SOURCE: "The Short Stories," in François Mauriac, Twayne Publishers, 1970, pp. 121-28.

I Trois Récits (1929)

Since Mauriac's most successful novels are brief or at least of medium length, it might be expected that he would find the genre of novella or récit appropriate to his type of composition. He has produced, however, only two volumes of short stories,Trois Récits (Three Tales) andPlongées None of the first volume appear likely to add appreciably to his reputation in fiction. The first two tales in the earlier collection, "Coups de couteau" and "Un Homme de lettres" are so similar in plot that it is difficult not to confuse them in our memory.

"Coups de couteau" ("Knife Blows") is less a story than the recital by a painter to his wife of his amorous desires and frustrations in regard to a young woman he had befriended and protected. Never, perhaps, has the author's irony shown itself more acerbic, never has he illustrated more convincingly his theory of the impossibility for two souls to understand and penetrate each other. Unable to comprehend why his confession of love for another and younger woman should distress the quiet serenity of his "patient Griselda" wife, the famous artist expresses his despair at being appreciated only through gratitude for his professional aid instead of having his passion reciprocated. In his preface Mauriac wonders if he has succeeded in rendering acceptable to the reader such "muflerie" [boorishness] on the part of the artist-husband. A short quotation, chosen almost at random, should suffice to prove that for most readers the author has not succeeded. When Louis observes to his delighted surprise that his wife has actually felt jealousy of the other woman:

—You have then suffered a little, my poor Babeth? He repeated, "you have suffered"with a vague pleasure.

Then:

—Andrée, she doesn't suffer. I have never had that happiness to see her suffer because of me. Yet nothing can be as reassuring as the tears of the other.

When at the end of "Coups de couteau" we witness the artist's joy at the telephone call from Andrée expressing her desire to see him again, we note the irony of his realization that her real purpose was only to confide in him the anguish another had caused her. The tragic misunderstanding of these tortured souls comes full circle in the denouement.

"He began to walk back and forth in the studio, repeating one by one each word of Andrée, until he had extracted from them all the poison that was necessary for him to suffer."

The second story in this collection, "Un Homme de lettres," differs from the first only in that its hero (or antihero) is an author rather than a painter, and its souffredouleur or victim is not a wife but a faithful mistress of fifteen years' standing. Deserted by the man whose career she had worshiped, she is tortured primarily by the question of why Jérôme had abandoned her for an older woman with sickly children. She urges Mauriac to find out from Jérôme the answer to this mystery. The latter tells his friend that it is precisely because Gabrielle has surrounded him with such tranquillity and isolation from worldly cares, whereas it is in the confusion of a household filled with noisy children that he finds inspiration for his work. Apparently, however, the man of letters does not follow his own prescription, for some days after this conversation Mauriac receives a letter of gratitude from Gabrielle, thanking him for being the agent who brought about Jérome's decision to put his second mistress with her children on the train to a health resort so that he could return to her. Lest we assume the permanence of this happy ending however, we read between the lines in the concluding sentence that Jérôme has already found another mistress. "The raised hand of Jérôme stopped a cab driver; but I could not hear the address which he gave in a low voice."

In these two stories of Parisian life the reader's lack of emotional involvement is due in part to the unsympathetic nature of the principal protagonists, in part perhaps because, like La Bruyère and the seventeenth-century moralists, Mauriac has given us abstractions, typical portraits of the artist, the man of letters. The third story, "Le Demon de la connaissance," however, is more effective, not only because it is full of personal memories of Mauriac's own boyhood and Bordeaux background, but also because its young hero moves us deeply in his solitude and quest for perfection. While critics have reproached Mauriac for not giving a portrait of a pure intellectual, he tells us in his preface that this is exactly why he called this story the demon of knowledge: "a mind invaded, troubled, blinded by the exhalations of his blood, that is what one must seek in my sad hero."

In the opening pages with their depiction of the school days of young Maryan, viewed askance by the masters and proctors for his dreamy eccentricities and inability to conform to the rigid rules of the establishment, we may glimpse, no doubt, memories of Mauriac's own rather solitary childhood. Overcome with distaste and repulsion for an active career in the prosaic business world of his family, and attracted perhaps by the opportunity for solitude and the pursuit of knowledge, young Maryan chooses the quiet and austere cell of a seminary. After a few months, however, his independence of thought and his pursuit of new truths render him suspect to the pious fathers, who show him the door.

He arranges with his friend Lange to spend Easter vacation at the estate of his sister-in-law Mone, a confirmed invalid whose husband Robert visits her occasionally on weekends. Despite the chilly rain outside, Maryan rambles through the countryside, leaving his friend alone with Mone by the fireside. Climbing the stairs to the belfry of an almost abandoned church, he encounters a pair of lovers in passionate embrace. Returning to Mone's dwelling he sees through the window a pantomime in which Mone is obviously describing to his friend an attempt that Maryan, in a fit of youthful passion, had once made to embrace her. Furious at what he considers a betrayal, Maryan quarrels with his friend, who then decides to leave on the next morning's train.

