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What a tremendous stretch!\"\n\n\"Wha-ooh! Oh dear! We sha'n't get one moment before dinner! Oh,\nhorrible! oh, horrible! most horrible!\"\n\n\"Sylvia, you know I hate hearing _Hamlet_ profaned.\"\n\n\"You can't hate it more than having no one to hear our lessons.\"\n\n\"That makes you do it. What on earth can Mary be about?\"\n\n\"Some tiresome woman to speak to her, I suppose.\"\n\n\"I'm sure it can't be as much her business as it is to mind her poor\nlittle sisters. Oh dear! if Papa could only afford us a governess!\"\n\n\"I am sure I should not like it at all; besides, it is wrong to wish to\nbe richer than one is.\"\n\n\"I don't wish; I am only thinking how nice it would be, if some one would\ngive us a famous quantity of money. Then Papa should have a pretty\nparsonage, like the one at Shagton; and we would make the church\nbeautiful, and get another pony or two, to ride with Charlie.\"\n\n\"Yes, and have a garden with a hothouse like Mr. Brown's.\"\n\n\"Oh yes; and a governess to teach us to draw. But best of all\u2014O Sylvia!\nwouldn't it be nice not to have to mind one's clothes always? Yes, you\nlaugh; but it comes easier to you; and, oh dear! oh dear! it is so horrid\nto be always having to see one does not tear oneself.\"\n\n\"I don't think you do see,\" said Sylvia, laughing.\n\n\"My frocks always _will_ get upon the thorns. It is very odd.\"\n\n\"Only do please, Katie dear, let me finish this sum; and then if Mary is\nnot come, she can't scold if we are amusing ourselves.\"\n\n\"I know!\" cried Kate. \"I'll draw such a picture, and tell you all about\nit when your sum is over.\"\n\nThereon ensued silence in the little room, half parlour, half study,\nnearly filled with books and piano; and the furniture, though carefully\nprotected with brown holland, looking the worse for wear, and as if\ndanced over by a good many young folks.\n\nThe two little girls, who sat on the opposite sides of a little square\ntable in the bay-window, were both between ten and eleven years old, but\ncould not have been taken for twins, nor even for sisters, so unlike were\ntheir features and complexion; though their dress, very dark grey linsey,\nand brown holland aprons, was exactly the same, except that Sylvia's was\nenlivened by scarlet braid, Kate's darkened by black\u2014and moreover, Kate's\napron was soiled, and the frock bore traces of a great darn. In fact,\nnew frocks for the pair were generally made necessary by Kate's tattered\nstate, when Sylvia's garments were still available for little Lily, or\nfor some school child.\n\nSylvia's brown hair was smooth as satin; Kate's net did not succeed in\nconfining the loose rough waves of dark chestnut, on the road to\nblackness. Sylvia was the shorter, firmer, and stronger, with round\nwhite well-cushioned limbs; Kate was tall, skinny, and brown, though\nperfectly healthful. The face of the one was round and rosy, of the\nother thin and dark; and one pair of eyes were of honest grey, while the\nothers were large and hazel, with blue whites. Kate's little hand was so\nslight, that Sylvia's strong fingers could almost crush it together, but\nit was far less effective in any sort of handiwork; and her slim\nneatly-made foot always was a reproach to her for making such boisterous\nsteps, and wearing out her shoes so much faster than the quieter\nmovements of her companion did\u2014her sister, as the children would have\nsaid, for nothing but the difference of surname reminded Katharine\nUmfraville that she was not the sister of Sylvia Wardour.\n\nHer father, a young clergyman, had died before she could remember\nanything, and her mother had not survived him three months. Little Kate\nhad then become the charge of her mother's sister, Mrs. Wardour, and had\ngrown up in the little parsonage belonging to the district church of St.\nJames's, Oldburgh, amongst her cousins, calling Mr. and Mrs. Wardour Papa\nand Mamma, and feeling no difference between their love to their own five\nchildren and to her.\n\nMrs. Wardour had been dead for about four years, and the little girls\nwere taught by the eldest sister, Mary, who had been at a boarding-school\nto fit her for educating them. Mr. Wardour too taught them a good deal\nhimself, and had the more time for them since Charlie, the youngest boy,\nhad gone every day to the grammar-school in the town.\n\nArmyn, the eldest of the family, was with Mr. Brown, a very good old\nsolicitor, who, besides his office in Oldburgh, had a very pretty house\nand grounds two miles beyond St. James's, where the parsonage children\nwere delighted to spend an afternoon now and then.\n\nLittle did they know that it was the taking the little niece as a\ndaughter that had made it needful to make Armyn enter on a profession at\nonce, instead of going to the university and becoming a clergyman like\nhis father; nor how cheerfully Armyn had agreed to do whatever would best\nlighten his father's cares and troubles. They were a very happy family;\nabove all, on the Saturday evenings and Sundays that the good-natured\nelder brother spent at home.\n\n\"There!\" cried Sylvia, laying down her slate pencil, and indulging in\nanother tremendous yawn; \"we can't do a thing more till Mary comes! What\ncan she be about?\"\n\n\"Oh, but look, Sylvia!\" cried Kate, quite forgetting everything in the\ninterest of her drawing on a large sheet of straw-paper. \"Do you see\nwhat it is?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Sylvia, \"unless\u2014let me see\u2014 That's a very rich\nlittle girl, isn't it?\" pointing to an outline of a young lady whose\nwealth was denoted by the flounces (or rather scallops) on her frock, the\nbracelets on her sausage-shaped arms, and the necklace on her neck.\n\n\"Yes; she is a very rich and grand\u2014 Lady Ethelinda; isn't that a pretty\nname? I do wish I was Lady Katharine.\"\n\n\"And what is she giving? I wish you would not do men and boys, Kate;\ntheir legs always look so funny as you do them.\"\n\n\"They never will come right; but never mind, I must have them. That is\nLady Ethelinda's dear good cousin, Maximilian; he is a lawyer\u2014don't you\nsee the parchment sticking out of his pocket?\"\n\n\"Just like Armyn.\"\n\n\"And she is giving him a box with a beautiful new microscope in it; don't\nyou see the top of it? And there is a whole pile of books. And I would\ndraw a pony, only I never can nicely; but look here,\"\u2014Kate went on\ndrawing as she spoke\u2014\"here is Lady Ethelinda with her best hat on, and a\nlittle girl coming. There is the little girl's house, burnt down; don't\nyou see?\"\n\nSylvia saw with the eyes of her mind the ruins, though her real eyes saw\nnothing but two lines, meant to be upright, joined together by a wild\nzig-zag, and with some peaked scrabbles and round whirls intended for\nsmoke. Then Kate's ready pencil portrayed the family, as jagged in their\ndrapery as the flames and presently Lady Ethelinda appeared before a\ncounter (such a counter! sloping like a desk in the attempt at\nperspective, but it conveniently concealed the shopman's legs,) buying\nvery peculiar garments for the sufferers. Another scene in which she was\npresenting them followed, Sylvia looking on, and making suggestions; for\nin fact there was no quiet pastime more relished by the two cousins than\ndrawing stories, as they called it, and most of their pence went in paper\nfor that purpose.\n\n\"Lady Ethelinda had a whole ream of paper to draw on!\" were the words\npronounced in Kate's shrill key of eagerness, just as the long lost Mary\nand her father opened the door.\n\n\"Indeed!\" said Mr. Wardour, a tall, grave-looking man; \"and who is Lady\nEthelinda!\"\n\n\"O Papa, it's just a story I was drawing,\" said Kate, half eager, half\nashamed.\n\n\"We have done all the lessons we could, indeed we have\u2014\" began Sylvia;\n\"my music and our French grammar, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, I know,\" said Mary; and she paused, looking embarrassed and\nuncomfortable, so that Sylvia stood in suspense and wonder.\n\n\"And so my little Kate likes thinking of Lady\u2014Lady Etheldredas,\" said Mr.\nWardour rather musingly; but Kate was too much pleased at his giving any\nsort of heed to her performances to note the manner, and needed no more\nencouragement to set her tongue off.\n\n\"Lady Ethelinda, Papa. She is a very grand rich lady, though she is a\nlittle girl: and see there, she is giving presents to all her cousins;\nand there she is buying new clothes for the orphans that were burnt out;\nand there she is building a school for them.\"\n\nKate suddenly stopped, for Mr. Wardour sat down, drew her between his\nknees, took both her hands into one of his, and looked earnestly into her\nface, so gravely that she grew frightened, and looking appealingly up,\ncried out, \"O Mary, Mary! have I been naughty?\"\n\n\"No, my dear,\" said Mr. Wardour; \"but we have heard a very strange piece\nof news about you, and I am very anxious as to whether it may turn out\nfor your happiness.\"\n\nKate stood still and looked at him, wishing he would speak faster. Could\nher great-uncle in India be come home, and want her to make him a visit\nin London? How delightful! If it had been anybody but Papa, she would\nhave said, \"Go on.\"\n\n\"My dear,\" said Mr. Wardour at last, \"you know that your cousin, Lord\nCaergwent, was killed by an accident last week.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know,\" said Kate; \"that was why Mary made me put this black braid\non my frock; and a very horrid job it was to do\u2014it made my fingers so\nsore.\"\n\n\"I did not know till this morning that his death would make any other\ndifference to you,\" continued Mr. Wardour. \"I thought the title went to\nheirs-male, and that Colonel Umfraville was the present earl; but, my\nlittle Katharine, I find that it is ordained that you should have this\ngreat responsibility.\"\n\n\"What, you thought it was the Salic law?\" said Kate, going on with one\npart of his speech, and not quite attending to the other.\n\n\"Something like it; only that it is not the English term for it,\" said\nMr. Wardour, half smiling. \"As your grandfather was the elder son, the\ntitle and property come to you.\"\n\nKate did not look at him, but appeared intent on the marks of the needle\non the end of her forefinger, holding down her head.\n\nSylvia, however, seemed to jump in her very skin, and opening her eyes,\ncried out, \"The title! Then Kate is\u2014is\u2014oh, what is a she-earl called?\"\n\n\"A countess,\" said Mr. Wardour, with a smile, but rather sadly. \"Our\nlittle Kate is Countess of Caergwent.\"\n\n\"My dear Sylvia!\" exclaimed Mary in amazement; for Sylvia, like an\nIndia-rubber ball, had bounded sheer over the little arm-chair by which\nshe was standing.\n\nBut there her father's look and uplifted finger kept her still and\nsilent. He wanted to give Kate time to understand what he had said.\n\n\"Countess of Caergwent,\" she repeated; \"that's not so pretty as if I were\nLady Katharine.\"\n\n\"The sound does not matter much,\" said Mary. \"You will always be\nKatharine to those that love you best. And oh!\u2014\" Mary stopped short,\nher eyes full of tears.\n\nKate looked up at her, astonished. \"Are you sorry, Mary?\" she asked, a\nlittle hurt.\n\n\"We are all sorry to lose our little Kate,\" said Mr. Wardour.\n\n\"Lose me, Papa!\" cried Kate, clinging to him, as the children scarcely\never did, for he seldom made many caresses; \"Oh no, never! Doesn't\nCaergwent Castle belong to me? Then you must all come and live with me\nthere; and you shall have lots of big books, Papa; and we will have a\npony-carriage for Mary, and ponies for Sylvia and Charlie and me, and\u2014\"\n\nKate either ran herself down, or saw that the melancholy look on Mr.\nWardour's face rather deepened than lessened, for she stopped short.\n\n\"My dear,\" he said, \"you and I have both other duties.\"\n\n\"Oh, but if I built a church! I dare say there are people at Caergwent\nas poor as they are here. Couldn't we build a church, and you mind them,\nPapa?\"\n\n\"My little Katharine, you have yet to understand that 'the heir, so long\nas he is a child, differeth in nothing from a servant, but is under\ntutors and governors.' You will not have any power over yourself or your\nproperty till you are twenty-one.\"\n\n\"But you are my tutor and my governor, and my spiritual pastor and\nmaster,\" said Kate. \"I always say so whenever Mary asks us questions\nabout our duty to our neighbour.\"\n\n\"I have been so hitherto,\" said Mr. Wardour, setting her on his knee;\n\"but I see I must explain a good deal to you. It is the business of a\ncourt in London, that is called the Court of Chancery, to provide that\nproper care is taken of young heirs and heiresses and their estates, if\nno one have been appointed by their parents to do so; and it is this\ncourt that must settle what is to become of you.\"\n\n\"And why won't it settle that I may live with my own papa and brothers\nand sisters?\"\n\n\"Because, Kate, you must be brought up in a way to fit your station; and\nmy children must be brought up in a way to fit theirs. And besides,\" he\nadded more sadly, \"nobody that could help it would leave a girl to be\nbrought up in a household without a mother.\"\n\nKate's heart said directly, that as she could never again have a mother,\nher dear Mary must be better than a stranger; but somehow any reference\nto the sorrow of the household always made her anxious to get away from\nthe subject, so she looked at her finger again, and asked, \"Then am I to\nlive up in this Court of Chances?\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" said Mr. Wardour. \"Your two aunts in London, Lady Barbara\nand Lady Jane Umfraville, are kind enough to offer to take charge of you.\nHere is a letter that they sent inclosed for you.\"\n\n\"The Countess of Caergwent,\" was written on the envelope; and Kate's and\nSylvia's heads were together in a moment to see how it looked, before\nopening the letter, and reading:\u2014\"'My dear Niece,'\u2014dear me, how funny to\nsay niece!\u2014'I deferred writing to you upon the melancholy\u2014' oh, what is\nit, Sylvia?\"\n\n\"The melancholy comet!\"\n\n\"No, no; nonsense.\"\n\n\"Melancholy event,\" suggested Mary.\n\n\"Yes, to be sure. I can't think why grown-up people always write on\npurpose for one not to read them.\u2014'Melancholy event that has placed you\nin possession of the horrors of the family.'\"\n\n\"Horrors!\u2014Kate, Kate!\"\n\n\"Well, I am sure it _is_ horrors,\" said the little girl rather\nperversely.\n\n\"This is not a time for nonsense, Kate,\" said Mr. Wardour; and she was\nsubdued directly.\n\n\"Shall I read it to you?\" said Mary.\n\n\"Oh, no, no!\" Kate was too proud of her letter to give it up, and\napplied herself to it again.\u2014\"'Family honours, until I could ascertain\nyour present address. And likewise, the shock of your poor cousin's\ndeath so seriously affected my sister's health in her delicate state,\nthat for some days I could give my attention to nothing else.' Dear me!\nThis is my Aunt Barbara, I see! Is Aunt Jane so ill?\"\n\n\"She has had very bad health for many years,\" said Mr. Wardour; \"and your\nother aunt has taken the greatest care of her.\"\n\n\"'We have now, however, been able to consider what will be best for all\nparties; and we think nothing will be so proper as that you should reside\nwith us for the present. We will endeavour to make a happy home for you;\nand will engage a lady to superintend your education, and give you all\nthe advantages to which you are entitled. We have already had an\ninterview with a very admirable person, who will come down to Oldburgh\nwith our butler next Friday, and escort you to us, if Mrs. Wardour will\nkindly prepare you for the journey. I have written to thank her for her\nkindness to you.'\"\n\n\"Mrs. Wardour!\" exclaimed Sylvia.\n\n\"The ladies have known and cared little about Kate or us for a good many\nyears,\" said Mary, almost to herself, but in such a hurt tone, that her\nfather looked up with grave reproof in his eyes, as if to remind her of\nall he had been saying to her during the long hours that the little girls\nhad waited.\n\n\"'With your Aunt Jane's love, and hoping shortly to be better acquainted,\nI remain, my dear little niece, your affectionate aunt, Barbara\nUmfraville.' Then I am to go and live with them!\" said Kate, drawing a\nlong sigh. \"O Papa, do let Sylvia come too, and learn of my governess\nwith me!\"\n\n\"Your aunts do not exactly contemplate that,\" said Mr. Wardour; \"but\nperhaps there may be visits between you.\"\n\nSylvia began to look very grave. She had not understood that this great\nnews was to lead to nothing but separation. Everything had hitherto been\nin common between her and Kate, and that what was good for the one should\nnot be good for the other was so new and strange, that she did not\nunderstand it at once.\n\n\"Oh yes! we will visit. You shall all come and see me in London, and see\nthe Zoological Gardens and the British Museum; and I will send you such\npresents!\"\n\n\"We will see,\" said Mr. Wardour kindly; \"but just now, I think the best\nthing you can do is to write to your aunt, and thank her for her kind\nletter; and say that I will bring you up to London on the day she names,\nwithout troubling the governess and the butler.\"\n\n\"Oh, thank you!\" said Kate; \"I sha'n't be near so much afraid if you come\nwith me.\"\n\nMr. Wardour left the room; and the first thing Mary did was to throw her\narms round the little girl in a long vehement embrace. \"My little Kate!\nmy little Kate! I little thought this was to be the end of it!\" she\ncried, kissing her, while the tears dropped fast.\n\nKate did not like it at all. The sight of strong feeling distressed her,\nand made her awkward and ungracious. \"Don't, Mary,\" she said,\ndisengaging herself; \"never mind; I shall always come and see you; and\nwhen I grow up, you shall come to live with me at Caergwent. And you\nknow, when they write a big red book about me, they will put in that you\nbrought me up.\"\n\n\"Write a big red book about you, Kate!\"\n\n\"Why,\" said Kate, suddenly become very learned, \"there is an immense fat\nred and gold book at Mr. Brown's, all full of Lords and Ladies.\"\n\n\"Oh, a Peerage!\" said Mary; \"but even you, my Lady Countess, can't have a\nwhole peerage to yourself.\"\n\nAnd that little laugh seemed to do Mary good, for she rose and began to\nrule the single lines for Kate's letter. Kate could write a very tidy\nlittle note; but just now she was too much elated and excited to sit down\nquietly, or quite to know what she was about. She went skipping\nrestlessly about from one chair to another, chattering fast about what\nshe would do, and wondering what the aunts would be like, and what Armyn\nwould say, and what Charlie would say, and the watch she would buy for\nCharlie, and the great things she was to do for everybody\u2014till Mary\nmuttered something in haste, and ran out of the room.\n\n\"I wonder why Mary is so cross,\" said Kate.\n\nPoor Mary! No one could be farther from being cross; but she was\nthoroughly upset. She was as fond of Kate as of her own sisters, and was\nnot only sorry to part with her, but was afraid that she would not be\nhappy or good in the new life before her.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n\nTHE days passed very slowly with Kate, until the moment when she was to\ngo to London and take her state upon her, as she thought. Till that\nshould come to pass, she could not feel herself really a countess. She\ndid not find herself any taller or grander; Charlie teased her rather\nmore instead of less and she did not think either Mr. Wardour or Mary or\nArmyn thought half enough of her dignity: they did not scruple to set her\ndown when she talked too loud, and looked sad instead of pleased when she\nchattered about the fine things she should do. Mr. and Mrs. Brown, to be\nsure, came to wish her good-bye; but they were so respectful, and took\nsuch pains that she should walk first, that she grew shy and sheepish,\nand did not like it at all.\n\nShe thought ease and dignity would come by nature when she was once in\nLondon; and she made so certain of soon seeing Sylvia again, that she did\nnot much concern herself about the parting with her; while she was rather\ndispleased with Mary for looking grave, and not making more of her, and\ntrying to tell her that all might not be as delightful as she expected.\nShe little knew that Mary was grieved at her eagerness to leave her happy\nhome, and never guessed at the kind sister's fears for her happiness.\nShe set it all down to what she was wont to call crossness. If Mary had\nreally been a cross or selfish person, all she would have thought of\nwould have been that now there would not be so many rents to mend after\nKate's cobbling attempts, nor so many shrill shrieking laughs to disturb\nPapa writing his sermon, nor so much difficulty in keeping any room in\nthe house tidy, nor so much pinching in the housekeeping. Instead of\nthat, Mary only thought whether Barbara and Lady Jane would make her\nlittle Kate happy and good. She was sure they were proud, hard, cold\npeople; and her father had many talks with her, to try to comfort her\nabout them.\n\nMr. Wardour told her that Kate's grandfather had been such a grief and\nshame to the family, that it was no wonder they had not liked to be\nfriendly with those he had left behind him. There had been help given to\neducate the son, and some notice had been taken of him, but always very\ndistant; and he had been thought very foolish for marrying when he was\nvery young, and very ill off. At the time of his death, his uncle,\nColonel Umfraville, had been very kind, and had consulted earnestly with\nMr. Wardour what was best for the little orphan; but had then explained\nthat he and his wife could not take charge of her, because his regiment\nwas going to India, and she could not go there with them; and that his\nsisters were prevented from undertaking the care of so young a child by\nthe bad health of the elder, who almost owed her life to the tender\nnursing of the younger. And as Mrs. Wardour was only eager to keep to\nherself all that was left of her only sister, and had a nursery of her\nown, it had been most natural that Kate should remain at St. James's\nParsonage; and Mr. Wardour had full reason to believe that, had there\nbeen any need, or if he had asked for help, the aunts would have gladly\ngiven it. He knew them to be worthy and religious women; and he told\nMary that he thought it very likely that they might deal better with\nKate's character than he had been able to do. Mary knew she herself had\nmade mistakes, but she could not be humble for her father, or think any\nplace more improving than under his roof.\n\nAnd Kate meanwhile had her own views. And when all the good-byes were\nover, and she sat by the window of the railway carriage, watching the\nfields rush by, reduced to silence, because \"Papa\" had told her he could\nnot hear her voice, and had made a peremptory sign to her when she\nscreamed her loudest, and caused their fellow-travellers to look up\namazed, she wove a web in her brain something like this:\u2014\"I know what my\naunts will be like: they will be just like ladies in a book. They will\nbe dreadfully fashionable! Let me see\u2014Aunt Barbara will have a turban on\nher head, and a bird of paradise, like the bad old lady in Armyn's book\nthat Mary took away from me; and they will do nothing all day long but\ntry on flounced gowns, and count their jewels, and go out to balls and\noperas\u2014and they will want me to do the same\u2014and play at cards all Sunday!\n'Lady Caergwent,' they will say, 'it is becoming to your position!' And\nthen the young countess presented a remarkable contrast in her ingenuous\nsimplicity,\" continued Kate, not quite knowing whether she was making a\nstory or thinking of herself\u2014for indeed she did not feel as if she were\nherself, but somebody in a story. \"Her waving hair was only confined by\nan azure ribbon, (Kate loved a fine word when Charlie did not hear it to\nlaugh at her;) and her dress was of the simplest muslin, with one diamond\naigrette of priceless value!\"\n\nKate had not the most remote notion what an aigrette might be, but she\nthought it would sound well for a countess; and she went on musing very\npleasantly on the amiable simplicity of the countess, and the speech that\nwas to cure the aunts of playing at cards on a Sunday, wearing turbans,\nand all other enormities, and lead them to live in the country, giving a\ncontinual course of school feasts, and surprising meritorious families\nwith gifts of cows. She only wished she had a pencil to draw it all to\nshow Sylvia, provided Sylvia would know her cows from her tables.\n\nAfter more vain attempts at chatter, and various stops at stations, Mr.\nWardour bought a story-book for her; and thus brought her to a most happy\nstate of silent content, which lasted till the house roofs of London\nbegan to rise on either side of the railway.\n\nAmong the carriages that were waiting at the terminus was a small\nbrougham, very neat and shiny; and a servant came up and touched his hat,\nopening the door for Kate, who was told to sit there while the servant\nand Mr. Wardour looked for the luggage. She was a little disappointed.\nShe had once seen a carriage go by with four horses, and a single one did\nnot seem at all worthy of her; but she had two chapters more of her story\nto read, and was so eager to see the end of it, that Mr. Wardour could\nhardly persuade her to look out and see the Thames when she passed over\nit, nor the Houses of Parliament and the towers of Westminster Abbey.\n\nAt last, while passing through the brighter and more crowded streets,\nKate having satisfied herself what had become of the personages of her\nstory, looked up, and saw nothing but dull houses of blackened cream\ncolour; and presently found the carriage stopping at the door of one.\n\n\"Is it here, Papa?\" she said, suddenly seized with fright.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, \"this is Bruton Street;\" and he looked at her anxiously\nas the door was opened and the steps were let down. She took tight hold\nof his hand. Whatever she had been in her day-dreams, she was only his\nown little frightened Kate now; and she tried to shrink behind him as the\nfootman preceded them up the stairs, and opening the door,\nannounced\u2014\"Lady Caergwent and Mr. Wardour!\"\n\nTwo ladies rose up, and came forward to meet her. She felt herself\nkissed by both, and heard greetings, but did not know what to say, and\nstood up by Mr. Wardour, hanging down her head, and trying to stand upon\none foot with the other, as she always did when she was shy and awkward.\n\n\"Sit down, my dear,\" said one of the ladies, making a place for her on\nthe sofa. But Kate only laid hold of a chair, pulled it as close to Mr.\nWardour as possible, and sat down on the extreme corner of it, feeling\nfor a rail on which to set her feet, and failing to find one, twining her\nankles round the leg of the chair. She knew very well that this was not\npretty; but she never could recollect what was pretty behaviour when she\nwas shy. She was a very different little girl in a day-dream and out of\none. And when one of the aunts asked her if she were tired, all she\ncould do was to give a foolish sort of smile, and say, \"N\u2014no.\"\n\nThen she had a perception that Papa was looking reprovingly at her; so\nshe wriggled her legs away from that of the chair, twisted them together\nin the middle, and said something meant for \"No, thank you;\" but of which\nnothing was to be heard but \"q,\" apparently proceeding out of the brim of\nher broad hat, so low did the young countess, in her amiable simplicity,\nhold her head.\n\n\"She is shy!\" said one of the ladies to the other; and they let her alone\na little, and began to talk to Mr. Wardour about the journey, and various\nother things, to which Kate did not greatly listen. She began to let her\neyes come out from under her hat brim, and satisfied herself that the\naunts certainly did not wear either turbans or birds of paradise, but\nlooked quite as like other people as she felt herself, in spite of her\ntitle.\n\nIndeed, one aunt had nothing on her head at all but a little black velvet\nand lace, not much more than Mary sometimes wore, and the other only a\nvery light cap. Kate thought great-aunts must be as old at least as Mrs.\nBrown, and was much astonished to see that these ladies had no air of age\nabout them. The one who sat on the sofa had a plump, smooth, pretty,\npink and white face, very soft and pleasant to look at, though an older\nperson than Kate would have perceived that the youthful delicacy of the\ncomplexion showed that she had been carefully shut up and sheltered from\nall exposure and exertion, and that the quiet innocent look of the small\nfeatures was that of a person who had never had to use her goodness more\nactively than a little baby. Kate was sure that this was aunt Jane, and\nthat she should get on well with her, though that slow way of speaking\nwas rather wearisome.\n\nThe other aunt, who was talking the most, was quite as slim as Mary, and\nhad a bright dark complexion, so that if Kate had not seen some shades of\ngrey in her black hair, it would have been hard to believe her old at\nall. She had a face that put Kate in mind of a picture of a beautiful\nlady in a book at home\u2014the eyes, forehead, nose, and shape of the chin,\nwere so finely made; and yet there was something in them that made the\nlittle girl afraid, and feel as if the plaster cast of Diana's head on\nthe study mantelpiece had got a pair of dark eyes, and was looking very\nhard at her; and there was a sort of dry sound in her voice that was\nuncomfortable to hear.\n\nThen Kate took a survey of the room, which was very prettily furnished,\nwith quantities of beautiful work of all kinds, and little tables and\nbrackets covered with little devices in china and curiosities under\nglass, and had flowers standing in the windows; and by the time she had\nfinished trying to make out the subject of a print on the walls, she\nheard some words that made her think that her aunts were talking of her\nnew governess, and she opened her ears to hear, \"So we thought it would\nbe an excellent arrangement for her, poor thing!\" and \"Papa\" answering,\n\"I hope Kate may try to be a kind considerate pupil.\" Then seeing by\nKate's eyes that her attention had been astray, or that she had not\nunderstood Lady Barbara's words, he turned to her, saying, \"Did you not\nhear what your aunt was telling me?\"\n\n\"No, Papa.\"\n\n\"She was telling me about the lady who will teach you. She has had great\nafflictions. She has lost her husband, and is obliged to go out as\ngoverness, that she may be able to send her sons to school. So, Kate,\nyou must think of this, and try to give her as little trouble as\npossible.\"\n\nIt would have been much nicer if Kate would have looked up readily, and\nsaid something kind and friendly; but the fit of awkwardness had come\nover her again, and with it a thought so selfish, that it can hardly be\ncalled otherwise than naughty\u2014namely, that grown-up people in trouble\nwere very tiresome, and never let young ones have any fun.\n\n\"Shall I take you to see Mrs. Lacy, my dear?\" said Lady Barbara, rising.\nAnd as Kate took hold of Mr. Wardour's hand, she added, \"You will see Mr.\nWardour again after dinner. You had better dress, and have some meat for\nyour tea, with Mrs. Lacy, and then come into the drawing-room.\"\n\nThis was a stroke upon Kate. She who had dined with the rest of the\nworld ever since she could remember\u2014she, now that she was a countess, to\nbe made to drink tea up-stairs like a baby, and lose all that time of\nPapa's company! She swelled with displeasure: but Aunt Barbara did not\nlook like a person whose orders could be questioned, and \"Papa\" said not\na word in her favour. Possibly the specimen of manners she had just\ngiven had not led either him or Lady Barbara to think her fit for a late\ndinner.\n\nLady Barbara first took her up-stairs, and showed her a little long\nnarrow bed-room, with a pretty pink-curtained bed in it.\n\n\"This will be your room, my dear,\" she said. \"I am sorry we have not a\nlarger one to offer you; but it opens into mine, as you see, and my\nsister's is just beyond. Our maid will dress you for a few days, when I\nhope to engage one for you.\"\n\nHere was something like promotion! Kate dearly loved to have herself\ntaken off her own hands, and not to be reproved by Mary for untidiness,\nor roughly set to rights by Lily's nurse. She actually exclaimed, \"Oh,\nthank you!\" And her aunt waited till the hat and cloak had been taken\noff and the chestnut hair smoothed, looked at her attentively, and said,\n\"Yes, you are like the family.\"\n\n\"I'm very like my own papa,\" said Kate, growing a little bolder, but\nstill speaking with her head on one side, which was her way when she said\nanything sentimental.\n\n\"I dare say you are,\" answered her aunt, with the dry sound. \"Are you\nready now? I will show you the way. The house is very small,\" continued\nLady Barbara, as they went down the stairs to the ground floor; \"and this\nmust be your school-room for the present.\"\n\nIt was the room under the back drawing-room; and in it was a lady in a\nwidow's cap, sitting at work. \"Here is your little Pupil\u2014Lady\nCaergwent\u2014Mrs. Lacy,\" said Lady Barbara. \"I hope you will find her a\ngood child. She will drink tea with you, and then dress, and afterwards\nI hope, we shall see you with her in the drawing-room.\"\n\nMrs. Lacy bowed, without any answer in words, only she took Kate's hand\nand kissed her. Lady Barbara left them, and there was a little pause.\nKate looked at her governess, and her heart sank, for it was the very\nsaddest face she had ever seen\u2014the eyes looked soft and gentle, but as if\nthey had wept till they could weep no longer; and when the question was\nasked, \"Are you tired, my dear?\" it was in a sunk tone, trying to be\ncheerful but the sadder for that very reason. Poor lady! it was only\nthat morning that she had parted with her son, and had gone away from the\nhome where she had lived with her husband and children.\n\nKate was almost distressed; yet she felt more at her ease than with her\naunts, and answered, \"Not at all, thank you,\" in her natural tone.\n\n\"Was it a long journey?\"\n\nKate had been silent so long, that her tongue was ready for exertion; and\nshe began to chatter forth all the events of the journey, without heeding\nmuch whether she were listened to or not, till having come to the end of\nher breath, she saw that Mrs. Lacy was leaning back in her chair, her\neyes fixed as if her attention had gone away. Kate thereupon roamed\nround the room, peeped from the window and saw that it looked into a dull\nblack-looking narrow garden, and then studied the things in the room.\nThere was a piano, at which she shook her head. Mary had tried to teach\nher music; but after a daily fret for six weeks, Mr. Wardour had said it\nwas waste of time and temper for both; and Kate was delighted. Then she\ncame to a book-case; and there the aunts had kindly placed the books of\ntheir own younger days, some of which she had never seen before. When\nshe had once begun on the \"Rival Crusoes,\" she gave Mrs. Lacy no more\ntrouble, except to rouse her from it to drink her tea, and then go and be\ndressed.\n\nThe maid managed the white muslin so as to make her look very nice; but\nbefore she had gone half way down-stairs, there was a voice behind\u2014\"My\nLady! my Lady!\"\n\nShe did not turn, not remembering that she herself must be meant; and the\nmaid, running after her, caught her rather sharply, and showed her her\nown hand, all black and grimed.\n\n\"How tiresome!\" cried she. \"Why, I only just washed it!\"\n\n\"Yes, my Lady; but you took hold of the balusters all the way down. And\nyour forehead! Bless me! what would Lady Barbara say?\"\n\nFor Kate had been trying to peep through the balusters into the hall\nbelow, and had of course painted her brow with London blacks. She made\none of her little impatient gestures, and thought she was very hardly\nused\u2014dirt stuck upon her, and brambles tore her like no one else.\n\nShe got safely down this time, and went into the drawing-room with Mrs.\nLacy, there taking a voyage of discovery among the pretty things, knowing\nshe must not touch, but asking endless questions, some of which Mrs. Lacy\nanswered in her sad indifferent way, others she could not answer, and\nKate was rather vexed at her not seeming to care to know. Kate had not\nyet any notion of caring for other people's spirits and feelings; she\nnever knew what to do for them, and so tried to forget all about them.\n\nThe aunts came in, and with them Mr. Wardour. She was glad to run up to\nhim, and drag him to look at a group in white Parian under a glass, that\nhad delighted her very much. She knew it was Jupiter's Eagle; but who\nwas feeding it? \"Ganymede,\" said Mr. Wardour; and Kate, who always liked\nmythological stories, went on most eagerly talking about the legend of\nthe youth who was borne away to be the cup-bearer of the gods. It was a\nthing to make her forget about the aunts and everybody else; and Mr.\nWardour helped her out, as he generally did when her talk was neither\nfoolish nor ill-timed but he checked her when he thought she was running\non too long, and went himself to talk to Mrs. Lacy, while Kate was\nobliged to come to her aunts, and stood nearest to Lady Jane, of whom she\nwas least afraid.\n\n\"You seem quite at home with all the heathen gods, my dear,\" said Lady\nJane; \"how come you to know them so well?\"\n\n\"In Charlie's lesson-books, you know,\" said Kate; and seeing that her\naunt did not know, she went on to say, \"there are notes and explanations.\nAnd there is a Homer\u2014an English one, you know; and we play at it.\"\n\n\"We seem to have quite a learned lady here!\" said aunt Barbara, in the\nvoice Kate did not like. \"Do you learn music?\"\n\n\"No; I haven't got any ear; and I hate it!\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Lady Barbara drily; and Kate seeing Mr. Wardour's eyes fixed\non her rather anxiously, recollected that hate was not a proper word, and\nfell into confusion.\n\n\"And drawing?\" said her aunt.\n\n\"No; but I want to\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh!\" again said Lady Barbara, looking at Kate's fingers, which in her\nawkwardness she was apparently dislocating in a method peculiar to\nherself.\n\nHowever, it was soon over, for it was already later than Kate's home\nbed-time; she bade everyone good-night, and was soon waited on by Mrs.\nBartley, the maid, in her own luxurious little room.\n\nBut luxurious as it was, Kate for the first time thoroughly missed home.\nThe boarded floor, the old crib, the deal table, would have been welcome,\nif only Sylvia had been there. She had never gone to bed without Sylvia\nin her life. And now she thought with a pang that Sylvia was longing for\nher, and looking at her empty crib, thinking too, it might be, that Kate\nhad cared more for her grandeur than for the parting.\n\nNot only was it sorrowful to be lonely, but also Kate was one of the\nsilly little girls, to whom the first quarter of an hour in bed was a\ntime of fright. Sylvia had no fears, and always accounted for the odd\nnoises and strange sights that terrified her companion. She never\nbelieved that the house was on fire, even though the moon made very\nbright sparkles; she always said the sounds were the servants, the wind,\nor the mice; and never would allow that thieves would steal little girls,\nor anything belonging to themselves. Or if she were fast asleep, her\nvery presence gave a feeling of protection.\n\nBut when the preparations were very nearly over, and Kate began to think\nof the strange room, and the roar of carriages in the streets sounded so\nunnatural, her heart failed her, and the fear of being alone quite\noverpowered her dread of the grave staid Mrs. Bartley, far more of being\nthought a silly little girl.\n\n\"Please please, Mrs. Bartley,\" she said in a trembling voice, \"are you\ngoing away?