PAGE 5
The Desire to be a Man
by
‘Ah!’ he murmured, ‘I ought to have lent the assistance of my talent for the benefit of my victims! That would have been my farewell performance! I would have declaimed Orestes. I’d have been very convincing. …
Thereupon, Chaudval began life in his lighthouse.
And the evenings fell, came one upon the other; and the nights.
One thing happened which stupefied the artist. Something atrocious!
Contrary to all his hopes and anticipations, his conscience gave no murmur of remorse. Not one ghost showed itself! He experienced nothing—absolutely nothing!
He could not believe the silence. He could not get over it.
And from time to time he looked in the mirror, but his head had not altered its complacent aspect! In a fury, he rushed to his lantern, and falsified its lights in a glowing hope of sinking some far-off vessel, so as to help, to quicken, to stimulate this mutinous remorse, to awaken the ghost!
Useless toil!
Fruitless attempts! Vain efforts! He experienced nothing. Not one menacing phantom did he behold. He no longer slept so heavily did despair and shame weigh him down. —So much so that one night he was stricken in his light-giving solitude by a cerebral congestion, and fell into a fit, wherein he cried aloud, to the sound of the sea, and with the great ocean winds smiting his tower lost there in the infinite:
‘Ghosts—for the love of God, ghosts! Let me see just one ghost! I’ve well deserved it!’
The God whom he invoked did not vouchsafe him this grace. And the old actor expired, still proclaiming with all its futile emphasis his great desire to set eyes on the ghosts, and never once seeing that what he was seeking was simply—himself.