When a letter arrives on the morrow announcing Robert's arrival for the weekend, the sudden joy which lights up Mone's pallid face convinces Maryan of his unimportance in her life. Yes, it must be true as Lange had so tactlessly told him, that he was destined never to inspire love. Heartsick at the collapse of his amorous ambitions, discouraged by his consciousness that his search for God had been in vain, Maryan climbs once more to the top of the belfry, thinking of suicide to escape this world full only of emptiness. Suddenly, however, he sees resplendent before him a celestial Face; he feels that he is loved and that he is no longer alone.

As epilogue, the last sentence in the story suggests the ultimate fate of this young seeker after God: "He did not see in his mind that trench in the earth, where, a few seconds before the attack, a few minutes before being struck down, he would repeat in a medium voice the most beautiful words that the war has inspired in a man about to die: 'At last! I am going to know.'"

II Plongées (1938)

"Thérèse must be your favorite character, M. Mauriac, since you have made her the heroine in four of your works, besides her brief appearance in Destins." "No," he answered this writer, "but I feel such immense pity for her." The two short stories concerning Thérèse were written in 1933 and are the first two tales included in Mauriac's second volume of short stories which appeared five years later. In his preface, Mauriac states that he has written these two plongées into the obscure period of her life in answer to those who have questioned him about her fate. In "Thérèse chez le docteur" some ten or eleven years have elapsed since the end of Thérèse Desqueyroux. Thérèse calls late at night upon a psychiatrist, Dr. Schwartz, in a despairing effort to receive guidance concerning a crisis she is facing. Haggard and distraught, she relates her bohemian existence in the night life of Paris, her unhappy liaison with Jean Azévédo—whom we remember for his role of catalyst for her revolt in the novel—and her present anguished efforts to retain the affections of Phili. The latter, a sordid wastrel in the toils of some financial imbroglio, has returned to Thérèse in hopes of pecuniary aid from her estate; and in default of this, having learned of her early crime, he wants her assistance in poisoning his blackmailer. When Dr. Schwartz greets this confession with scornful laughter and cynically advises her to get what she wants from Phili without acceding to his demands, Thérèse in disgust makes a movement towardher purse which the doctor, terrified, misinterprets as a gesture toward a revolver. At his frightened outcry his wife rushes in, convinced now of his shallow cynicism and cowardice, and compassionately conducts the disillusioned Thérèse to the elevator.

The second of these short stories, "Thérèse à l'hotel," takes place a few months later. Recounted in the first person by Thérèse herself, this brief anecdote shows us a Thérèse temporarily calmed by the suicide of Phili but depressed by the ravages of time which show only too clearly in her mirror. A strange rebirth of hope and tenderness surges forth in her heart as she observes the passionate gaze of a youth of eighteen resting upon her. Through a bit of feminine strategy she engages him in conversation and arranges a rendezvous for that evening. Before she can commit herself, however, she discovers that the young man's interest in her is purely spiritual and humanitarian, for he has seen in this middle-aged woman a fallen creature, a brand he would pluck from the burning. Furious at herself, even more furious with this "poor fool," Thérèse leaves in a rage to mourn the destruction of her illusions.

One critic at least found these incarnations of Thérèse possessed of more truth and carnal consistency than the earlier one. André Thérive was closer to recent critical evaluation in finding "Thérèse chez le docteur" melodramatic and unconvincing, as is usual when Mauriac tries to describe the fleshpots of Paris. In any case we have here a preparation for the appearance of Thérèse in La Fin de la nuit. Marked by Parisian dissipation and by the approach of middle age, Thérèse has become a truly pitiable personage, preserved by her intelligence from the depths of moral degradation but speaking now with an accent of coarseness and cynicism, still the prisoner of the crime committed so many years before. As pure narrative "Thérèse chez le docteur" is perhaps superior for the intensity with which it grips the reader, but for irony and pathos "Thérèse à l'hotel" is not entirely lacking in merit.

"Insomnie," written in 1927 as Mauriac tells us in the foreword to this volume, is less a short story than a plongée or descent "into the thickness of a life." According to the author,

It is the chapter of a novel that I have not written, for which "Coups de couteau" might perhaps have been the prologue. Many destinies which are dramatic do not furnish material for a novel, because they lack events. The history of the hero of "Insomnie" can have only a chapter. His sorrow loses itself in the sand.

