THE PORTRAIT GALLERY
217
It was very wann and the guard snored gently. My glance roved
over the walls: I saw hands and eyes; here and there a spot of light
blotted out a face.
As
I turned towards the portrait of Olivier Ble–
vigne, something held me back: from the arch the merchant Pacome
focussed his clear gaze upon me.
He was standing,
his
head thrown slightly back, one hand
holding against his pearl gray trousers a fashionable high hat and
gloves. I could not keep back a certain admiration: I saw nothing
mediocre about him, nothing to criticize: small feet, fine hands, the
broad shoulders of a champion, discreet elegance, with a suggestion
of humor. He offered courteously to visitors his clean-cut, unlined
face; the shadow of a smile hovered at his lips. But his grey eyes did
not smile. He must have been fifty:
he~
looked as young and fresh as
thirty. He was handsome.
I gave up the chance to catch him in the wrong. But he would
not let me go. I read in his eyes a calm and unyielding judgment.
I understood then
all
that separated us: what I might think of
him
did not touch him, it was a bit of psychology, as in novels.
But his judgment pierced me like a sword, putting in question my
very right to exist. And it was true, I had always taken this into
account: I did not have the right to exist. I had come into being by
chance, I existed as did a stone, a plant, a microbe. My being sprouted
with little joy and in every direction. Sometimes it sent me vague
signals; at other times I felt nothing but a humming without meaning.
But for this handsome faultless man, today deceased, for Jean
Pacome, son of Pacome of the National Guard, it had been very
different: the beat of his heart and the muffied noises of his organs
reached him in the form of small instantaneous and unadulterated
rights. For sixty years, unfalteringly, he had made use of the right
to live. Magnificent grey eyes! Never had the slightest doubt crossed
them. Never, never had Pacome been wrong.
He had always done his duty, his entire duty, his duty as son,
husband, fathe , as leader. He had claimed his rights unhesitatingly:
as a child, the right to be well brought up in a closely knit family,
of inheriting a spotless name, a prosperous business; as a husband,
the right to be cared for, surrounded by tender affection; as a father,
the right to
be
looked up to as leader, the right of protesting obe–
dience. For a right is never more than another form of duty. His
extraordinary success (the Pacomes are today the richest family in
Bouville) must never have astonished him. He had never said to
himself that he was happy, and when he took his pleasure he felt
