My Brother's Wife

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Excerpt from My Brother's Wife: A Life-HistoryI can scarcely believe that my task is real - that I am now guiding my pen along the first few sentences of my Life-History. It seems so strange a thing that any man (and myself above all men) should deliberately receive the whole world into his confidence - should take his own heart to pieces, as one might a passion-flower, and pluck it leaf from leaf, petal from petal, for every eye to gaze upon at will!Stranger still is it that I should indite these pages in a foreign tongue - that I should, in the first instance, address myself to foreign readers. Yet not so strange, perhaps, when I reflect upon all the long past, and when I remember how dear and familiar is the English language to my lips and to my ears. It is the native tongue of many whom I have best loved in life. From my earliest childhood I have studied and spoken it. I could not write this book with satisfaction to myself in any other, and, be it well or ill done, it must go thus before all who read it.My name is Paul Latour. I was born upon our estate in Burgundy, about two years after my father's marriage, and three years before the birth of my brother Theophile. I do not remember my father very distinctly, excepting as I saw him lying in his coffin, very pale and still, when they carried me to his chamber, that I might kiss him for the last time. His cheek was cold and sunken, he did not raise those heavy eyelids to gaze fondly upon me as was his wont, and I recollect that I sobbed bitterly without knowing why, unless it were in childish sympathy with the distress around me. Some other memories, vague and transient enough, seem now and then to flit before me - memories of a cordial voice and of a lofty brow - yet, when I strive to realize them, they fade away, and leave me doubting whether they be recollections or fragments of old dreams.My mother was beautiful - nay, is still beautiful, though somewhat faded by the passage of events and years. According to my earliest impressions, she was tall, fair, and stately as a queen, and, when she spoke, the low tones of her voice were grave and sweet, like the cadence of our chapel bells down in the valley. I will not say that my mother's disposition was unloving, but it was cold - cold toward her husband, toward her servants, toward me. The touch of her white slender fingers was ever brief and unwilling, the expression of her large, calm blue eyes was serious, but frosty, her kisses, for me at least, were careless and infrequent. Théophile was ever her favorite child. She treated us in all respects precisely alike, she never accorded him any indulgence in which I was not an equal sharer, and yet I saw it, knew it, felt it from the first. That she thought her preference unjust, that she even resisted it to the utmost, I am fully certain, for I saw that also. I saw the effort as plainly as I saw the affection, and I wept away many an hour of the night-time thinking of it. No one ever knew how passionately I then loved my mother - how breathlessly I used to listen to her gentle speaking - how reverently and admiringly I used to look up to her beautiful, proud mouth, and to the rich folds of her golden hair! It was an idolatry - the idolatry which children often feel, and for which we are so little disposed to give them credit.I once dreamt that I was with my mother in the library, and that she took me by the hand, and, looking into my face, said, "Paul, you are not my child." And I remember now, as if it were yesterday, how I woke up sobbing, and crept out of my little bed in the bright moonlight, and stole along the corridor, and how I crouched down at her chamber-door, listening to her breathing, and there dropped asleep. This it was which gave me the reputation of being a somnambulist, for, when they found mo in the morning lying there, I would say nothing of what brought me.I have already stated that Theophile was my mothe...