatitudes. It means that one has a
thousand palettes with which to taste to the utmost the delights
of life.

If I were to define my life in a word I would call it a quest.
A quest of what? One needs almost a lifetime to answer this question.

First of all I searched for life through what is called "living".
But I always ~~felt that "life" is not there~~ where we are, nor in
the events which happen to us. Where is it? I searched and searched.
By force of searching I found myself in darkness. I stayed there a
long time . . . I might say - nowhere; having lost everything and
not yet having found anything. Between what one no longer accepts
and what one hopes for there is a void. Little by little all became
clear.

The writing of "The Courage Machine", which covers ten years,
was retarded by illness. For a long time I lived beside death. But
I had a presentiment that something essential - something foreseen in
New York - would develop for me during these last years. I was not
mistaken.

Between my life in America and that of today an enormous space
stretches. It is because the years from fifty to sixty count double
- one has kept what one had and gained what one did not have. This
~~book~~ follows an evolution which, for me, is not a curve but an
ascending line. There is a beginning and an end; a new beginning,
an advance, and a new search; then again an advance - but this time
on an ~~essential~~ plane, where the great events are innes ones.

Georgette Leblanc

5-6

Chapter One

1. A New World

At 1919.

I stood by Brooklyn Bridge in New York. A hard wind was beating against me and I held my coat with both hands to protect my body. A body was all I possessed - nothing when you have everything, everything when you have nothing.

I had been wandering among giant things. Now I watched the crowd hurry across the bridge. I did not understand its intentions, I did not understand its words. From a distance I stared at the extraordinary city. Through the bridge's cables on that white winter morning its spires and towers looked like chessmen for Titans.

In my purse I carried the number of the bus that would take me back to the hotel. I felt absolutely free, free even of myself, without a name and without a language. And I was trying to be without a past.

The bus from the bridge left me in front of the Madison Square Hotel where Monique and I had been staying since our arrival from France a few days before. Throwing down her sewing, losing her glasses, she rushed to me - "How are you, chérie?" Today as in the past, this is the way she always welcomes me. Whether I have crossed the garden or the Atlantic, her anxious voice questions me with the same solicitude.

As she took my coat Monique announced good news. One of the newspaper editors, a friend of Veral D., had found us an apartment where we could live for "almost nothing". "Those newspaper men are so good", she added, "they will tell us everything we are expected to do".

6

I remembered Veral's last words in Paris : "In America I will direct your affairs in a completely new manner, according to my system of éclatement". But on the boat I had received a cable from him : "Keep arrival strictly incognito". I knew enough of American ways and the enormous importance given to the arrival of celebrities to be surprised at such a request. However, as we approached the Statue of Liberty I obeyed the cable, covered my face with a heavy veil and watched reporters swarm over the decks. They finally found Monique's cabin. Monique is a poor liar and kept repeating, "I don't know Georgette Leblanc, I don't know her". These blushing denials only enlivened the reporters and at last they tracked me down. "You are Georgette Leblanc!" In despair I cried, "I don't know". To escape the cameras I fled up and down corridors and hid in a bathroom. I was carrying my fish, St.Augustine, under my cape, and when I looked in at him I saw the little flame writhing in his glass prison, almost dry. Monique found me as I was bringing him back to life under water. "Ah, ma petite chérie, what an adventure! I lied very well but those men are clever. There is no way of hiding anything from them".

space

Since my arrival I had been waiting to hear the Sunday American intended to publish my memoirs. But Véral said, "Don't be impatient, you must think only of being happy, we will take care of business while you go sightseeing". After my experience⁵ of the last two years, nothing could have pleased me more than this life in parentheses; perhaps a little too much . . . Véral's eyes were without guile and his standardized smile was paternal. He was sure

7

of himself - like all those who, having nothing, have nothing to lose. He inspired confidence - indispensable quality for those who live by their wits.

Late that evening we went with him to see the apartment. A large perfumed lady received us in a Japanese kimona, but I gave no attention to her or to the apartment - I was hypnotized by the sight of a grand piano that occupied half of the living-room and I saw everything in terms of it.

When I was asked to pay four months' rent in advance - one thousand dollars - I protested, but my manager interrupted: "The newspaper will pay half".