\"\n\n\"Yes, my Lady; I am going down to supper, when I have placed my Lady\nJane's and my Lady Barbara's things.\"\n\n\"Then please\u2014please,\" said Kate, in her most humble and insinuating\nvoice, \"do leave the door open while you are doing it.\"\n\n\"Very well, my Lady,\" was the answer, in a tone just like that in which\nLady Barbara said \"Oh!\"\n\nAnd the door stayed open; but Kate could not sleep. There seemed to be\nthe rattle and bump of the train going on in her bed; the gas-lights in\nthe streets below came in unnaturally, and the noises were much more\nfrightful and unaccountable than any she had ever heard at home. Her\neyes spread with fright, instead of closing in sleep; then came the\nlonging yearning for Sylvia, and tears grew hot in them; and by the time\nMrs. Bartley had finished her preparations, and gone down, her distress\nhad grown so unbearable, that she absolutely began sobbing aloud, and\nscreaming, \"Papa!\" She knew he would be very angry, and that she should\nhear that such folly was shameful in a girl of her age; but any anger\nwould be better than this dreadful loneliness. She screamed louder and\nlouder; and she grew half frightened, half relieved, when she heard his\nstep, and a buzz of voices on the stairs; and then there he was, standing\nby her, and saying gravely, \"What is the matter, Kate?\"\n\n\"O Papa, Papa, I want\u2014I want Sylvia!\u2014I am afraid!\" Then she held her\nbreath, and cowered under the clothes, ready for a scolding; but it was\nnot his angry voice. \"Poor child!\" he said quietly and sadly. \"You must\nput away this childishness, my dear. You know that you are not really\nalone, even in a strange place.\"\n\n\"No, no, Papa; but I am afraid\u2014I cannot bear it!\"\n\n\"Have you said the verse that helps you to bear it, Katie?\"\n\n\"I could not say it without Sylvia.\"\n\nShe heard him sigh; and then he said, \"You must try another night, my\nKatie, and think of Sylvia saying it at home in her own room. You will\nmeet her prayers in that way. Now let me hear you say it.\"\n\nKate repeated, but half choked with sobs, \"I lay me down in peace,\" and\nthe rest of the calm words, with which she had been taught to lay herself\nin bed; but at the end she cried, \"O Papa, don't go!\"\n\n\"I must go, my dear: I cannot stay away from your aunts. But I will tell\nyou what to do to-night, and other nights when I shall be away: say to\nyourself the ninety-first Psalm. I think you know it\u2014'Whoso abideth\nunder the defence of the Most High\u2014'\"\n\n\"I think I do know it.\"\n\n\"Try to say it to yourself, and then the place will seem less dreary,\nbecause you will feel Who is with you. I will look in once more before I\ngo away, and I think you will be asleep.\"\n\nAnd though Kate tried to stay awake for him, asleep she was.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\n\nIN a very few days, Kate had been settled into the ways of the household\nin Bruton Street; and found one day so like another, that she sometimes\nasked herself whether she had not been living there years instead of\ndays.\n\nShe was always to be ready by half-past seven. Her French maid,\nJosephine, used to come in at seven, and wash and dress her quietly, for\nif there were any noise Aunt Barbara would knock and be displeased. Aunt\nBarbara rose long before that time, but she feared lest Aunt Jane should\nbe disturbed in her morning's sleep; and Kate thought she had the ears of\na dragon for the least sound of voice or laugh.\n\nAt half-past seven, Kate met Mrs. Lacy in the school-room, read the\nPsalms and Second Lesson, and learnt some answers to questions on the\nCatechism, to be repeated to Lady Barbara on a Sunday. For so far from\nplaying at cards in a bird-of-paradise turban all Sunday, the aunts were\nquite as particular about these things as Mr. Wardour\u2014more inconveniently\nso, the countess thought; for he always let her answer his examinations\nout of her own head, and never gave her answers to learn by heart;\n\"Answers that I know before quite well,\" said Kate, \"only not made\ntiresome with fine words.\"\n\n\"That is not a right way of talking, Lady Caergwent,\" gravely said Mrs.\nLacy; and Kate gave herself an ill-tempered wriggle, and felt cross and\nrebellious.\n\nIt was a trial; but if Kate had taken it humbly, she would have found\nthat even the stiff hard words and set phrases gave accuracy to her\nideas; and the learning of the texts quoted would have been clear gain,\nif she had been in a meeker spirit.\n\nThis done, Mrs. Lacy gave her a music-lesson. This was grievous work,\nfor the question was not how the learning should be managed, but whether\nthe thing should be learnt at all.\n\nKate had struggled hard against it. She informed her aunts that Mary had\ntried to teach her for six weeks in vain, and that she had had a bad mark\nevery day; that Papa had said it was all nonsense, and that talents could\nnot be forced; and that Armyn said she had no more ear than an old\npea-hen.\n\nTo which Lady Barbara had gravely answered, that Mr. Wardour could decide\nas he pleased while Katharine was under his charge, but that it would be\nhighly improper that she should not learn the accomplishments of her\nstation.\n\n\"Only I can't learn,\" said Kate, half desperate; \"you will see that it is\nno use, Aunt Barbara.\"\n\n\"I shall do my duty, Katharine,\" was all the answer she obtained; and she\npinched her chair with suppressed passion.\n\nLady Barbara was right in saying that it was her duty to see that the\nchild under her charge learnt what is usually expected of ladies; and\nthough Kate could never acquire music enough to give pleasure to others,\nyet the training and discipline were likely not only to improve her ear\nand untamed voice, but to be good for her whole character\u2014that is, if she\nhad made a good use of them. But in these times, being usually already\nout of temper with the difficult answers of the Catechism questions, and\nobliged to keep in her pettish feelings towards what concerned sacred\nthings, she let all out in the music lesson, and with her murmurs and her\ninattention, her yawns and her blunders, rendered herself infinitely more\ndull and unmusical than nature had made her, and was a grievous torment\nto poor Mrs. Lacy, and her patient, \"One, two, three\u2014now, my dear.\"\n\nKate thought it was Mrs. Lacy who tormented her! I wonder which was the\nworse to the other! At any rate, Mrs. Lacy's heavy eyes looked heavier,\nand she moved as though wearied out for the whole day by the time the\nclock struck nine, and released them; whilst her pupil, who never was\ncross long together, took a hop, skip, and jump, to the dining-room, and\nwas as fresh as ever in the eager hope that the post would bring a letter\nfrom home.\n\nLady Barbara read prayers in the dining-room at nine, and there\nbreakfasted with Kate and Mrs. Lacy, sending up a tray to Lady Jane in\nher bed-room. Those were apt to be grave breakfasts; not like the merry\nmornings at home, when chatter used to go on in half whispers between the\nyounger ones, with laughs, breaking out in sudden gusts, till a little\nover-loudness brought one of Mary's good-natured \"Hushes,\" usually\nanswered with, \"O Mary, such fun!\"\n\nIt was Lady Barbara's time for asking about all the lessons of the day\nbefore; and though these were usually fairly done, and Mrs. Lacy was\nalways a kind reporter, it was rather awful; and what was worse, were the\nstrictures on deportment. For it must be confessed, that Lady Caergwent,\nthough neatly and prettily made, with delicate little feet and hands, and\na strong upright back, was a remarkably awkward child; and the more she\nwas lectured, the more ungraceful she made herself\u2014partly from thinking\nabout it, and from fright making her abrupt, partly from being provoked.\nShe had never been so ungainly at Oldburgh; she never was half so awkward\nin the school-room, as she would be while taking her cup of tea from Lady\nBarbara, or handing the butter to her governess. And was it not wretched\nto be ordered to do it again, and again, and again, (each time worse than\nthe last\u2014the fingers more crooked, the elbow more stuck out, the shoulder\nmore forward than before), when there was a letter in Sylvia's writing\nlying on the table unopened?\n\nAnd whereas it had been the fashion at St. James's Parsonage to compare\nKate's handing her plate to a chimpanzee asking for nuts, it was hard\nthat in Bruton Street these manners should be attributed to the barbarous\ncountry in which she had grown up! But that, though Kate did not know\nit, was very much her own fault. She could never be found fault with but\nshe answered again. She had been scarcely broken of replying and\njustifying herself, even to Mr. Wardour, and had often argued with Mary\ntill he came in and put a sudden sharp stop to it; and now she usually\ndefended herself with \"Papa says\u2014\" or \"Mary says\u2014\" and though she really\nthought she spoke the truth, she made them say such odd things, that it\nwas no wonder Lady Barbara thought they had very queer notions of\neducation, and that her niece had nothing to do but to unlearn their\nlessons. Thus:\n\n\"Katharine, easy-chairs were not meant for little girls to lounge in.\"\n\n\"Oh, Papa says he doesn't want one always to sit upright and stupid.\"\n\nSo Lady Barbara was left to suppose that Mr. Wardour's model attitude for\nyoung ladies was sitting upon one leg in an easy-chair, with the other\nfoot dangling, the forehead against the back, and the arm of the chair\nused as a desk! How was she to know that this only meant that he had\nonce had the misfortune to express his disapproval of the high-backed\nlong-legged school-room chairs formerly in fashion? In fact, Kate could\nhardly be forbidden anything without her replying that Papa or Mary\n_always_ let her do it; till at last she was ordered, very decidedly,\nnever again to quote Mr. and Miss Wardour, and especially not to call him\nPapa.\n\nKate's eyes flashed at this; and she was so angry, that no words would\ncome but a passionate stammering \"I can't\u2014I can't leave off; I won't!\"\n\nLady Barbara looked stern and grave. \"You must be taught what is\nsuitable to your position, Lady Caergwent; and until you have learnt to\nfeel it yourself, I shall request Mrs. Lacy to give you an additional\nlesson every time you call Mr. Wardour by that name.\"\n\nAunt Barbara's low slow way of speaking when in great displeasure was a\nterrific thing, and so was the set look of her handsome mouth and eyes.\nKate burst into a violent fit of crying, and was sent away in dire\ndisgrace. When she had spent her tears and sobs, she began to think over\nher aunt's cruelty and ingratitude, and the wickedness of trying to make\nher ungrateful too; and she composed a thrilling speech, as she called\nit\u2014\"Lady Barbara Umfraville, when the orphan was poor and neglected, my\nUncle Wardour was a true father to me. You may tear me with wild horses\nere I will cease to give him the title of\u2014 No; and I will call him\npapa\u2014no, father\u2014with my last breath!\"\n\nWhat the countess might have done if Lady Barbara had torn her with wild\nhorses must remain uncertain. It is quite certain that the mere fixing\nof those great dark eyes was sufficient to cut off Pa\u2014at its first\nsyllable, and turn it into a faltering \"my uncle;\" and that, though\nKate's heart was very sore and angry, she never, except once or twice\nwhen the word slipped out by chance, incurred the penalty, though she\nwould have respected herself more if she had been brave enough to bear\nsomething for the sake of showing her love to Mr. Wardour.\n\nAnd the fact was, that self-justification and carelessness of exact\ncorrectness of truth had brought all this upon her, and given her aunt\nthis bad opinion of her friends!\n\nBut this is going a long way from the description of Kate's days in\nBruton Street.\n\nAfter breakfast, she was sent out with Mrs. Lacy for a walk. If she had\na letter from home, she read it while Josephine dressed her as if she had\nbeen a doll; or else she had a story book in hand, and was usually lost\nin it when Mrs. Lacy looked into her room to see if she were ready.\n\nTo walk along the dull street, and pace round and round the gardens in\nBerkeley Square, was not so entertaining as morning games in the garden\nwith Sylvia; and these were times of feeling very like a prisoner. Other\nchildren in the gardens seemed to be friends, and played together; but\nthis the aunts had forbidden her, and she could only look on, and think\nof Sylvia and Charlie, and feel as if one real game of play would do her\nall the good in the world.\n\nTo be sure she could talk to Mrs. Lacy, and tell her about Sylvia, and\ndeliver opinions upon the characters in her histories and stories; but it\noften happened that the low grave \"Yes, my dear,\" showed by the very tone\nthat her governess had heard not a word; and at the best, it was dreary\nwork to look up and discourse to nothing but the black crape veil that\nMrs. Lacy always kept down.\n\n\"I cannot think why I should have a governess in affliction; it is very\nhard upon me!\" said Kate to herself.\n\nWhy did she never bethink herself how hard the afflictions were upon Mrs.\nLacy, and what good it would have done her if her pupil had tried to be\nlike a gentle little daughter to her, instead of merely striving for all\nthe fun she could get?\n\nThe lesson time followed. Kate first repeated what she had learnt the\nday before; and then had a French master two days in the week; on two\nmore, one for arithmetic and geography; and on the other two, a drawing\nmaster. She liked these lessons, and did well in all, as soon as she\nleft off citing Mary Wardour's pronunciations, and ways of doing sums.\nIndeed, she had more lively conversation with her French master, who was\na very good-natured old man, than with anyone else, except Josephine; and\nshe liked writing French letters for him to correct, making them be from\nthe imaginary little girls whom she was so fond of drawing, and sending\nthem to Sylvia.\n\nAfter the master was gone, Kate prepared for him for the next day, and\ndid a little Italian reading with Mrs. Lacy; after which followed reading\nof history, and needle-work. Lady Barbara was very particular that she\nshould learn to work well, and was a good deal shocked at her very poor\nperformances. \"She had thought that plain needle-work, at least, would\nbe taught in a clergyman's family.\"\n\n\"Mary tried to teach me; but she says all my fingers are thumbs.\"\n\nAnd so poor Mrs. Lacy found them.\n\nMrs. Lacy and her pupil dined at the ladies' luncheon; and this was\npleasanter than the breakfast, from the presence of Aunt Jane, whose kiss\nof greeting was a comforting cheering moment, and who always was so much\ndistressed and hurt at the sight of her sister's displeasure, that Aunt\nBarbara seldom reproved before her. She always had a kind word to say;\nMrs. Lacy seemed brighter and less oppressed in the sound of her voice;\neveryone was more at ease; and when speaking to her, or waiting upon her,\nLady Barbara was no longer stern in manner nor dry in voice. The meal\nwas not lively; there was nothing like the talk about parish matters, nor\nthe jokes that she was used to; and though she was helped first, and\nceremoniously waited on, she might not speak unless she was spoken to;\nand was it not very cruel, first to make everything so dull that no one\ncould help yawning, and then to treat a yawn as a dire offence?\n\nThe length of the luncheon was a great infliction, because all the time\nfrom that to three o'clock was her own. It was a poor remnant of the\nentire afternoons which she and Sylvia had usually disposed of much as\nthey pleased; and even what there was of it, was not to be spent in the\nway for which the young limbs longed. No one was likely to play at blind\nman's buff and hare and hounds in that house; and even her poor attempt\nat throwing her gloves or a pen-wiper against the wall, and catching them\nin the rebound, and her scampers up-stairs two steps at once, and runs\ndown with a leap down the last four steps, were summarily stopped, as\nunladylike, and too noisy for Aunt Jane. Kate did get a private run and\nleap whenever she could, but never with a safe conscience; and that\nspoilt the pleasure, or made it guilty and alarmed.\n\nAll she could do really in peace was reading or drawing, or writing\nletters to Sylvia. Nobody had interfered with any of these occupations,\nthough Kate knew that none of them were perfectly agreeable to Aunt\nBarbara, who had been heard to speak of children's reading far too many\nsilly story-books now-a-days, and had declared that the child would cramp\nher hand for writing or good drawing with that nonsense.\n\nHowever, Lady Jane had several times submitted most complacently to have\na whole long history in pictures explained to her, smiling very kindly,\nbut not apparently much the wiser. And one, at least, of the old visions\nof wealth was fulfilled, for Kate's pocket-money enabled her to keep\nherself in story-books and unlimited white paper, as well as to set up a\npaint-box with real good colours. But somehow, a new tale every week had\nnot half the zest that stories had when a fresh book only came into the\nhouse by rare and much prized chances; and though the paper was smooth,\nand the blue and red lovely, it was not half so nice to draw and paint as\nwith Sylvia helping, and the remains of Mary's rubbings for making\nilluminations; nay, Lily spoiling everything, and Armyn and Charlie\nlaughing at her were now remembered as ingredients in her pleasure; and\nshe would hardly have had the heart to go on drawing but that she could\nstill send her pictorial stories to Sylvia, and receive remarks on them.\nThere were no more Lady Ethelindas in flounces in Kate's drawings now;\nher heroines were always clergymen's daughters, or those of colonists\ncutting down trees and making the butter.\n\nAt three o'clock the carriage came to the door; and on Mondays and\nThursdays took Lady Caergwent and her governess to a mistress who taught\ndancing and calisthenic exercises, and to whom her aunts trusted to make\nher a little more like a countess than she was at present. Those were\npoor Kate's black days of the week; when her feet were pinched, and her\narms turned the wrong way, as it seemed to her; and she was in perpetual\ndisgrace. And oh, that polite disgrace! Those wishes that her Ladyship\nwould assume a more aristocratic deportment, were so infinitely worse\nthan a good scolding! Nothing could make it more dreadful, except Aunt\nBarbara's coming in at the end to see how she was getting on.\n\nThe aunts, when Lady Jane was well enough, used to take their drive while\nthe dancing lesson was in progress, and send the carriage afterwards to\nbring their niece home. On the other days of the week, when it was fine,\nthe carriage set Mrs. Lacy and Kate down in Hyde Park for their walk,\nwhile the aunts drove about; and this, after the first novelty, was\nnearly as dull as the morning walk. The quiet decorous pacing along was\nvery tiresome after skipping in the lanes at home; and once, when Mrs.\nLacy had let her run freely in Kensington Gardens, Lady Barbara was much\ndispleased with her, and said Lady Caergwent was too old for such habits.\n\nThere was no sight-seeing. Kate had told Lady Jane how much she wished\nto see the Zoological Gardens and British Museum, and had been answered\nthat some day when she was very good Aunt Barbara would take her there;\nbut the day never came, though whenever Kate had been in no particular\nscrape for a little while, she hoped it was coming. Though certainly\ndays without scrapes were not many: the loud tones, the screams of\nlaughing that betrayed her undignified play with Josephine, the\nattitudes, the skipping and jumping like the gambols of a calf, the\nwonderful tendency of her clothes to get into mischief\u2014all were\ncontinually bringing trouble upon her.\n\nIf a splash of mud was in the street, it always came on her stockings;\nher meals left reminiscences on all her newest dresses; her hat was\nalways blowing off; and her skirts curiously entangled themselves in\nrails and balusters, caught upon nails, and tore into ribbons; and though\nall the repairs fell to Josephine's lot, and the purchase of new garments\nwas no such difficulty as of old, Aunt Barbara was even more severe on\nsuch mishaps than Mary, who had all the trouble and expense of them.\n\nAfter the walk, Kate had lessons to learn for the next day\u2014poetry, dates,\ngrammar, and the like; and after them came her tea; and then her evening\ntoilette, when, as the aunts were out of hearing, she refreshed herself\nwith play and chatter with Josephine. She was supposed to talk French to\nher; but it was very odd sort of French, and Josephine did not insist on\nits being better. She was very good-natured, and thought \"Miladi\" had a\ndull life; so she allowed a good many things that a more thoughtful\nperson would have known to be inconsistent with obedience to Lady\nBarbara.\n\nWhen dressed, Kate had to descend to the drawing-room, and there await\nher aunts coming up from dinner. She generally had a book of her own, or\nelse she read bits of those lying on the tables, till Lady Barbara caught\nher, and in spite of her protest that at home she might always read any\nbook on the table ordered her never to touch any without express\npermission.\n\nSometimes the aunts worked; sometimes Lady Barbara played and sang. They\nwanted Kate to sit up as they did with fancy work, and she had a bunch of\nflowers in Berlin wool which she was supposed to be grounding; but she\nmuch disliked it, and seldom set three stitches when her aunts' eyes were\nnot upon her. Lady Jane was a great worker, and tried to teach her some\npretty stitches; but though she began by liking to sit by the soft gentle\naunt, she was so clumsy a pupil, that Lady Barbara declared that her\nsister must not be worried, and put a stop to the lessons. So Kate\nsometimes read, or dawdled over her grounding; or when Aunt Barbara was\nsinging, she would nestle up to her other aunt, and go off into some\ndreamy fancy of growing up, getting home to the Wardours, or having them\nto live with her at her own home; or even of a great revolution, in\nwhich, after the pattern of the French nobility, she should have to\nmaintain Aunt Jane by the labour of her hands! What was to become of\nAunt Barbara was uncertain; perhaps she was to be in prison, and Kate to\nbring food to her in a little basket every day; or else she was to run\naway: but Aunt Jane was to live in a nice little lodging, with no one to\nwait on her but her dear little niece, who was to paint beautiful screens\nfor her livelihood, and make her coffee with her own hands. Poor Lady\nJane!\n\nBed-time came at last\u2014horrible bed-time, with all its terrors! At first\nKate persuaded Josephine and her light to stay till sleep came to put an\nend to them; but Lady Barbara came up one evening, declared that a girl\nof eleven years old must not be permitted in such childish nonsense, and\nordered Josephine to go down at once, and always to put out the candle as\nsoon as Lady Caergwent was in bed.\n\nLady Barbara would hardly have done so if she had known how much\nsuffering she caused; but she had always been too sensible to know what\nthe misery of fancies could be, nor how the silly little brain imagined\neverything possible and impossible; sometimes that thieves were breaking\nin\u2014sometimes that the house was on fire\u2014sometimes that she should be\nsmothered with pillows, like the princes in the Tower, for the sake of\nher title\u2014sometimes that the Gunpowder Plot would be acted under the\nhouse!\n\nMost often of all it was a thought that was not foolish and unreal like\nthe rest. It was the thought that the Last Judgment might be about to\nbegin. But Kate did not use that thought as it was meant to be used when\nwe are bidden to \"watch.\" If she had done so, she would have striven\nevery morning to \"live this day as if the last.\" But she never thought\nof it in the morning, nor made it a guide to her actions; or else she\nwould have dreaded it less. And at night it did not make her particular\nabout obedience. It only made her want to keep Josephine; as if\nJosephine and a candle could protect her from that Day and Hour! And if\nthe moment had come, would she not have been safer trying to endure\nhardness for the sake of obedience\u2014with the holy verses Mr. Wardour had\ntaught her on her lips, alone with her God and her good angel\u2014than trying\nto forget all in idle chatter with her maid, and contrary to known\ncommands, detaining her by foolish excuses?\n\nIt is true that Kate did not feel as if obedience to Lady Barbara was the\nsame duty as obedience to \"Papa.\" Perhaps it was not in the nature of\nthings that she should; but no one can habitually practise petty\ndisobedience to one \"placed in authority over\" her, without hurting the\nwhole disposition.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\n\n\"THURSDAY morning! Bother\u2014calisthenic day!\u2014I'll go to sleep again, to\nput it off as long as I can. If I was only a little countess in her own\nfeudal keep, I would get up in the dawn, and gather flowers in the May\ndew\u2014primroses and eglantine!\u2014Charlie says it is affected to call\nsweet-briar eglantine.\u2014Sylvia! Sylvia! that thorn has got hold of me;\nand there's Aunt Barbara coming down the lane in the baker's jiggeting\ncart.\u2014Oh dear! was it only dreaming? I thought I was gathering dog-roses\nwith Charlie and Sylvia in the lane; and now it is only Thursday, and\nhorrid calisthenic day! I suppose I must wake up.\n\n 'Awake, my soul, and with the sun\n Thy daily stage of duty run.'\n\nI'm sure it's a very tiresome sort of stage! We used to say, 'As happy\nas a queen:' I am sure if the Queen is as much less happy than a countess\nas I am than a common little girl, she must be miserable indeed! It is\nlike a rule-of-three sum. Let me see\u2014if a common little girl has one\nhundred happinesses a day, and a countess only\u2014only five\u2014how many has the\nQueen? No\u2014but how much higher is a queen than a countess? If I were\nQueen, I would put an end to aunts and to calisthenic exercises; and I\nwould send for all my orphan nobility, and let them choose their own\ngovernesses and playfellows, and always live with country clergymen! I\nam sure nobody ought to be oppressed as Aunt Barbara oppresses me: it is\njust like James V. of Scotland when the Douglases got hold of him! I\nwonder what is the use of being a countess, if one never is to do\nanything to please oneself, and one is to live with a cross old aunt!\"\n\nMost likely everyone is of Lady Caergwent's morning opinion\u2014that Lady\nBarbara Umfraville was cross, and that it was a hard lot to live in\nsubjection to her. But there are two sides to a question; and there were\nother hardships in that house besides those of the Countess of Caergwent.\n\nForty years ago, two little sisters had been growing up together, so fond\nof each other that they were like one; and though the youngest, Barbara,\nwas always brighter, stronger, braver, and cleverer, than gentle Jane,\nshe never enjoyed what her sister could not do; and neither of them ever\nwanted any amusement beyond quiet play with their dolls and puzzles,\ncontrivances in pretty fancy works, and walks with their governess in\ntrim gravel paths. They had two elder brothers and one younger; but they\nhad never played out of doors with them, and had not run about or romped\nsince they were almost babies; they would not have known how; and Jane\nwas always sickly and feeble, and would have been very unhappy with loud\nor active ways.\n\nAs time passed on, Jane became more weakly and delicate while Barbara\ngrew up very handsome, and full of life and spirit, but fonder of her\nsister than ever, and always coming home from her parties and gaieties,\nas if telling Jane about them was the best part of all.\n\nAt last, Lady Barbara was engaged to be married to a brother officer of\nher second brother, James; but just then poor Jane fell so ill, that the\ndoctors said she could not live through the year. Barbara loved her\nsister far too well to think of marrying at such a time, and said she\nmust attend to no one else. All that winter and spring she was nursing\nher sister day and night, watching over her, and quite keeping up the\nlittle spark of life, the doctors said, by her tender care. And though\nLady Jane lived on day after day, she never grew so much better as to be\nfit to hear of the engagement and that if she recovered her sister would\nbe separated from her; and so weeks went on, and still nothing could be\ndone about the marriage.\n\nAs it turned out, this was the best thing that could have happened to\nLady Barbara; for in the course of this time, it came to her father's\nknowledge that her brother and her lover had both behaved disgracefully,\nand that, if she had married, she must have led a very unhappy life. He\ncaused the engagement to be broken off. She knew it was right, and made\nno complaint to anybody; but she always believed that it was her brother\nJames who had been the tempter, who had led his friend astray; and from\nthat time, though she was more devoted than ever to her sick sister, she\nwas soft and bright to nobody else. She did not complain, but she\nthought that things had been very hard with her; and when people repine\ntheir troubles do not make them kinder, but the brave grow stern and the\nsoft grow fretful.\n\nAll this had been over for nearly thirty years, and the brother and the\nfriend had both been long dead. Lady Barbara was very anxious to do all\nthat she thought right; and she was so wise and sensible, and so careful\nof her sister Jane, that all the family respected her and looked up to\nher. She thought she had quite forgiven all that had passed: she did not\nknow why it was so hard to her to take any notice of her brother James's\nonly son. Perhaps, if she had, she would have forced herself to try to\nbe more warm and kind to him, and not have inflamed Lord Caergwent's\ndispleasure when he married imprudently. Her sister Jane had never known\nall that had passed: she had been too ill to hear of it at the time; and\nit was not Lady Barbara's way to talk to other people of her own\ntroubles. But Jane was always led by her sister, and never thought of\npeople, or judged events, otherwise than as Barbara told her; so that,\nkind and gentle as she was by nature, she was like a double of her\nsister, instead of by her mildness telling on the family counsels. The\nother brother, Giles, had been aware of all, and saw how it was; but he\nwas so much younger than the rest, that he was looked on by them like a\nboy long after he was grown up, and had not felt entitled to break\nthrough his sister Barbara's reserve, so as to venture on opening out the\nsorrows so long past, and pleading for his brother James's family, though\nhe had done all he could for them himself. He had indeed been almost\nconstantly on foreign service, and had seen very little of his sisters.\n\nSince their father's death, the two sisters had lived their quiet life\ntogether. They were just rich enough to live in the way they thought the\nduty of persons in their rank, keeping their carriage for Lady Jane's\ndaily drive, and spending two months every year by the sea, and one at\nCaergwent Castle with their eldest brother. They always had a spare room\nfor any old friend who wanted to come up to town; and they did many acts\nof kindness, and gave a great deal to be spent on the poor of their\nparish. They did the same quiet things every day: one liked what the\nother liked; and Lady Barbara thought, morning, noon, and night, what\nwould be good for her sister's health; while Lady Jane rested on\nBarbara's care, and was always pleased with whatever came in her way.\n\nAnd so the two sisters had gone on year after year, and were very happy\nin their own way, till the great grief came of losing their eldest\nbrother; and not long after him, his son, the nephew who had been their\ngreat pride and delight, and for whom they had so many plans and hopes.\n\nAnd with his death, there came what they felt to be the duty and\nnecessity of trying to fit the poor little heiress for her station. They\nwere not fond of any children; and it upset all their ways very much to\nhave to make room for a little girl, her maid, and her governess; but\nstill, if she had been such a little girl as they had been, and always\nlike the well-behaved children whom they saw in drawing-rooms, they would\nhave known what kind of creature had come into their hands.\n\nBut was it not very hard on them that their niece should turn out a\nlittle wild harum-scarum creature, such as they had never dreamt\nof\u2014really unable to move without noises that startled Lady Jane's nerves,\nand threw Lady Barbara into despair at the harm they would do\u2014a child\nwhose untutored movements were a constant eye-sore and distress to them;\nand though she could sometimes be bright and fairy-like if unconstrained,\nalways grew abrupt and uncouth when under restraint\u2014a child very far from\nsilly, but apt to say the silliest things\u2014learning quickly all that was\nmere head-work, but hopelessly or obstinately dull at what was to be done\nby the fingers\u2014a child whose ways could not be called vulgar, but would\nhave been completely tom-boyish, except for a certain timidity that\ndeprived them of the one merit of courage, and a certain frightened\nconsciousness that was in truth modesty, though it did not look like it?\nTo have such a being to endure, and more than that, to break into the\nhabits of civilized life, and the dignity of a lady of rank, was no small\nburden for them; but they thought it right, and made up their minds to\nbear it.\n\nOf course it would have been better if they had taken home the little\norphan when she was destitute and an additional weight to Mr. Wardour;\nand had she been actually in poverty or distress, with no one to take\ncare of her, Lady Barbara would have thought it a duty to provide for\nher: but knowing her to be in good hands, it had not then seemed needful\nto inflict the child on her sister, or to conquer her own distaste to all\nconnected with her unhappy brother James. No one had ever thought of the\nlittle Katharine Aileve Umfraville becoming the head of the family; for\nthen young Lord Umfraville was in his full health and strength.\n\nAnd why _did_ Lady Barbara only now feel the charge of the child a duty?\nPerhaps it was because, without knowing it, she had been brought up to\nmake an idol of the state and consequence of the earldom, since she\nthought breeding up the girl for a countess incumbent on her, when she\nhad not felt tender compassion for the brother's orphan grandchild. So\nsomewhat of the pomps of this world may have come in to blind her eyes;\nbut whatever she did was because she thought it right to do, and when\nKate thought of her as cross, it was a great mistake. Lady Barbara had\ngreat control of temper, and did everything by rule, keeping herself as\nstrictly as she did everyone else except Lady Jane; and though she could\nnot like such a troublesome little incomprehensible wild cat as\nKatharine, she was always trying to do her strict justice, and give her\nwhatever in her view was good or useful.\n\nBut Kate esteemed it a great holiday, when, as sometimes happened, Aunt\nBarbara went out to spend the evening with some friends; and she, under\npromise of being very good, used to be Aunt Jane's companion.\n\nThose were the times when her tongue took a holiday, and it must be\nconfessed, rather to the astonishment and confusion of Lady Jane.\n\n\"Aunt Jane, do tell me about yourself when you were a little girl?\"\n\n\"Ah! my dear, that does not seem so very long ago. Time passes very\nquickly. To think of such a great girl as you being poor James's\ngrandchild!\"\n\n\"Was my grandpapa much older than you, Aunt Jane?\"\n\n\"Only three years older, my dear.\"\n\n\"Then do tell me how you played with him?\"\n\n\"I never did, my dear; I played with your Aunt Barbara.\"\n\n\"Dear me how stupid! One can't do things without boys.\"\n\n\"No, my dear; boys always spoil girls' play, they are so rough.\"\n\n\"Oh! no, no, Aunt Jane; there's no fun unless one is rough\u2014I mean, not\nrough exactly; but it's no use playing unless one makes a jolly good\nnoise.\"\n\n\"My dear,\" said Lady Jane, greatly shocked, \"I can't bear to hear you\ntalk so, nor to use such words.\"\n\n\"Dear me, Aunt Jane, we say 'Jolly' twenty times a day at St. James's,\nand nobody minds.\"\n\n\"Ah! yes, you see you played with boys.\"\n\n\"But our boys are not rough, Aunt Jane,\" persisted Kate, who liked\nhearing herself talk much better than anyone else. \"Mary says Charlie is\na great deal less riotous than I am, especially since he went to school;\nand Armyn is too big to be riotous. Oh dear, I wish Mr. Brown would send\nArmyn to London; he said he would be sure to come and see me, and he is\nthe jolliest, most delightful fellow in the world!\"\n\n\"My dear child,\" said Lady Jane in her soft, distressed voice, \"indeed\nthat is not the way young ladies talk of\u2014of\u2014boys.\"\n\n\"Armyn is not a boy, Aunt Jane; he's a man. He is a clerk, you know, and\nwill get a salary in another year.\"\n\n\"A clerk!\"\n\n\"Yes; in Mr. Brown's office, you know. Aunt Jane, did you ever go out to\ntea?\"\n\n\"Yes, my dear; sometimes we drank tea with our little friends in the\ndolls' tea-cups.\"\n\n\"Oh! you can't think what fun we have when Mrs. Brown asks us to tea.\nShe has got the nicest garden in the world, and a greenhouse, and a great\nsquirt-syringe, I mean, to water it; and we always used to get it, till\nonce, without meaning it, I squirted right through the drawing-room\nwindow, and made such a puddle; and Mrs. Brown thought it was Charlie,\nonly I ran in and told of myself, and Mrs. Brown said it was very\ngenerous, and gave me a Venetian weight with a little hermit in a\nsnow-storm; only it is worn out now, and won't snow, so I gave it to\nlittle Lily when we had the whooping-cough.\"\n\nBy this time Lady Jane was utterly ignorant what the gabble was about,\nexcept that Katharine had been in very odd company, and done very strange\nthings with those boys, and she gave a melancholy little sound in the\npause; but Kate, taking breath, ran on again\u2014\n\n\"It is because Mrs. Brown is not used to educating children, you know,\nthat she fancies one wants a reward for telling the truth; I told her so,\nbut Mary thought it would vex her, and stopped my mouth. Well, then we\nyoung ones\u2014that is, Charlie, and Sylvia, and Armyn, and I\u2014drank tea out\non the lawn. Mary had to sit up and be company; but we had such fun!\nThere was a great old laurel tree, and Armyn put Sylvia and me up into\nthe fork; and that was our nest, and we were birds, and he fed us with\nstrawberries; and we pretended to be learning to fly, and stood up\nflapping our frocks and squeaking, and Charlie came under and danced the\nbranches about. We didn't like that; and Armyn said it was a shame, and\nhunted him away, racing all round the garden; and we scrambled down by\nourselves, and came down on the . It is a long green , right\ndown to the river, all smooth and turfy, you know; and I was standing at\nthe top, when Charlie comes slyly, and saying he would help the little\nbird to fly, gave me one push, and down I went, roll, roll, tumble,\ntumble, till Sylvia _really_ thought she heard my neck crack! Wasn't it\nfun?\"\n\n\"But the river, my dear!\" said Lady Jane, shuddering.\n\n\"Oh! there was a good flat place before we came to the river, and I\nstopped long before that! So then, as we had been the birds of the air,\nwe thought we would be the fishes of the sea; and it was nice and\nshallow, with dear little caddises and river cray-fish, and great British\npearl-shells at the bottom. So we took off our shoes and stockings, and\nCharlie and Armyn turned up their trousers, and we had such a nice\npaddling. I really thought I should have got a British pearl then; and\nyou know there were some in the breast-plate of Venus.\"\n\n\"In the river! Did your cousin allow that?