Adolphe

Adolphe is twenty-two when he leaves the University of Göttingen, his mind already aged by a singular education and by the company of an older woman whose death he witnessed at close quarters—a death that left him with a reverie on the brevity of all things and a premature detachment from everything that ought to occupy a young man. His father, the minister of a small German state, is a noble and generous man but incapable of direct tenderness; between them reigns a mutual timidity that freezes words on their lips, allowing only irony or silence to pass. Adolphe has inherited this constraint: he has grown accustomed to locking away everything he feels, to relying solely on his own plans, and to considering the presence of others a hindrance. Deep in his heart, he harbors a need for sensibility of which he remains unaware, and which, never finding satisfaction, successively detaches him from every object that attracts his curiosity.

He travels to the small town of D***, the residence of an enlightened prince who is nonetheless surrounded by insignificant courtiers. There, Adolphe inadvertently acquires a reputation for mockery and malice: his biting jests wound, his indifference irritates. Then, a young friend confides in him the joy of a romantic conquest, and this spectacle awakens in Adolphe a vague need, mingled with vanity and something far deeper, to be loved in turn. He sees no one who inspires love in him, no one who seems capable of feeling it, until the day he meets the Count of P***'s mistress at the Count's home: Ellénore.

Ellénore is a Polish woman from an illustrious but ruined family, driven by the fatality of her circumstances into an irregular liaison with the Count. She has salvaged his fortune, shared his perils, and raised their two children with excessive austerity; yet she has never ceased to protest against the class to which society consigns her, and this constant struggle against her own destiny has rendered her temper volatile, her character fiery, and her manner unpredictable. Adolphe finds her presented to his gaze at a moment when his heart craves love and his vanity demands success. He deems her a conquest worthy of him. He begins to see her daily, to read with her, to walk by her side, and the intention of pleasing her enlivens his existence in an unwonted fashion—but his pride acts as a third party between them, and an invincible timidity arrests every word on his lips.

He resolves to write to her. The agitation of his letter bears a striking resemblance to love. Ellénore replies with kindness, offers him her friendship, but refuses to receive him until the Count's return. Adolphe, inflamed by the obstacle, suddenly believes he feels with frantic intensity what, an hour earlier, he was congratulating himself on feigning. He rushes to her home, pleads with her, threatens to leave, to sever all his ties, to put an early end to a life she takes pleasure in poisoning. Ellénore yields and consents to see him again. Gradually, the strict rules she had prescribed for him are modified: she allows him to depict his love, she grows accustomed to this language, she confesses that she loves him. Adolphe spends hours at her feet, proclaiming himself the happiest of men. Then he presses her further, loses his temper, begs, overwhelms Ellénore with reproaches; she forms the plan to sever a tie that spreads only anxiety through her life—he appeases her with his tears. She finally surrenders herself entirely, and Adolphe walks with pride among men, casting a domineering gaze upon them.

But the charm of love does not last. Ellénore, in her devotion, no longer lets him leave without attempting to hold him back; two hours of separation are unbearable to her. Adolphe begins to find it irksome to have his every step charted in advance and all his moments accounted for. He does not miss the pleasures of social life, but he wishes he could renounce them more freely, to return to her of his own volition rather than out of duty. She is no longer a goal: she has become a chain. When the Count of P*** begins to suspect their relationship, Adolphe begs Ellénore to exercise prudence, to let him go away for a few days. She refuses. In one way or another, she says, he will soon depart; let them not hasten that moment; days, hours, are all she needs. A premonition tells her that she will die in his arms.

Adolphe's father orders him to return. Ellénore begs him to remain for another six months. He yields, writes to his father, obtains a reprieve—then immediately resents it. He announces the news to Ellénore with coldness; she is wounded by his regrets precisely where she expected his joy. The scene turns violent, mutual reproaches erupt, irreparable words are spoken. They embrace, but a first blow has been struck, a first barrier crossed: they can keep silent, but they cannot forget. Four months pass in forced relations, sometimes sweet, never completely free. Ellénore does not detach herself from him; all prudence is odious to her because prudence comes from him; she does not calculate her sacrifices because she is entirely consumed with making him accept them.

One morning, Ellénore announces that she has broken with the Count. He finds her settled in modest lodgings, making preparations for a permanent home, seeking to persuade him that she will be happy, that she has sacrificed nothing for him. Adolphe, incapable of raising the slightest objection, accepts this sacrifice and assures her that he is overjoyed by it—and as he speaks, he is sincere in his promises, for he envisions nothing beyond the present moment. But in an instant, Ellénore loses the fruit of ten years of devotion: society conflates her with the women of her class who indulge in a thousand fleeting fancies, pitying her only to better condemn Adolphe; and he, who is merely a weak, grateful, and dominated man, expresses himself with embarrassment, parading in general conversation a contempt for women that contradicts his direct praises of Ellénore. He is wounded in a duel with a man who insulted her; Ellénore installs herself at his bedside, watches over him night and day, multiplying the proofs of a devotion that nothing can reward. Adolphe summons to his aid his memories, his imagination, his reason, his sense of duty—useless efforts.