"But why?"

"Because that's the arrangement in your contract".

We strolled home along Broadway, beneath celestial and commercial fireworks. A procession of clowns leaping at the sky advertised a chewing-gum; the glory of a famous mineral water blazed through a spray of sparkling rockets; a sapphire dragon blew forth a fountain of youth of an insulting red. All the cardinal points spat folly at stars and the spent moon.

As we walked I asked Véral, "What have you planned for me?"
My unfathomable manager smiled. "First of all we are going to hide
you." Then he explained his system of éclatement. "In America success
depends upon surprise - you have to explode like a bomb. You are
lucky to be with the Sunday American, one of the biggest newspapers
in the country, and the editors are interested in your success. The
moment your memoirs appear we will arrange your debut - you'll sing,
act, lecture, make a film, all at once. It will be magnificent!"

8

Véral shone with enthusiasm. Hat in hand, he offered his bald crown to Broadway's coloured lights and walked beside me like a conqueror.

"You can't imagine the vastness of our plans! Novelty is what counts. In your case it's going to be mystery, mystery, and then . . ."

He stopped and flung up his arms. A spray of golden rockets burst in the sky and at the top of his lungs **he** yelled, **she**
"L'éclatement!"

space

The next night there was a deluge. While thunder fell in colonnades we moved to the new apartment. Véral rode in the taxi with St. Augustine and me and I watched his sulky Roman profile reflected in the glass window. My fish was the cause of his hostility - "You'll find hundreds like it anywhere", he said. The bowl was balanced on my knees and in revenge I let the water splash on him at every turning.

We were greeted by a flash of joy in the black face of the doorman. He waved his great hands over St. Augustine - "Hello, boy! Hello, French fish! How do you do?"

The elevator that took us up seemed to mount by our happiness alone . . . And then, after Véral had left, we discovered our mistake. Everything was dusty and in disorder; the furniture was dilapidated and unsteady; after investigating the beds we dared not sleep in them. We installed ourselves in armchairs for the night, counting the hours and waiting for morning. It never came,

9

and I realized why when I went to the window at nine o'clock -
the wall of the building opposite us was so close that I could
almost touch it. Above my head, as if at the end of a long ver-
ticle corridor, I saw a small space of grey sky and breathed a
poisonous reek from a restaurant which opened on the narrow
court below. I shut the window, turned on the light, and remem-
bered that I had paid four months' rent.

Véral was called to the rescue. He suggested extravagant and
impossible ways of freeing me immediately from my lease, but the
woman who had rented us the apartment had left for an unknown des-
tination. I discovered several months later that she was the mis-
tress of one of the newspaper men.

One day Véral took me to the offices of the Sunday American.
The building - a long facade of dark walls and small windows -
made me think of a prison. All the editors of the paper were in-
troduced to me, but when I asked to meet the owner, William Ran-
dolph Hearst, everyone laughed. I was told that he never came here;
that he owned several newspapers and lived in several coun-
tries at once.

The business manager, Mr. Read, who soon was to play the
principal role in my affairs, was a man of forty who looked sixty.
He had the head of a skinned fox, a yellow face, and a coat
too wide for his thin shoulders. His pale bored eyes were like
panes of glass with a perpetual rain behind them; when he was

10

pleased, the rain lifted enough for a beam of sunlight to filter
through the lids. He went to church on Sunday with his wife, a
vast creature with flat feet, dressed in black satin adorned with
jet. The editor-in-chief looked and acted like a wild boar. Com-
pleting the group with which I was to be surrounded were the
Smiths - he a wily biped, she built like a quadruped, low to the
ground, massive, powerful.

If I had not been living in a sort of lethargy I would never
have allowed such a group of people to take charge of my affairs.
As it was, I scarcely listened to their talk. I was elsewhere. I
was neither happy nor unhappy. I did not know toward what I was
going, while waiting for the source of a real life to come to me.
I merely thought, "What does life, all-powerful life, want of me?
Why am I like a winter field, and when will spring return?"

space

Although I knew a few people in New York I refrained from tel-
ephoning them. "Don't let anyone know you are here", said Véral,
"until you have made your first appearance".