\"\n\n\"Oh yes; we had on our old blue checks; and Mary never minds anything\nwhen Armyn is there to take care of us. When they heard in the\ndrawing-room what we had been doing, they made Mary sing 'Auld Lang\nSyne,' because of 'We twa hae paidlit in the burn frae morning sun till\ndine;' and whenever in future times I meet Armyn, I mean to say,\n\n 'We twa hae paidlit in the burn\n Frae morning sun till dine;\n We've wandered many a weary foot\n Sin auld lang syne.'\n\nOr perhaps I shall be able to sing it, and that will be still prettier.\"\n\nAnd Kate sat still, thinking of the prettiness of the scene of the\nstranger, alone in the midst of numbers, in the splendid drawing-rooms,\nhearing the sweet voice of the lovely young countess at the piano,\nsinging this touching memorial of the simple days of childhood.\n\nLady Jane meanwhile worked her embroidery, and thought what wonderful\ndisadvantages the poor child had had, and that Barbara really must not be\ntoo severe on her, after she had lived with such odd people, and that it\nwas very fortunate that she had been taken away from them before she had\ngrown any older, or more used to them.\n\nSoon after, Kate gave a specimen of her manners with boys. When she went\ninto the dining-room at luncheon time one wet afternoon, she heard steps\non the stairs behind her aunt's, and there appeared a very\npleasant-looking gentleman, followed by a boy of about her own age.\n\n\"Here is our niece,\" said Lady Barbara. \"Katharine, come and speak to\nLord de la Poer.\"\n\nKate liked his looks, and the way in which he held out his hand to her;\nbut she knew she should be scolded for her awkward greeting: so she put\nout her hand as if she had no use of her arm above the elbow, hung down\nher head, and said \"\u2014do;\" at least no more was audible.\n\nBut there was something comfortable and encouraging in the grasp of the\nstrong large hand over the foolish little fingers; and he quite gave them\nto his son, whose shake was a real treat; the contact with anything young\nwas like meeting a follow-countryman in a foreign land, though neither as\nyet spoke.\n\nShe found out that the boy's name was Ernest, and that his father was\ntaking him to school, but had come to arrange some business matters for\nher aunts upon the way. She listened with interest to Lord de la Poer's\nvoice, for she liked it, and was sure he was a greater friend there than\nany she had before seen. He was talking about Giles\u2014that was her uncle,\nthe Colonel in India; and she first gathered from what was passing that\nher uncle's eldest and only surviving son, an officer in his own\nregiment, had never recovered a wound he had received at the relief of\nLucknow, and that if he did not get better at Simlah, where his mother\nhad just taken him, his father thought of retiring and bringing him home,\nthough all agreed that it would be a very unfortunate thing that the\nColonel should be obliged to resign his command before getting promoted;\nbut they fully thought he would do so, for this was the last of his\nchildren; another son had been killed in the Mutiny, and two or three\nlittle girls had been born and died in India.\n\nKate had never known this. Her aunts never told her anything, nor talked\nover family affairs before her; and she was opening her ears most\neagerly, and turning her quick bright eyes from one speaker to the other\nwith such earnest attention, that the guest turned kindly to her, and\nsaid, \"Do you remember your uncle?\"\n\n\"Oh dear no! I was a little baby when he went away.\"\n\nKate never used _dear_ as an adjective except at the beginning of a\nletter, but always, and very unnecessarily, as an interjection; and this\ntime it was so emphatic as to bring Lady Barbara's eyes on her.\n\n\"Did you see either Giles or poor Frank before they went out to him?\"\n\n\"Oh dear no!\"\n\nThis time the _dear_ was from the confusion that made her always do the\nvery thing she ought not to do.\n\n\"No; my niece has been too much separated from her own relations,\" said\nLady Barbara, putting this as an excuse for the \"Oh dears.\"\n\n\"I hope Mr. Wardour is quite well,\" said Lord de la Poer, turning again\nto Kate.\n\n\"Oh yes, quite, thank you;\" and then with brightening eyes, she ventured\non \"Do you know him?\"\n\n\"I saw him two or three times,\" he answered with increased kindness of\nmanner. \"Will you remember me to him when you write?\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Kate promptly; \"but he says all those sort of things\nare nonsense.\"\n\nThe horror of the two aunts was only kept in check by the good manners\nthat hindered a public scolding; but Lord de la Poer only laughed\nheartily, and said, \"Indeed! What sort of things, may I ask, Lady\nCaergwent?\"\n\n\"Why\u2014love, and regards, and remembrances. Mary used to get letters from\nher school-fellows, all filled with dearest loves, and we always laughed\nat her; and Armyn used to say them by heart beforehand,\" said Kate.\n\n\"I beg to observe,\" was the answer, in the grave tone which, however,\nKate understood as fun, \"that I did not presume to send my love to Mr.\nWardour. May not that make the case different?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Kate meditatively; \"only I don't know that your remembrance\nwould be of more use than your love.\"\n\n\"And are we never to send any messages unless they are of use?\" This was\na puzzling question, and Kate did not immediately reply.\n\n\"None for pleasure\u2014eh?\"\n\n\"Well, but I don't see what would be the pleasure.\"\n\n\"What, do you consider it pleasurable to be universally forgotten?\"\n\n\"Nobody ever could forget Pa\u2014my Uncle Wardour,\" cried Kate, with eager\nvehemence flashing in her eyes.\n\n\"Certainly not,\" said Lord de la Poer, in a voice as if he were much\npleased with her; \"he is not a man to be forgotten. It is a privilege to\nhave been brought up by him. But come, Lady Caergwent, since you are so\ncritical, will you be pleased to devise some message for me, that may\ncombine use, pleasure, and my deep respect for him?\" and as she sat\nbeside him at the table, he laid his hand on hers, so that she felt that\nhe really meant what he said.\n\nShe sat fixed in deep thought; and her aunts, who had been miserable all\nthrough the conversation, began to speak of other things; but in the\nmidst the shrill little voice broke in, \"I know what!\" and good-natured\nLord de la Poer turned at once, smiling, and saying, \"Well, what?\"\n\n\"If you would help in the new aisle! You know the church is not big\nenough; there are so many people come into the district, with the new\nironworks, you know; and we have not got half room enough, and can't make\nmore, though we have three services; and we want to build a new aisle,\nand it will cost \u00a3250, but we have only got \u00a3139 15_s._ 6_d._ And if you\nwould but be so kind as to give one sovereign for it\u2014that would be better\nthan remembrances and respects, and all that sort of thing.\"\n\n\"I rather think it would,\" said Lord de la Poer; and though Lady Barbara\neagerly exclaimed, \"Oh! do not think of it; the child does not know what\nshe is talking of. Pray excuse her\u2014\" he took out his purse, and from it\ncame a crackling smooth five-pound note, which he put into the hand,\nsaying, \"There, my dear, cut that in two, and send the two halves on\ndifferent days to Mr. Wardour, with my best wishes for his success in his\ngood works. Will that do?\"\n\nKate turned quite red, and only perpetrated a choked sound of her\nfavourite \u2014q. For the whole world she could not have said more: but\nthough she knew perfectly well that anger and wrath were hanging over\nher, she felt happier than for many a long week.\n\nPresently the aunts rose, and Lady Barbara said to her in the low\nceremonious voice that was a sure sign of warning and displeasure, \"You\nhad better come up stairs with us, Katharine, and amuse Lord Ernest in\nthe back drawing-room while his father is engaged with us.\"\n\nKate's heart leapt up at the sound \"amuse.\" She popped her precious note\ninto her pocket, bounded up-stairs, and opened the back drawing-room door\nfor her playfellow, as he brought up the rear of the procession.\n\nLord de la Poer and Lady Barbara spread the table with papers; Lady Jane\nsat by; the children were behind the heavy red curtains that parted off\nthe second room. There was a great silence at first, then began a little\ntittering, then a little chattering, then presently a stifled explosion.\nLady Barbara began to betray some restlessness; she really must see what\nthat child was about.\n\n\"No, no,\" said Lord de la Poer; \"leave them in peace. That poor girl\nwill never thrive unless you let her use her voice and limbs. I shall\nmake her come over and enjoy herself with my flock when we come up _en\nmasse_.\"\n\nThe explosions were less carefully stifled, and there were some sounds of\nrushing about, some small shrieks, and then the door shut, and there was\na silence again.\n\nBy this it may be perceived that Kate and Ernest had become tolerably\nintimate friends. They had informed each other of what games were their\nfavourites; Kate had told him the Wardour names and ages; and required\nfrom him in return those of his brothers and sisters. She had been\ngreatly delighted by learning that Adelaide was no end of a hand at\nclimbing trees; and that whenever she should come and stay at their\nhouse, Ernest would teach her to ride. And then they began to consider\nwhat play was possible under the present circumstances\u2014beginning they\nhardly knew how, by dodging one another round and round the table, making\nsnatches at one another, gradually assuming the characters of hunter and\nRed Indian. Only when the hunter had snatched up Aunt Jane's\ntortoise-shell paper-cutter to stab with, complaining direfully that it\nwas a stupid place, with nothing for a gun, and the Red Indian's\ncrinoline had knocked down two chairs, she recollected the consequences\nin time to strangle her own war-whoop, and suggested that they should be\nsafer on the stairs; to which Ernest readily responded, adding that there\nwas a great gallery at home all full of pillars and statues, the jolliest\nplace in the world for making a row.\n\n\"Oh dear! oh dear! how I hope I shall go there!\" cried Kate, swinging\nbetween the rails of the landing-place. \"I do want of all things to see\na statue.\"\n\n\"A statue! why, don't you see lots every day?\"\n\n\"Oh! I don't mean great equestrian things like the Trafalgar Square\nones, or the Duke\u2014or anything big and horrid, like Achilles in the Park,\nholding up a shield like a green umbrella. I want to see the work of the\ngreat sculptor Julio Romano.\"\n\n\"He wasn't a sculptor.\"\n\n\"Yes, he was; didn't he sculp\u2014no, what is the word\u2014Hermione. No; I mean\nthey pretended he had done her.\"\n\n\"Hermione! What, have you seen the 'Winter's Tale?'\"\n\n\"Papa\u2014Uncle Wardour, that is\u2014read it to us last Christmas.\"\n\n\"Well, I've seen it. Alfred and I went to it last spring with our\ntutor.\"\n\n\"Oh! then do, pray, let us play at it. Look, there's a little stand up\nthere, where I have always so wanted to get up and be Hermione, and\ndescend to the sound of slow music. There's a musical-box in the back\ndrawing-room that will make the music.\n\n\"Very well; but I must be the lion and bear killing the courtier.\"\n\n\"O yes\u2014very well, and I'll be courtier; only I must get a sofa-cushion to\nbe Perdita.\"\n\n\"And where's Bohemia?\"\n\n\"Oh! the hall must be Bohemia, and the stair-carpet the sea, because then\nthe aunts won't hear the lion and bear roaring.\"\n\nWith these precautions, the characteristic roaring and growling of lion\nand bear, and the shrieks of the courtier, though not absolutely unheard\nin the drawing-room, produced no immediate results. But in the very\nmidst of Lady Jane's signing her name to some paper, she gave a violent\nstart, and dropped the pen, for they were no stage shrieks\u2014\"Ah! ah! It\nis coming down! Help me down! Ernest, Ernest! help me down! Ah!\"\u2014and\nthen a great fall.\n\nThe little mahogany bracket on the wall had been mounted by the help of a\nchair, but it was only fixed into the plaster, being intended to hold a\nsmall lamp, and not for young ladies to stand on; so no sooner was the\nchair removed by which Kate had mounted, than she felt not only giddy in\nher elevation, but found her pedestal loosening! There was no room to\njump; and Ernest, perhaps enjoying what he regarded as a girl's foolish\nfright, was a good way off, endeavouring to wind up the musical-box, when\nthe bracket gave way, and Hermione descended precipitately with anything\nbut the sound of soft music; and as the inhabitants of the drawing-room\nrushed out to the rescue, her legs were seen kicking in the air upon the\nlanding-place; Ernest looking on, not knowing whether to laugh or be\ndismayed.\n\nLord de la Poer picked her up, and sat down on the stairs with her\nbetween his knees to look her over and see whether she were hurt, or what\nwas the matter, while she stood half sobbing with the fright and shock.\nHe asked his son rather severely what he had been doing to her.\n\n\"He did nothing,\" gasped Kate; \"I was only Hermione.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's all, Papa,\" repeated Ernest; \"it is all the fault of the\nplaster.\"\n\nAnd a sort of explanation was performed between the two children, at\nwhich Lord de la Poer could hardly keep his gravity, though he was\nsomewhat vexed at the turn affairs had taken. He was not entirely devoid\nof awe of the Lady Barbara, and would have liked his children to be on\ntheir best behaviour before her.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"I am glad there is no worse harm done. You had better\ndefer your statueship till we can find you a sounder pedestal, Lady\nCaergwent.\"\n\n\"Oh! call me Kate,\" whispered she in his ear, turning redder than the\nfright had made her.\n\nHe smiled, and patted her hand; then added, \"We must go and beg pardon, I\nsuppose; I should not wonder if the catastrophe had damaged Aunt Jane the\nmost; and if so, I don't know what will be done to us!\"\n\nHe was right; Lady Barbara had only satisfied herself that no bones had\nbeen broken, and then turned back to reassure her sister; but Lady Jane\ncould not be frightened without suffering for it, and was lying back on\nthe sofa, almost faint with palpitation, when Lord de la Poer, with\nKate's hand in his, came to the door, looking much more consciously\nguilty than his son, who on the whole was more diverted than penitent at\nthe commotion they had made.\n\nLady Barbara looked very grand and very dignified, but Lord de la Poer\nwas so grieved for Lady Jane's indisposition, that she was somewhat\nsoftened; and then he began asking pardon, blending himself with the\nchildren so comically, that in all her fright and anxiety, Kate wondered\nhow her aunt could help laughing.\n\nIt never was Lady Barbara's way to reprove before a guest; but this good\ngentleman was determined that she should not reserve her displeasure for\nhis departure, and he would not go away till he had absolutely made her\npromise that his little friend, as he called Kate, should hear nothing\nmore about anything that had that day taken place.\n\nLady Barbara kept her promise. She uttered no reproof either on her\nniece's awkward greeting, her abrupt conversation and its tendency to\npertness, nor on the loudness of the unlucky game and the impropriety of\nclimbing; nor even on what had greatly annoyed her, the asking for the\nsubscription to the church. There was neither blame nor punishment; but\nshe could not help a certain cold restraint of manner, by which Kate knew\nthat she was greatly displeased, and regarded her as the most hopeless\nlittle saucy romp that ever maiden aunt was afflicted with.\n\nAnd certainly it was hard on her. She had a great regard for Lord de la\nPoer, and thought his a particularly well trained family; and she was\nespecially desirous that her little niece should appear to advantage\nbefore him. Nothing, she was sure, but Katharine's innate naughtiness\ncould have made that well-behaved little Ernest break out into rudeness;\nand though his father had shown such good nature, he must have been very\nmuch shocked. What was to be done to tame this terrible little savage,\nwas poor Lady Barbara's haunting thought, morning, noon, and night!\n\nAnd what was it that Kate did want? I believe nothing could have made\nher perfectly happy, or suited to her aunt; but that she would have been\ninfinitely happier and better off had she had the spirit of obedience, of\nhumility, or of unselfishness.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\n\nTHE one hour of play with Ernest de la Poer had the effect of making Kate\nlong more and more for a return of \"fun,\" and of intercourse with beings\nof her own age and of high spirits.\n\nShe wove to herself dreams of possible delights with Sylvia and Charlie,\nif the summer visit could be paid to them; and at other times she\nimagined her Uncle Giles's two daughters still alive, and sent home for\neducation, arranging in her busy brain wonderful scenes, in which she,\nwith their assistance, should be happy in spite of Aunt Barbara.\n\nThese fancies, however, would be checked by the recollection, that it was\nshocking to lower two happy spirits in Heaven into playful little girls\nupon earth; and she took refuge in the thought of the coming chance of\nplayfellows, when Lord de la Poer was to bring his family to London. She\nhad learnt the names and ages of all the ten; and even had her own\ntheories as to what her contemporaries were to be like\u2014Mary and Fanny,\nErnest's elders, and Adelaide and Grace, who came next below him; she had\na vision for each of them, and felt as if she already knew them.\n\nMeanwhile, the want of the amount of air and running about to which she\nhad been used, did really tell upon her; she had giddy feelings in the\nmorning, tired limbs, and a weary listless air, and fretted over her\nlessons at times. So they showed her to the doctor, who came to see Lady\nJane every alternate day; and when he said she wanted more exercise, her\nmorning walk was made an hour longer, and a shuttlecock and battledores\nwere bought, with which it was decreed that Mrs. Lacy should play with\nher for exactly half an hour every afternoon, or an hour when it was too\nwet to go out.\n\nIt must be confessed that this was a harder task to both than the music\nlessons. Whether it were from the difference of height, or from Kate's\ninnate unhandiness, they never could keep that unhappy shuttlecock up\nmore than three times; and Mrs. Lacy looked as grave and melancholy all\nthe time as if she played it for a punishment, making little efforts to\nbe cheerful that were sad to see. Kate hated it, and was always cross;\nand willingly would they have given it up by mutual consent, but the\ninstant the tap of the cork against the parchment ceased, if it were not\nhalf-past five, down sailed Lady Barbara to inquire after her\nprescription.\n\nShe had been a famous battledore-player in the galleries of Caergwent\nCastle; and once when she took up the battledore to give a lesson, it\nseemed as if, between her and Mrs. Lacy, the shuttlecock would not come\ndown\u2014they kept up five hundred and eighty-one, and then only stopped\nbecause it was necessary for her to go to dinner.\n\nShe could not conceive anyone being unable to play at battledore, and\nthought Kate's failures and dislike pure perverseness. Once Kate by\naccident knocked her shuttlecock through the window, and hoped she had\ngot rid of it; but she was treated as if she had done it out of\nnaughtiness, and a new instrument of torture, as she called it, was\nbought for her.\n\nIt was no wonder she did not see the real care for her welfare, and\nthought this intensely cruel and unkind; but it was a great pity that she\nvisited her vexation on poor Mrs. Lacy, to whom the game was even a\ngreater penance than to herself, especially on a warm day, with a bad\nheadache.\n\nEven in her best days at home, Kate had resisted learning to take thought\nfor others. She had not been considerate of Mary's toil, nor of Mr.\nWardour's peace, except when Armyn or Sylvia reminded her; and now that\nshe had neither of them to put it into her mind, she never once thought\nof her governess as one who ought to be spared and pitied. Yet if she\nhad been sorry for Mrs. Lacy, and tried to spare her trouble and\nannoyance, how much irritability and peevishness, and sense of constant\nnaughtiness, would have been prevented! And it was that feeling of being\nalways naughty that was what had become the real dreariness of Kate's\npresent home, and was far worse than the music, the battledore, or even\nthe absence of fun.\n\nAt last came a message that Lady Caergwent was to be dressed for going\nout to make a call with Lady Barbara as soon as luncheon was over.\n\nIt could be on no one but the De la Poers; and Kate was so delighted,\nthat she executed all manner of little happy hops, skips, and fidgets,\nall the time of her toilette, and caused many an expostulation of \"Mais,\nMiladi!\" from Josephine, before the pretty delicate blue and white\nmuslin, worked white jacket, and white ribboned and feathered hat, were\nadjusted. Lady Barbara kept her little countess very prettily and\nquietly dressed; but it was at the cost of infinite worry of herself,\nKate, and Josephine, for there never was a child whom it was so hard to\nkeep in decent trim. Armyn's old saying, that she ought to be always\nkept dressed in sacking, as the only thing she could not spoil, was a\ntrue one; for the sharp hasty movements, and entire disregard of where\nshe stepped, were so ruinous, that it was on the records of the Bruton\nStreet household, that she had gone far to demolish eight frocks in ten\ndays.\n\nHowever, on this occasion she did get safe down to the carriage\u2014clothes,\ngloves, and all, without detriment or scolding; and jumped in first. She\nwas a long way yet from knowing that, though her aunts gave the first\nplace to her rank, it would have been proper in her to yield it to their\nyears, and make way for them.\n\nShe was too childish to have learnt this as a matter of good breeding,\nbut she might have learnt it of a certain parable, which she could say\nfrom beginning to end, that she should \"sit not down in the highest\nroom.\"\n\nHer aunt sat down beside her, and spent the first ten minutes of the\ndrive in enjoining on her proper behaviour at Lady de la Poer's. The\nchildren there were exceedingly well brought up, she said, and she was\nvery desirous they should be her niece's friends; but she was certain\nthat Lady de la Poer would allow no one to associate with them who did\nnot behave properly.\n\n\"Lord de la Poer was very kind to me just as I was,\" said Kate, in her\nspirit of contradiction, which was always reckless of consequences.\n\n\"Gentlemen are no judges of what is becoming to a little girl,\" said Lady\nBarbara severely. \"Unless you make a very different impression upon Lady\nde la Poer, she will never permit you to be the friend of her daughters.\"\n\n\"I wonder how I am to make an impression,\" meditated Kate, as they drove\non; \"I suppose it would make an impression if I stood up and repeated,\n'Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!' or something of that sort, as soon as I\ngot in. But one couldn't do that; and I am afraid nothing will happen.\nIf the horses would only upset us at the door, and Aunt Barbara be nicely\ninsensible, and the young countess show the utmost presence of mind! But\nnothing nice and like a book ever does happen. And after all, I believe\nthat it is all nonsense about making impressions. Thinking of them is\nall affectation; and one ought to be as simple and unconscious as one\ncan.\" A conclusion which did honour to the countess's sense. In fact,\nshe had plenty of sense, if only she had ever used it for herself,\ninstead of for the little ladies she drew on her quires of paper.\n\nLady Barbara had started early, as she really wished to find her friends\nat home; and accordingly, when the stairs were mounted, and the aunt and\nniece were ushered into a pretty bright-looking drawing-room, there they\nfound all that were not at school enjoying their after-dinner hour of\nliberty with their father and mother.\n\nLord de la Poer himself had the youngest in his arms, and looked very\nmuch as if he had only just scrambled up from the floor; his wife was\nreally sitting on the ground, helping two little ones to put up a puzzle\nof wild beasts; and there was a little herd of girls at the farther\ncorner, all very busy over something, towards which Kate's longing eyes\nat once turned\u2014even in the midst of Lord de la Poer's very kind greeting,\nand his wife's no less friendly welcome.\n\nIt was true that, as Lady Barbara had said, they were all exceedingly\nwell-bred children. Even the little fellow in his father's arms, though\nbut eighteen months old, made no objection to hold out his fat hand\ngraciously, and showed no shyness when Lady Barbara kissed him! and the\nothers all waited quietly over their several occupations, neither\nshrinking foolishly from notice, nor putting themselves forward to claim\nit. Only the four sisters came up, and took their own special visitor\ninto the midst of them as their own property; the elder of them, however,\nat a sign from her mamma, taking the baby in her arms, and carrying him\noff, followed by the other two small ones\u2014only pausing at the door for\nhim to kiss his little hand, and wave it in the prettiest fashion of baby\nstateliness.\n\nThe other sisters drew Kate back with them into the room, where they had\nbeen busy. Generally, however much she and Sylvia might wish it, they\nhad found acquaintance with other children absolutely impossible in the\npresence of grown-up people, whose eyes and voices seemed to strike all\nparties dumb. But these children seemed in no wise constrained: one of\nthem said at once, \"We are so glad you are come. Mamma said she thought\nyou would before we went out, one of those days.\"\n\n\"Isn't it horrid going out in London?\" asked Kate, at once set at ease.\n\n\"It is not so nice as it is at home,\" said one of the girls; laughing;\n\"except when it is our turn to go out with Mamma.\"\n\n\"She takes us all out in turn,\" explained another, \"from Fanny, down to\nlittle Cecil the baby\u2014and that is our great time for talking to her, when\none has her all alone.\"\n\n\"And does she never take you out in the country?\"\n\n\"Oh yes! but there are people staying with us then, or else she goes out\nwith Papa. It is not a regular drive every day, as it is here.\"\n\nKate would not have had a drive with Aunt Barbara every day, for more\nthan she could well say. However, she was discreet enough not to say so,\nand asked what they did on other days.\n\n\"Oh, we walk with Miss Oswald in the park, and she tells us stories, or\nwe make them. We don't tell stories in the country, unless we have to\nwalk straight along the drives, that, as Papa says, we may have some\nsolace.\"\n\nThen it was explained that Miss Oswald was their governess, and that they\nwere very busy preparing for her birth-day. They were making a\npaper-case for her, all themselves, and this hour was their only time for\ndoing it out of her sight in secret.\n\n\"But why do you make it yourselves?\" said Kate; \"one can buy such\nbeauties at the bazaars.\"\n\n\"Yes; but Mamma says a present one has taken pains to make, is worth a\ngreat deal more than what is only bought; for trouble goes for more than\nmoney.\"\n\n\"But one can make nothing but nasty tumble-to-pieces things,\" objected\nKate.\n\n\"That depends,\" said Lady Mary, in a very odd merry voice; and the other\ntwo, Adelaide and Grace, who were far too much alike for Kate to guess\nwhich was which, began in a rather offended manner to assure her that\n_their_ paper-case was to be anything but tumble-to-pieces. Fanny was to\nbind it, and Papa had promised to paste its back and press it.\n\n\"And Mamma drove with me to Richmond, on purpose to get leaves to\nspatter,\" added the other sister.\n\nThen they showed Kate\u2014whose eyes brightened at anything approaching to a\nmess\u2014that they had a piece of cardboard, on which leaves,\nchiefly fern, were pinned tightly down, and that the entire sheet was\nthen covered with a spattering of ink from a tooth-brush drawn along the\ntooth of a comb. When the process was completed, the form of the loaf\nremained in the primitive colour of the card, thrown out by the cloud of\nink-spots, and only requiring a tracing of its veins by a pen.\n\nA space had been cleared for these operations on a side-table; and in\nspite of the newspaper, on which the appliances were laid, and even the\ncomb and brush, there was no look of disarrangement or untidiness.\n\n\"Oh, do\u2014do show me how you do it!\" cried Kate, who had had nothing to do\nfor months, with the dear delight of making a mess, except what she could\ncontrive with her paints.\n\nAnd Lady Grace resumed a brown-holland apron and bib, and opening her\nhands with a laugh, showed their black insides, then took up her\nimplements.\n\n\"Oh, do\u2014do let me try,\" was Kate's next cry; \"one little bit to show\nSylvia Wardour.\"\n\nWith one voice the three sisters protested that she had better not; she\nwas not properly equipped, and would ink herself all over. If she would\npin down a leaf upon the scrap she held up, Grace should spatter it for\nher, and they would make it up into anything she liked.\n\nBut this did not satisfy Kate at all; the pinning out of the leaf was\nstupid work compared with the glory of making the ink fly. In vain did\nAdelaide represent that all the taste and skill was in the laying out the\nleaves, and pinning them down, and that anyone could put on the ink; in\nvain did Mary represent the dirtiness of the work: this was the beauty of\nit in her eyes; and the sight of the black dashes sputtering through the\ncomb filled her with emulation; so that she entreated, almost piteously,\nto be allowed to \"do\" an ivy loaf, which she had hastily, and not very\ncarefully, pinned out with Mary's assistance\u2014that is, she had feebly and\nunsteadily stuck every pin, and Mary had steadied them.\n\nThe new friends consented, seeing how much she was set on it; but Fanny,\nwho had returned from the nursery, insisted on precautions\u2014took off the\njacket, turned up the frock sleeves, and tied on an apron; though Kate\nfidgeted all the time, as if a great injury were being inflicted on her;\nand really, in her little frantic spirit, thought Lady Fanny a great\ntorment, determined to delay her delight till her aunt should go away and\nput a stop to it.\n\nWhen once she had the brush, she was full of fun and merriment, and kept\nher friends much amused by her droll talk, half to them, half to her\nwork.\n\n\"There's a portentous cloud, isn't there? An inky cloud, if ever there\nwas one! Take care, inhabitants below; growl, growl, there's the\nthunder; now comes the rain; hail, hail, all hail, like the beginning of\nMacbeth.\"\n\n\"Which the Frenchman said was in compliment to the climate,\" said Fanny;\nat which the whole company fell into convulsions of laughing; and neither\nKate nor Grace exactly knew what hands or brush or comb were about; but\nwhereas the little De La Poers had from their infancy laughed almost\nnoiselessly, and without making faces, Kate for her misfortune had never\nbeen broken of a very queer contortion of her lips, and a cackle like a\nbantam hen's.\n\nWhen this unlucky cackle had been several times repeated, it caused Lady\nBarbara, who had been sitting with her back to the inner room, to turn\nround.\n\nPoor Lady Barbara! It would not be easy to describe her feelings when\nshe saw the young lady, whom she had brought delicately blue and white,\nlike a speedwell flower, nearly as black as a sweep.\n\nLord de la Poer broke out into an uncontrollable laugh, half at the aunt,\nhalf at the niece. \"Why, she has grown a moustache!\" he exclaimed.\n\"Girls, what have you been doing to her?\" and walking up to them, he\nturned Kate round to a mirror, where she beheld her own brown eyes\nlooking out of a face dashed over with black specks, thicker about the\nmouth, giving her altogether much the colouring of a very dark man\nclosely shaved. It was so exceedingly comical, that she went off into\nfits of laughing, in which she was heartily joined by all the merry\nparty.\n\n\"There,\" said Lord de la Poer, \"do you want to know what your Uncle Giles\nis like? you've only to look at yourself!\u2014See, Barbara, is it not a\ncapital likeness?\"\n\n\"I never thought her like _Giles_,\" said her aunt gravely, with an\nemphasis on the name, as if she meant that the child did bear a likeness\nthat was really painful to her.\n\n\"My dears,\" said the mother, \"you should not have put her in such a\ncondition; could you not have been more careful?\"\n\nKate expected one of them to say, \"She would do it in spite of us;\" but\ninstead of that Fanny only answered, \"It is not so bad as it looks,\nMamma; I believe her frock is quite safe; and we will soon have her face\nand hands clean.\"\n\nWhereupon Kate turned round and said, \"It is all my fault, and _nobody's\nelse's_. They told me not, but it was such fun!\"\n\nAnd therewith she obeyed a pull from Grace, and ran upstairs with the\nparty to be washed; and as the door shut behind them, Lord de la Poer\nsaid, \"You need not be afraid of _that_ likeness, Barbara. Whatever else\nshe may have brought from her parsonage, she has brought the spirit of\ntruth.\"\n\nThough knowing that something awful hung over her head, Kate was all the\nmore resolved to profit by her brief minutes of enjoyment; and the little\nmaidens all went racing and flying along the passages together; Kate\nfeeling as if the rapid motion among the other young feet was life once\nmore.\n\n\"Well! your frock is all right; I hope your aunt will not be very angry\nwith you,\" said Adelaide. (She know Adelaide now, for Grace was the inky\none.)\n\n\"It is not a thing to be angry for,\" added Grace.\n\n\"No, it would not have been at my home,\" said Kate, with a sigh; \"but,\noh! I hope she will not keep me from coming here again.\"\n\n\"She shall not,\" exclaimed Adelaide; \"Papa won't let her.\"\n\n\"She said your mamma would mind what your papa did not,\" said Kate, who\nwas not very well informed on the nature of mammas.\n\n\"Oh, that's all stuff,\" decidedly cried Adelaide. \"When Papa told us\nabout you, she said, 'Poor child! I wish I had her here.'\"\n\nPrudent Fanny made an endeavour at chocking her little sister; but the\nlight in Kate's eye, and the responsive face, drew Grace on to ask, \"She\ndidn't punish you, I hope, for your tumbling off the bracket?\"\n\n\"No, your papa made her promise not; but she was very cross. Did he tell\nyou about it?\"\n\n\"Oh yes; and what do you think Ernest wrote? You must know he had\ngrumbled excessively at Papa's having business with Lady Barbara; but his\nletter said, 'It wasn't at all slow at Lady Barbara's, for there was the\njolliest fellow there you ever knew; mind you get her to play at\nacting.'\"\n\nLady Fanny did not think this improving, and was very glad that the maid\ncame in with hot water and towels, and put an end to it with the work of\nscrubbing.\n\nGoing home, Lady Barbara was as much displeased as Kate had expected, and\nwith good reason. After all her pains, it was very strange that\nKatharine should be so utterly unfit to behave like a well-bred girl.\nThere might have been excuse for her before she had been taught, but now\nit was mere obstinacy.\n\nShe should be careful how she took her out for a long time to come!\n\nKate's heart swelled within her. It was not obstinacy, she know; and\nthat bit of injustice hindered her from seeing that it was really wilful\nrecklessness. She was elated with Ernest's foolish school-boy account of\nher, which a more maidenly little girl would not have relished; she was\nstrengthened in her notion that she was ill-used, by hearing that the De\nla Poers pitied her; and because she found that Aunt Barbara was\nconsidered to be a little wrong, she did not consider that she herself\nhad ever been wrong at all.\n\nAnd Lady Barbara was not far from the truth when she told her sister\n\"that Katharine was perfectly hard and reckless; there was no such thing\nas making her sorry!\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\n\nAFTER that first visit, Kate did see something of the De la Poers, but\nnot more than enough to keep her in a constant ferment with the uncertain\npossibility, and the longing for the meetings.\n\nThe advances came from them; Lady Barbara said very truly, that she could\nnot be responsible for making so naughty a child as her niece the\ncompanion of any well-regulated children; she was sure that their mother\ncould not wish it, since nice and good as they naturally were, this\nunlucky Katharine seemed to infect them with her own spirit of riot and\nturbulence whenever they came near her.\n\nThere was no forwarding of the attempts to make appointments for walks in\nthe Park, though really very little harm had ever come of them, guarded\nby the two governesses, and by Lady Fanny's decided ideas of propriety.\nThat Kate embarked in long stories, and in their excitement raised her\nvoice, was all that could be said against her on those occasions, and\nMrs. Lacy forbore to say it.\n\nOnce, indeed, Kate was allowed to ask her friends to tea; but that proved\na disastrous affair. Fanny was prevented from coming; and in the absence\nof her quiet elder-sisterly care, the spirits of Grace and Adelaide were\nso excited by Kate's drollery, that they were past all check from Mary,\nand drew her along with them into a state of frantic fun and mad pranks.\n\nThey were full of merriment all tea time, even in the presence of the two\ngovernesses; and when that was over, and Kate showed \"the bracket,\" they\nbegan to grow almost ungovernable in their spirit of frolic and fun: they\nwent into Kate's room, resolved upon being desert travellers, set up an\numbrella hung round with cloaks for a tent, made camels of chairs, and\nfinding those tardy, attempted riding on each other\u2014with what results to\nAunt Jane's ears below may be imagined\u2014dressed up wild Arabs in\nbournouses of shawls, and made muskets of parasols, charging desperately,\nand shrieking for attack, defence, \"for triumph or despair,\" as Kate\nobserved, in one of her magnificent quotations. Finally, the endangered\ntraveller, namely Grace, rushed down the stairs headlong, with the two\nArabs clattering after him, banging with their muskets, and shouting\ntheir war-cry the whole height of the house.\n\nThe ladies in the drawing-room had borne a good deal; but Aunt Jane was\nby this time looking meekly distracted; and Lady Barbara sallying out,\nmet the Arab Sheikh with his white frock over his head, descending the\nstairs in the rear, calling to his tribe in his sweet voice not to be so\nnoisy\u2014but not seeing before him through the said bournouse, he had very\nnearly struck Lady Barbara with his parasol before he saw her.\n\nNo one could be more courteous or full of apologies than the said Sheikh,\nwho was in fact a good deal shocked at his unruly tribe, and quite\nacquiesced in the request that they would all come and sit quiet in the\ndrawing-room, and play at some suitable game there.\n\nIt would have been a relief to Mary to have them thus disposed of safely;\nand Adelaide would have obeyed; but the other two had been worked up to a\nstate of wildness, such as befalls little girls who have let themselves\nout of the control of their better sense.\n\nThey did not see why they should sit up stupid in the drawing-room; \"Mary\nwas as cross as Lady Barbara herself to propose it,\" said Grace,\nunfortunately just as the lady herself was on the stairs to enforce her\ndesire, in her gravely courteous voice; whereupon Kate, half tired and\nwholly excited, burst out into a violent passionate fit of crying and\nsobbing, declaring that it was very hard, that whenever she had ever so\nlittle pleasure, Aunt Barbara always grudged it to her.