Louis (the same name as that of the hero in "Coups de couteau," likewise a painter and therefore perhaps the same individual), furious at the conduct of his mistress who seems more interested in his comrades than in him, flees unceremoniously to his hotel room, hoping to escape his jealous torments through the medium of sleep. Alas, his vivid imagination forces him to toss restlessly until dawn, creating vivid pictures of his mistress in the company of a rival. He waits anxiously for the sound of the elevator which might betoken her arrival to console him, decides to break off future relations in order to allow his deep wounds to heal with time, then realizes that this solution is impossible since his fickle mistress has the rare faculty of knowing just how far she can push him before reopening his wound with protestations of tenderness. Just as we saw in "Coups de couteau," a masterly analysis of masculine treachery, so in "Insomnie" we perceive the sharp scalpel of the author probing the depths of masculine jealousy and despair.

"Le Rang" ("Rank"), unlike its predecessor, is a wellconstructed tale, perhaps the most successful of Mauriac's short stories. In Bordeaux or one of its suburbs, old Auguste Duprouy who has returned to the empty house after conducting the body of his sister Emma to the family vault in Langoiran where repose the remains of his father, mother, and sister Eudoxie, receives a visit of condolence from his cousin, Hector Bellade. In the act of relating calmly to Hector the tragic account of his life of frustration, he suddenly collapses in a faint. Hector, after seeking vainly any vestige of food or drink in the gloomy mansion, realizes that the old man is a victim of hunger. He takes him to a restaurant where, his vitality restored, Auguste proceeds to finish his sad tale.

His father's dying words had implored his mother to maintain her position in society at no matter what cost. This implacable old lady, who reminds us of the grim figure of Mme Cazenave in Genitrix, exerts a dominating role in control of the household. First she refuses to allow Emma and Eudoxie to give singing or piano lessons, since this would be considered retrogression from their social standard of respectability and decorum. Then she forces her son Auguste to renounce a brilliant career as scholar and teacher to accept a lucrative offer as traveling salesman for the great wine firm of Harry Maucoudinat. A final straw, which effectively breaks the back of Auguste's independence, is his mother's refusal to allow his marriage to the woman he loves, since this would entail the removal of mother and old-maid sisters to a comfortable nursing home.

Some months after this conversation it is discovered that Auguste had died alone in the desolate mansion three days before the neighbors found his emaciated corpse. Hector is deeply moved by the contrast with the radiant youth he had known in his childhood. A final ironic touch is afforded by his wife's decision, despite the heavy expense, to have the body transported to the family funeral vault at Langoiran. "He would have been pleased, poor old Auguste, if he had been able to foresee that he would rejoin his mother, Eudoxie, Emma for eternity." Hector asked, "Do you think so?"

In this mordant flagellation of pride and social prestige among the upper bourgeoisie Mauriac has returned to the theme of his early novel Préséances (in which the name of Harry Maucoudinat was also prominent).

A refreshing contrast to this stark tale of genteel poverty and bourgeois pride is the final "Conte de Noël" or "Christmas Story" which concludes the volume, with its delicate fragrance and nostalgic charm of Mauriac's own childhood in Bordeaux. As his seven-year-old comrades gather at the school preparatory to dismissal for the Christmas holidays, the overgrown bully Campagne jeers at little Jean de Blaye with his long silken tresses (which remind young Frontenac of little Lord Fauntleroy) and mocks his naïve belief that it is the little Jesus who descends in the chimney to fill his shoes with presents. Since his mother has told him this, Jean insists that it must be true, for his mother never lies. Nevertheless, Frontenac, whose skepticism has been aroused, persuades Jean to stay awake also on Christmas Eve in order to discover the truth. Little Frontenac does indeed perceive that it is his mother who performs this function, thinking him safely asleep, yet somehow he is not disillusioned for he feels in his mother the spirit of the Christ child.

On returning to school after New Year's Day, Frontenac finds a new Jean de Blaye, shorn of his curly locks, shorn also of his childlike faith. Their tender companionship has been broken, and since Jean's family soon leaves Bordeaux, Frontenac loses all contact with his chum. Many years later, when Frontenac (Mauriac) is a student in Paris celebrating Christmas Eve in a noisy bar, he encounters a youth whom he mistakes at first for Jean de Blaye, but who turns out to be his younger brother, Philippe. The latter tells him how Jean had been disillusioned, first by learning it was his mother after all who placed the presents, later that the family treasure box contained only his shorn locks, as if his mother wished always to keep him in her mind as a child. As he matured, little Jean had fallen into vice, and the last word they had received was of his death in a hospital in Saigon.

As Mauriac returned to his room, in spite of his desire for sleep he decided to write down this story of little Jean de Blaye. Creating in his imagination the details which led from that moment of disenchantment to Jean's death, after a misspent youth, in a Saigon hospital, "it is that night that I became a novelist, or at least that of this power. . . . A novelist had just been born and was opening his eyes upon this sad world."