A Grandmother
There are people who live but
lack, so to speak, the necessary strength, just as there are
people who sing but do not have a voice. These are the most
interesting; they have replaced the qualities they lack with
intelligence and feeling. The grandmother of our dear
collaborator and friend Robert de Flers, Mme de Rozière, who is
to be buried today at Malzieu, was possessed of intelligence and
feeling alone. Consumed with that perpetual anxiety which is the
mark of a great life-long love (her love for her grandson), how
could she be in good health! But she had that particular state of
health of superior beings who do not benefit from good health but
which we call vitality. So frail, so slight, she always came
through the most terrible bouts of illness, and just when we
thought she would sink down, we would see her rise quickly to the
surface, following closely behind the craft which was leading her
grandson to fame and fortune, not so that he would shower it upon
her, but to see that he lacked for nothing, whether he still had
need of a little of his grandmother's attention, and in her heart
she truly hoped he did. Truly it took the power of death to
separate them!
I who have witnessed a grandmother's tears -
the tears of a young girl - each time that Robert de Flers set
off on a voyage alone, it was not without some anxiety for her
that I thought how one day Robert would marry. She often said
that she wanted him to marry but I believe she said it above all
to accustom herself to the idea. Deep down, she was much more
fearful of the fatal imminence of his marriage than her dread of
his going off to college or leaving to join the army. And God
alone knows - because people are courageous when they are loving
- what she had suffered on both of those occasions! Shall I say
it? Her love for her grandson did not seem to me to be bound,
when Robert came to be married, to become a source of sadness for
her alone: I was thinking about the woman who was to become her
grand-daughter... Jealous love is not always kind to those with
whom we have to share... The woman who married Robert de Flers
accomplished with divine simplicity the miracle of making of this
much dreaded marriage a period of pure happiness for Mme de
Rozière, for herself and for Robert de Flers. All three of them
were neither separated nor quarrelled for a single day. Mme de
Rozière rightly said that out of discretion she would not
continue to live with them and would go and live on her own, but
I do not believe that either she, Robert, nor anybody else could
seriously believe that such a thing was possible. The only way
she could have been taken away was in a coffin.
Another thing had occurred to me that would not
pass off without grave difficulties, which, thanks to the
understanding and kind-heartedness of Gaston de Caillavet, and of
his wife, passed off most easily and happily for all concerned.
At one particular time Robert had a collaborator. A collaborator!
Really, what need did he, her grandson, have of a collaborator,
he who had more talent alone than all the writers who had ever
walked the earth? In any case it is of no importance; it is quite
certain that of all the works written in collaboration everything
good would be Robert's, and if by any chance some parts are less
good they will by the other one, the presumptuous one... Well!
nothing was "less good" and in any case she will
declare that it was not all by Robert. I would not go as far as
to say that in the unceasing triumphs that have marked this
collaboration she would consider that all the glory should come
to Caillavet, but he would have been the first to disavow it. And
in their harmonious success, she shared those different gifts
that were able to bring them together wonderfully. You must know
that above everything else she was marvellously intelligent and
it is that that makes it more just. That is why without doubt
intelligence, which is such a great source of misfortune, appears
to us all the same as so beneficent and so noble: we very much
feel that it is intelligence alone that can honour and serve
Justice. "They are two powerful gods."
She did not leave her bed or her bedroom any
more than did Joubert, or Descartes, or other people who
considered it necessary to their health to spend a lot of time in
bed without having for all that the delicacy of mind of the one
or the strength of mind of the other. It is not for Mme de
Rozière that I say this. Chateaubriand said of Joubert that he
was constantly lying down with his eyes shut, but that that was
when he was most troubled and got most tired. For the same reason
Pascal, on this point, could never follow the advice that
Descartes lavished upon him. So it is with many invalids to whom
we recommend silence, but - like the young woman to Mme de
Sevigné's grand-daughter - their thoughts "are noisy to
them". She made herself such a difficult patient that she
might have done better simply to take the more complicated wager
of being healthy. But that was beyond her strength. In her final
years her ravishing eyes, which had the colour of hyacinth,
reflecting more and more what was taking place within, ceased to
show her what was happening around her: she had become almost
blind. At least that is what she said. But I myself know
perfectly well that if Robert ever showed the slightest sign of
illness, she was always the first to notice! And as she had no
wish to see anything beyond him, she was happy. She never loved
anything, to use Malbranche's phrase, except through
him. He was her god.
She had always been indulgent to his friends,
but also severe, because she never thought them worthy of him.
There was no one she was more indulgent towards than me. She had
a way of saying to me: "Robert loves you like a
brother", which at the same time meant: "You do not do
wrong seeking to deserve it", and "all the same you
only deserve it a very little". She extended her blindness
towards everything that concerned me to the extent of being able
to discern some talent in me. No doubt she told herself that
anybody who spent so much time with her grandson could not help
but pick up a little from him.
Such a perfect love as united Robert de Flers
and his grandmother could never die. Indeed! two beings so
entirely correspondent that nothing that existed in one could not
be found in the other, their raison d'être, their
purpose, their satisfaction, their meaning, their tender remarks,
two beings who seemed to be the translation one of the other,
even though each was a true original, these two beings who only
came together for a moment, by chance, in the infinity of time,
how could they no longer mean anything to each other, nothing
more special than they are to countless millions of others? Must
we really think so? All the letters that constitute that
spiritual and passionate book that was Mme de Rozière, have they
become replaced with meaningless characters, that no longer form
one single word? Those like me who have too quickly made a habit
of loving to read both books and hearts can never fully believe
that...
I wanted to say to her on behalf of Robert de
Flers' friends - who were friends of hers too - what I could not
call a last farewell, because I feel that I will say many more to
her yet, and then again, to be sure, we never truly say farewell
to those we have loved, because they never leave us completely.
Nothing lasts, not even death! Mme de Rozière
is no longer on this earth, and already she is beginning to speak
vividly to me so that I am unable to prevent myself from talking
of her. And if you find me doing so with a smile, you will find
it hard to believe that I have never for a second felt the need
to weep. Nobody could better understand that than Robert. He
would do the same as me. He knows that we never think of those
whom we have most loved, at the times we are most sorrowful,
without fervently addressing the most affectionate smile we are
capable of in their direction. Do we do this in order to mislead
them, to reassure them, to tell them that they need not worry and
that we will be brave, to make them believe that we are not
unhappy? Or is it, rather, that this smile is the physical
expression of the countless kisses that we give them in the
Invisible?
Article appeared
in Le Figaro, 23 July 1907.