\n\nNone of them had ever heard anything like it; to the little De la Poers\nshe seemed like one beside herself, and Grace clung to Mary, and Adelaide\nto Miss Oswald, almost frightened at the screams and sobs that Kate\nreally could not have stopped if she would. Lady Jane came to the head\nof the stairs, pale and trembling, begging to know who was hurt; and Mrs.\nLacy tried gentle reasoning and persuading, but she might as well have\nspoken to the storm beating against the house.\n\nLady Barbara sternly ordered her off to her room; but the child did not\nstir\u2014indeed, she could not, except that she rocked herself to and fro in\nher paroxysms of sobbing, which seemed to get worse and worse every\nmoment. It was Miss Oswald at last, who, being more used to little girls\nand their naughtiness than any of the others, saw the right moment at\nlast, and said, as she knelt down by her, half kindly, half severely, \"My\ndear, you had better let me take you up-stairs. I will help you: and you\nare only shocking everyone here.\"\n\nKate did let her take her up-stairs, though at every step there was a\npause, a sob, a struggle; but a gentle hand on her shoulder, and firm\npersuasive voice in her ear, moved her gradually onwards, till the little\npink room was gained; and there she threw herself on her bed in another\nagony of wild subs, unaware of Miss Oswald's parley at the door with Lady\nBarbara and Mrs. Lacy, and her entreaty that the patient might be left to\nher, which they were nothing loth to do.\n\nWhen Kate recovered her speech, she poured out a wild and very naughty\ntorrent, about being the most unhappy girl in the world; the aunts were\nalways unkind to her; she never got any pleasure; she could not bear\nbeing a countess; she only wanted to go back to her old home, to Papa and\nMary and Sylvia; and nobody would help her.\n\nMiss Oswald treated the poor child almost as if she had been a little out\nof her mind, let her say it all between her sobs, and did not try to\nargue with her, but waited till the talking and the sobbing had fairly\ntried her out; and by that time the hour had come at which the little\nvisitors were to go home. The governess rose up, and said she must go,\nasking in a quiet tone, as if all that had been said were mere mad folly,\nwhether Lady Caergwent would come down with her, and tell her aunts she\nwas sorry for the disturbance she had made.\n\nKate shrank from showing such a spectacle as her swollen, tear-stained,\nred-marbled visage. She was thoroughly sorry, and greatly ashamed; and\nshe only gasped out, \"I can't, I can't; don't let me see anyone.\"\n\n\"Then I will wish Mary and her sisters good-bye for you.\"\n\n\"Yes, please.\" Kate had no words for more of her sorrow and shame.\n\n\"And shall I say anything to your aunt for you?\"\n\n\"I\u2014I don't know; only don't let anyone come up.\"\n\n\"Then shall I tell Lady Barbara you are too much tired out now for\ntalking, but that you will tell her in the morning how sorry you are?\"\n\n\"Well, yes,\" said Kate rather grudgingly. \"Oh, must you go?\"\n\n\"I am afraid I must, my dear. Their mamma does not like Addie and Grace\nto be kept up later than their usual bed-time.\"\n\n\"I wish you could stay. I wish you were my governess,\" said Kate,\nclinging to her, and receiving her kind, friendly, pitying kiss.\n\nAnd when the door had shut upon her, Kate's tears began to drop again at\nthe thought that it was very hard that the little De la Poers, who had\nfather, mother, and each other, should likewise have such a nice\ngoverness, while she had only poor sad dull Mrs. Lacy.\n\nHad Kate only known what an unselfish little girl and Mrs. Lacy might\nhave been to each other!\n\nHowever, the first thing she could now think of was to avoid being seen\nor spoken to by anyone that night; and for this purpose she hastily\nundressed herself, bundled-up her hair as best she might, as in former\ndays, said her prayers, and tumbled into bed, drawing the clothes over\nher head, resolved to give no sign of being awake, come who might.\n\nHer shame was real, and very great. Such violent crying fits had\novertaken her in past times, but had been thought to be outgrown. She\nwell recollected the last. It was just after the death of her aunt, Mrs.\nWardour, just when the strange stillness of sorrow in the house was\nbeginning to lessen, and the children had forgotten themselves, and burst\nout into noise and merriment, till they grew unrestrained and\nquarrelsome; Charlie had offended Kate, she had struck him, and Mary\ncoming on them, grieved and hurt at their conduct at such a time, had\npunished Kate for the blow, but missed perception of Charlie's offence;\nand the notion of injustice had caused the shrieking cries and violent\nsobs that had brought Mr. Wardour from the study in grave sorrowful\nseverity.\n\nWhat she had heard afterwards from him about not making poor Mary's task\nharder, and what she had heard from Mary about not paining him, had\nreally restrained her; and she had thought such outbreaks passed by among\nthe baby faults she had left behind, and was the more grieved and ashamed\nin consequence. She felt it a real exposure: she remembered her young\nfriends' surprised and frightened eyes, and not only had no doubt their\nmother would really think her too naughty to be their playfellow, but\nalmost wished that it might be so\u2014she could never, never bear to see them\nagain.\n\nShe heard the street door close after them, she heard the carriage drive\naway; she felt half relieved; but then she hid her face in the pillow,\nand cried more quietly, but more bitterly.\n\nThen some one knocked; she would not answer. Then came a voice, saying,\n\"Katharine.\" It was Aunt Barbara's, but it was rather wavering. She\nwould not answer, so the door was opened, and the steps, scarcely audible\nin the rustling of the silk, came in; and Kate felt that her aunt was\nlooking at her, wondered whether she had better put out her head, ask\npardon, and have it over, but was afraid; and presently heard the moir\u00e9\nantique go sweeping away again.\n\nAnd then the foolish child heartily wished she had spoken, and was seized\nwith desperate fears of the morrow, more of the shame of hearing of her\ntears than of any punishment. Why had she not been braver?\n\nAfter a time came a light, and Josephine moving about quietly, and\nputting away the clothes that had been left on the floor. Kate was not\nafraid of her, but her caressing consolations and pity would have only\nadded to the miserable sense of shame; so there was no sign, no symptom\nof being awake, though it was certain that before Josephine went away,\nthe candle was held so as to cast a light over all that was visible of\nthe face. Kate could not help hearing the low muttering of the\nFrenchwoman, who was always apt to talk to herself: \"Asleep! Ah, yes!\nShe sleeps profoundly. How ugly _la petite_ has made herself! What\ncries! Ah, she is like Miladi her aunt! a demon of a temper!\"\n\nKate restrained herself till the door was shut again, and then rolled\nover and over, till she had made a strange entanglement of her\nbed-clothes, and brought her passion to an end by making a mummy of\nherself, bound hand and foot, snapping with her month all the time, as if\nshe longed to bite.\n\n\"O you horrible Frenchwoman! You are a flatterer, a base flatterer; such\nas always haunt the great! I hate it all. I a demon of a temper? I\nlike Aunt Barbara? Oh, you wretch! I'll tell Aunt Barbara a to-morrow,\nand get you sent away!\"\n\nThose were some of Kate's fierce angry thoughts in her first vexation;\nbut with all her faults, she was not a child who ever nourished rancour\nor malice; and though she had been extremely wounded at first, yet she\nquickly forgave.\n\nBy the time she had smoothed out her sheet, and settled matters between\nit and her blanket, she had begun to think more coolly. \"No, no, I\nwon't. It would be horribly dishonourable and all that to tell Aunt\nBarbara. Josephine was only thinking out loud; and she can't help what\nshe thinks. I was very naughty; no wonder she thought so. Only next\ntime she pets me, I will say to her, 'You cannot deceive me, Josephine; I\nlike the plain truth better than honeyed words.'\"\n\nAnd now that Kate had arrived at the composition of a fine speech that\nwould never be made, it was plain that her mind was pretty well composed.\nThat little bit of forgiveness, though it had not even cost an effort,\nhad been softening, soothing, refreshing; it had brought peacefulness;\nand Kate lay, not absolutely asleep, but half dreaming, in the summer\ntwilight, in the soft undefined fancies of one tired out with agitation.\n\nShe was partly roused by the various sounds in the house, but not\nstartled\u2014the light nights of summer always diminished her alarms; and she\nheard the clocks strike, and the bell ring for prayers, the doors open\nand shut, all mixed in with her hazy fancies. At last came the silken\nrustlings up the stairs again, and the openings of bed-room doors close\nto her.\n\nKate must have gone quite to sleep, for she did not know when the door\nwas opened, and how the soft voices had come in that she heard over her.\n\n\"Poor little dear! How she has tossed her bed about! I wonder if we\ncould set the clothes straight without wakening her.\"\n\nHow very sweet and gentle Aunt Jane's voice was in that low cautious\nwhisper.\n\nSome one\u2014and Kate knew the peculiar sound of Mrs. Lacy's crape\u2014was moving\nthe bed-clothes as gently as she could.\n\n\"Poor little dear!\" again said Lady Jane; \"it is very sad to see a child\nwho has cried herself to sleep. I do wish we could manage her better.\nDo you think the child is happy?\" she ended by asking in a wistful voice.\n\n\"She has very high spirits,\" was the answer.\n\n\"Ah, yes! her impetuosity; it is her misfortune, poor child! Barbara is\nso calm and resolute, that\u2014that\u2014\" Was Lady Jane really going to regret\nanything in her sister? She did not say it, however; but Kate heard her\nsigh, and add, \"Ah, well! if I were stronger, perhaps we could make her\nhappier; but I am so nervous. I must try not to look distressed when her\nspirits do break out, for perhaps it is only natural. And I am so sorry\nto have brought all this on her, and spoilt those poor children's\npleasure!\"\n\nLady Jane bent over the child, and Kate reared herself up on a sudden,\nthrew her arms round her neck, and whispered, \"Aunt Jane, dear Aunt Jane,\nI'll try never to frighten you again! I am so sorry.\"\n\n\"There, there; have I waked you? Don't, my dear; your aunt will hear.\nGo to sleep again. Yes, do.\"\n\nBut Aunt Jane was kissing and fondling all the time; and the end of this\nsad naughty evening was, that Kate went to sleep with more softness,\nlove, and repentance in her heart, than there had been since her coming\nto Bruton Street.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\n\nLADY CAERGWENT was thoroughly ashamed and bumbled by that unhappy\nevening. She looked so melancholy and subdued in the morning, with her\nheavy eyelids and inflamed eyes, and moved so meekly and sadly, without\ndaring to look up, that Lady Barbara quite pitied her, and said\u2014more\nkindly than she had ever spoken to her before:\n\n\"I see you are sorry for the exposure last night, so we will say no more\nabout it. I will try to forget it. I hope our friends may.\"\n\nThat hope sounded very much like \"I do not think they will;\" and truly\nKate felt that it was not in the nature of things that they ever should.\nShe should never have forgotten the sight of a little girl in that frenzy\nof passion! No, she was sure that their mamma and papa knew all about\nit, and that she should never be allowed to play with them again, and she\ncould not even wish to meet them, she should be miserably ashamed, and\nwould not know which way to look.\n\nShe said not one word about meeting them, and for the first day or two\neven begged to walk in the square instead of the park; and she was so\ngood and steady with her lessons, and so quiet in her movements, that she\nscarcely met a word of blame for a whole week.\n\nOne morning, while she was at breakfast with Lady Barbara and Mrs. Lacy,\nthe unwonted sound of a carriage stopping, and of a double knock, was\nheard. In a moment the colour flushed into Lady Barbara's face, and her\neyes lighted: then it passed away into a look of sadness. It had seemed\nto her for a moment as if the bright young nephew who had been the light\nand hope of her life, were going to look in on her; and it had only\nbrought the remembrance that he was gone for ever, and that in his stead\nthere was only the poor little girl, to whom rank was a misfortune, and\nwho seemed as if she would never wear it becomingly. Kate saw nothing of\nall this; she was only eager and envious for some change and variety in\nthese long dull days. It was Lord de la Poer and his daughter Adelaide,\nwho the next moment were in the room; and she remembered instantly that\nshe had heard that this was to be Adelaide's birthday, and wished her\nmany happy returns in all due form, her heart beating the while with\nincreasing hope that the visit concerned herself.\n\nAnd did it not? Her head swam round with delight and suspense, and she\ncould hardly gather up the sense of the words in which Lord de la Poer\nwas telling Lady Barbara that Adelaide's birthday was to be spent at the\nCrystal Palace at Sydenham; that the other girls were gone to the station\nwith their mother, and that he had come round with Adelaide to carry off\nKate, and meet the rest at ten o'clock. Lady de la Poer would have\nwritten, but it had only boon settled that morning on finding that he\ncould spare the day.\n\nKate squeezed Adelaide's hand in an agony. Oh! would that aunt let her\ngo?\n\n\"You would like to come?\" asked Lord de la Poer, bending his pleasant\neyes on her. \"Have you ever been there?\"\n\n\"Never! Oh, thank you! I should like it so much! I never saw any\nexhibition at all, except once the Gigantic Cabbage!\u2014May I go, Aunt\nBarbara?\"\n\n\"Really you are very kind, after\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, we never think of _afters_ on birthdays!\u2014Do we, Addie?\"\n\n\"If you are so very good, perhaps Mrs. Lacy will kindly bring her to meet\nyou.\"\n\n\"I am sure,\" said he, turning courteously to that lady, \"that we should\nbe very sorry to give Mrs. Lacy so much trouble. If this is to be a\nholiday to everyone, I am sure you would prefer the quiet day.\"\n\nNo one could look at the sad face and widow's cap without feeling that so\nit must be, even without the embarrassed \"Thank you, my Lord, if\u2014\"\n\n\"If\u2014if Katharine were more to be trusted,\" began Lady Barbara.\n\n\"Now, Barbara,\" he said in a drolly serious fashion, \"if you think the\nCourt of Chancery would seriously object, say so at once.\"\n\nLady Barbara could not keep the corners of her mouth quite stiff, but she\nstill said, \"You do not know what you are undertaking.\"\n\n\"Do you deliberately tell me that you think myself and Fanny, to say\nnothing of young Fanny, who is the wisest of us all, unfit to be trusted\nwith this one young lady?\" said he, looking her full in the face, and\nputting on a most comical air: \"It is humiliating, I own.\"\n\n\"Ah! if Katharine were like your own daughters, I should have no fears,\"\nsaid the aunt. \"But\u2014 However, since you are so good\u2014if she will promise\nto be very careful\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh yes, yes, Aunt Barbara!\"\n\n\"I make myself responsible,\" said Lord de la Poer. \"Now, young woman,\nrun off and get the hat; we have no time to lose.\"\n\nKate darted off and galloped up the stairs at a furious pace, shouted\n\"Josephine\" at the top; and then, receiving no answer, pulled the bell\nviolently; after which she turned round, and obliged Adelaide with a\nspecies of dancing hug, rather to the detriment of that young lady's\nmuslin jacket.\n\n\"I was afraid to look back before,\" she breathlessly said, as she\nreleased Adelaide; \"I felt as if your papa were Orpheus, when\n\n 'Stern Proserpine relented,\n And gave him back the fair\u2014'\n\nand I was sure Aunt Barbara would catch me like Eurydice, if I only\nlooked back.\"\n\n\"What a funny girl you are, to be thinking about Orpheus and Eurydice!\"\nsaid Adelaide. \"Aren't you glad?\"\n\n\"Glad? Ain't I just! as Charlie would say. Oh dear! your papa is a\ndelicious man; I'd rather have him for mine than anybody, except Uncle\nWardour!\"\n\n\"I'd rather have him than anyone,\" said the little daughter. \"Because he\nis yours,\" said Kate; \"but somehow, though he is more funny and\ngood-natured than Uncle Wardour, I wouldn't\u2014no, I shouldn't like him so\nwell for a papa. I don't think he would punish so well.\"\n\n\"Punish!\" cried Adelaide. \"Is that what you want? Why, Mamma says\nchildren ought to be always pleasure and no trouble to busy fathers. But\nthere, Kate; you are not getting ready\u2014and we are to be at the station at\nten.\"\n\n\"I am waiting for Josephine! Why doesn't she come?\" said Kate, ringing\nviolently again.\n\n\"Why don't you get ready without her?\"\n\n\"I don't know where anything is! It is very tiresome of her, when she\nknows I never dress myself,\" said Kate fretfully.\n\n\"Don't you? Why, Grace and I always dress ourselves, except for the\nevening. Let me help you. Are not those your boots?\"\n\nKate rushed to the bottom of the attic stairs, and shouted \"Josephine\" at\nthe top of her shrill voice; then, receiving no answer, she returned,\ncondescended to put on the boots that Adelaide held up to her, and\nnoisily pulled out some drawers; but not seeing exactly what she wanted,\nshe again betook herself to screams of her maid's name, at the third of\nwhich out burst Mrs. Bartley in a regular state of indignation: \"Lady\nCaergwent! Will your Ladyship hold your tongue! There's Lady Jane\nstartled up, and it's a mercy if her nerves recover it the whole\nday\u2014making such a noise as that!\"\n\n\"But Josephine won't come, and I'm going out, Bartley,\" said Kate\npiteously. \"Where is Josephine?\"\n\n\"Gone out, my Lady, so it is no use making a piece of work,\" said Bartley\ncrossly, retreating to Lady Jane.\n\nKate was ready to cry; but behold, that handy little Adelaide had\nmeantime picked out a nice black silk cape, with hat and feather, gloves\nand handkerchief, which, if not what Kate had intended, were nice enough\nfor anything, and would have\u2014some months ago\u2014seemed to the orphan at the\nparsonage like robes of state. Kind Adelaide held them up so\ntriumphantly, that Kate could not pout at their being only everyday\nthings; and as she began to put them on, out came Mrs. Bartley again, by\nLady Jane's orders, pounced upon Lady Caergwent, and made her repent of\nall wishes for assistance by beginning upon her hair, and in spite of all\nwriggles and remonstrances, dressing her in the peculiarly slow and\nprecise manner by which a maid can punish a troublesome child; until\nfinally Kate\u2014far too much irritated for a word of thanks, tore herself\nout of her hands, caught up her gloves, and flew down-stairs as if her\nlife depended on her speed. She thought the delay much longer than it\nhad really been, for she found Lord de la Poer talking so earnestly to\nher aunt, that he hardly looked up when she came in\u2014something about her\nUncle Giles in India, and his coming home\u2014which seemed to be somehow\nbecoming possible\u2014though at a great loss to himself; but there was no\nmaking it out; and in a few minutes he rose, and after some fresh charges\nfrom Lady Barbara to her niece \"not to forgot herself,\" Kate was handed\ninto the carriage, and found herself really off.\n\nThen the tingle of wild impatience and suspense subsided, and happiness\nbegan! It had not been a good beginning, but it was very charming now.\n\nAdelaide and her father were full of jokes together, so quick and bright\nthat Kate listened instead of talking. She had almost lost the habit of\nmerry chatter, and it did not come to her quickly again; but she was\ngreatly entertained; and thus they came to the station, where Lady de la\nPoer and her other three girls were awaiting them, and greeted Kate with\njoyful faces.\n\nThey were the more relieved at the arrival of the three, because the\nstation was close and heated, and it was a very warm summer day, so that\nthe air was extremely oppressive.\n\n\"It feels like thunder,\" said some one. And thenceforth Kate's perfect\nfelicity was clouded. She had a great dislike to a thunder-storm, and\nshe instantly began asking her neighbours if they _really_ thought it\nwould be thunder.\n\n\"I hope it will,\" said Lady Fanny; \"it would cool the air, and sound so\ngrand in those domes.\"\n\nKate thought this savage, and with an imploring look asked Lady de la\nPoer if she thought there would be a storm.\n\n\"I can't see the least sign of one,\" was the answer. \"See how clear the\nsky is!\" as they steamed out of the station.\n\n\"But do you think there will be one to-day?\" demanded Kate.\n\n\"I do not expect it,\" said Lady de la Poer, smiling; \"and there is no use\nin expecting disagreeables.\"\n\n\"Disagreeables! O Mamma, it would be such fun,\" cried Grace, \"if we only\nhad a chance of getting wet through!\"\n\nHere Lord de la Poer adroitly called off the public attention from the\nperils of the clouds, by declaring that he wanted to make out the fourth\nline of an advertisement on the banks, of which he said he had made out\none line as he was whisked by on each journey he had made; and as it was\nfour times over in four different languages, he required each damsel to\nundertake one; and there was a great deal of laughing over which it\nshould be that should undertake each language. Fanny and Mary were\nhumble, and sure they could never catch the German; and Kate, more\nenterprising, undertook the Italian. After all, while they were\nchattering about it, they went past the valuable document, and were come\nin sight of the \"monsters\" in the Gardens; and Lord de la Poer asked Kate\nif she would like to catch a pretty little frog; to which Mary responded,\n\"Oh, what a tadpole it must have been!\" and the discovery that her\nfriends had once kept a preserve of tadpoles to watch them turn into\nfrogs, was so delightful as entirely to dissipate all remaining thoughts\nof thunder, and leave Kate free for almost breathless amazement at the\nglittering domes of glass, looking like enormous bubbles in the sun.\n\nWhat a morning that was, among the bright buds and flowers, the wonders\nof nature and art all together! It was to be a long day, and no\nhurrying; so the party went from court to court at their leisure, sat\ndown, and studied all that they cared for, or divided according to their\ntastes. Fanny and Mary wanted time for the wonderful sculptures on the\nnoble gates in the Italian court; but the younger girls preferred roaming\nmore freely, so Lady de la Poer sat down to take care of them, while her\nhusband undertook to guide the wanderings of the other three.\n\nHe particularly devoted himself to Kate, partly in courtesy as to the\nguest of the party, partly because, as he said, he felt himself\nresponsible for her; and she was in supreme enjoyment, talking freely to\none able and willing to answer her remarks and questions, and with the\ncompanionship of girls of her own age besides. She was most of all\ndelighted with the Alhambra\u2014the beauty of it was to her like a fairy\ntale; and she had read Washington Irving's \"Siege of Granada,\" so that\nshe could fancy the courts filled with the knightly Moors, who were so\nnoble that she could not think why they were not Christians\u2014nay, the\ntears quite came into her eyes as she looked up in Lord de la Poer's\nface, and asked why nobody converted the Abencerrages instead of fighting\nwith them!\n\nIt was a pity that Kate always grew loud when she was earnest; and Lord\nde la Poer's interest in the conversation was considerably lessened by\nthe discomfort of seeing some strangers looking surprised at the five\nsyllables in the squeaky voice coming out of the mouth of so small a\nlady.\n\n\"Gently, my dear,\" he softly said; and Kate for a moment felt it hard\nthat the torment about her voice should pursue her even in such moments,\nand spoil the Alhambra itself.\n\nHowever, her good humour recovered the next minute, at the Fountain of\nLions. She wanted to know how the Moors came to have lions; she thought\nshe had heard that no Mahometans were allowed to represent any living\ncreature, for fear it should be an idol. Lord de la Poer said she was\nquite right, and that the Mahometans think these forms will come round\ntheir makers at the last day, demanding to have souls given to them; but\nthat her friends, the Moors of Spain, were much less strict than any\nothers of their faith. She could see, however, that the carving of such\nfigures was a new art with them, since these lions were very rude and\nclumsy performances for people who could make such delicate tracery as\nthey had seen within. And then, while Kate was happily looking with\nAdelaide at the orange trees that completed the Spanish air of the court,\nand hoping to see the fountain play in the evening, he told Grace that it\nwas worth while taking people to see sights if they had as much\nintelligence and observation as Kate had, and did not go gazing idly\nabout, thinking of nothing.\n\nHe meant it to stir up his rather indolent-minded Grace\u2014he did not mean\nthe countess to hear it; but some people's eyes and ears are wonderfully\nquick at gathering what is to their own credit, and Kate, who had not\nheard a bit of commendation for a long time, was greatly elated.\n\nLuckily for appearances, she remembered how Miss Edgeworth's Frank made\nhimself ridiculous by showing off to Mrs. J\u2014, and how she herself had\nonce been overwhelmed by the laughter of the Wardour family for having\nrehearsed to poor Mrs. Brown all the characters of the gods of the\nNorthmen\u2014Odin, Thor, and all\u2014when she had just learnt them. So she was\nmore careful than before not to pour out all the little that she knew;\nand she was glad she had not committed herself, for she had very nearly\nvolunteered the information that Pompeii was overwhelmed by Mount Etna,\nbefore she heard some one say Vesuvius, and perceived her mistake,\nfeeling as if she had been rewarded for her modesty like a good child in\na book.\n\nShe applauded herself much more for keeping back her knowledge till it\nwas wanted, than for having it; but this self-satisfaction looked out in\nanother loop-hole. She avoided pedantry, but she was too much elated not\nto let her spirits get the better of her; and when Lady de la Poer and\nthe elder girls came up, they found her in a suppressed state of\ncapering, more like a puppy on its hind logs, than like a countess or any\nother well-bred child.\n\nThe party met under the screen of kings and queens, and there had some\ndinner, at one of the marble tables that just held them pleasantly. The\ncold chicken and tongue were wonderfully good on that hot hungry day, and\nstill better were the strawberries that succeeded them; and oh! what\nmirth went on all the time! Kate was chattering fastest of all, and\nloudest\u2014not to say the most nonsensically. It was not nice nonsense\u2014that\nwas the worst of it\u2014it was pert and saucy. It was rather the family\nhabit to laugh at Mary de la Poer for ways that were thought a little\nfanciful; and Kate caught this up, and bantered without discretion, in a\nway not becoming towards anybody, especially one some years her elder.\nMary was good-humoured, but evidently did not like being asked if she had\nstayed in the medi\u00e6val court, because she was afraid the great bulls of\nNineveh would run at her with their five legs.\n\n\"She will be afraid of being teazed by a little goose another time,\" said\nLord de la Poer, intending to give his little friend a hint that she was\nmaking herself very silly; but Kate took it quite another way, and not a\npretty one, for she answered, \"Dear me, Mary, can't you say bo to a\ngoose!\"\n\n\"Say what?\" cried Adelaide, who was always apt to be a good deal excited\nby Kate; and who had been going off into fits of laughter at all these\nfoolish sallies.\n\n\"It is not a very nice thing to say,\" answered her mother gravely; \"so\nthere is no occasion to learn it.\"\n\nKate did take the hint this time, and up to the ears, partly\nwith vexation, partly with shame. She sat silent and confused for\nseveral minutes, till her friends took pity on her, and a few\ngood-natured words about her choice of an ice quite restored her\nliveliness. It is well to be good-humoured; but it is unlucky, nay,\nwrong, when a check from friends without authority to scold, does not\nsuffice to bring soberness instead of rattling giddiness. Lady de la\nPoer was absolutely glad to break up the dinner, so as to work off the\nfolly and excitement by moving about, before it should make the little\ngirl expose herself, or infect Adelaide.\n\nThey intended to have gone into the gardens till four o'clock, when the\nfountains were to play; but as they moved towards the great door, they\nperceived a dark heavy cloud was hiding the sun that had hitherto shone\nso dazzlingly through the crystal walls.\n\n\"That is nice,\" said Lady Fanny; \"it will be cool and pleasant now before\nthe rain.\"\n\n\"If the rain is not imminent,\" began her father.\n\n\"Oh! is it going to be a thunder-storm?\" cried Kate. \"Oh dear! I do so\nhate thunder! What shall I do?\" cried she; all her excitement turning\ninto terror.\n\nBefore anyone could answer her, there was a flash of bright white light\nbefore all their eyes, and a little scream.\n\n\"She's struck! she's struck!\" cried Adelaide, her hands before her eyes.\n\nFor Kate had disappeared. No, she was in the great pond, beside which\nthey had been standing, and Mary was kneeling on the edge, holding fast\nby her frock. But before the deep voice of the thunder was roaring and\nreverberating through the vaults, Lord de la Poer had her in his grasp,\nand the growl had not ceased before she was on her feet again, drenched\nand trembling, beginning to be the centre of a crowd, who were running\ntogether to help or to see the child who had been either struck by\nlightning or drowned.\n\n\"Is she struck? Will she be blind?\" sobbed Adelaide, still with her\nhands before her eyes; and the inquiry was echoed by the nearer people,\nwhile more distant ones told each other that the young lady was blind for\nlife.\n\n\"Struck! nonsense!\" said Lord de la Poer; \"the lightning was twenty miles\noff at least. Are you hurt, my dear?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Kate, shaking herself, and answering \"No,\" more decidedly.\n\"Only I am so wet, and my things stick to me.\"\n\n\"How did it happen?\" asked Grace.\n\n\"I don't know. I wanted to get away from the thunder!\" said bewildered\nKate.\n\nMeantime, an elderly lady, who had come up among the spectators, was\ntelling Lady de la Poer that she lived close by, and insisting that the\nlittle girl should be taken at once to her house, put to bed, and her\nclothes dried. Lady de la Poer was thankful to accept the kind offer\nwithout loss of time; and in the fewest possible words it was settled\nthat she would go and attend to the little drowned rat, while her girls\nshould remain with their father at the palace till the time of going\nhome, when they would meet at the station. They must walk to the good\nlady's house, be the storm what it would, as the best chance of\npreventing Kate from catching cold. She looked a rueful spectacle,\ndripping so as to make a little pool on the stone floor; her hat and\nfeather limp and streaming; her hair in long lank rats' tails, each\ndischarging its own waterfall; her clothes, ribbons, and all, pasted down\nupon her! There was no time to be lost; and the stranger took her by one\nhand, Lady de la Poer by the other, and exchanging some civil speeches\nwith one another half out of breath, they almost swung her from one step\nof the grand stone stairs to another, and hurried her along as fast as\nthese beplastered garments would let her move. There was no rain as yet,\nbut there was another clap of thunder much louder than the first; but\nthey held Kate too fast to let her stop, or otherwise make herself more\nfoolish.\n\nIn a very few minutes they were at the good lady's door; in another\nminute in her bedroom, where, while she and her maid bustled off to warm\nthe bed, Lady de la Poer tried to get the clothes off\u2014a service of\ndifficulty, when every tie held fast, every button was slippery, and the\ntighter garments fitted like skins. Kate was subdued and frightened; she\ngave no trouble, but all the help she gave was to pull a string so as to\nmake a hopeless knot of the bow that her friend had nearly undone.\n\nHowever, by the time the bed was warm the dress was off, and the child,\nrolled up in a great loose night-dress of the kind lady's, was installed\nin it, feeling\u2014sultry day though it were\u2014that the warm dryness was\nextremely comfortable to her chilled limbs. The good lady brought her\nsome hot tea, and moved away to the window, talking in a low murmuring\nvoice to Lady de la Poer. Presently a fresh flash of lightning made her\nbury her head in the pillow; and there she began thinking how hard it was\nthat the thunder should come to spoil her one day's pleasure; but soon\nstopped this, remembering Who sends storm and thunder, and feeling afraid\nto murmur. Then she remembered that perhaps she deserved to be\ndisappointed. She had been wild and troublesome, had spoilt Adelaide's\nbirthday, teazed Mary, and made kind Lady de la Poer grave and\ndispleased.\n\nShe would say how sorry she was, and ask pardon. But the two ladies\nstill stood talking. She must wait till this stranger was gone. And\nwhile she was waiting\u2014how it was she knew not\u2014but Countess Kate was fast\nasleep.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\n\nWHEN Kate opened her eyes again, and turned her face up from the pillow,\nshe saw the drops on the window shining in the sun, and Lady de la Poer,\nwith her bonnet off, reading under it.\n\nAll that had happened began to return on Kate's brain in a funny medley;\nand the first thing she exclaimed was, \"Oh! those poor little fishes, how\nI must have frightened them!\"\n\n\"My dear!\"\n\n\"Do you think I did much mischief?\" said Kate, raising herself on her\narm. \"I am sure the fishes must have been frightened, and the\nwater-lilies broken. Oh! you can't think how nasty their great coiling\nstems were\u2014just like snakes! But those pretty blue and pink flowers!\nDid it hurt them much, do you think\u2014or the fish?\"\n\n\"I should think the fish had recovered the shock,\" said Lady de la Poer,\nsmiling; \"but as to the lilies, I should be glad to be sure you had done\nyourself as little harm as you have to them.\"\n\n\"Oh no,\" said Kate, \"I'm not hurt\u2014if Aunt Barbara won't be terribly\nangry. Now I wouldn't mind that, only that I've spoilt Addie's birthday,\nand all your day. Please, I'm very sorry!\"\n\nShe said this so sadly and earnestly, that Lady de la Poer came and gave\nher a kind hiss of forgiveness, and said:\n\n\"Never mind, the girls are very happy with their father, and the rest is\ngood for me.\"\n\nKate thought this very comfortable and kind, and clung to the kind hand\ngratefully; but though it was a fine occasion for one of the speeches she\ncould have composed in private, all that came out of her mouth was, \"How\nhorrid it is\u2014the way everything turns out with me!\"\n\n\"Nay, things need not turn out horrid, if a certain little girl would\nkeep herself from being silly.\"\n\n\"But I _am_ a silly little girl!\" cried Kate with emphasis. \"Uncle\nWardour says he never saw such a silly one, and so does Aunt Barbara!\"\n\n\"Well, my dear,\" said Lady de la Poer very calmly, \"when clever people\ntake to being silly, they can be sillier than anyone else.\"\n\n\"Clever people!\" cried Kate half breathlessly.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the lady, \"you are a clever child; and if you made the most\nof yourself, you could be very sensible, and hinder yourself from being\nfoolish and unguarded, and getting into scrapes.\"\n\nKate gasped. It was not pleasant to be in a scrape; and yet her whole\nself recoiled from being guarded and watchful, even though for the first\ntime she heard she was not absolutely foolish. She began to argue, \"I\nwas naughty, I know, to teaze Mary; and Mary at home would not have let\nme; but I could not help the tumbling into the pond. I wanted to get out\nof the way of the lightning.\"\n\n\"Now, Kate, you _are_ trying to show how silly you can make yourself.\"\n\n\"But I can't bear thunder and lightning. It frightens me so, I don't\nknow what to do; and Aunt Jane is just as bad. She always has the\nshutters shut.\"\n\n\"Your Aunt Jane has had her nerves weakened by bad health; but you are\nyoung and strong, and you ought to fight with fanciful terrors.\"\n\n\"But it is not fancy about lightning. It does kill people.\"\n\n\"A storm is very awful, and is one of the great instances of God's power.\nHe does sometimes allow His lightnings to fall; but I do not think it can\nbe quite the thought of this that terrifies you, Kate, for the\nrecollection of His Hand is comforting.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Kate honestly, \"it is not thinking of that. It is that the\nglare\u2014coming no one knows when\u2014and the great rattling clap are so\u2014so\nfrightful!\"\n\n\"Then, my dear, I think all you can do is to pray not only for protection\nfrom lightning and tempest, but that you may be guarded from the fright\nthat makes you forget to watch yourself, and so renders the danger\ngreater! You could not well have been drowned where you fell; but if it\nhad been a river\u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Kate.\n\n\"And try to get self-command. That is the great thing, after all, that\nwould hinder things from being horrid!\" said Lady de la Poer, with a\npleasant smile, just as a knock came to the door, and the maid announced\nthat it was five o'clock, and Miss's things were quite ready; and in\nreturn she was thanked, and desired to bring them up.\n\n\"Miss!\" said Kate, rather hurt: \"don't they know who we are?\"\n\n\"It is not such a creditable adventure that we should wish to make your\nname known,\" said Lady de la Poer, rather drily; and Kate blushed, and\nbecame ashamed of herself.\n\nShe was really five minutes before she recovered the use of her tongue,\nand that was a long time for her. Lady de la Poer meantime was helping\nher to dress, as readily as Josephine herself could have done, and\nbrushing out the hair, which was still damp. Kate presently asked where\nthe old lady was.\n\n\"She had to go back as soon as the rain was over, to look after a nephew\nand niece, who are spending the day with her. She said she would look\nfor our party, and tell them how we were getting on.\"\n\n\"Then I have spoilt three people's pleasure more!\" said Kate ruefully.\n\"Is the niece a little girl?\"\n\n\"I don't know; I fancy her grown up, or they would have offered clothes\nto you.\"\n\n\"Then I don't care!\" said Kate.\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"Why, for not telling my name. Once it would have been like a fairy tale\nto Sylvia and me, and have made up for anything, to see a\ncountess\u2014especially a little girl. But don't you think seeing me would\nquite spoil that?\"\n\nLady de la Poer was so much amused, that she could not answer at first;\nand Kate began to feel as if she had been talking foolishly, and turned\nher back to wash her hands.\n\n\"Certainly, I don't think we are quite as well worth seeing as the\nCrystal Palace! You put me in mind of what Madame Campan said. She had\nbeen governess to the first Napoleon's sisters; and when, in the days of\ntheir grandeur, she visited them, one of them asked her if she was not\nawe-struck to find herself among so much royalty. 'Really,' she said, 'I\ncan't be much afraid of queens whom I have whipped!'\"\n\n\"They were only mock queens,\" said Kate.