Every day I went out alone, walking at random and looking at
everything - my days were spent in looking. I went everywhere my
curiosity drew me and it led me one day to the very top of the
famous old Hipprodrome. Through an alley I saw a wide iron stair-
way and started up it, climbing flight after flight until I opened
a door and found myself in the last row of an immense amphitheatre.
Far below I saw a brilliant stream of clowns, horses, flags - a
sparkling phantasmagoria. I was too high above the stage to see the
performance clearly, but I was fascinated by the audience - living

11

walls made of clapping hands and howling mouths. Here was the enthusiasm of the American race in ~~this~~ action - that race composed of the most audacious and vigorous elements of all the other nations of the world.

And then, upon the delirious arena, a total and trembling silence fell, as if the audience were holding its breath. It made me think of the silence of a forest, at night, when one suddenly becomes aware of the breathing of the earth. The brutality of the projectors was dimmed, and after a pause a slender black silhouette made its way to the footlights. A translucent voice floated up to the galleries, its exquisite notes like the flowering of a sky-rocket against a dark night-sky. A religious peace spread over the arena . . . When the song was over the reaction of the audience surpassed even my expectation. A chorus of mad and frenzied cries mounted to the roof . . . I felt the boiling-up of those forces which I would soon be facing myself, and I rushed home to tell Monique how right we had been to come to this vital land.

Time passes quickly when it is not used. The day is marked only by my sight-seeing promenades, flowed away like hours. Every time I asked Véral when this aimless existence would end he always answered, "Don't try to hurry destiny". He even thought it unimportant that the English translation of my memoirs was not yet finished. I continued to walk and wait.

We soon found a way to compensate for the daytime darkness of our apartment. Many houses in New York have flat roofs -

12

ours was a black terrace, surrounded by old chimneys and piles
of fire hose. Nevertheless the place was my delight. I went
there early in the morning when smoke from the chimneys rose gently
upward; I went there in the afternoon before the day __1__ faded;
Monique and I had our tea there as the sun went down. But we
missed the pink twilights of Paris and those suspended moments
that separate day from darkness. In New York the beauty that __2__
at the day's end is broken by artificial light. When electric beams
lagan __3__ to streak across the sky Monique and I descended the narrow
iron stairway.

One day I received word from the newspaper that the transla-
tion of my memoirs was finished, but Véral and Read came to tell me
that slight changes in the text were necessary. "I'll change any-
you like", I said. "Tell me what I should do".

"You don't have to change anything", said Mr. Read, "we've
done it for you".

"But I stipulated that nothing could be changed, or added, with-
out my consent".

Read said, "You don't understand the psychology of the American
public. You must give us a free hand with the changes".

"Only if I approve of them", I said.

They realized that I could not be moved and at last agreed to
show me what they had written into my manuscript.

space

Although we lived carefully, our simple needs were more than
we could afford. I possessed neither money nor jewels when I left

13

France. What I had earned there in the last years by producing Maeterlinck's plays I had used to present other beautiful and little-known dramas; and during the war, like everyone else, I had made no money. Of course I could have had a little foresight, but to me foresight is premeditated avarice.

The *Sunday American* showed me their "improvements" in my manuscript. They were of a sensational inaccuracy that I was forced to reject.

Every night Véral telephoned to say, "I am here, ma chère, sleep in peace. I am letting it be whispered about that you are in New York, mystery surrounds you, curiosity is awakening".

Each week he drew a small sum from the newspaper for us to live on. Then suddenly he "forgot" to bring it to us. We waited for him from day to day, but he never came. When he finally reappeared it was to announce that the *Sunday American* refused to continue its advances unless I agreed to the revisions of the manuscript. "But I have a contract", I said, "the paper has only to publish and pay me". "That would have been done long since", Véral said, "if they were free. But since you don't accept the paper's point of view, the publication can drag along indefinitely - for months, even years. In fact, they can refuse to publish you at all".

A band tightened around my throat.

"In which case", Véral continued, "all you have to do is to repay the paper and take back your book".

When I didn't answer he made a final appeal : "You are refusing a fortune. One doesn't refuse a fortune"!