The six months having elapsed, he finally departs, promising to return or to let her join him. Far from her, he savors the indifference of others as a respite from the exhaustion of his love. He writes her letters in which he substitutes the word affection for love, then, seized with remorse, hastily adds a few ardent phrases designed to deceive her anew. Ellénore ultimately joins him against his will. Their reunion is a tempest of reproaches; a senseless fury takes hold of them; they seem like two irreconcilable enemies bent on tearing each other apart. Adolphe's father takes measures to have Ellénore expelled from the town. Adolphe, revolted, orders a post-chaise at dawn, rushes to Ellénore, and drags her away on the road. During the journey, he smothers her with caresses, swearing to devote his life to her. But she soon unravels the contradictions in his account, and tells him that he is deceiving himself, that he feels nothing but pity. The truth pierces his soul; the momentum is destroyed.

They settle in Caden, a small town in Bohemia. Adolphe forces himself to be cheerful, locking away in his breast the slightest signs of discontent—and this effort produces an unexpected effect upon him: the feelings he feigns, he eventually comes half to experience. Five months pass in this fragile calm. Then the Count of P*** offers Ellénore half of his fortune on the condition that she leave Adolphe: she refuses. Adolphe, moved yet despairing, realizes that their ties must be severed, that he is the sole obstacle between her and a respectable existence. He returns to her, resolved to declare that he has no love left. He speaks, his eyes downcast, his voice hurried: love, that transport of the senses, that involuntary intoxication, he feels it no more. Ellénore remains motionless, gazing at objects as though she recognizes none of them. She staggers and falls senseless at his feet. He lifts her up, cries out that he loves her with true love, that he had deceived her so she might be freer in her choice. She believes him, drinks in this love she takes to be theirs, and confirms her refusal to the Count.

Ellénore's father, his estates in Poland having been restored, invites her to join him. She refuses to leave without Adolphe. He follows her, reluctantly, to Poland. There, a friend of his father's, the Baron de T***, receives him and speaks with brutal candor: he is no longer in love with the woman who dominates him and drags him along in her wake; between every kind of success and himself stands an insurmountable obstacle, and that obstacle is Ellénore. Adolphe protests vehemently, defending Ellénore with sincere eloquence—but no sooner has he left the Baron's presence than the sentiment dictating his words fades before he has even finished uttering them. He wanders alone through the countryside, recalling the hopes of his youth, the fellow students who have surpassed him, the career he has never begun. He imagines a companion whom social conventions would allow him to acknowledge, a peaceful hearth, his father's joy. Then night falls, the vast silence envelops him, and the idea of death, which has always held great sway over him, soothes his irritation. He returns at daybreak, exhausted, almost calm.

The Baron de T*** maneuvers patiently to obtain from Adolphe a written confession of his desire to break it off. Adolphe, in a moment of weakness, confides his resolution in a letter to the Baron. The latter forwards it to Ellénore. She reads it, and her world collapses. When Adolphe arrives at her home, he finds her prostrate, her features distorted, her eyes dry and fixed. She shows him the letter. He throws himself at her knees, disavows everything, curses the Baron, and protests his love. But words no longer hold any sway. Ellénore falls ill; the fever never leaves her. Adolphe, torn by remorse, does not leave her side for an instant; he spends his nights at her bedside, holding her in his arms with a tenderness in which he searches in vain for a trace of his former love. She looks at him sometimes with a sweetness that breaks his heart, sometimes with a terror that chills him. She writes him a final letter which he will not find until after her death—a letter in which she tells him that he will learn, by this very letter, that she is no more, and that perhaps through it he will be drawn back to the feeling he thought he had lost.

Ellénore dies. And Adolphe, free at last, discovers that this long-desired freedom weighs upon him like a desert. The earth is empty around him. He has spurned the being who loved him; he is no less anxious, no less agitated, no less discontented; he makes no use of this freedom reclaimed at the cost of so much sorrow and so many tears. He wanders, dragging out an existence whose dismal emptiness is his sole punishment—and his only company, henceforth, is this manuscript in which he has recorded everything, this narrative that a stranger will one day find in a Calabrian inn, just as one gathers the wreckage of a ship on a silent beach.