\n\n\"Very true. But, little woman, it is _all_ mockery, unless it is the\n_self_ that makes the impression; and I am afraid being perched upon any\nkind of pedestal makes little faults and follies do more harm to others.\nBut come, put on your hat: we must not keep Papa waiting.\"\n\nThe hat was the worst part of the affair; the colour of the blue edge of\nthe ribbon had run into the white, and the pretty soft feather had been\nso daggled in the wet, that an old hen on a wet day was respectability\nitself compared with it, and there was nothing for it but to take it out;\nand even then the hat reminded Kate of a certain Amelia Matilda Bunny,\nwhose dirty finery was a torment and a by-word in St. James's Parsonage.\nHer frock and white jacket had been so nicely ironed out, as to show no\ntraces of the adventure; and she disliked all the more to disfigure\nherself with such a thing on her head for the present, as well as to\nencounter Aunt Barbara by-and-by.\n\n\"There's no help for it,\" said Lady de la Poer, seeing her disconsolately\nsurveying it; \"perhaps it will not be bad for you to feel a few\nconsequences from your heedlessness.\"\n\nWhether it were the hat or the shock, Kate was uncommonly meek and\nsubdued as she followed Lady de la Poer out of the room; and after giving\nthe little maid half a sovereign and many thanks for having so nicely\nrepaired the damage, they walked back to the palace, and up the great\nstone stairs, Kate hanging down her head, thinking that everyone was\nwondering how Amelia Matilda Bunny came to be holding by the hand of a\nlady in a beautiful black lace bonnet and shawl, so quiet and simple, and\nyet such a lady!\n\nShe hardly even looked up when the glad exclamations of the four girls\nand their father sounded around her, and she could not bear their\ninquiries whether she felt well again. She knew that she owed thanks to\nMary and her father, and apologies to them all; but she had not manner\nenough to utter them, and only made a queer scrape with her foot, like a\nhen scratching out corn, hung her head, and answered \"Yes.\"\n\nThey saw she was very much ashamed, and they were in a hurry besides; so\nwhen Lord de la Poer had said he had given all manner of thanks to the\ngood old lady, he took hold of Kate's hand, as if he hardly ventured to\nlet go of her again, and they all made the best of their way to the\nstation, and were soon in full career along the line, Kate's heart\nsinking as she thought of Aunt Barbara. Fanny tried kindly to talk to\nher; but she was too anxious to listen, made a short answer, and kept her\neyes fixed on the two heads of the party, who were in close consultation,\nrendered private by the noise of the train.\n\n\"If ever I answer for anyone again!\" said Lord de la Poer. \"And now for\nfacing Barbara!\"\n\n\"You had better let me do that.\"\n\n\"What! do you think I am afraid?\" and Kate thought the smile on his lip\nvery cruel, as she could not hear his words.\n\n\"I don't do you much injustice in thinking so,\" as he shrugged up his\nshoulders like a boy going to be punished; \"but I think Barbara considers\nyou as an accomplice in mischief, and will have more mercy if I speak.\"\n\n\"Very well! I'm not the man to prevent you. Tell Barbara I'll undergo\nwhatever she pleases, for having ever let go the young lady's hand! She\nmay have me up to the Lord Chancellor if she pleases!\"\n\nA little relaxation in the noise made these words audible; and Kate, who\nknew the Lord Chancellor had some power over her, and had formed her\nnotions of him from a picture, in a history book at home, of Judge\nJefferies holding the Bloody Assize, began to get very much frightened;\nand her friends saw her eyes growing round with alarm, and not knowing\nthe exact cause, pitied her; Lord de la Poer seated her upon his knee,\nand told her that Mamma would take her home, and take care Aunt Barbara\ndid not punish her.\n\n\"I don't think she will punish me,\" said Kate; \"she does not often! But\npray come home with me!\" she added, getting hold of the lady's hand.\n\n\"What would she do to you, then?\"\n\n\"She would\u2014only\u2014be dreadful!\" said Kate.\n\nLord de la Poer laughed; but observed, \"Well, is it not enough to make\none dreadful to have little girls taking unexpected baths in public?\nNow, Kate, please to inform me, in confidence, what was the occasion of\nthat remarkable somerset.\"\n\n\"Only the lightning,\" muttered Kate.\n\n\"Oh! I was not certain whether your intention might not have been to\nmake that polite address to an aquatic bird, for which you pronounced\nMary not to have sufficient courage!\"\n\nLady de la Poer, thinking this a hard trial of the poor child's temper,\nwas just going to ask him not to tease her; but Kate was really candid\nand good tempered, and she said, \"I was wrong to say that! It was Mary\nthat had presence of mind, and I had not.\"\n\n\"Then the fruit of the adventure is to be, I hope, Look Before you\nLeap!\u2014Eh, Lady Caergwent?\"\n\nAnd at the same time the train stopped, and among kisses and farewells,\nKate and kind Lady de la Poer left the carriage, and entering the\nbrougham that was waiting for them, drove to Bruton Street; Kate very\ngrave and silent all the way, and shrinking behind her friend in hopes\nthat the servant who opened the door would not observe her plight\u2014indeed,\nshe took her hat off on the stairs, and laid it on the table in the\nlanding.\n\nTo her surprise, the beginning of what Lady de la Poer said was chiefly\napology for not having taken better care of her. It was all quite true:\nthere was no false excuse made for her, she felt, when Aunt Barbara\nlooked ashamed and annoyed, and said how concerned she was that her niece\nshould be so unmanageable; and her protector answered,\n\n\"Not that, I assure you! She was a very nice little companion, and we\nquite enjoyed her readiness and intelligent interest; but she was a\nlittle too much excited to remember what she was about when she was\nstartled.\"\n\n\"And no wonder,\" said Lady Jane. \"It was a most tremendous storm, and I\nfeel quite shaken by it still. You can't be angry with her for being\nterrified by it, Barbara dear, or I shall know what you think of me;\u2014half\ndrowned too\u2014poor child!\"\n\nAnd Aunt Jane put her soft arm round Kate, and put her cheek to hers.\nPerhaps the night of Kate's tears had really made Jane resolved to try to\nsoften even Barbara's displeasure; and the little girl felt it very kind,\nthough her love of truth made her cry out roughly, \"Not half drowned!\nMary held me fast, and Lord de la Poer pulled me out!\"\n\n\"I am sure you ought to be extremely thankful to them,\" said Lady\nBarbara, \"and overcome with shame at all the trouble and annoyance you\nhave given!\"\n\nLady de la Poer quite understood what the little girl meant by her aunt\nbeing dreadful. She would gladly have protected her; but it was not what\ncould be begged off like punishment, nor would truth allow her to say\nthere had been no trouble nor annoyance. So what she did say was, \"When\none has ten children, one reckons upon such things!\" and smiled as if\nthey were quite pleasant changes to her.\n\n\"Not, I am sure, with your particularly quiet little girls,\" said Aunt\nBarbara. \"I am always hoping that Katharine may take example by them.\"\n\n\"Take care what you hope, Barbara,\" said Lady de la Poer, smiling: \"and\nat any rate forgive this poor little maiden for our disaster, or my\nhusband will be in despair.\"\n\n\"I have nothing to forgive,\" said Lady Barbara gravely. \"Katharine\ncannot have seriously expected punishment for what is not a moral fault.\nThe only difference will be the natural consequences to herself of her\nfolly.\u2014You had better go down to the schoolroom, Katharine, have your\ntea, and then go to bed; it is nearly the usual time.\"\n\nLady de la Poer warmly kissed the child, and then remained a little while\nwith the aunts, trying to remove what she saw was the impression, that\nKate had been complaining of severe treatment, and taking the opportunity\nof telling them what she herself thought of the little girl. But though\nAunt Barbara listened politely, she could not think that Lady de la Poer\nknew anything about the perverseness, heedlessness, ill-temper,\ndisobedience, and rude ungainly ways, that were so tormenting. She said\nno word about them herself, because she would not expose her niece's\nfaults; but when her friend talked Kate's bright candid conscientious\ncharacter, her readiness, sense, and intelligence, she said to herself,\nand perhaps justly, that here was all the difference between at home and\nabroad, an authority and a stranger.\n\nMeantime, Kate wondered what would be the natural consequences of her\nfolly. Would she have a rheumatic fever or consumption, like a child in\na book?\u2014and she tried breathing deep, and getting up a little cough, to\nsee if it was coming! Or would the Lord Chancellor hear of it? He was\nnew bugbear recently set up, and more haunting than even a gunpowder\ntreason in the cellars! What did he do with the seals? Did he seal up\nmischievous heiresses in closets, as she had seen a door fastened by two\nseals and a bit of string? Perhaps the Court of Chancery was full of\nsuch prisons! And was the woolsack to smother them with, like the\nprinces in the Tower?\n\nIt must be owned that it was only when half asleep at night that Kate was\nso absurd. By day she knew very well that the Lord Chancellor was only a\ngreat lawyer; but she also knew that whenever there was any puzzle or\ndifficulty about her or her affairs, she always heard something\nmysteriously said about applying to the Lord Chancellor, till she began\nto really suspect that it was by his commands that Aunt Barbara was so\nstern with her; and that if he knew of her fall into the pond, something\nterrible would come of it. Perhaps that was why the De la Poers kept her\nname so secret!\n\nShe trembled as she thought of it; and here was another added to her many\nterrors. Poor little girl! If she had rightly feared and loved One, she\nwould have had no room for the many alarms that kept her heart\nfluttering!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\n\nIT may be doubted whether Countess Kate ever did in her childhood\ndiscover what her Aunt Barbara meant by the natural consequences of her\nfolly, but she suffered from them nevertheless. When the summer was\ngetting past its height of beauty, and the streets were all sun and misty\nheat, and the grass in the parks looked brown, and the rooms were so\nclose that even Aunt Jane had one window open, Kate grew giddy in the\nhead almost every morning, and so weary and dull all day that she had\nhardly spirit to do anything but read story-books. And Mrs. Lacy was\nquite poorly too, though not saying much about it; was never quite\nwithout a head-ache, and was several times obliged to send Kate out for\nher evening walk with Josephine.\n\nIt was high time to be going out of town; and Mrs. Lacy was to go and be\nwith her son in his vacation.\n\nThis was the time when Kate and the Wardours had hoped to be together.\nBut \"the natural consequence\" of the nonsense Kate had talked, about\nbeing \"always allowed\" to do rude and careless things, and her wild\nrhodomontade about romping games with the boys, had persuaded her aunts\nthat they were very improper people for her to be with, and that it would\nbe wrong to consent to her going to Oldburgh.\n\nThat was one natural consequence of her folly. Another was that when the\nDe la Poers begged that she might spend the holidays with them, and from\nfather and mother downwards were full of kind schemes for her happiness\nand good, Lady Barbara said to her sister that it was quite impossible;\nthese good friends did not know what they were asking, and that the child\nwould again expose herself in some way that would never be forgotten,\nunless she were kept in their own sight till she had been properly tamed\nand reduced to order.\n\nIt was self-denying in Lady Barbara to refuse that invitation, for she\nand her sister would have been infinitely more comfortable together\nwithout their troublesome countess\u2014above all when they had no governess\nto relieve them of her. The going out of town was sad enough to them,\nfor they had always paid a long visit at Caergwent Castle, which had felt\nlike their home through the lifetime of their brother and nephew; but now\nit was shut up, and their grief for their young nephew came back all the\nmore freshly at the time of year when they were used to be kindly\nentertained by him in their native home.\n\nBut as they could not go there, they went to Bournemouth and the first\nrun Kate took upon the sands took away all the giddiness from her head,\nand put an end to the tired feeling in her limbs! It really was a run!\nAunt Barbara gave her leave to go out with Josephine; and though\nJosephine said it was very sombre and savage, between the pine-woods and\nthe sea, Kate had not felt her heart leap with such fulness of enjoyment\nsince she had made snow-balls last winter at home. She ran down to the\nwaves, and watched them sweep in and curl over and break, as if she could\nnever have enough of them; and she gazed at the grey outline of the Isle\nof Wight opposite, feeling as if there was something very great in really\nseeing an island.\n\nWhen she came in, there was so much glow on her brown check, and her\neyelids looked so much less heavy, that both the aunts gazed at her with\npleasure, smiled to one another, and Lady Jane kissed her, while Lady\nBarbara said, \"This was the right thing.\"\n\nShe was to be out as much as possible, so her aunt made a set of new\nrules for the day. There was to be a walk before breakfast; then\nbreakfast; then Lady Barbara heard her read her chapter in the Bible, and\ngo through her music. And really the music was not half as bad as might\nhave been expected with Aunt Barbara. Kate was too much afraid of her to\ngive the half attention she had paid to poor Mrs. Lacy\u2014fright and her\naunt's decision of manner forced her to mind what she was about; and\nthough Aunt Barbara found her really very dull and unmusical, she did get\non better than before, and learnt something, though more like a machine\nthan a musician.\n\nThen she went out again till the hottest part of the day, during which a\nbit of French and of English reading was expected from her, and half an\nhour of needle-work; then her dinner; and then out again\u2014with her aunts\nthis time, Aunt Jane in a wheeled-chair, and Aunt Barbara walking with\nher\u2014this was rather dreary; but when they went in she was allowed to stay\nout with Josephine, with only one interval in the house for tea, till it\ngrew dark, and she was so sleepy with the salt wind, that she was ready\nfor bed, and had no time to think of the Lord Chancellor.\n\nAt first, watching those wonderful and beautiful waves was pleasure\nenough; and then she was allowed, to her wonder and delight, to have a\nholland dress, and dig in the sand, making castles and moats, or rocks\nand shipwrecks, with beautiful stories about them; and sometimes she\nhunted for the few shells and sea-weeds there, or she sat down and read\nsome of her favourite books, especially poetry\u2014it suited the sea so well;\nand she was trying to make Ellen's Isle and all the places of the \"Lady\nof the Lake\" in sand, only she never had time to finish them, and they\nalways were either thrown down or washed away before she could return to\nthem.\n\nBut among all these amusements, she was watching the families of children\nwho played together, happy creatures! The little sturdy boys, that\ndabbled about so merrily, and minded so little the \"Now Masters\" of their\nindignant nurses; the little girls in brown hats, with their baskets\nfull; the big boys, that even took off shoes, and dabbled in the shallow\nwater; the great sieges of large castles, where whole parties attacked\nand defended\u2014it was a sort of melancholy glimpse of fairy-land to her,\nfor she had only been allowed to walk on the beach with Josephine on\ncondition she never spoke to the other children.\n\nWould the Lord Chancellor be after her if she did? Her heart quite\nyearned for those games, or even to be able to talk to one of those\nlittle damsels; and one day when a bright-faced girl ran after her with a\npiece of weed that she had dropped, she could hardly say \"thank you\" for\nher longing to say more; and many were the harangues she composed within\nherself to warn the others not to wish to change places with her, for to\nbe a countess was very poor fun indeed.\n\nHowever, one morning at the end of the first week, Kate looked up from a\nletter from Sylvia, and said with great glee, \"Aunt Barbara! O Aunt\nBarbara! Alice and the other Sylvia\u2014Sylvia Joanna\u2014are coming! I may\nplay with them, mayn't I?\"\n\n\"Who are they?\" said her aunt gravely.\n\n\"Uncle Wardour's nieces,\" said Kate; \"Sylvia's cousins, you know, only we\nnever saw them; but they are just my age; and it will be such fun\u2014only\nAlice is ill, I believe. Pray\u2014please\u2014let me play with them!\" and Kate\nhad tears in her eyes.\n\n\"I shall see about it when they come.\"\n\n\"Oh, but\u2014but I can't have them there\u2014Sylvia's own, own cousins\u2014and not\nplay with them! Please, Aunt Barbara!\"\n\n\"You ought to know that this impetuosity never disposes me favourably,\nKatharine; I will inquire and consider.\"\n\nKate had learnt wisdom enough not to say any more just then; but the\nthought of sociability, the notion of chattering freely to young\ncompanions, and of a real game at play, and the terror of having all this\nwithheld, and of being thought too proud and haughty for the Wardours,\nput her into such an agony, that she did not know what she was about,\nmade mistakes even in reading, and blundered her music more than she had\nover done under Lady Barbara's teaching; and then, when her aunt reproved\nher, she could not help laying down her head and bursting into a fit of\ncrying. However, she had not forgotten the terrible tea-drinking, and\nwas resolved not to be as bad as at that time, and she tried to stop\nherself, exclaiming between her sobs, \"O Aunt Bar\u2014bar\u2014a,\u2014I\u2014can\u2014not\u2014help\nit!\" And Lady Barbara did not scold or look stern. Perhaps she saw that\nthe little girl was really trying to chock herself, for she said quite\nkindly, \"Don't, my dear.\"\n\nAnd just then, to Kate's great wonder, in came Lady Jane, though it was\nfull half an hour earlier than she usually left her room; and Lady\nBarbara looked up to her, and said, quite as if excusing herself,\n\"Indeed, Jane, I have not been angry with her.\"\n\nAnd Kate, somehow, understanding that she might, flung herself down by\nAunt Jane, and hid her face in her lap, not crying any more, though the\nsobs were not over, and feeling the fondling hands on her hair very\ntender and comforting, though she wondered to hear them talk as if she\nwere asleep or deaf\u2014or perhaps they thought their voices too low, or\ntheir words too long and fine for her to understand; nor perhaps did she,\nthough she gathered their drift well enough, and that kind Aunt Jane was\nquite pleading for herself in having come to the rescue.\n\n\"I could not help it, indeed\u2014you remember Lady de la Poer, Dr. Woodman,\nboth\u2014excitable, nervous temperament\u2014almost hysterical.\"\n\n\"This unfortunate intelligence\u2014untoward coincidence\u2014\" said Lady Barbara.\n\"But I have been trying to make her feel I am not in anger, and I hope\nthere really was a struggle for self-control.\"\n\nKate took her head up again at this, a little encouraged; and Lady Jane\nkissed her forehead, and repeated, \"Aunt Barbara was not angry with you,\nmy dear.\"\n\n\"No, for I think you have tried to conquer yourself,\" said Lady Barbara.\nShe did not think it wise to tell Kate that she thought she could not\nhelp it, though oddly enough, the very thing had just been said over the\nchild's head, and Kate ventured on it to get up, and say quietly, \"Yes,\nit was not Aunt Barbara's speaking to me that made me cry, but I am so\nunhappy about Alice and Sylvia Joanna;\" and a soft caress from Aunt Jane\nmade her venture to go on. \"It is not only the playing with them, though\nI do wish for that very very much indeed; but it would be so unkind, and\nso proud and ungrateful, to despise my own cousin's cousins!\"\n\nThis was more like the speeches Kate made in her own head than anything\nshe had ever said to her aunts; and it was quite just besides, and not\nspoken in naughtiness, and Lady Barbara did not think it wrong to show\nthat she attended to it. \"You are right, Katharine,\" she said; \"no one\nwishes you to be either proud or ungrateful. I would not wish entirely\nto prevent you from seeing the children of the family, but it must not be\ntill there is some acquaintance between myself and their mother, and I\ncannot tell whether you can be intimate with them till I know what sort\nof children they are. Much, too, must depend on yourself, and whether\nyou will behave well with them.\"\n\nKate gave a long sigh, and looked up relieved; and for some time she and\nher aunt were not nearly so much at war as hitherto, but seemed to be\ncoming to a somewhat better understanding.\n\nYet it rather puzzled Kate. She seemed to herself to have got this\nfavour for crying for it; and it was a belief at home, not only that\nnothing was got by crying, but that if by some strange chance it were, it\nnever came to good; and she began the more to fear some disappointment\nabout the expected Wardours.\n\nFor two or three days she was scanning every group on the sands with all\nher might, in hopes of some likeness to Sylvia, but at last she was taken\nby surprise: just as she was dressed, and Aunt Barbara was waiting in the\ndrawing-room for Aunt Jane, there came a knock at the door, and \"Mrs.\nWardour\" was announced.\n\nIn came a small, quiet-looking lady in mourning, and with her a girl of\nabout Kate's own age; there was some curtseying and greeting between the\ntwo ladies, and her aunt said, \"Here is my niece.\u2014Come and speak to Mrs.\nWardour, my dear,\" and motioned her forwards.\n\nNow to be motioned forwards by Aunt Barbara always made Kate shrink back\ninto herself, and the presence of a little girl before elders likewise\nrendered her shy and bashful, so she came forth as if intensely\ndisgusted, put out her hand as if she were going to poke, and muttered\nher favourite \"\u2014do\" so awkwardly and coldly, that Lady Barbara felt how\nproud and ungracious it looked, and to make up said, \"My niece has been\nvery eager for your coming.\" And then the two little girls drew off into\nthe window, and looked at each other under their eyelashes in silence.\n\nSylvia Joanna Wardour was not like her namesake at home, Sylvia\nKatharine. She was a thin, slight, quiet-looking child, with so little\nto note about her face, that Kate was soon wondering at her dress being\nso much smarter than her own was at present. She herself had on a\nholland suit with a deep cape, which, except that they were adorned with\nlabyrinths of white braid, were much what she had worn at home, also a\nround brown hat, shading her face from the sun; whereas Sylvia's face was\nexposed by a little turban hat so deeply edged with blue velvet, that the\nwhite straw was hardly seen; had a little watered-silk jacket, and a\nlittle flounced frock of a dark silk figured with blue, that looked\nslightly fuzzed out; and perhaps she was not at ease in this fine dress,\nfor she stood with her head down, and one hand on the window-sill,\npretending to look out of window, but really looking at Kate.\n\nMeanwhile the two grown-up ladies were almost as stiff and shy, though\nthey could not keep dead silence like the children. Mrs. Wardour had\nheard before that Lady Barbara Umfraville was a formidable person, and\nwas very much afraid of her; and Lady Barbara was not a person to set\nanyone at ease.\n\nSo there was a little said about taking the liberty of calling, for her\nbrother-in-law was so anxious to hear of Lady Caergwent: and Lady Barbara\nsaid her niece was very well and healthy, and had only needed change of\nair.\n\nAnd then came something in return about Mrs. Wardour's other little girl,\na sad invalid, she said, on whose account they were come to Bournemouth;\nand there was a little more said of bathing, and walking, and whether the\nplace was full; and then Mrs. Wardour jumped up and said she was\ndetaining Lady Barbara, and took leave; Kate, though she had not spoken a\nword to Sylvia Wardour, looking at her wistfully with all her eyes, and\nfeeling more than usually silly.\n\nAnd when the guests were gone her aunt told her how foolish her want of\nmanner was, and how she had taken the very means to make them think she\nwas not glad to see them. She hung down her head, and pinched the ends\nof her gloves; she knew it very well, but that did not make it a bit more\npossible to find a word to say to a stranger before the elders, unless\nthe beginning were made for her as by the De la Poers.\n\nHowever, she knew it would be very different out of doors, and her heart\nbounded when her aunt added, \"They seem to be quiet, lady-like,\ninoffensive people, and I have no objection to your associating with the\nlittle girl in your walks, as long as I do not see that it makes you\nthoughtless and ungovernable.\"\n\n\"Oh, thank you, thank you, Aunt Barbara!\" cried Kate, with a bouncing\nbound that did not promise much for her thought or her governableness;\nbut perhaps Lady Barbara recollected what her own childhood would have\nbeen without Jane, for she was not much discomposed, only she said,\n\n\"It is very odd you should be so uncivil to the child in her presence,\nand so ecstatic now! However, take care you do not get too familiar.\nRemember, these Wardours are no relations, and I will not have you\nletting them call you by your Christian name.\"\n\nKate's bright looks sank. That old married-woman sound, Lady Caergwent,\nseemed as if it would be a bar between her and the free childish fun she\nhoped for. Yet when so much had been granted, she must not call her aunt\ncross and unkind, though she did think it hard and proud.\n\nPerhaps she was partly right; but after all, little people cannot judge\nwhat is right in matters of familiarity. They have only to do as they\nare told, and they may be sure of this, that friendship and respect\ndepend much more on what people are in themselves than on what they call\none another.\n\nThis lady was the widow of Mr. Wardour's brother, and lived among a great\nclan of his family in a distant county, where Mary and her father had\nsometimes made visits, but the younger ones never. Kate was not likely\nto have been asked there, for it was thought very hard that she should be\nleft on the hands of her aunt's husband: and much had been said of the\nduty of making her grand relations provide for her, or of putting her\ninto the \"Clergy Orphan Asylum.\" And there had been much displeasure\nwhen Mr. Wardour answered that he did not think it right that a child who\nhad friends should live on the charity intended for those who had none\nable to help them; and soon after the decision he had placed his son\nArmyn in Mr. Brown's office, instead of sending him to the University.\nAll the Wardours were much vexed then; but they were not much better\npleased when the little orphan had come to her preferment, and he made no\nattempt to keep her in his hands, and obtain the large sum allowed for\nher board\u2014only saying that his motherless household was no place for her,\nand that he could not at once do his duty by her and by his parish. They\ncould not understand the real love and uprightness that made him prefer\nher advantage to his own\u2014what was right to what was convenient.\n\nMrs. George Wardour had not scolded her brother-in-law for his want of\nprudence and care for his own children's interests; but she had agreed\nwith those who did; and this, perhaps, made her feel all the more awkward\nand shy when she was told that she _must_ go and call upon the Lady\nUmfravilles, whom the whole family regarded as first so neglectful and\nthen so ungrateful, and make acquaintance with the little girl who had\nonce been held so cheap. She was a kind, gentle person, and a careful,\nanxious mother, but not wishing to make great acquaintance, nor used to\nfine people, large or small, and above all, wrapped up in her poor little\ndelicate Alice.\n\nThe next time Kate saw her she was walking by the side of Alice's\nwheeled-chair, and Sylvia by her side, in a more plain and suitable\ndress. Kate set off running to greet them; but at a few paces from them\nwas seized by a shy fit, and stood looking and feeling like a goose,\ndrawing great C's with the point of her parasol in the sand; Josephine\nlooking on, and thinking how \"_b\u00eate_\" English children were. Mrs.\nWardour was not much less shy; but she knew she must make a beginning,\nand so spoke in the middle of Kate's second C: and there was a shaking of\nhands, and walking together.\n\nThey did not get on very well: nobody talked but Mrs. Wardour, and she\nasked little frightened questions about the Oldburgh party, as she called\nthem, which Kate answered as shortly and shyly\u2014the more so from the\nuncomfortable recollection that her aunt had told her that this was the\nvery way to seem proud and unkind; but what could she do? She felt as if\nshe were frozen up stiff, and could neither move nor look up like\nherself. At last Mrs. Wardour said that Alice would be tired, and must\ngo in; and then Kate managed to blurt out a request that Sylvia might\nstay with her. Poor Sylvia looked a good deal scared, and as if she\nlonged to follow her mamma and sister; but the door was shut upon her,\nand she was left alone with those two strange people\u2014the Countess and the\nFrenchwoman!\n\nHowever, Kate recovered the use of her limbs and tongue in a moment, and\ninstantly took her prisoner's hand, and ran off with her to the corner\nwhere the scenery of Loch Katrine had so often been begun, and began with\ngreat animation to explain. This\u2014a hole that looked as if an old hen had\nbeen grubbing in it\u2014was Loch Katrine.\n\n\"Loch Katharine\u2014that's yours! And which is to be Loch Sylvia?\" said the\nchild, recovering, as she began to feel by touch, motion, and voice, that\nshe had only to do with a little girl after all.\n\n\"Loch nonsense!\" said Kate, rather bluntly. \"Did you never hear of the\nLochs, the Lakes, in Scotland?\"\n\n\"Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine, Loch Awe, Loch Ness?\u2014But I don't do my\ngeography out of doors!\"\n\n\"'Tisn't geography; 'tis the 'The Lady of the Lake.'\"\n\n\"Is that a new game?\"\n\n\"Dear me! did you never read 'The Lady of the Lake?'\u2014Sir Walter Scott's\npoem\u2014\n\n 'The summer dawn's reflected hue\u2014'\"\n\n\"Oh! I've learnt that in my extracts; but I never did my poetry task out\nof doors!\"\n\n\"'Tisn't a task\u2014'tis beautiful poetry! Don't you like poetry better than\nanything?\"\n\n\"I like it better than all my other lessons, when it is not very long and\nhard.\"\n\nKate felt that her last speech would have brought Armyn and Charlie down\non her for affectation, and that it was not strictly true that she liked\npoetry better than anything, for a game at romps, and a very amusing\nstory, were still better things; so she did not exclaim at the other\nSylvia's misunderstanding, but only said, \"'The Lady of the Lake' is\nstory and poetry too, and we will play at it.\"\n\n\"And how?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you as we go on. I'm the King\u2014that is, the Knight of\nSnowdon\u2014James Fitzjames, for I'm in disguise, you know; and you're\nEllen.\"\n\n\"Must I be Ellen? We had a horrid nurse once, who used to slap us, and\nwas called Ellen.\"\n\n\"But it was her name. She was Ellen Douglas, and was in banishment on an\nisland with her father. You are Ellen, and Josephine is your old\nharper\u2014Allan Bane; she talks French, you know, and that will do for\nHighland: Gallic and Gaelic sound alike, you know. There! Then I'm\ngoing out hunting, and my dear gallant grey will drop down dead with\nfatigue, and I shall lose my way; and when you hear me wind my horn\ntoo-too, you get upon your hoop\u2014that will be your boat, you know\u2014and\nanswer 'Father!' and when I too-too again, answer 'Malcolm!' and then put\nup your hand behind your ear, and stand listening\n\n \"With locks thrown back and lips apart,\n Like monument of Grecian art;\"\n\nand then I'll tell you what to do.\"\n\nAway scudded the delighted Kate; and after having lamented her gallant\ngrey, and admired the Trosachs, came up too-tooing through her hand with\nall her might, but found poor Ellen, very unlike a monument of Grecian\nart, absolutely crying, and Allan Bane using his best English and kindest\ntones to console her.\n\n\"_Miladi l'a stup\u00e9faite\u2014la pauvre petite_!\" began Josephine; and Kate in\nconsternation asking what was the matter, and Josephine encouraging her,\nit was all sobbed out. She did not like to be called Ellen\u2014and she\nthought it unkind to send her into banishment\u2014and she had fancied she was\nto get astride on her hoop, which she justly thought highly improper\u2014and\nabove all, she could not bear to say 'Father'\u2014because\u2014\n\n\"I never thought you would mind that,\" said Kate, rather abashed. \"I\nnever did; and I never saw my papa or mamma either.\"\n\n\"No\u2014so you didn't care.\"\n\n\"Well then,\" said Kate gravely, \"we won't play at that. Let's have\n'Marmion' instead; and I'll be killed.\"\n\n\"But I don't like you to be killed.\"\n\n\"It is only in play.\"\n\n\"Please\u2014please, let us have a nice play!\"\n\n\"Well, what do you call a nice play?\"\n\n\"Alice and I used to drive hoops.\"\n\n\"That's tiresome! My hoop always tumbles down: think of something else.\"\n\n\"Alice and I used to play at ball; but there's no ball here!\"\n\n\"Then I'll stuff my pocket-handkerchief with seaweed, and make one;\" and\nKate spread out her delicate cambric one\u2014not quite so fit for such a\npurpose as the little cheap cotton ones at home, that Mary tried in vain\nto save from cruel misuse.\n\n\"Here's a famous piece! Look, it is all wriggled; it is a mermaid's old\nstay-lace that she has used and thrown away. Perhaps she broke it in a\npassion because her grandmother made her wear so many oyster-shells on\nher tail!\"\n\n\"There are no such creatures as mermaids,\" said Sylvia, looking at her\nsolemnly.\n\nThis was not a promising beginning; Sylvia Joanna was not a bit like\nSylvia Katharine, nor like Adelaide and Grace de la Poer; yet by seeing\neach other every day, she and Kate began to shake together, and become\nfriends.\n\nThere was no fear of her exciting Kate to run wild; she was a little\npussy-cat in her dread of wet, and guarded her clothes as if they could\nfeel\u2014indeed, her happiest moments were spent in the public walks by\nAlice's chair, studying how the people were dressed; but still she\nthought it a fine thing to be the only child in Bournemouth who might\nplay with the little Countess, and was so silly as to think the others\nenvied her when she was dragged and ordered about, bewildered by Kate's\nloud rapid talk about all kinds of odd things in books, and distressed at\nbeing called on to tear through the pine-woods, or grub in wet sand. But\nit was not all silly vanity: she was a gentle, loving little girl, very\ngood-natured, and sure to get fond of all who were kind to her; and she\nliked Kate's bright ways and amusing manner\u2014perhaps really liking her\nmore than if she had understood her better; and Kate liked her, and\nrushed after her on every occasion, as the one creature with whom it was\npossible to play and to chatter.\n\nNo, not quite the one; for poor sick Alice was better for talk and quiet\nplay than her sister. She read a great deal; and there was an exchange\nof story-books, and much conversation over them, between her and\nKate\u2014indeed, the spirit and animation of this new friend quite made her\nlight up, and brighten out of her languor whenever the shrill laughing\nvoice came near. And Kate, after having got over her first awe at coming\nnear a child so unlike herself, grew very fond of her, and felt how good\nand sweet and patient she was. She never ran off to play till Alice was\ntaken in-doors; and spent all her spare time in-doors in drawing picture\nstories, which were daily explained to the two sisters at some seat in\nthe pine-woods.\n\nThere was one very grand one, that lasted all the latter part of the stay\nat Bournemouth\u2014as the evenings grew longer, and Kate had more time for\npreparing it, at the rate of four or five scenes a day, drawn and\npainted\u2014being the career of a very good little girl, whose parents were\nkilled in a railway accident, (a most fearful picture was that\u2014all\nblunders being filled up by spots of vermilion blood and orange-\nflame!) and then came all the wonderful exertions by which she maintained\nher brothers and sisters, taught them, and kept them in order.\n\nThey all had names; and there was a naughty little Alexander, whose\nmonkey tricks made even Sylvia laugh. Sylvia was very anxious that the\nadmirable heroine, Hilda, should be rewarded by turning into a countess;\nand could not enter into Kate's first objection\u2014founded on fact\u2014that it\ncould not be without killing all the brothers. \"Why couldn't it be done\nin play, like so many other things?\" To which Kate answered, \"There is a\nsort of true in play;\" but as Sylvia could not understand her, nor she\nherself get at her own idea, she went on to her other objection, a still\nmore startling one\u2014that \"She couldn't wish Hilda anything so nasty!\"\n\nAnd this very ignoble word was long a puzzle to Alice and Sylvia.\n\nThus the time at the sea-side was very happy\u2014quite the happiest since\nKate's change of fortune. The one flaw in those times on the sands was\nwhen she was alone with Sylvia and Josephine; not in Sylvia's\ndulness\u2014that she had ceased to care about\u2014but in a little want of plain\ndealing. Sylvia was never wild or rude, but she was not strictly\nobedient when out of sight; and when Kate was shocked would call it very\nunkind, and caress and beseech her not to tell.\n\nThey were such tiny things, that they would hardly bear mention; but one\nwill do as a specimen. Sylvia was one of those very caressing children\nwho can never be happy without clinging to their friends, kissing them\nconstantly, and always calling them dear, love, and darling.\n\nNow, Mrs. Wardour knew it was not becoming to see all this embracing in\npublic, and was sure besides that Lady Barbara would not like to see the\nCountess hung upon in Sylvia's favourite way; so she forbade all such\ndemonstrations except the parting and meeting kiss. It was a terrible\ngrievance to Sylvia\u2014it seemed as if her heart could not love without her\ntouch; but instead of training herself in a little self-control and\nobedience, she thought it \"cross;\" and Mamma was no sooner out of sight\nthan her arm was around Kate's waist. Kate struggled at first\u2014it did not\nsuit her honourable conscientiousness; but then Sylvia would begin to cry\nat the unkindness, say Kate did not love her, that she would not be proud\nif she was a countess: and Kate gave in, liked the love\u2014of which, poor\nchild! she got so little\u2014and let Sylvia do as she pleased, but never\nwithout a sense of disobedience and dread of being caught.\n\nSo, too, about her title. Sylvia called her darling, duck, and love, and\nshe called Sylvia by plenty of such names; but she had been obliged to\ntell of her aunt's desire\u2014that Katharine and Kate should never be used.\n\nSylvia's ready tears fell; but the next day she came back cheerful, with\nthe great discovery that darling Lady Caergwent might be called K, her\ninitial, and the first syllable of her title. It was the cleverest\ninvention Sylvia had ever made; and she was vexed when Kate demurred,\nhonestly thinking that her aunts would like it worse than even Kate, and\nthat therefore she ought not to consent.\n\nBut when Sylvia coaxingly uttered, \"My own dear duck of a K,\" and the\nsoft warm arm squeezed her, and the eyes would have been weeping, and the\ntongue reproaching in another moment, she allowed it to go on\u2014it was so\nprecious and sweet to be loved; and she told Sylvia she was a star in the\ndark night.\n\nNo one ever found out those, and one or two other, instances of small\ndisobedience. They were not mischievous, Josephine willingly overlooked\nthem, and there was nothing to bring them to light. It would have been\nbetter for Sylvia if her faults had been of a sort that brought attention\non them more easily!\n\nMeanwhile, Lady Barbara had almost found in her a model child\u2014except for\nher foolish shy silence before her elders, before whom she always\nwhispered\u2014and freely let the girls be constantly together. The aunt\nlittle knew that this meek well-behaved maiden was giving the first warp\nto that upright truth that had been the one sterling point of Kate's\ncharacter!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\n\nIT had been intended that Mrs. Lacy should rejoin her pupil at\nBournemouth at the end of six weeks; but in her stead came a letter\nsaying that she was unwell, and begging for a fortnight's grace. At the\nfortnight's end came another letter; to which Lady Barbara answered that\nall was going on so well, that there was no need to think of returning\ntill they should all meet in London on the 1st of October.\n\nBut before that 1st, poor Mrs. Lacy wrote again, with great regret and\nmany excuses for the inconvenience she was causing. Her son and her\ndoctor had insisted on her resigning her situation at once; and they\nwould not even allow her to go back until her place could be supplied.\n\n\"Poor thing!\" said Lady Jane. \"I always thought it was too much for her.\nI wish we could have made her more comfortable: it would have been such a\nthing for her!\"\n\n\"So it would,\" answered Lady Barbara, \"if she had had to do with any\nother child. A little consideration or discretion, such as might have\nbeen expected from a girl of eleven years old towards a person in her\ncircumstances, would have made her happy, and enabled her to assist her\nson. But I have given up expecting feeling from Katharine.\"\n\nThat speech made Kate swell with anger at her aunt's tone and in her\nanger she forgot to repent of having been really thoughtless and almost\nunkind, or to recollect how differently her own gentle Sylvia at home\nwould have behaved to the poor lady. She liked the notion of novelty,\nand hoped for a new governess as kind and bright as Miss Oswald.\n\nMoreover, she was delighted to find that Mrs. George Wardour was going to\nlive in London for the present, that Alice might be under doctors, and\nSylvia under masters. Kate cared little for the why, but was excessively\ndelighted with plans for meeting, hopes of walks, talks, and\ntea-drinkings together; promises that the other dear Sylvia should come\nto meet her; and above all, an invitation to spend Sylvia Joanna's\nbirthday with her on the 21st of October, and go all together either to\nthe Zoological Gardens or to the British Museum, according to the\nweather.\n\nWith these hopes, Kate was only moderately sorry to leave the sea and\npine-trees behind her, and find herself once more steaming back to\nLondon, carrying in her hand a fine blue and white travelling-bag, worked\nfor her by her two little friends, but at which Lady Barbara had coughed\nrather dryly. In the bag were a great many small white shells done up in\ntwists of paper, that pretty story \"The Blue Ribbons,\" and a small blank\nbook, in which, whenever the train stopped, Kate wrote with all her\nmight. For Kate had a desire to convince Sylvia Joanna that one was much\nhappier without being a countess, and she thought this could be done very\ntouchingly and poetically by a fable in verse; so she thought she had a\nvery good idea by changing the old daisy that pined for transplantation\nand found it very unpleasant, into a harebell.\n\n A harebell blue on a tuft of moss\n In the wind her bells did toss.\n\nThat was her beginning; and the poor harebell was to get into a\nhot-house, where they wanted to turn her into a tall stately campanula,\nand she went through a great deal from the gardeners. There was to be a\npretty fairy picture to every verse; and it would make a charming\nbirthday present, much nicer than anything that could be bought; and Kate\nkept on smiling to herself as the drawings came before her mind's eye,\nand the rhymes to her mind's ear.\n\nSo they came home; but it was odd, the old temper of the former months\nseemed to lay hold of Kate as soon as she set foot in the house in Bruton\nStreet, as if the cross feelings were lurking in the old corners.\n\nShe began by missing Mrs. Lacy very much. The kind soft governess had\nmade herself more loved than the wayward child knew; and when Kate had\nrun into the schoolroom and found nobody sitting by the fire, no sad\nsweet smile to greet her, no one to hear her adventures, and remembered\nthat she had worried the poor widow, and that she would never come back\nagain, she could have cried, and really had a great mind to write to her,\nask her pardon, and say she was sorry. It would perhaps have been the\nbeginning of better things if she had; but of all things in the world,\nwhat prevented her? Just this\u2014that she had an idea that her aunt\nexpected it of her! O Kate! Kate!\n\nSo she went back to the harebell, and presently began rummaging among her\nbooks for a picture of one to copy; and just then Lady Barbara came in,\nfound half a dozen strewn on the floor, and ordered her to put them tidy,\nand then be dressed. That put her out, and after her old bouncing\nfashion she flew upstairs, caught her frock in the old hitch at the turn,\nand half tore off a flounce.\n\nNo wonder Lady Barbara was displeased; and that was the beginning of\nthings going wrong\u2014nay, worse than before the going to Bournemouth. Lady\nBarbara was seeking for a governess, but such a lady as she wished for\nwas not to be found in a day; and in the meantime she was resolved to do\nher duty by her niece, and watched over her behaviour, and gave her all\nthe lessons that she did not have from masters.\n\nWhether it was that Lady Barbara did not know exactly what was to be\nexpected of a little girl, or whether Kate was more fond of praise than\nwas good for her, those daily lessons were more trying than ever they had\nbeen. Generally she had liked them; but with Aunt Barbara, the being\ntold to sit upright, hold her book straight, or pronounce her words\nrightly, always teased her, and put her out of humour at the beginning.\nOr she was reminded of some failure of yesterday, and it always seemed to\nher unjust that bygones should not be bygones; or even when she knew she\nhad been doing her best, her aunt always thought she could have done\nbetter, so that she had no heart or spirit to try another time, but went\non in a dull, save-trouble way, hardly caring to exert herself to avoid a\nscolding, it was so certain to come.\n\nIt was not right\u2014a really diligent girl would have won for herself the\npeaceful sense of having done her best, and her aunt would have owned it\nin time; whereas poor Kate's resistance only made herself and her aunt\nworse to each other every day, and destroyed her sense of duty and\nobedience more and more.\n\nLady Barbara could not be always with her, and when once out of sight\nthere was a change. If she were doing a lesson with one of her masters,\nshe fell into a careless attitude in an instant, and would often chatter\nso that there was no calling her to order, except by showing great\ndetermination to tell her aunt. It made her feel both sly and guilty to\nbehave so differently out of sight, and yet now that she had once begun\nshe seemed unable to help going on and she was sure, foolish child, that\nAunt Barbara's strictness made her naughty!\n\nThen there were her walks. She was sent out with Josephine in the\nmorning and desired to walk nowhere but in the Square; and in the\nafternoon she and Josephine were usually set down by the carriage\ntogether in one of the parks, and appointed where to meet it again after\nLady Jane had taken her airing when she was well enough, for she soon\nbecame more ailing than usual. They were to keep in the quiet paths, and\nnot speak to anyone.\n\nBut neither Josephine nor her young lady had any turn for what was\n\"triste.\" One morning, when Kate was in great want of a bit of\nIndia-rubber, and had been sighing because of the displeasure she should\nmeet for having lost her own through using it in play-hours, Josephine\noffered to take her\u2014only a little out of her way\u2014to buy a new piece.\n\nKate knew this was not plain dealing, and hated herself for it, but she\nwas tired of being scolded, and consented! And then how miserable she\nwas; how afraid of being asked where she had been; how terrified lest her\naunt should observe that it was a new, not an old, piece; how humiliated\nby knowing she was acting untruth!\n\nAnd then Josephine took more liberties. When Kate was walking along the\npath, thinking how to rhyme to \"pride,\" she saw Josephine talking over\nthe iron rail to a man with a beard; and she told her maid afterwards\nthat it was wrong; but Josephine said, \"Miladi had too good a heart to\nbetray her,\" and the man came again and again, and once even walked home\npart of the way with Josephine, a little behind the young lady.\n\nKate was desperately affronted, and had a great mind to complain to her\naunts. But then Josephine could have told that they had not been in the\nSquare garden at all that morning, but in much more entertaining streets!\nPoor Kate, these daily disobediences did not weigh on her nearly as much\nas the first one did; it was all one general sense of naughtiness!\n\nWorking at her harebell was the pleasantest thing she did, but her\neagerness about it often made her neglectful and brought her into\nscrapes. She had filled one blank book with her verses and pictures,\nsome rather good, some very bad; and for want of help and correction she\nwas greatly delighted with her own performance, and thought it quite\nworthy of a little ornamental album, where she could write out the verses\nand gum in the drawings.\n\n\"Please, Aunt Barbara, let me go to the Soho Bazaar to-day?\"\n\n\"I cannot take you there, I have an engagement.\"\n\n\"But may I not go with Josephine?\"\n\n\"Certainly not. I would not trust you there with her. Besides, you\nspend too much upon trumpery, as it is.\"\n\n\"I don't want it for myself; I want something to get ready for Sylvia's\nbirthday\u2014the Sylvia that is come to London, I mean.\"\n\n\"I do not approve of a habit of making presents.\"\n\n\"Oh! but, Aunt Barbara, I am to drink tea with her on her birthday, and\nspend the day, and go to the Zoological Gardens, and I have all ready but\nmy presents! and it will not be in time if you won't let me go to-day.\"\n\n\"I never grant anything to pertinacity,\" answered Lady Barbara. \"I have\ntold you that I cannot go with you to-day, and you ought to submit.\"\n\n\"But the birthday, Aunt Barbara!\"\n\n\"I have answered you once, Katharine; you ought to know better than to\npersist.\"\n\nKate pouted, and the tears swelled in her eyes at the cruelty of\ndepriving her of the pleasure of making her purchase, and at having her\nbeautiful fanciful production thus ruined by her aunt's unkindness. As\nshe sat over her geography lesson, out of sight of her own bad writing,\nher broken-backed illuminated capitals, her lumpy campanulas,\ncrooked-winged fairies, queer perspective, and dabs of blue paint, she\nsaw her performance not as it was, but as it was meant to be, heard her\nown lines without their awkward rhymes and bits like prose, and thought\nof the wonder and admiration of all the Wardour family, and of the charms\nof having it secretly lent about as a dear simple sweet effusion of the\ntalented young countess, who longed for rural retirement. And down came\na great tear into the red trimming of British North America, and Kate\nunadvisedly trying to wipe it up with her handkerchief, made a red smear\nall across to Cape Verd! Formerly she would have exclaimed at once; now\nshe only held up the other side of the book that her aunt might not see,\nand felt very shabby all the time. But Lady Barbara was reading over a\nletter, and did not look. If Kate had not been wrapt up in herself, she\nwould have seen that anxious distressed face.\n\nThere came a knock to the schoolroom door. It was Mr. Mercer, the\ndoctor, who always came to see Lady Jane twice a week, and startled and\nalarmed, Lady Barbara sprang up. \"Do you want me, Mr. Mercer? I'll\ncome.\"\n\n\"No, thank you,\" said the doctor, coming in. \"It was only that I\npromised I would look at this little lady, just to satisfy Lady Jane, who\ndoes not think her quite well.\"\n\nKate's love of being important always made her ready to be looked at by\nMr. Mercer, who was a kind, fatherly old gentleman, not greatly apt to\ngive physic, very good-natured, and from his long attendance more\nintimate with the two sisters than perhaps any other person was. Lady\nBarbara gave an odd sort of smile, and said, \"Oh! very well!\" and the old\ngentleman laughed as the two bright clear eyes met his, and said, \"No\ngreat weight there, I think! Only a geography fever, eh? Any more giddy\nheads lately, eh? Or only when you make cheeses?\"\n\n\"I can't make cheeses now, my frocks are so short,\" said Kate, whose\nspirits always recovered with the least change.\n\n\"No more dreams?\"\n\n\"Not since I went to Bournemouth.\"\n\n\"Your tongue.\" And as Kate, who had a certain queer pleasure in the\noperation, put out the long pinky member with its ruddier tip, quivering\nlike an animal, he laughed again, and said, \"Thank you, Lady Caergwent;\nit is a satisfaction once in a way to see something perfectly healthy!\nYou would not particularly wish for a spoonful of cod-liver oil, would\nyou?\"\n\nKate laughed, made a face, and shook her head.\n\n\"Well,\" said the doctor as he released her, \"I may set Lady Jane's mind\nat rest. Nothing the matter there with the health.\"\n\n\"Nothing the matter but perverseness, I am afraid,\" said Lady Barbara, as\nKate stole back to her place, and shut her face in with the board of her\natlas. \"It is my sister who is the victim, and I cannot have it go on.\nShe is so dreadfully distressed whenever the child is in disgrace that it\nis doing her serious injury. Do you not see it, Mr. Mercer?\"\n\n\"She is very fond of the child,\" said Mr. Mercer.\n\n\"That is the very thing! She is constantly worrying herself about her,\ntakes all her naughtiness for illness, and then cannot bear to see her\nreproved. I assure you I am forced for my sister's sake to overlook many\nthings which I know I ought not to pass by.\" (Kate shuddered.) \"But the\nvery anxiety about her is doing great harm.\"\n\n\"I thought Lady Jane nervous and excited this morning,\" said Mr. Mercer:\n\"but that seemed to me to be chiefly about the Colonel's return.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Lady Barbara, \"of course in some ways it will be a great\npleasure; but it is very unlucky, after staying till the war was over,\nthat he has had to sell out without getting his promotion. It will make\na great difference!\"\n\n\"On account of his son's health, is it not?\"\n\n\"Yes; of course everything must give way to that, but it is most\nunfortunate. The boy has never recovered from his wound at Lucknow, and\nthey could not bear to part, or they ought to have sent him home with his\nmother long ago; and now my brother has remained at his post till he\nthought he could be spared; but he has not got his promotion, which he\nmust have had in a few months.\"\n\n\"When do you expect him?\"\n\n\"They were to set off in a fortnight from the time he wrote, but it all\ndepended on how Giles might be. I wish we knew; I wish there could be\nany certainty, this is so bad for my sister. And just at this very time,\nwithout a governess, when some children would be especially thoughtful\nand considerate, that we should have this strange fit of idleness and\nperverseness! It is very trying; I feel quite hopeless sometimes!\"\n\nSome children, as Lady Barbara said, would have been rendered thoughtful\nand considerate by hearing such a conversation as this, and have tried to\nmake themselves as little troublesome to their elders as possible; but\nthere are others who, unless they are directly addressed, only take in,\nin a strange dreamy way, that which belongs to the grown-up world, though\nquick enough to catch what concerns themselves. Thus Kate, though aware\nthat Aunt Barbara thought her naughtiness made Aunt Jane ill, and that\nthere was a fresh threat of the Lord Chancellor upon the return of her\ngreat-uncle from India, did not in the least perceive that her Aunt\nBarbara was greatly perplexed and harassed, divided between her care for\nher sister and for her niece, grieved for her brother's anxiety, and\ndisappointed that he had been obliged to leave the army, instead of being\nmade a General. The upshot of all that she carried away with her was,\nthat it was very cross of Aunt Barbara to think she made Aunt Jane ill,\nand very very hard that she could not go to the bazaar.\n\nLady Jane did not go out that afternoon, and Lady Barbara set her niece\nand Josephine down in the Park, saying that she was going into Belgravia,\nand desiring them to meet her near Apsley House. They began to walk, and\nKate began to lament. \"If she could only have gone to the bazaar for her\nalbum! It was very hard!\"\n\n\"Eh,\" Josephine said, \"why should they not go? There was plenty of time.\nMiladi Barbe had given them till four. She would take la petite.\"\n\nKate hung back. She knew it was wrong. She should never dare produce\nthe book if she had it.\n\nBut Josephine did not attend to the faltered English words, or disposed\nof them with a \"Bah! Miladi will guess nothing!\" and she had turned\ndecidedly out of the Park, and was making a sign to a cab. Kate was\ngreatly frightened, but was more afraid of checking Josephine in the open\nstreet, and making her dismiss the cab, than of getting into it.\nBesides, there was a very strong desire in her for the red and gold\nsquare book that had imprinted itself on her imagination. She could not\nbut be glad to do something in spite of Aunt Barbara. So they were shut\nin, and went off along Piccadilly, Kate's feelings in a strange whirl of\nfright and triumph, amid the clattering of the glasses. Just suppose she\nsaw anyone she knew!\n\nBut they got to Soho Square at last; and through the glass door, in among\nthe stalls\u2014that fairy land in general to Kate; but now she was too much\nfrightened and bewildered to do more than hurry along the passages,\nstaring so wildly for her albums, that Josephine touched her, and said,\n\"Tenez, Miladi, they will think you farouche. Ah! see the beautiful\nwreaths!\"\n\n\"Come on, Josephine,\" said Kate impatiently.\n\nBut it was not so easy to get the French maid on. A bazaar was felicity\nto her, and she had her little lady in her power; she stood and gazed,\nadmired, and criticised, at every stall that afforded ornamental wearing\napparel or work patterns; and Kate, making little excursions, and coming\nback again to her side, could not get her on three yards in a quarter of\nan hour, and was too shy and afraid of being lost, to wander away and\ntransact her own business. At last they did come to a counter with\nornamental stationery; and after looking at four or five books, Kate\nbought a purple embossed one, not at all what she had had in her mind's\neye, just because she was in too great a fright to look further; and then\nstep by step, very nearly crying at last, so as to alarm Josephine lest\nshe should really cry, she got her out at last. It was a quarter to\nfour, and Josephine was in vain sure that Miladi Barbe would never be at\nthe place in time; Kate's heart was sick with fright at the thought of\nthe shame of detection.\n\nShe begged to get out at the Marble Arch, and not risk driving along Park\nLane; but Josephine was triumphant in her certainty that there was time;\nand on they went, Kate fancying every bay nose that passed the window\nwould turn out to have the brougham, the man-servant, and Aunt Barbara\nbehind it.\n\nAt length they were set down at what the Frenchwoman thought a safe\ndistance, and paying the cabman, set out along the side path, Josephine\nadmonishing her lady that it was best not to walk so swiftly, or to look\nguilty, or they would be \"_trahies_.\"\n\nBut just then Kate really saw the carriage drawn up where there was an\nopening in the railings, and the servant holding open the door for them.\nHad they been seen? There was no knowing! Lady Barbara did not say one\nsingle word; but that need not have been surprising\u2014only how very\nstraight her back was, how fixed her marble mouth and chin! It was more\nlike Diana's head than ever\u2014Diana when she was shooting all Niobe's\ndaughters, thought Kate, in her dreamy, vague alarm. Then she looked at\nJosephine on the back seat, to see what she thought of it; but the brown\nsallow face in the little bonnet was quite still and like itself\u2014beyond\nKate's power to read.\n\nThe stillness, doubt, and suspense, were almost unbearable. She longed\nto speak, but had no courage, and could almost have screamed with desire\nto have it over, end as it would. Yet at last, when the carriage did\nturn into Bruton Street, fright and shame had so entirely the upper hand,\nthat she read the numbers on every door, wishing the carriage would only\nstand still at each, or go slower, that she might put off the moment of\nknowing whether she was found out.\n\nThey stopped; the few seconds of ringing, of opening the doors, of\ngetting out, were over. She knew how it would be, when, instead of going\nupstairs, her aunt opened the schoolroom door, beckoned her in, and said\ngravely, \"Lady Caergwent, while you are under my charge, it is my duty to\nmake you obey me. Tell me where you have been.\"\n\nThere was something in the sternness of that low lady-like voice, and of\nthat dark deep eye, that terrified Kate more than the brightest flash of\nlightning: and it was well for her that the habit of truth was too much\nfixed for falsehood or shuffling even to occur to her. She did not dare\nto do more than utter in a faint voice, scarcely audible \"To the bazaar.\"\n\n\"In direct defiance of my commands?\"\n\nBut the sound of her own confession, the relief of having told, gave Kate\nspirit to speak; \"I know it was naughty,\" she said, looking up; \"I ought\nnot. Aunt Barbara, I have been very naughty. I've been often where you\ndidn't know.\"\n\n\"Tell me the whole truth, Katharine;\" and Lady Barbara's look relaxed,\nand the infinite relief of putting an end to a miserable concealment was\nfelt by the little girl; so she told of the shops she had been at, and of\nher walks in frequented streets, adding that indeed she would not have\ngone, but that Josephine took her. \"I did like it,\" she added candidly;\n\"but I know I ought not.\"\n\n\"Yes, Katharine,\" said Lady Barbara, almost as sternly as ever; \"I had\nthought that with all your faults you were to be trusted.\"\n\n\"I have told you the truth!\" cried Kate.\n\n\"Now you may have; but you have been deceiving me all this time; you, who\nought to set an example of upright and honourable conduct.\"\n\n\"No, no, Aunt!\" exclaimed Kate, her eyes flashing. \"I never spoke one\nuntrue word to you; and I have not now\u2014nor ever. I never deceived.\"\n\n\"I do not say that you have _told_ untruths. It is deceiving to betray\nthe confidence placed in you.\"\n\nKate knew it was; yet she had never so felt that her aunt trusted her as\nto have the sense of being on honour; and she felt terribly wounded and\ngrieved, but not so touched as to make her cry or ask pardon. She knew\nshe had been audaciously disobedient; but it was hard to be accused of\nbetraying trust when she had never felt that it was placed in her; and\nyet the conviction of deceit took from her the last ground she had of\npeace with herself.\n\nDrooping and angry, she stood without a word; and her aunt presently\nsaid, \"I do not punish you. The consequences of your actions are\npunishment enough in themselves, and I hope they may warn you, or I\ncannot tell what is to become of you in your future life, and of all that\nwill depend on you. You must soon be under more strict and watchful care\nthan mine, and I hope the effect may be good. Meantime, I desire that\nyour Aunt Jane may be spared hearing of this affair, little as you seem\nto care for her peace of mind.\"\n\nAnd away went Lady Barbara; while Kate, flinging herself upon the sofa,\nsobbed out, \"I do care for Aunt Jane! I love Aunt Jane! I love her ten\nhundred times more than you! you horrid cross old Diana! But I have\ndeceived! Oh, I am getting to be a wicked little girl! I never did such\nthings at home. Nobody made me naughty there. But it's the fashionable\nworld. It is corrupting my simplicity. It always does. And I shall be\nlost! O Mary, Mary! O Papa, Papa! Oh, come and take me home!\" And for\na little while Kate gasped out these calls, as if she had really thought\nthey would break the spell, and bring her back to Oldburgh.\n\nShe ceased crying at last, and slowly crept upstairs, glad to meet no\none, and that not even Josephine was there to see her red eyes. Her\nmuslin frock was on the bed, and she managed to dress herself, and run\ndown again unseen; she stood over the fire, so that the housemaid, who\nbrought in her tea, should not see her face; and by the time she had to\ngo to the drawing-room, the mottling of her face had abated under the\ninfluence of a story-book, which always drove troubles away for the time.\n\nIt was a very quiet evening. Aunt Barbara read bits out of the\nnewspaper, and there was a little talk over them: and Kate read on in her\nbook, to hinder herself from feeling uncomfortable. Now and then Aunt\nJane said a few soft words about \"Giles and Emily;\" but her sister always\nled away from the subject, afraid of her exciting herself, and getting\nanxious.\n\nAnd if Kate had been observing, she would have heard in the weary sound\nof Aunt Barbara's voice, and seen in those heavy eyelids, that the\ntroubles of the day had brought on a severe headache, and that there was\nat least one person suffering more than even the young ill-used countess.\n\nAnd when bed-time came, she learnt more of the \"consequences of her\nactions.\" Stiff Mrs. Bartley stood there with her candle.\n\n\"Where is Josephine?\"\n\n\"She is gone away, my Lady.\"\n\nKate asked no more, but shivered and trembled all over. She recollected\nthat in telling the truth she had justified herself, and at Josephine's\nexpense. She knew Josephine would call it a blackness\u2014a treason. What\nwould become of the poor bright merry Frenchwoman? Should she never see\nher again? And all because she had not had the firmness to be obedient!\nOh, loss of trust! loss of confidence! disobedience! How wicked this\nplace made her! and would there be any end to it?\n\nAnd all night she was haunted through her dreams with the Lord\nChancellor, in his wig, trying to catch her, and stuff her into the\nwoolsack, and Uncle Wardour's voice always just out of reach. If she\ncould only get to him!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\n\nTHE young countess was not easily broken down. If she was ever so\nmiserable for one hour, she was ready to be amused the next; and though\nwhen left to herself she felt very desolate in the present, and much\nafraid of the future, the least enlivenment brightened her up again into\nmore than her usual spirits. Even an entertaining bit in the history\nthat she was reading would give her so much amusement that she would\nforget her disgrace in making remarks and asking questions, till Lady\nBarbara gravely bade her not waste time, and decided that she had no\nfeeling.\n\nIt was not more easy to find a maid than a governess to Lady Barbara's\nmind, nor did she exert herself much in the matter, for, as Kate heard\nher tell Mr. Mercer, she had decided that the present arrangement could\nnot last; and then something was asked about the Colonel and Mrs.\nUmfraville; to which the answer was, \"Oh no, quite impossible; she could\nnever be in a house with an invalid;\" and then ensued something about the\nChancellor and an establishment, which, as usual, terrified Kate's\nimagination.\n\nIndeed that night terrors were at their height, for Mrs. Bartley never\nallowed dawdling, and with a severely respectful silence made the\nundressing as brief an affair as possible, brushing her hair till her\nhead tingled all over, putting away the clothes with the utmost speed,\nand carrying off the candle as soon as she had uttered her grim\n\"Good-night, my Lady,\" leaving Kate to choose between her pet\nterrors\u2014either of the Lord Chancellor, or of the house on fire\u2014or a very\nfine new one, that someone would make away with her to make way for her\nUncle Giles and his son to come to her title. Somehow Lady Barbara had\ncontrived to make her exceedingly in awe of her Uncle Giles, the strict\nstern soldier who was always implicitly obeyed, and who would be so\nshocked at her. She wished she could hide somewhere when he was coming!\nBut there was one real good bright pleasure near, that would come before\nher misfortunes; and that was the birthday to be spent at the Wardours'.\nAs to the present, Josephine had had the album in her pocket, and had\nnever restored it, and Kate had begun to feel a distaste to the whole\nperformance, to recollect its faults, and to be ashamed of the entire\naffair; but that was no reason she should not be very happy with her\nfriends, who had promised to take her to the Zoological Gardens.\n\nShe had not seen them since her return to London; they were at Westbourne\nRoad, too far off for her to walk thither even if she had had anyone to\ngo with her, and though they had called, no one had seen them; but she\nhad had two or three notes, and had sent some \"story pictures\" by the\npost. And the thoughts of that day of freedom and enjoyment of talking\nto Alice, being petted by Mrs. Wardour and caressed by Sylvia, seemed to\nbear her through all the dull morning walks, in which she was not only\nattended by Bartley, but by the man-servant; all the lessons with her\naunt, and the still more dreary exercise which Lady Barbara took with her\nin some of the parks in the afternoon. She counted the days to the 21st\nwhenever she woke in the morning; and at last Saturday was come, and it\nwould be Monday.\n\n\"Katharine,\" said Lady Barbara at breakfast, \"you had better finish your\ndrawing to-day; here is a note from Madame to say it will suit her best\nto come on Monday instead of Tuesday.\"\n\n\"Oh! but, Aunt Barbara, I am going to Westbourne Road on Monday.\"\n\n\"Indeed! I was not aware of it.\"\n\n\"Oh, it is Sylvia's birthday! and I am going to the Zoological Gardens\nwith them.\"\n\n\"And pray how came you to make this engagement without consulting me?\"\n\n\"It was all settled at Bournemouth. I thought you knew! Did not Mrs.\nWardour ask your leave for me?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Wardour said something about hoping to see you in London, but I\nmade no decided answer. I should not have allowed the intimacy there if\nI had expected that the family would be living in London; and there is no\nreason that it should continue. Constant intercourse would not be at all\ndesirable.\"\n\n\"But may I not go on Monday?\" said Kate, her eyes opening wide with\nconsternation.\n\n\"No, certainly not. You have not deserved that I should trust you; I do\nnot know whom you might meet there: and I cannot have you going about\nwith any chance person.\"\n\n\"O Aunt Barbara! Aunt Barbara! I have promised!\"\n\n\"Your promise can be of no effect without my consent.\"\n\n\"But they will expect me. They will be so disappointed!\"\n\n\"I cannot help that. They ought to have applied to me for my consent.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Kate hopefully, \"Mrs. Wardour will write to-day. If she\ndoes, will you let me go?\"\n\n\"No, Katharine. While you are under my charge, I am accountable for you,\nand I will not send you into society I know nothing about. Let me hear\nno more of this, but write a note excusing yourself, and we will let the\ncoachman take it to the post.\"\n\nKate was thoroughly enraged, and forgot even her fears. \"I sha'n't\nexcuse myself,\" she said; \"I shall say you will not let me go.\"\n\n\"You will write a proper and gentlewoman-like note,\" said Lady Barbara\nquietly, \"so as not to give needless offence.\"\n\n\"I shall say,\" exclaimed Kate more loudly, \"that I can't go because you\nwon't let me go near old friends.\"\n\n\"Go into the schoolroom, and write a proper note, Katharine; I shall come\npresently, and see what you have said,\" repeated Lady Barbara, commanding\nher own temper with some difficulty.\n\nKate flung away into the schoolroom, muttering, and in a tumult of\nexceeding disappointment, anger, and despair, too furious even to cry,\nand dashing about the room, calling Aunt Barbara after every horrible\nheroine she could think of, and pitying herself and her friends, till the\nthought of Sylvia's disappointment stung her beyond all bearing. She was\nstill rushing hither and thither, inflaming her passion, when her aunt\nopened the door.\n\n\"Where is the note?\" she said quietly.\n\n\"I have not done it.\"\n\n\"Sit down then this instant, and write,\" said Lady Barbara, with her\nDiana face and cool way, the most terrible of all.\n\nKate sulkily obeyed, but as she seated herself, muttered, \"I shall say\nyou won't let me go near them.\"\n\n\"Write as I tell you.\u2014My dear Mrs. Wardour\u2014\"\n\n\"There.\"\n\n\"I fear you may be expecting to see me on Monday\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't fear; I know she is.\"\n\n\"Write\u2014I fear you may be expecting me on Monday, as something passed on\nthe subject at Bournemouth; and in order to prevent inconvenience, I\nwrite to say that it will not be in my power to call on that day, as my\naunt had made a previous engagement for me.\"\n\n\"I am sure I sha'n't say that!\" cried Kate, breaking out of all bounds in\nher indignation.\n\n\"Recollect yourself, Lady Caergwent,\" said Lady Barbara calmly.\n\n\"It is not true!\" cried Kate passionately, jumping up from her seat.\n\"You had not made an engagement for me! I won't write it! I won't write\nlies, and you sha'n't make me.\"\n\n\"I do not allow such words or such a manner in speaking to me,\" said Lady\nBarbara, not in the least above her usual low voice; and her calmness\nmade Kate the more furious, and jump and dance round with passion,\nrepeating, \"I'll never write lies, nor tell lies, for you or anyone; you\nmay kill me, but I won't!\"\n\n\"That is enough exposure of yourself, Lady Caergwent,\" said her aunt.\n\"When you have come to your senses, and choose to apologize for insulting\nme, and show me the letter written as I desire, you may come to me.\"\n\nAnd away walked Lady Barbara, as cool and unmoved apparently as if she\nhad been made of cast iron; though within she was as sorry, and hardly\nless angry, than the poor frantic child she left.\n\nKate did not fly about now. She was very indignant, but she was proud of\nherself too; she had spoken as if she had been in a book, and she\nbelieved herself persecuted for adhering to old friends, and refusing to\nadopt fashionable falsehoods, such as she had read of. She was a heroine\nin her own eyes, and that made her inclined to magnify all the\npersecution and cruelty. They wanted to shut her up from the friends of\nher childhood, to force her to be false and fashionable; they had made\nher naughtier and naughtier ever since she came there; they were teaching\nher to tell falsehoods now, and to give up the Wardours. She would never\nnever do it! Helpless girl as she was, she would be as brave as the\nknights and earls her ancestors, and stand up for the truth. But what\nwould they do at her! Oh! could she bear Aunt Barbara's dreadful set\nDiana face again, and not write as she was told!\n\nThe poor weak little heart shrank with terror as she only looked at Aunt\nBarbara's chair\u2014not much like the Sir Giles de Umfraville she had thought\nof just now. \"And I'm naughty now; I did betray my trust: I'm much\nnaughtier than I was. Oh, if Papa was but here!\" And then a light\ndarted into Kate's eye, and a smile came on her lip. \"Why should not I\ngo home? Papa would have me again; I know he would! He would die rather\nthan leave his child Kate to be made wicked, and forced to tell lies!\nPerhaps he'll hide me! Oh, if I could go to school with the children at\nhome in disguise, and let Uncle Giles be Earl of Caergwent if he likes!\nI've had enough of grandeur! I'll come as Cardinal Wolsey did, when he\nsaid he was come to lay his bones among them\u2014and Sylvia and Mary, and\nCharlie and Armyn\u2014oh, I must go where someone will be kind to me again!\nCan I really, though? Why not?\" and her heart beat violently. \"Yes,\nyes; nothing would happen to me; I know how to manage! If I can only get\nthere, they will hide me from Aunt Barbara and the Lord Chancellor; and\neven if I had to go back, I should have had one kiss of them all.\nPerhaps if I don't go now I shall never see them again!\"\n\nWith thoughts something like these, Kate, moving dreamily, as if she were\nnot sure that it was herself or not, opened her little writing-case, took\nout her purse, and counted the money. There was a sovereign and some\nsilver; more than enough, as she well knew. Then she took out of a\nchiffoniere her worked travelling bag, and threw in a few favourite\nbooks; then stood and gasped, and opened the door to peep out. The\ncoachman was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for orders, so she drew\nin her head, looked at her watch, and considered whether her room would\nbe clear of the housemaids. If she could once get safely out of the\nhouse she would not be missed till her dinner time, and perhaps then\nmight be supposed sullen, and left alone. She was in a state of great\nfright, starting violently at every sound; but the scheme having once\noccurred to her, it seemed as if St. James's Parsonage was pulling her\nharder and harder every minute; she wondered if there were really such\nthings as heart-strings; if there were, hers must be fastened very tight\nround Sylvia.\n\nAt last she ventured out, and flew up to her own room more swiftly than\never she had darted before! She moved about quietly, and perceived by\nthe sounds in the next room that Mrs. Bartley was dressing Aunt Jane, and\nAunt Barbara reading a letter to her. This was surely a good moment; but\nshe knew she must dress herself neatly, and not look scared, if she did\nnot mean to be suspected and stopped; and she managed to get quietly into\nher little shaggy coat, her black hat and feather and warm gloves\u2014even\nher boots were remembered\u2014and then whispering to herself, \"It can't be\nwrong to get away from being made to tell stories! I'm going to Papa!\"\nshe softly opened the door, went on tip-toe past Lady's Jane's door; then\nafter the first flight of stairs, rushed like the wind, unseen by anyone,\ngot the street door open, pulled it by its outside handle, and heard it\nshut!\n\nIt was done now! She was on the wide world\u2014in the street! She could not\nhave got in again without knocking, ringing, and making her attempt\nknown; and she was far more terrified at the thought of Lady Barbara's\nstern face and horror at her proceedings than even at the long journey\nalone.\n\nEvery step was a little bit nearer Sylvia, Mary, and Papa\u2014it made her\nheart bound in the midst of its frightened throbs\u2014every step was farther\naway from Aunt Barbara, and she could hardly help setting off in a run.\nIt was a foggy day, when it was not so easy to see far, but she longed to\nbe out of Bruton Street, where she might be known; yet when beyond the\nquiet familiar houses, the sense of being alone, left to herself, began\nto get very alarming, and she could hardly control herself to walk like a\nrational person to the cab-stand in Davies Street.\n\nNobody remarked her; she was a tall girl for her age, and in her sober\ndark dress, with her little bag, might be taken for a tradesman's\ndaughter going to school, even if anyone had been out who had time to\nlook at her. Trembling, she saw a cabman make a sign to her, and stood\nwaiting for him, jumped in as he opened his door, and felt as if she had\nfound a refuge for the time upon the dirty red plush cushions and the\nstraw. \"To the Waterloo Station,\" said she, with as much indifference\nand self-possession as she could manage. The man touched his hat, and\nrattled off: he perhaps wondering if this were a young runaway, and if he\nshould get anything by telling where she was gone; she working herself\ninto a terrible fright for fear he should be going to drive round and\nround London, get her into some horrible den of iniquity, and murder her\nfor the sake of her money, her watch, and her clothes. Did not cabmen\nalways do such things? She had quite decided how she would call a\npoliceman, and either die like an Umfraville or offer a ransom of \"untold\ngold,\" and had gone through all possible catastrophes long before she\nfound herself really safe at the railway station, and the man letting her\nout, and looking for his money.\n\nThe knowledge that all depended on herself, and that any signs of alarm\nwould bring on inquiry, made her able to speak and act so reasonably,\nthat she felt like one in a dream. With better fortune than she could\nhave hoped for, a train was going to start in a quarter of an hour; and\nthe station clerk was much too busy and too much hurried to remark how\nscared were her eyes, and how trembling her voice, as she asked at his\npigeon-hole for \"A first-class ticket to Oldburgh, if you please,\"\noffered the sovereign in payment, swept up the change, and crept out to\nthe platform.\n\nA carriage had \"Oldburgh\" marked on it; she tried to open the door, but\ncould not reach the handle; then fancied a stout porter who came up with\nhis key must be some messenger of the Lord Chancellor come to catch her,\nand was very much relieved when he only said, \"Where for, Miss?\" and on\nher answer, \"Oldburgh,\" opened the door for her, and held her bag while\nshe tripped up the steps. \"Any luggage, Miss?\" \"No, thank you.\" He\nshot one inquiring glance after her, but hastened away; and she settled\nherself in the very farthest corner of the carriage, and lived in an\nagony for the train to set off before her flight should be detected.\n\nOnce off, she did not care; she should be sure of at least seeing Sylvia,\nand telling her uncle her troubles. She had one great start, when the\ndoor was opened, and a gentleman peered in; but it was merely to see if\nthere was room, for she heard him say, \"Only a child,\" and in came a lady\nand two gentlemen, who at least filled up the window so that nobody could\nsee her, while they talked a great deal to someone on the platform. And\nthen after some bell-ringing, whistling, sailing backwards and forwards,\nand stopping, they were fairly off\u2014getting away from the roofs of\nLondon\u2014seeing the sky clear of smoke and fog\u2014getting nearer home every\nmoment; and Countess Kate relaxed her shy, frightened, drawn-up attitude,\ngave a long breath, felt that the deed was done, and began to dwell on\nthe delight with which she should be greeted at home, and think how to\nsurprise them all!\n\nThere was plenty of time for thinking and planning and dreaming, some few\npossible things, but a great many more most impossible ones. Perhaps the\nqueerest notion of all was her plan for being disguised like a\nschool-child all day, and always noticed for her distinguished appearance\nby ladies who came to see the school, or overheard talking French to\nSylvia; and then in the midst of her exceeding anxiety not to be\ndetected, she could not help looking at her travelling companions, and\nwondering if they guessed with what a grand personage they had the honour\nto be travelling! Only a child, indeed! What would they think if they\nknew? And the little goose held her pocket-handkerchief in her hand,\nfeeling as if it would be like a story if they happened to wonder at the\ncoronet embroidered in the corner; and when she took out a story-book,\nshe would have liked that the fly-leaf should just carelessly reveal the\nCaergwent written upon it. She did not know that selfishness had thrown\nout the branch of self-consequence.\n\nHowever, nothing came of it; they had a great deal too much to say to\neach other to notice the little figure in the corner; and she had time to\nread a good deal, settle a great many fine speeches, get into many a\nfright lest there should be an accident, and finally grow very impatient,\nalarmed, and agitated before the last station but one was passed, and she\nbegan to know the cut of the hedgerow-trees, and the shape of the\nhills\u2014to feel as if the cattle and sheep in the fields were old friends,\nand to feel herself at home.\n\nOldburgh Station! They were stopping at last, and she was on her feet,\npressing to the window between the strangers. One of the gentlemen\nkindly made signs to the porter to let her out, and asked if she had any\nbaggage, or anyone to meet her. She thanked him by a smile and shake of\nthe head; she could not speak for the beating of her heart; she felt\nalmost as much upon the world as when the door in Bruton Street had shut\nbehind her; and besides, a terrible wild fancy had seized her\u2014suppose,\njust suppose, they were all gone away, or ill, or someone dead! Perhaps\nshe felt it would serve her right, and that was the reason she was in\nsuch terror.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\n\nWHEN Kate had left the train, she was still two miles from St. James's;\nand it was half-past three o'clock, so that she began to feel that she\nhad run away without her dinner, and that the beatings of her heart made\nher knees ache, so that she had no strength to walk.\n\nShe thought her best measure would be to make her way to a pastry-cook's\nshop that looked straight down the street to the Grammar School, and\nwhere it was rather a habit of the family to meet Charlie when they had\ngone into the town on business, and wanted to walk out with him. He\nwould be out at four o'clock, and there would not be long to wait. So,\nfeeling shy, and even more guilty and frightened than on her first start,\nKate threaded the streets she knew so well, and almost gasping with\nnervous alarm, popped up the steps into the shop, and began instantly\neating a bun, and gazing along the street. She really could not speak\ntill she had swallowed a few mouthfuls; and then she looked up to the\nwoman, and took courage to ask if the boys were out of school yet.\n\n\"Oh, no, Miss; not for a quarter of an hour yet.\"\n\n\"Do you know if\u2014if Master Charles Wardour is there to-day?\" added Kate,\nwith a gulp.\n\n\"I don't, Miss.\" And the woman looked hard at her.\n\n\"Do you know if any of them\u2014any of them from St. James's, are in to-day?\"\n\n\"No, Miss; I have not seen any of them, but very likely they may be. I\nsaw Mr. Wardour go by yesterday morning.\"\n\nSo far they were all well, then; and Kate made her mind easier, and went\non eating like a hungry child till the great clock struck four; when she\nhastily paid for her cakes and tarts, put on her gloves, and stood on the\nstep, half in and half out of the shop, staring down the street. Out\ncame the boys in a rush, making straight for the shop, and brushing past\nKate; she, half alarmed, half affronted, descended from her post, still\nlooking intently. Half a dozen more big fellows, eagerly talking, almost\ntumbled over her, and looked as if she had no business there; she seemed\nto be quite swept off the pavement into the street, and to be helpless in\nthe midst of a mob, dashing around her. They might begin to tease her in\na minute; and more terrified than at any moment of her journey, she was\nalmost ready to cry, when the tones of a well-known voice came on her ear\nclose to her\u2014\"I say, Will, you come and see my new terrier;\" and before\nthe words were uttered, with a cry of, \"Charlie, Charlie!\" she was\nclinging to a stout boy who had been passing without looking at her.\n\n\"Let go, I say. Who are you?\" was the first rough greeting.\n\n\"O Charlie, Charlie!\" almost sobbing, and still grasping his arm tight.\n\n\"Oh, I say!\" and he stood with open mouth staring at her.\n\n\"O Charlie! take me home!\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; come along!\u2014Get off with you, fellows!\" he added\u2014turning round\nupon the other boys, who were beginning to stare\u2014and exclaimed, \"It's\nnothing but our Kate!\"\n\nOh! what a thrill there was in hearing those words; and the boys, who\nwere well-behaved and gentlemanly, were not inclined to molest her. So\nshe hurried on, holding Charles's arm for several steps, till they were\nout of the hubbub, when he turned again and stared, and again exclaimed,\n\"I say!\" all that he could at present utter; and Kate looked at his ruddy\nface and curly head, and dusty coat and inky collar, as if she would eat\nhim for very joy.\n\n\"I say!\" and this time he really did say, \"Where are the rest of them?\"\n\n\"At home, aren't they?\"\n\n\"What, didn't they bring you in?\"\n\n\"Oh no!\"\n\n\"Come, don't make a tomfoolery of it; that's enough. I shall have all\nthe fellows at me for your coming up in that way, you know. Why couldn't\nyou shake hands like anyone else?\"\n\n\"O Charlie, I couldn't help it! Please let us go home!\"\n\n\"Do you mean that you aren't come from there?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Kate, half ashamed, but far more exultant, and hanging down\nher head; \"I came from London\u2014I came by myself. My aunt wanted me to\ntell a story, and\u2014and I have run away. O Charlie! take me home!\" and\nwith a fresh access of alarm, she again threw her arms round him, as if\nto gain his protection from some enemy.\n\n\"Oh, I say!\" again he cried, looking up the empty street and down again,\npartly for the enemy, partly to avoid eyes; but he only beheld three\ndirty children and an old woman, so he did not throw her off roughly.\n\"Ran away!\" and he gave a great whistle.\n\n\"Yes, yes. My aunt shut me up because I would not tell a story,\" said\nKate, really believing it herself. \"Oh, let us get home, Charlie, do.\"\n\n\"Very well, if you won't throttle a man; and let me get Tony in here,\" he\nadded, going on a little way towards a small inn stable-yard.\n\n\"Oh, don't go,\" cried Kate, who, once more protected, could not bear to\nbe left alone a moment; but Charlie plunged into the yard, and came back\nnot only with the pony, but with a plaid, and presently managed to mount\nKate upon the saddle, throwing the plaid round her so as to hide the\nshort garments and long scarlet stockings, that were not adapted for\nriding, all with a boy's rough and tender care for the propriety of his\nsister's appearance.\n\n\"There, that will do,\" said he, holding the bridle. \"So you found it\npoor fun being My Lady, and all that.\"\n\n\"Oh! it was awful, Charlie! You little know, in your peaceful\nretirement, what are the miseries of the great.\"\n\n\"Come, Kate, don't talk bosh out of your books. What did they do to you?\nThey didn't lick you, did they?\"\n\n\"No, no; nonsense,\" said Kate, rather affronted; \"but they wanted to make\nme forget all that I cared for, and they really did shut me up because I\nsaid I would not write a falsehood to please them! They did, Charlie!\"\nand her eyes shone.\n\n\"Well, I always knew they must be a couple of horrid old owls,\" began\nCharlie.\n\n\"Oh! I didn't mean Aunt Jane,\" said Kate, feeling a little compunction.\n\"Ah!\" with a start and scream, \"who is coming?\" as she heard steps behind\nthem.\n\n\"You little donkey, you'll be off! Who should it be but Armyn?\"\n\nFor Armyn generally overtook his brother on a Saturday, and walked home\nwith him for the Sunday.\n\nCharles hailed him with a loud \"Hollo, Armyn! What d'ye think I've got\nhere?\"\n\n\"Kate! Why, how d'ye do! Why, they never told me you were coming to see\nus.\"\n\n\"They didn't know,\" whispered Kate.\n\n\"She's run away, like a jolly brick!\" said Charlie, patting the pony\nvehemently as he made this most inappropriate comparison.\n\n\"Run away! You don't mean it!\" cried Armyn, standing still and aghast,\nso much shocked that her elevation turned into shame; and Charles\nanswered for her\u2014\n\n\"Yes, to be sure she did, when they locked her up because she wouldn't\ntell lies to please them. How did you get out, Kittens? What jolly good\nfun it must have been!\"\n\n\"Is this so, Kate?\" said Armyn, laying his hand on the bridle; and his\ndispleasure roused her spirit of self-defence, and likewise a sense of\nill-usage.\n\n\"To be sure it is,\" she said, raising her head indignantly. \"I would not\nbe made to tell fashionable falsehoods; and so\u2014and so I came home, for\nPapa to protect me:\" and if she had not had to take care to steady\nherself on her saddle, she would have burst out sobbing with vexation at\nArmyn's manner.\n\n\"And no one knew you were coming?\" said he.\n\n\"No, of course not; I slipped out while they were all in confabulation in\nAunt Jane's room, and they were sure not to find me gone till dinner\ntime, and if they are very cross, not then.\"\n\n\"You go on, Charlie,\" said Armyn, restoring the bridle to his brother;\n\"I'll overtake you by the time you get home.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do?\" cried boy and girl with one voice.\n\n\"Well, I suppose it is fair to tell you,\" said Armyn. \"I must go and\ntelegraph what is become of you.\"\n\nThere was a howl and a shriek at this. They would come after her and\ntake her away, when she only wanted to be hid and kept safe; it was a\ncruel shame, and Charles was ready to fly at his brother and pommel him;\nindeed, Armyn had to hold him by one shoulder, and say in the voice that\nmeant that he would be minded, \"Steady, boy I\u2014I'm very sorry, my little\nKatie; it's a melancholy matter, but you must have left those poor old\nladies in a dreadful state of alarm about you, and they ought not to be\nkept in it!\"\n\n\"Oh! but Armyn, Armyn, do only get home, and see what Papa says.\"\n\n\"I am certain what he will say, and it would only be the trouble of\nsending someone in, and keeping the poor women in a fright all the\nlonger. Besides, depend on it, the way to have them sending down after\nyou would be to say nothing. Now, if they hear you are safe, you are\npretty secure of spending to-morrow at least with us. Let me go, Kate;\nit must be done. I cannot help it.\"\n\nEven while he spoke, the kind way of crossing her will was so like home,\nthat it gave a sort of happiness, and she felt she could not resist; so\nshe gave a sigh, and he turned back.\n\nHow much of the joy and hope of her journey had he not carried away with\nhim! His manner of treating her exploit made her even doubt how his\nfather might receive it; and yet the sight of old scenes, and the\npresence of Charlie, was such exceeding delight, that it seemed to kill\noff all unpleasant fears or anticipations; and all the way home it was\none happy chatter of inquiries for everyone, of bits of home news, and\nexclamations at the sight of some well-known tree, or the outline of a\nhouse remembered for some adventure; the darker the twilight the happier\nher tongue. The dull suburb, all little pert square red-brick houses,\nwith slated roofs and fine names, in the sloppiness of a grey November\nday, was dear to Kate; every little shop window with the light streaming\nout was like a friend; and she anxiously gazed into the rough parties out\nfor their Saturday purchases, intending to nod to anyone she might know,\nbut it was too dark for recognitions; and when at length they passed the\ndark outline of the church, she was silent, her heart again bouncing as\nif it would beat away her breath and senses. The windows were dark; it\nwas a sign that Evening Service was just over. The children turned in at\nthe gate, just as Armyn overtook them. He lifted Kate off her pony. She\ncould not have stood, but she could run, and she flew to the\ndrawing-room. No one was there; perhaps she was glad. She knew the\ncousins would be dressing for tea, and in another moment she had torn\nopen Sylvia's door.\n\nSylvia, who was brushing her hair, turned round. She stared\u2014as if she\nhad seen a ghost. Then the two children held out their arms, and rushed\ntogether with a wild scream that echoed through the house, and brought\nMary flying out of her room to see who was hurt! and to find, rolling on\nher sister's bed, a thing that seemed to have two bodies and two faces\nglued together, four legs, and all its arms and hands wound round and\nround.\n\n\"Sylvia! What is it? Who is it? What is she doing to you?\" began Mary;\nbut before the words were out of her mouth, the thing had flown at her\nneck, and pulled her down too; and the grasp and the clinging and the\nkisses told her long before she had room or eyes or voice to know the\ncreature by. A sort of sobbing out of each name between them was all\nthat was heard at first.\n\nAt last, just as Mary was beginning to say, \"My own own Katie! how did\nyou come\u2014\" Mr. Wardour's voice on the stairs called \"Mary!\"\n\n\"Have you seen him, my dear?\"\n\n\"No;\" but Kate was afraid now she had heard his voice, for it was grave.\n\n\"Mary!\" And Mary went. Kate sat up, holding Sylvia's hand.\n\nThey heard him ask, \"Is Kate there?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" And then there were lower voices that Kate could not hear, and\nwhich therefore alarmed her; and Sylvia, puzzled and frightened, sat\nholding her hand, listening silently.\n\nPresently Mr. Wardour came in; and his look was graver than his tone; but\nit was so pitying, that in a moment Kate flew to his breast, and as he\nheld her in his arms she cried, \"O Papa! Papa! I have found you again!\nyou will not turn me away.\"\n\n\"I must do whatever may be right, my dear child,\" said Mr. Wardour,\nholding her close, so that she felt his deep love, though it was not an\nundoubting welcome. \"I will hear all about it when you have rested, and\nthen I may know what is best to be done.\"\n\n\"Oh! keep me, keep me, Papa.\"\n\n\"You will be here to-morrow at least,\" he said, disengaging himself from\nher. \"This is a terrible proceeding of yours, Kate, but it is no time\nfor talking of it; and as your aunts know where you are, nothing more can\nbe done at present; so we will wait to understand it till you are rested\nand composed.\"\n\nHe went away; and Kate remained sobered and confused, and Mary stood\nlooking at her, sad and perplexed.\n\n\"O Kate! Kate!\" she said, \"what have you been doing?\"\n\n\"What is the matter? Are not you glad?\" cried Sylvia; and the squeeze of\nher hand restored Kate's spirits so much that she broke forth with her\nstory, told in her own way, of persecution and escape, as she had wrought\nherself up to believe in it; and Sylvia clung to her, with flushed cheeks\nand ardent eyes, resenting every injury that her darling detailed,\ntriumphing in her resistance, and undoubting that here she would be\nreceived and sheltered from all; while Mary, distressed and grieved, and\ncautioned by her father to take care not to show sympathy that might be\nmischievous, was carried along in spite of herself to admire and pity her\nchild, and burn with indignation at such ill-treatment, almost in despair\nat the idea that the child must be sent back again, yet still not\ndiscarding that trust common to all Mr. Wardour's children, that \"Papa\nwould do _anything_ to hinder a temptation.\"\n\nAnd so, with eager words and tender hands, Kate was made ready for the\nevening meal, and went down, clinging on one side to Mary, on the other\nto Sylvia\u2014a matter of no small difficulty on the narrow staircase, and\nalmost leading to a general avalanche of young ladies, all upon the head\nof little Lily, who was running up to greet and be greeted, and was\nalmost devoured by Kate when at length they did get safe downstairs.\n\nIt was a somewhat quiet, grave meal; Mr. Wardour looked so sad and\nserious, that all felt that it would not do to indulge in joyous chatter,\nand the little girls especially were awed; though through all there was a\ntender kindness in his voice and look, whenever he did but offer a slice\nof bread to his little guest, such as made her feel what was home and\nwhat was love\u2014\"like a shower of rain after a parched desert\" as she said\nto herself; and she squeezed Sylvia's hand under the table whenever she\ncould.\n\nMr. Wardour spoke to her very little. He said he had seen Colonel\nUmfraville's name in the _Gazette_, and asked about his coming home; and\nwhen she had answered that the time and speed of the journey were to\ndepend on Giles's health, he turned from her to Armyn, and began talking\nto him about some public matters that seemed very dull to Kate; and one\nlittle foolish voice within her said, \"He is not like Mrs. George\nWardour, he forgets what I am;\" but there was a wiser, more loving voice\nto answer, \"Dear Papa, he thinks of me as myself; he is no respecter of\npersons. Oh, I hope he is not angry with me!\"\n\nWhen tea was over Mr. Wardour stood up, and said, \"I shall wish you\nchildren good-night now; I have to read with John Bailey for his\nConfirmation, and to prepare for to-morrow;\u2014and you, Kate, must go to bed\nearly.\u2014Mary, she had better sleep with you.\"\n\nThis was rather a blank, for sleeping with Sylvia again had been Kate's\ndream of felicity; yet this was almost lost in the sweetness of once more\ncoming in turn for the precious kiss and good-night, in the midst of\nwhich she faltered, \"O Papa, don't be angry with me!\"\n\n\"I am not angry, Katie,\" he said gently; \"I am very sorry. You have done\na thing that nothing can justify, and that may do you much future harm;\nand I cannot receive you as if you had come properly. I do not know what\nexcuse there was for you, and I cannot attend to you to-night; indeed, I\ndo not think you could tell me rightly; but another time we will talk it\nall over, and I will try to help you. Now good-night, my dear child.\"\n\nThose words of his, \"I will try to help you,\" were to Kate like a promise\nof certain rescue from all her troubles; and, elastic ball that her\nnature was, no sooner was his anxious face out of sight, and she secure\nthat he was not angry, than up bounded her spirits again. She began\nwondering why Papa thought she could not tell him properly, and forthwith\nbegan to give what she intended for a full and particular history of all\nthat she had gone through.\n\nIt was a happy party round the fire; Kate and Sylvia both together in the\nlarge arm-chair, and Lily upon one of its arms; Charles in various odd\nattitudes before the fire; Armyn at the table with his book, half\nreading, half listening; Mary with her work; and Kate pouring out her\nstory, making herself her own heroine, and describing her adventures, her\nway of life, and all her varieties of miseries, in the most glowing\ncolours. How she did rattle on! It would be a great deal too much to\ntell; indeed it would be longer than this whole story!\n\nSylvia and Charlie took it all in, pitied, wondered, and were indignant,\nwith all their hearts; indeed Charlie was once heard to wish he could\nonly get that horrid old witch near the horse-pond; and when Kate talked\nof her Diana face, he declared that he should get the old brute of a cat\ninto the field, and set all the boys to stone her.\n\nLittle Lily listened, not sure whether it was not all what she called \"a\nmade-up story only for prettiness;\" and Mary, sitting over her work, was\npuzzled, and saw that her father was right in saying that Kate could not\nat present give an accurate account of herself. Mary knew her\ntruthfulness, and that she would not have said what she knew to be\ninvention; but those black eyes, glowing like little hot coals, and those\nburning cheeks, as well as the loud, squeaky key of the voice, all showed\nthat she had worked herself up into a state of excitement, such as not to\nknow what was invented by an exaggerating memory. Besides, it could not\nbe all true; it did not agree; the ill-treatment was not consistent with\nthe grandeur. For Kate had taken to talking very big, as if she was an\nimmensely important personage, receiving much respect wherever she went;\nand though Armyn once or twice tried putting in a sober matter-of-fact\nquestion for the fun of disconcerting her, she was too mad to care or\nunderstand what he said.\n\n\"Oh no! she never was allowed to do anything for herself. That was quite\na rule, and very tiresome it was.\"\n\n\"Like the King of Spain, you can't move your chair away from the fire\nwithout the proper attendant.\"\n\n\"I never do put on coals or wood there!\"\n\n\"There may be several reasons for that,\" said Armyn, recollecting how\nnearly Kate had once burnt the house down.\n\n\"Oh, I assure you it would not do for me,\" said Kate. \"If it were not so\ninconvenient in that little house, I should have my own man-servant to\nattend to my fire, and walk out behind me. Indeed, now Perkins always\ndoes walk behind me, and it is such a bore.\"\n\nAnd what was the consequence of all this wild chatter? When Mary had\nseen the hot-faced eager child into bed, she came down to her brother in\nthe drawing-room with her eyes brimful of tears, saying, \"Poor dear\nchild! I am afraid she is very much spoilt!\"\n\n\"Don't make up your mind to-night,\" said Armyn. \"She is slightly insane\nas yet! Never mind, Mary; her heart is in the right place, if her head\nis turned a little.\"\n\n\"It is very much turned indeed,\" said Mary. \"How wise it was of Papa not\nto let Sylvia sleep with her! What will he do with her? Oh dear!\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\n\nTHE Sunday at Oldburgh was not spent as Kate would have had it. It\ndawned upon her in the midst of horrid dreams, ending by wakening to an\noverpowering sick headache, the consequence of the agitations and alarms\nof the previous day, and the long fast, appeased by the contents of the\npastry-cook's shop, with the journey and the excitement of the\nmeeting\u2014altogether quite sufficient to produce such a miserable feeling\nof indisposition, that if Kate could have thought at all of anything but\npresent wretchedness, she would have feared that she was really carrying\nout the likeness to Cardinal Wolsey by laying her bones among them.\n\nThat it was not quite so bad as that, might be inferred from her having\nno doctor but Mary Wardour, who attended to her most assiduously from her\nfirst moans at four o'clock in the morning, till her dropping off to\nsleep about noon; when the valiant Mary, in the absence of everyone at\nchurch, took upon herself to pen a note, to catch the early Sunday post,\non her own responsibility, to Lady Barbara Umfraville, to say that her\nlittle cousin was so unwell that it would be impossible to carry out the\npromise of bringing her home on Monday, which Mr. Wardour had written on\nSaturday night.\n\nSleep considerably repaired her little ladyship; and when she had\nawakened, and supped up a bason of beef-tea, toast and all, with\nconsiderable appetite, she was so much herself again, that there was no\nreason that anyone should be kept at home to attend to her. Mary's\nabsence was extremely inconvenient, as she was organist and leader of the\nchoir.\n\n\"So, Katie dear,\" she said, when she saw her patient on her legs again,\nmaking friends with the last new kitten of the old cat, \"you will not\nmind being left alone, will you? It is only for the Litany and\ncatechising, you know.\"\n\nKate looked blank, and longed to ask that Sylvia might stay with her, but\ndid not venture; knowing that she was not ill enough for it to be a\nnecessity, and that no one in that house was ever kept from church,\nexcept for some real and sufficient cause.\n\nBut the silly thoughts that passed through the little head in the hour of\nsolitude would fill two or three volumes. In the first place, she was\naffronted. They made very little of her, considering who she was, and\nhow she had come to see them at all risks, and how ill she had been!\nThey would hardly have treated a little village child so negligently as\ntheir visitor, the Countess\u2014\n\nThen her heart smote her. She remembered Mary's tender and assiduous\nnursing all the morning, and how she had already stayed from service and\nSunday school; and she recollected her honour for her friends for not\nvaluing her for her rank; and in that mood she looked out the Psalms and\nLessons, which she had not been able to read in the morning, and when she\nhad finished them, began to examine the book-case in search of a new, or\nelse a very dear old, Sunday book.\n\nBut then something went \"crack,\"\u2014or else it was Kate's fancy\u2014for she\nstarted as if it had been a cannon-ball; and though she sat with her book\nin her lap by the fire in Mary's room, all the dear old furniture and\npictures round her, her head was weaving an unheard-of imagination, about\nrobbers coming in rifling everything\u2014coming up the stairs\u2014creak, creak,\nwas that their step?\u2014she held her breath, and her eyes dilated\u2014seizing\nher for the sake of her watch! What article there would be in the\npaper\u2014\"Melancholy disappearance of the youthful Countess of Caergwent.\"\nThen Aunt Barbara would be sorry she had treated her so cruelly; then\nMary would know she ought not to have abandoned the child who had thrown\nherself on her protection.\n\nThat was the way Lady Caergwent spent her hour. She had been kidnapped\nand murdered a good many times before; there was a buzz in the street,\nher senses came back, and she sprang out on the stairs to meet her\ncousins, calling herself quite well again. And then they had a very\npeaceful, pleasant time; she was one of them again, when, as of old, Mr.\nWardour came into the drawing-room, and she stood up with Charles,\nSylvia, and little Lily, who was now old enough for the Catechism, and\nthen the Collect, and a hymn. Yes, she had Collect and hymn ready too,\nand some of the Gospel; Aunt Barbara always heard her say them on Sunday,\nbesides some very difficult questions, not at all like what Mr. Wardour\nasked out of his own head.\n\nKate was a little afraid he would make his teaching turn on submitting to\nrulers; it was an Epistle that would have given him a good opportunity,\nfor it was the Fourth Epiphany Sunday, brought in at the end of the\nSundays after Trinity. If he made his teaching personal, something\nwithin her wondered if she could bear it, and was ready to turn angry and\ndefiant. But no such thing; what he talked to them about was the gentle\nPresence that hushed the waves and winds in outward nature, and calmed\nthe wild spiritual torments of the possessed; and how all fears and\nterrors, all foolish fancies and passionate tempers, will be softened\ninto peace when the thought of Him rises in the heart.\n\nKate wondered if she should be able to think of that next time she was\ngoing to work herself into an agony.\n\nBut at present all was like a precious dream, to be enjoyed as slowly as\nthe moments could be persuaded to pass. Out came the dear old Dutch\nBible History, with pictures of everything\u2014pictures that they had looked\nat every Sunday since they could walk, and could have described with\ntheir eyes shut; and now Kate was to feast her eyes once again upon them,\nand hear how many little Lily knew; and a pretty sight it was, that tiny\nchild, with her fat hands clasped behind her so as not to be tempted to\nput a finger on the print, going so happily and thoroughly through all\nthe creatures that came to Adam to be named, and showing the whole\nprocession into the Ark, and, her favourite of all, the Angels coming\ndown to Jacob.\n\nThen came tea; and then Kate was pronounced, to her great delight, well\nenough for Evening Service. The Evening Service she always thought a\ntreat, with the lighted church, and the choicest singing\u2014the only singing\nthat had ever taken hold of Kate's tuneless ear, and that seemed to come\nhome to her. At least, to-night it came home as it had never done\nbefore; it seemed to touch some tender spot in her heart, and when she\nthought how dear it was, and how little she had cared about it, and how\nglad she had been to go away, she found the candles dancing in a green\nmist, and great drops came down upon the Prayer-book in her hand.\n\nThen it could not be true that she had no feeling. She was crying\u2014the\nfirst time she had ever known herself cry except for pain or at reproof;\nand she was really so far pleased, that she made no attempt to stop the\ngreat tears that came trickling down at each familiar note, at each\nthought how long it had been since she had heard them. She cried all\nchurch time; for whenever she tried to attend to the prayers, the very\nsound of the voice she loved so well set her off again; and Sylvia,\ntenderly laying a hand on her by way of sympathy, made her weep the more,\nthough still so softly and gently that it was like a strange sort of\nhappiness\u2014almost better than joy and merriment. And then the sermon\u2014upon\nthe text, \"Peace, be still,\"\u2014was on the same thought on which her uncle\nhad talked to the children: not that she followed it much; the very words\n\"peace\" and \"be still,\" seemed to be enough to touch, soften, and\ndissolve her into those sweet comfortable tears.\n\nPerhaps they partly came from the weakening of the morning's\nindisposition; at any rate, when she moved, after the Blessing, holding\nthe pitying Sylvia's hand, she found that she was very much tired, her\neyelids were swollen and aching, and in fact she was fit for nothing but\nbed, where Mary and Sylvia laid her; and she slept, and slept in\ndreamless soundness, till she was waked by Mary's getting up in the\nmorning, and found herself perfectly well.\n\n\"And now, Sylvia,\" she said, as they went downstairs hand-in-hand, \"let\nus put it all out of our heads, and try and think all day that it is just\none of our old times, and that I am your old Kate. Let me do my lessons\nand go into school, and have some fun, and quite forget all that is\nhorrid.\"\n\nBut there was something to come before this happy return to old times.\nAs soon as breakfast was over Mr Wardour said, \"Now, Kate, I want you.\"\nAnd then she knew what was coming; and somehow, she did not feel exactly\nthe same about her exploit and its causes by broad daylight, now that she\nwas cool. Perhaps she would have been glad to hang back; yet on the\nwhole, she had a great deal to say to \"Papa,\" and it was a relief, though\nrather terrific, to find herself alone with him in the study.\n\n\"Now, Kate,\" said he again, with his arm round her, as she stood by him,\n\"will you tell me what led you to this very sad and strange proceeding?\"\n\nKate hung her head, and ran her fingers along the mouldings of his chair.\n\n\"Why was it, my dear?\" asked Mr. Wardour.\n\n\"It was\u2014\" and she grew bolder at the sound of her own voice, and more\nconfident in the goodness of her cause\u2014\"it was because Aunt Barbara said\nI must write what was not true, and\u2014and I'll never tell a\nfalsehood\u2014never, for no one!\" and her eyes flashed.\n\n\"Gently, Kate,\" he said, laying his hand upon hers; \"I don't want to know\nwhat you never _will_ do, only what you have done. What was this\nfalsehood?\"\n\n\"Why, Papa, the other Sylvia\u2014Sylvia Joanna, you know\u2014has her birthday\nto-day, and we settled at Bournemouth that I should spend the day with\nher; and on Saturday, when Aunt Barbara heard of it, she said she did not\nwant me to be intimate there, and that I must not go, and told me to\nwrite a note to say she had made a previous engagement for me.\"\n\n\"And do you know that she had not done so?\"\n\n\"O Papa! she could not; for when I said I would not write a lie, she\nnever said it was true.\"\n\n\"Was that what you said to your aunt?\"\n\n\"Yes,\"\u2014and Kate hung her head\u2014\"I was in a passion.\"\n\n\"Then, Kate, I do not wonder that Lady Barbara insisted on obedience,\ninstead of condescending to argue with a child who could be so insolent.\"\n\n\"But, Papa,\" said Kate, abashed for a moment, then getting eager, \"she\ndoes tell fashionable falsehoods; she says she is not at home when she\nis, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Stay, Kate; it is not for you to judge of grown people's doings.\nNeither I nor Mary would like to use that form of denying ourselves; but\nit is usually understood to mean only not ready to receive visitors. In\nthe same way, this previous engagement was evidently meant to make the\nrefusal less discourteous, and you were not even certain it did not\nexist.\"\n\n\"My Italian mistress did want to come on Monday,\" faltered Kate, \"but it\nwas not 'previous.'\"\n\n\"Then, Kate, who was it that went beside the mark in letting us believe\nthat Lady Barbara locked you up to make you tell falsehoods?\"\n\n\"Indeed, Papa, I did not say locked\u2014Charlie and Sylvia said that.\"\n\n\"But did you correct them?\"\n\n\"O Papa, I did not mean it! But I am naughty now! I always am naughty,\nso much worse than I used to be at home. Indeed I am, and I never do get\ninto a good vein now. O Papa, Papa, can't you get me out of it all? If\nyou could only take me home again! I don't think my aunts want to keep\nme\u2014they say I am so bad and horrid, and that I make Aunt Jane ill. Oh,\ntake me back, Papa!\"\n\nHe did take her on his knee, and held her close to him. \"I wish I could,\nmy dear,\" he said; \"I should like to have you again! but it cannot be.\nIt is a different state of life that has been appointed for you; and you\nwould not be allowed to make your home with me, with no older a person\nthan Mary to manage for you. If your aunt had not been taken from us,\nthen\u2014\" and Kate ventured to put her arm round his neck\u2014\"then this would\nhave been your natural home; but as things are with us, I could not make\nmy house such as would suit the requirements of those who arrange for\nyou. And, my poor child, I fear we let the very faults spring up that\nare your sorrow now.\"\n\n\"Oh no, no, Papa, you helped me! Aunt Barbara only makes me\u2014oh! may I\nsay?\u2014hate her! for indeed there is no helping it! I can't be good\nthere.\"\n\n\"What is it? What do you mean, my dear? What is your difficulty? And I\nwill try to help you.\"\n\nPoor Kate found it not at all easy to explain when she came to\nparticulars. \"Always cross,\" was the clearest idea in her mind; \"never\npleased with her, never liking anything she did\u2014not punishing, but much\nworse.\" She had not made out her case, she knew; but she could only\nmurmur again, \"It all went wrong, and I was very unhappy.\"\n\nMr. Wardour sighed from the bottom of his heart; he was very sorrowful,\ntoo, for the child that was as his own. And then he went back and\nthought of his early college friend, and of his own wife who had so\nfondled the little orphan\u2014all that was left of her sister. It was\ngrievous to him to put that child away from him when she came clinging to\nhim, and saying she was unhappy, and led into faults.\n\n\"It will be better when your uncle comes home,\" he began.\n\n\"Oh no, Papa, indeed it will not. Uncle Giles is more stern than Aunt\nBarbara. Aunt Jane says it used to make her quite unhappy to see how\nsharp he was with poor Giles and Frank.\"\n\n\"I never saw him in his own family,\" said Mr. Wardour thoughtfully; \"but\nthis I know, Kate, that your father looked up to him, young as he then\nwas, more than to anyone; that he was the only person among them all who\never concerned himself about you or your mother; and that on the two\noccasions when I saw him, I thought him very like your father.\"\n\n\"I had rather he was like you, Papa,\" sighed Kate. \"Oh, if I was but\nyour child!\" she added, led on by a little involuntary pressure of his\nencircling arm.\n\n\"Don't let us talk of what is not, but of what is,\" said Mr. Wardour;\n\"let us try to look on things in their right light. It has been the will\nof Heaven to call you, my little girl, to a station where you will, if\nyou live, have many people's welfare depending on you, and your example\nwill be of weight with many. You must go through training for it, and\nstrict training may be the best for you. Indeed, it must be the best, or\nit would not have been permitted to befall you.\"\n\n\"But it does not make me good, it makes me naughty.\"\n\n\"No, Kate; nothing, nobody can make you naughty; nothing is strong enough\nto do that.\"\n\nKate knew what he meant, and hung her head.\n\n\"My dear, I do believe that you feel forlorn and dreary, and miss the\naffection you have had among us; but have you ever thought of the Friend\nwho is closest of all to us, and who is especially kind to a fatherless\nchild?\"\n\n\"I can't\u2014I can't feel it\u2014Papa, I can't. And then, why was it made so\nthat I must go away from you and all?\"\n\n\"You will see some day, though you cannot see now, my dear. If you use\nit rightly, you will feel the benefit. Meantime, you must take it on\ntrust, just as you do my love for you, though I am going to carry you\nback.\"\n\n\"Yes; but I can feel you loving me.\"\n\n\"My dear child, it only depends on yourself to feel your Heavenly Father\nloving you. If you will set yourself to pray with your heart, and think\nof His goodness to you, and ask Him for help and solace in all your\npresent vexatious and difficulties, never mind how small, you _will_\nbecome conscious of his tender pity and love to you.\"\n\n\"Ah! but I am not good!\"\n\n\"But He can make you so, Kate. Your have been wearied by religious\nteaching hitherto, have you not?\"\n\n\"Except when it was pretty and like poetry,\" whispered Kate.\n\n\"Put your heart to your prayers now, Kate. Look in the Psalms for verses\nto suit your loneliness; recollect that you meet us in spirit when you\nuse the same Prayers, read the same Lessons, and think of each other.\nOr, better still, carry your troubles to Him; and when you _have_ felt\nHis help, you will know what that is far better than I can tell you.\"\n\nKate only answered with a long breath; not feeling as if she could\nunderstand such comfort, but with a resolve to try.\n\n\"And now,\" said Mr. Wardour, \"I must take you home to-morrow, and I will\nspeak for you to Lady Barbara, and try to obtain her forgiveness; but,\nKate, I do not think you quite understand what a shocking proceeding this\nwas of yours.\"\n\n\"I know it was wrong to fancy _that_, and say _that_ about Aunt Barbara.\nI'll tell her so,\" said Kate, with a trembling voice.\n\n\"Yes, that will be right; but it was this\u2014this expedition that I meant.\"\n\n\"It was coming to you, Papa!\"\n\n\"Yes, Kate; but did you think what an outrageous act it was? There is\nsomething particularly grievous in a little girl, or a woman of any age,\ncasting off restraint, and setting out in the world unprotected and\ncontrary to authority. Do you know, it frightened me so much, that till\nI saw more of you I did not like you to be left alone with Sylvia.\"\n\nThe deep red colour flushed all over Kate's face and neck in her angry\nshame and confusion, burning darker and more crimson, so that Mr. Wardour\nwas very sorry for her, and added, \"I am obliged to say this, because you\nought to know that it is both very wrong in itself, and will be regarded\nby other people as more terrible than what you are repenting of more.\nSo, if you do find yourself distrusted and in disgrace, you must not\nthink it unjust and cruel, but try to submit patiently, and learn not to\nbe reckless and imprudent. My poor child, I wish you could have so come\nto us that we might have been happier together. Perhaps you will some\nday; and in the meantime, if you have any troubles, or want to know\nanything, you may always write to me.\"\n\n\"Writing is not speaking,\" said Kate ruefully.\n\n\"No; but it comes nearer to it as people get older. Now go, my dear; I\nam busy, and you had better make the most of your time with your\ncousins.\"\n\nKate's heart was unburthened now; and though there was much alarm, pain,\nand grief, in anticipation, yet she felt more comfortable in herself than\nshe had done for months. \"Papa\" had never been so tender with her, and\nshe knew that he had forgiven her. She stept back to the drawing-room,\nvery gentle and subdued, and tried to carry out her plans of living one\nof her old days, by beginning with sharing the lessons as usual, and then\ngoing out with her cousins to visit the school, and see some of the\nparishioners. It was very nice and pleasant; she was as quiet and loving\nas possible, and threw herself into all the dear old home matters. It\nwas as if for a little while Katharine was driven out of Katharine, and a\nvery sweet little maiden left instead\u2014thinking about other things and\npeople instead of herself, and full of affection and warmth. The\nimprovement that the half year's discipline had made in her bearing and\nmanners was visible now; her uncouth abrupt ways were softened, though\nstill she felt that the naturally gentle and graceful Sylvia would have\nmade a better countess than she did.\n\nThey spent the evening in little tastes of all their favourite\ndrawing-room games, just for the sake of having tried them once more; and\nPapa himself came in and took a share\u2014a very rare treat;\u2014and he always\nthought of such admirable things in \"Twenty questions,\" and made \"What's\nmy thought like?\" more full of fun than anyone.\n\nIt was a very happy evening\u2014one of the most happy that Kate had ever\npassed. She knew _how_ to enjoy her friends now, and how precious they\nwere to her; and she was just so much tamed by the morning's\nconversation, and by the dread of the future, as not to be betrayed into\ndangerously high spirits. That loving, pitying way of Mary's, and her\nown Sylvia's exceeding pleasure in having her, were delightful; and all\nthrough she felt the difference between the real genuine love that she\ncould rest on, and the mere habit of fondling of the other Sylvia.\n\n\"O Sylvia,\" she said, as they walked upstairs, hand in hand, pausing on\nevery stop to make it longer, \"how could I be so glad to go away before?\"\n\n\"We didn't know,\" said Sylvia.\n\n\"No,\" as they crept up another step; \"Sylvia, will you always think of me\njust here on this step, as you go up to bed?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Sylvia, \"that I will. And, Katie, would it be wrong just to\nwhisper a little prayer then that you might be good and happy?\"\n\n\"It couldn't be wrong, Sylvia; only couldn't you just ask, too, for me to\ncome home?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Sylvia thoughtfully, pausing a long time on the\nstep. \"You see we know it is sure to be God's will that you should be\ngood and happy; but if it was not for you to come home, we might be like\nBalaam, you know, if we asked it too much, and it might come about in\nsome terrible way.\"\n\n\"I didn't think of that,\" said Kate. And the two little girls parted\ngravely and peacefully; Kate somehow feeling as if, though grievous\nthings were before her, the good little kind Sylvia's hearty prayers must\nobtain some good for her.\n\nThere is no use in telling how sad the parting was when Mr. Wardour and\nthe little Countess set out for London again. Mary had begged hard to go\ntoo, thinking that she could plead for Kate better than anyone else; but\nMr. Wardour thought Lady Barbara more likely to be angered than softened\nby their clinging to their former charge; and besides, it was too great\nan expense.\n\nHe had no doubt of Lady Barbara's displeasure from the tone of the note\nthat morning received, coldly thanking him and Miss Wardour for their\nintelligence, and his promise to restore Lady Caergwent on Tuesday. She\nwas sorry to trouble him to bring the child back; she would have come\nherself, but that her sister was exceedingly unwell, from the alarm\ncoming at a time of great family affliction. If Lady Caergwent were not\nable to return on Tuesday, she would send down her own maid to bring her\nhome on Wednesday. The letter was civility itself; but it was plain that\nLady Barbara thought Kate's illness no better than the \"previous\nengagement,\" in the note that never was written.\n\nWhat was the family affliction? Kate could not guess, but was inclined\nto imagine privately that Aunt Barbara was magnifying Uncle Giles's\nreturn without being a General into a family affliction, on purpose to\naggravate her offence. However, in the train, Mr. Wardour, who had been\nlooking at the Supplement of the _Times_, lent to him by a\nfellow-traveller, touched her, and made her read\u2014\n\n\"On the 11th, at Alexandria, in his 23rd year, Lieutenant Giles de la\nPoer Umfraville, of the 109th regiment; eldest, and last survivor of the\nchildren of the Honourable Giles Umfraville, late Lieutenant-Colonel of\nthe 109th regiment.\"\n\nKate knew she ought to be very sorry, and greatly pity the bereaved\nfather and mother; but, somehow, she could not help dwelling most upon\nthe certainty that everyone would be much more hard upon her, and cast up\nthis trouble to her, as if she had known of it, and run away on purpose\nto make it worse. It must have been this that they were talking about in\nAunt Jane's room, and this must have made them so slow to detect her\nflight.\n\nIn due time the train arrived, a cab was taken, and Kate, beginning to\ntremble with fright, sat by Mr. Wardour, and held his coat as if clinging\nto him as long as she could was a comfort. Sometimes she wished the cab\nwould go faster, so that it might be over; sometimes\u2014especially when the\nstreets became only too well known to her\u2014she wished that they would\nstretch out and out for ever, that she might still be sitting by Papa,\nholding his coat. It seemed as if that would be happiness enough for\nlife!\n\nHere was Bruton Street; here the door that on Saturday had shut behind\nher! It was only too soon open, and Kate kept her eyes on the ground,\nashamed that even the butler should see her. She hung back, waiting till\nMr. Wardour had paid the cabman; but there was no spinning it out, she\nhad to walk upstairs, her only comfort being that her hand was in his.\n\nNo one was in the drawing-room; but before long Lady Barbara came in.\nKate durst not look up at her, but was sure, from the tone of her voice,\nthat she must have her very sternest face; and there was something to\nmake one shiver in the rustle of her silk dress as she curtsied to Mr.\nWardour.\n\n\"I have brought home my little niece,\" he said, drawing Kate forward;\n\"and I think I may truly say, that she is very sorry for what has\npassed.\"\n\nThere was a pause; Kate knew the terrible black eyes were upon her, but\nshe felt, besides, the longing to speak out the truth, and a sense that\nwith Papa by her side she had courage to do so.\n\n\"I am sorry, Aunt Barbara,\" she said; \"I was very self-willed; I ought\nnot to have fancied things, nor said you used me ill, and wanted me to\ntell stories.\"\n\nKate's heart was lighter; though it beat so terribly as she said those\nwords. She knew that they pleased _one_ of the two who were present, and\nshe knew they were right.\n\n\"It is well you should be so far sensible of your misconduct,\" said Lady\nBarbara; but her voice was as dry and hard as ever, and Mr. Wardour\nadded, \"She is sincerely sorry; it is from her voluntary confession that\nI know how much trouble she has given you; and I think, if you will\nkindly forgive her, that you will find her less self-willed in future.\"\n\nAnd he shoved Kate a little forward, squeezing her hand, and trying to\nwithdraw his own. She perceived that he meant that she ought to ask\npardon; and though it went against her more than her first speech had\ndone, she contrived to say, \"I do beg pardon, Aunt Barbara; I will try to\ndo better.\"\n\n\"My pardon is one thing, Katharine,\" said Lady Barbara. \"If your sorrow\nis real, of course I forgive you;\" and she took Kate's right-hand\u2014the\nleft was still holding by the fingers' ends to Mr. Wardour. \"But the\nconsequences of such behaviour are another consideration. My personal\npardon cannot, and ought not, to avert them\u2014as I am sure you must\nperceive, Mr. Wardour,\" she added, as the frightened child retreated upon\nhim. Those consequences of Aunt Barbara's were fearful things! Mr.\nWardour said something, to which Kate scarcely attended in her alarm, and\nher aunt went on\u2014\n\n\"For Lady Caergwent's own sake, I shall endeavour to keep this most\nunfortunate step as much a secret as possible. I believe that scarcely\nanyone beyond this house is aware of it; and I hope that your family will\nperceive the necessity of being equally cautious.\"\n\nMr. Wardour bowed, and assented.\n\n\"But,\" added Lady Barbara, \"it has made it quite impossible for my sister\nand myself to continue to take the charge of her. My sister's health has\nsuffered from the constant noise and restlessness of a child in the\nhouse: the anxiety and responsibility are far too much for her; and in\naddition to this, she had such severe nervous seizures from the alarm of\nmy niece's elopement, that nothing would induce me to subject her to a\nrecurrence of such agitation. We must receive the child for the present,\nof course; but as soon as my brother returns, and can attend to business,\nthe matter must be referred to the Lord Chancellor, and an establishment\nformed, with a lady at the head, who may have authority and experience to\ndeal with such an ungovernable nature.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Mr. Wardour, \"under these circumstances it might be\nconvenient for me to take her home again for the present.\"\n\nKate quivered with hope; but that was far too good to be true; Lady\nBarbara gave a horrid little cough, and there was a sound almost of\noffence in her \"Thank you, you are very kind, but that would be quite out\nof the question. I am at present responsible for my niece.\"\n\n\"I thought, perhaps,\" said Mr. Wardour, as an excuse for the offer, \"that\nas Lady Jane is so unwell, and Colonel Umfraville in so much affliction,\nit might be a relief to part with her at present.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" again said Lady Barbara, as stiffly as if her throat were\nlined with whalebone; \"no inconvenience can interfere with my duty.\"\n\nMr. Wardour knew there was no use in saying any more, and inquired after\nLady Jane. She had, it appeared, been very ill on Saturday evening, and\nhad not since left her room. Mr. Wardour then said that Kate had not\nbeen aware, till a few hours ago, of the death of her cousin, and\ninquired anxiously after the father and mother; but Lady Barbara would\nnot do more than answer direct questions, and only said that her nephew\nhad been too much weakened to bear the journey, and had sunk suddenly at\nAlexandria, and that his father was, she feared, very unwell. She could\nnot tell how soon he was likely to be in England. Then she thanked Mr.\nWardour for having brought Lady Caergwent home, and offered him some\nluncheon; but in such a grave grand way, that it was plain that she did\nnot want him to eat it, and, feeling that he could do no more good, he\nkissed poor Kate and wished Lady Barbara good-bye.\n\nPoor Kate stood, drooping, too much constrained by dismay even to try to\ncling to him, or run after him to the foot of the stairs.\n\n\"Now, Katharine,\" said her aunt, \"come up with me to your Aunt Jane's\nroom. She has been so much distressed about you, that she will not be\neasy till she has seen you.\"\n\nKate followed meekly; and found Aunt Jane sitting by the fire in her own\nroom, looking flushed, hot, and trembling. She held out her arms, and\nKate ran into them; but neither of them dared to speak, and Lady Barbara\nstood up, saying, \"She says she is very sorry, and thus we may forgive\nher; as I know you do all the suffering you have undergone on her\naccount.\"\n\nLady Jane held the child tighter, and Kate returned her kisses with all\nher might; but the other aunt said, \"That will do. She must not be too\nmuch for you again.\" And they let go as if a cold wind had blown between\nthem.\n\n\"Did Mr. Wardour bring her home?\" asked Lady Jane.\n\n\"Yes; and was kind enough to propose taking her back again,\" was the\nanswer, with a sneer, that made Kate feel desperately angry, though she\ndid not understand it.\n\nIn truth, Lady Barbara was greatly displeased with the Wardours. She had\nalways been led to think her niece's faults the effect of their\nmanagement; and she now imagined that there had been some encouragement\nof the child's discontent to make her run away; and that if they had been\nsufficiently shocked and concerned, the truant would have been brought\nhome much sooner. It all came of her having allowed her niece to\nassociate with those children at Bournemouth. She would be more careful\nfor the future.\n\nCareful, indeed, she was! She had come to think of her niece as a sort\nof small wild beast that must never be let out of sight of some\ntrustworthy person, lest she should fly away again.\n\nA daily governess, an elderly person, very grave and silent, came in\ndirectly after breakfast, walked with the Countess, and heard the\nlessons; and after her departure, Kate was always to be in the room with\nher aunts, and never was allowed to sit in the schoolroom and amuse\nherself alone; but her tea was brought into the dining-room while her\naunts were at dinner, and morning, noon, and night, she knew that she was\nbeing watched.\n\nIt was very bitter to her. It seemed to take all the spirit away from\nher, as if she did not care for books, lessons, or anything else.\nSometimes her heart burnt with hot indignation, and she would squeeze her\nhands together, or wring round her handkerchief in a sort of misery; but\nit never got beyond that; she never broke out, for she was depressed by\nwhat was still worse, the sense of shame. Lady Barbara had not said many\nwords, but had made her feel, in spite of having forgiven her, that she\nhad done a thing that would be a disgrace to her for ever; a thing that\nwould make people think twice before they allowed their children to\nassociate with her; and that put her below the level of other girls. The\nvery pain that Lady Barbara took to hush it up, her fears lest it should\ncome to the ears of the De la Poers, her hopes that it _might_ not be\nnecessary to reveal it to her brother, assisted to weigh down Kate with a\nsense of the heinousness of what she had done, and sunk her so that she\nhad no inclination to complain of the watchfulness around her. And Aunt\nJane's sorrowful kindness went to her heart.\n\n\"How _could_ you do it, my dear?\" she said, in such a wonderful wistful\ntone, when Kate was alone with her.\n\nKate hung her head. She could not think now.\n\n\"It is so sad,\" added Lady Jane; \"I hoped we might have gone on so nicely\ntogether. And now I hope your Uncle Giles will not hear of it. He would\nbe so shocked, and never trust you again.\"\n\n\"_You_ will trust me, when I have been good a long time, Aunt Jane?\"\n\n\"My dear, I would trust you any time, you know; but then that's no use.\nI can't judge; and your Aunt Barbara says, after such lawlessness, you\nneed very experienced training to root out old associations.\"\n\nPerhaps the aunts were more shocked than was quite needful and treated\nKate as if she had been older and known better what she was doing; but\nthey were sincere in their horror at her offence; and once she even heard\nLady Barbara saying to Mr. Mercer that there seemed to be a doom on the\nfamily\u2014in the loss of the promising young man\u2014and\u2014\n\nThe words were not spoken, but Kate knew that she was this greatest of\nall misfortunes to the family.\n\nPoor child! In the midst of all this, there was one comfort. She had\nnot put aside what Mr. Wardour had told her about the Comforter she could\nalways have. She _did_ say her prayers as she had never said them\nbefore, and she looked out in the Psalms and Lessons for comforting\nverses. She knew she had done very wrong, and she asked with all the\nstrength of her heart to be forgiven, and made less unhappy, and that\npeople might be kinder to her. Sometimes she thought no help was coming,\nand that her prayers did no good, but she went on; and then, perhaps, she\ngot a kind little caress from Lady Jane, or Mr. Mercer spoke\ngood-naturedly to her, or Lady Barbara granted her some little favour,\nand she felt as if there was hope and things were getting better; and she\ntook courage all the more to pray that Uncle Giles might not be very hard\nupon her, nor the Lord Chancellor very cruel.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.\n\n\nA FORTNIGHT had passed, and had seemed nearly as long as a year, since\nKate's return from Oldburgh, when one afternoon, when she was lazily\nturning over the leaves of a story-book that she knew so well by heart\nthat she could go over it in the twilight, she began to gather from her\naunt's words that somebody was coming.\n\nThey never told her anything direct; but by listening a little more\nattentively to what they were saying, she found out that a letter\u2014no, a\ntelegram\u2014had come while she was at her lessons; that Aunt Barbara had\nbeen taking rooms at a hotel; that she was insisting that Jane should not\nimagine they would come to-night\u2014they would not come till the last train,\nand then neither of them would be equal\u2014\n\n\"Poor dear Emily! But could we not just drive to the hotel and meet\nthem? It will be so dreary for them.\"\n\n\"You go out at night! and for such a meeting! when you ought to be\nkeeping yourself as quiet as possible! No, depend upon it they will\nprefer getting in quietly, and resting to-night; and Giles, perhaps, will\nstep in to breakfast in the morning.\"\n\n\"And then you will bring him up to me at once! I wonder if the boy is\nmuch altered!\"\n\nThrob! throb! throb! went Kate's heart! So the terrible stern uncle was\nin England, and this was the time for her to be given up to the Lord\nChancellor and all his myrmidons (a word that always came into her head\nwhen she was in a fright). She had never loved Aunt Jane so well; she\nalmost loved Aunt Barbara, and began to think of clinging to her with an\neloquent speech, pleading to be spared from the Lord Chancellor!\n\nTo-morrow morning\u2014that was a respite!\n\nThere was a sound of wheels. Lady Jane started.\n\n\"They are giving a party next door,\" said Lady Barbara.\n\nBut the bell rang.\n\n\"Only a parcel coming home,\" said Lady Barbara. \"Pray do not be nervous,\nJane.\"\n\nBut the red colour was higher in Barbara's own cheeks, as there were\nsteps on the stairs; and in quite a triumphant voice the butler\nannounced, as he opened the door, \"Colonel and Mrs. Umfraville!\"\n\nKate stood up, and backed. It was Aunt Barbara's straight, handsome,\nterrible face, and with a great black moustache to make it worse. She\nsaw that, and it was all she feared! She was glad the sofa was between\nthem!\n\nThere was a lady besides all black bonnet and cloak; and there was a\nconfusion of sounds, a little half sobbing of Aunt Jane's; but the other\nsister and the brother were quite steady and grave. It was his keen dark\neye, sparkling like some wild animal's in the firelight, as Kate thought,\nwhich spied her out; and his deep grave voice said, \"My little niece,\" as\nhe held out his hand.\n\n\"Come and speak to your uncle, Katharine,\" said Lady Barbara; and not\nonly had she to put her hand into that great firm one, but her forehead\nwas scrubbed by his moustache. She had never been kissed by a moustache\nbefore, and she shuddered as if it had been on a panther's lip.\n\nBut then he said, \"There, Emily;\" and she found herself folded up in such\narms as had never been round her before, with the very sweetest of kisses\non her cheeks, the very kindest of eyes, full of moisture, gazing at her\nas if they had been hungry for her. Even when the embrace was over, the\nhand still held hers; and as she stood by the new aunt, a thought crossed\nher that had never come before, \"I wonder if my mamma was like this!\"\n\nThere was some explanation of how the travellers had come on, &c., and it\nwas settled that they were to stay to dinner; after which Mrs. Umfraville\nwent away with Lady Barbara to take off her bonnet.\n\nColonel Umfraville came and sat down by his sister on the sofa, and said,\n\"Well Jane, how have you been?\"\n\n\"Oh! much as usual:\" and then there was a silence, till she moved a\nlittle nearer to him, put her hand on his arm, looked up in his face with\nswimming eyes, and said, \"O Giles! Giles!\"\n\nHe took her hand, and bent over her, saying, in the same grave steady\nvoice, \"Do not grieve for us, Jane. We have a great deal to be thankful\nfor, and we shall do very well.\"\n\nIt made that loving tender-hearted Aunt Jane break quite down, cling to\nhim and sob, \"O Giles\u2014those dear noble boys\u2014how little we thought\u2014and\ndear Caergwent too\u2014and you away from home!\"\n\nShe was crying quite violently, so as to be shaken by the sobs; and her\nbrother stood over her, saying a kind word or two now and then, to try to\nsoothe her; while Kate remained a little way off, with her black eyes\nwide open, thinking her uncle's face was almost displeased\u2014at any rate,\nvery rigid. He looked up at Kate, and signed towards a scent-bottle on\nthe table. Kate gave it; and then, as if the movement had filled her\nwith a panic, she darted out of the room, and flew up to the bedrooms,\ncrying out, \"Aunt Barbara, Aunt Jane is crying so terribly!\"\n\n\"She will have one of her attacks! Oh!\" began Lady Barbara, catching up\na bottle of salvolatile.\n\n\"Had we not better leave her and Giles to one another?\" said the tones\nthat Kate liked so much.\n\n\"Oh! my dear, you don't know what these attacks are!\" and away hurried\nLady Barbara.\n\nThe bonnet was off now, leaving only a little plain net cap under it,\nround the calm gentle face. There was a great look of sadness, and the\neyelids were heavy and drooping; but there was something that put Kate in\nmind of a mother dove in the softness of the large tender embrace, and\nthe full sweet caressing tone. What a pity that such an aunt must know\nthat she was an ill-behaved child, a misfortune to her lineage! She\nstood leaning against the door, very awkward and conscious. Mrs.\nUmfraville turned round, after smoothing her hair at the glass, smiled,\nand said, \"I thought I should find you here, my little niece. You are\nKate, I think.\"\n\n\"I used to be, but my aunts here call me Katharine.\"\n\n\"Is this your little room?\" said Mrs. Umfraville, as they came out. The\nfact was, that she thought the sisters might be happier with their\nbrother if she delayed a little; so she came into Kate's room, and was\nbeginning to look at her books, when Lady Barbara came hurrying up again.\n\n\"She is composed now, Emily. Oh! it is all right; I did not know where\nKatharine might be.\"\n\nKate's colour glowed. She could not bear that this sweet Aunt Emily\nshould guess that she was a state prisoner, kept in constant view.\n\nLady Jane was quiet again, and nothing more that could overthrow her\nspirits passed all the evening; there was only a little murmur of talk,\ngenerally going on chiefly between Lady Barbara and Mrs. Umfraville,\nthough occasionally the others put in a word. The Colonel sat most of\nthe time with his set, serious face, and his eye fixed as if he was not\nattending, though sometimes Kate found the quick keen brilliance of his\nlook bent full upon her, so as to terrify her by its suddenness, and make\nher hardly know what she was saying or doing.\n\nThe worst moments were at dinner. She was, in the first place, sure that\nthose dark questioning eyes had decided that there must be some sad cause\nfor her not being trusted to drink her tea elsewhere; and then, in the\npause after the first course, the eyes came again, and he said, and to\nher, \"I hope your good relations the Wardours are well.\"\n\n\"Quite well\u2014thank you,\" faltered Kate.\n\n\"When did you see them last?\"\n\n\"A\u2014a fortnight ago\u2014\" began Kate.\n\n\"Mr. Wardour came up to London for a few hours,\" said Lady Barbara,\nlooking at Kate as if she meant to plunge her below the floor; at least,\nso the child imagined.\n\nThe sense that this was not the whole truth made her especially\nmiserable; and all the rest of the evening was one misery of\nembarrassment, when her limbs did not seem to be her own, but as if\nsomebody else was sitting at her little table, walking upstairs, and\ndoing her work. Even Mrs. Umfraville's kind ways could not restore her;\nshe only hung her head and mumbled when she was asked to show her work,\nand did not so much as know what was to become of her piece of\ncross-stitch when it was finished.\n\nThere was some inquiry after the De la Poers; and Mrs. Umfraville asked\nif she had found some playfellows among their daughters.\n\n\"Yes,\" faintly said Kate; and with another flush of colour, thought of\nhaving been told, that if Lady de la Poer knew what she had done, she\nwould never be allowed to play with them again, and therefore that she\nnever durst attempt it.\n\n\"They were very nice children,\" said Mrs. Umfraville.\n\n\"Remarkably nice children,\" returned Lady Barbara, in a tone that again\ncut Kate to the heart.\n\nBed-time came; and she would have been glad of it, but that all the time\nshe was going to sleep there was the Lord Chancellor to think of, and the\nuncle and aunt with the statue faces dragging her before him.\n\nSunday was the next day, and the uncle and aunt were not seen till after\nthe afternoon service, when they came to dinner, and much such an evening\nas the former one passed; but towards the end of it Mrs. Umfraville said,\n\"Now, Barbara, I have a favour to ask. Will you let this child spend the\nday with me to-morrow? Giles will be out, and I shall be very glad to\nhave her for my companion.\"\n\nKate's eyes glistened, and she thought of stern Proserpine.\n\n\"My dear Emily, you do not know what you ask. She will be far too much\nfor you.\"\n\n\"I'll take care of that,\" said Mrs. Umfraville, smiling.\n\n\"And I don't know about trusting her. I cannot go out, and Jane cannot\nspare Bartley so early.\"\n\n\"I will come and fetch her,\" said the Colonel.\n\n\"And bring her back too. I will send the carriage in the evening, but do\nnot let her come without you,\" said Lady Barbara earnestly.\n\nHad they told, or would they tell after she was gone to bed? Kate\nthought Aunt Barbara was a woman of her word, but did not quite trust\nher. Consent was given; but would not that stern soldier destroy all the\npleasure? And people in sorrow too! Kate thought of Mrs. Lacy, and had\nno very bright anticipations of her day; yet a holiday was something, and\nto be out of Aunt Barbara's way a great deal more.\n\nShe had not been long dressed when there was a ring at the bell, and,\nbefore she had begun to expect him, the tall man with the dark lip and\ngrey hair stood in her schoolroom. She gave such a start, that he asked,\n\"Did you not expect me so soon?\"\n\n\"I did not think you would come till after breakfast: but\u2014\"\n\nAnd with an impulse of running away from his dread presence, she darted\noff to put on her hat, but was arrested on the way by Lady Barbara, at\nher bedroom door.\n\n\"Uncle Giles is come for me,\" she said, and would have rushed on, but her\naunt detained her to say, \"Recollect, Katharine, that wildness and\nimpetuosity, at all times unbecoming, are particularly so where there is\naffliction. If consideration for others will not influence you, bear in\nmind that on the impression you make on your uncle and aunt, it depends\nwhether I shall be obliged to tell all that I would willingly forget.\"\n\nKate's heart swelled, and without speaking she entered her own room,\nthinking how hard it was to have even the pleasure of hoping for ease and\nenjoyment taken away.\n\nWhen she came down, she found her aunt\u2014as she believed\u2014warning her uncle\nagainst her being left to herself; and then came, \"If she should be too\nmuch for Emily, only send a note, and Bartley or I will come to fetch her\nhome.\"\n\n\"She wants him to think me a little wild beast!\" thought Kate; but her\nuncle answered, \"Emily always knows how to deal with children.\nGood-bye.\"\n\n\"To deal with children! What did that mean?\" thought the Countess, as\nshe stepped along by the side of her uncle, not venturing to speak, and\nfeeling almost as shy and bewildered as when she was on the world alone.\n\nHe did not speak, but when they came to a crossing of a main street, he\ntook her by the hand; and there was something protecting and comfortable\nin the feel, so that she did not let go; and presently, as she walked on,\nshe felt the fingers close on hers with such a quick tight squeeze, that\nshe looked up in a fright and met the dark eye turned on her quite soft\nand glistening. She did not guess how he was thinking of little clasping\nhands that had held there before; and he only said something rather\nhurriedly about avoiding some coals that were being taken in through a\nround hole in the pavement.\n\nSoon they were at the hotel; and Mrs. Umfraville came out of her room\nwith that greeting which Kate liked so much, helped her to take off her\ncloak and smooth her hair, and then set her down to breakfast.\n\nIt was a silent meal to Kate. Her uncle and aunt had letters to read,\nand things to consult about that she did not understand; but all the time\nthere was a kind watch kept up that she had what she liked; and Aunt\nEmily's voice was so much like the deep notes of the wood-pigeons round\nOldburgh, that she did not care how long she listened to it, even if it\nhad been talking Hindostanee!\n\nAs soon as breakfast was over, the Colonel took up his hat and went out;\nand Mrs. Umfraville said, turning to Kate, \"Now, my dear, I have\nsomething for you to help me in; I want to unpack some things that I have\nbrought home.\"\n\n\"Oh, I shall like that!\" said Kate, feeling as if a weight was gone with\nthe grave uncle.\n\nMrs. Umfraville rang, and asked to have a certain box brought in. Such a\nbox, all smelling of choice Indian wood; the very shavings that stuffed\nit were delightful! And what an unpacking! It was like nothing but the\nIndian stall at the Baker Street Bazaar! There were two beautiful large\nivory work-boxes, inlaid with stripes and circles of tiny mosaic; and\nthere were even more delicious little boxes of soft fragrant sandal wood,\nand a set of chessmen in ivory. The kings were riding on elephants, with\ncanopies over their heads, and ladders to climb up by; and each elephant\nhad a tiger in his trunk. Then the queens were not queens, but grand\nviziers, because the queen is nobody in the East: and each had a lesser\nelephant; the bishops were men riding on still smaller elephants; the\ncastles had camels, the knights horses; and the pawns were little\nfoot-soldiers, the white ones with guns, as being European troops, the\nred ones with bows and arrows. Kate was perfectly delighted with these\nmen, and looked at and admired them one by one, longing to play a game\nwith them. Then there was one of those wonderful clusters of Chinese\nivory balls, all loose, one within the other, carved in different\npatterns of network, and there were shells spotted and pink-mouthed,\ncard-cases, red shining boxes, queer Indian dolls; figures in all manner\nof costumes, in gorgeous colours, painted upon shining transparent talc\nor on soft rice-paper. There was no describing how charming the sight\nwas, nor how Kate dwelt upon each article; and how pleasantly her aunt\nexplained what it was intended for, and where it came from, answering all\nquestions in the nicest, kindest way. When all the wool and shavings had\nbeen pinched, and the curled-up toes of the slippers explored, so as to\nmake sure that no tiny shell nor ivory carving lurked unseen, the room\nlooked like a museum; and Mrs. Umfraville said, \"Most of these things\nwere meant for our home friends: there is an Indian scarf and a Cashmere\nshawl for your two aunts, and I believe the chessmen are for Lord de la\nPoer.\"\n\n\"O Aunt Emily, I should so like to play one game with them before they\ngo!\"\n\n\"I will have one with you, if you can be very careful of their tender\npoints,\" said Mrs. Umfraville, without one of the objections that Kate\nhad expected; \"but first I want you to help me about some of the other\nthings. Your uncle meant one of the work-boxes for you!\"\n\n\"O Aunt Emily, how delightful! I really will work, with such a dear\nbeautiful box!\" cried Kate, opening it, and again peeping into all its\nlittle holes and contrivances. \"Here is the very place for a dormouse to\nsleep in! And who is the other for?\"\n\n\"For Fanny de la Poer, who is his godchild.\"\n\n\"Oh, I am so glad! Fanny always has such nice pretty work about!\"\n\n\"And now I want you to help me to choose the other presents. There;\nthese,\" pointing to a scarf and a muslin dress adorned with the wings of\ndiamond beetles, \"are for some young cousins of my own; but you will be\nable best to choose what the other De la Poers and your cousins at\nOldburgh would like best.\"\n\n\"My cousins at Oldburgh!\" cried Kate. \"May they have some of these\npretty things?\" And as her aunt answered \"We hope they will,\" Kate flew\nat her, and hugged her quite tight round the throat; then, when Mrs.\nUmfraville undid the clasp, and returned the kiss, she went like an\nIndia-rubber ball with a backward bound, put her hands together over her\nhead, and gasped out, \"Oh, thank you, thank you!\"\n\n\"My dear, don't go quite mad. You will jump into that calabash, and then\nit won't be fit for anybody. Are you so very glad?\"\n\n\"Oh! so glad! Pretty things do come so seldom to Oldburgh!\"\n\n\"Well, we thought you might like to send Miss Wardour this shawl.\"\n\nIt was a beautiful heavy shawl of the soft wool of the Cashmere goats;\nreally of every kind of brilliant hue, but so dexterously blended\ntogether, that the whole looked dark and sober. But Kate did not look\nwith favour on the shawl.\n\n\"A shawl is so stupid,\" she said. \"If you please, I had rather Mary had\nthe work-box.\"\n\n\"But the work-box is for Lady Fanny.\"\n\n\"Oh! but I meant my own,\" said Kate earnestly. \"If you only knew what a\npity it is to give nice things to me; they always get into such a mess.\nNow, Mary always has her things so nice; and she works so beautifully;\nshe has never let Lily wear a stitch but of her setting; and she always\nwished for a box like this. One of her friends at school had a little\none; and she used to say, when we played at roe's egg, that she wanted\nnothing but an ivory work-box; and she has nothing but an old blue one,\nwith the steel turned black!\"\n\n\"We must hear what your uncle says, for you must know that he meant the\nbox for you.\"\n\n\"It isn't that I don't care for it,\" said Kate, with a sudden glistening\nin her eyes; \"it is because I do care for it so very much that I want\nMary to have it.\"\n\n\"I know it is, my dear;\" and her aunt kissed her; \"but we must think\nabout it a little. Perhaps Mary would not think an Indian shawl quite so\nstupid as you do.\"\n\n\"Mary isn't a nasty vain conceited girl!\" cried Kate indignantly. \"She\nalways looks nice; but I heard Papa say her dress did not cost much more\nthan Sylvia's and mine, because she never tore anything, and took such\ncare!\"\n\n\"Well, we will see,\" said Mrs. Umfraville, perhaps not entirely convinced\nthat the shawl would not be a greater prize to the thrifty girl than Kate\nperceived.\n\nKate meanwhile had sprung unmolested on a beautiful sandalwood case for\nSylvia, and a set of rice-paper pictures for Lily; and the appropriating\nother treasures to the De la Poers, packing them up, and directing them,\naccompanied with explanations of their habits and tastes, lasted till so\nlate, that after the litter was cleared away there was only time for one\ngame at chess with the grand pieces; and in truth the honour of using\nthem was greater than the pleasure. They covered up the board, so that\nthere was no seeing the squares, and it was necessary to be most\ninconveniently cautious in lifting them. They were made to be looked at,\nnot played with; and yet, wonderful to relate, Kate did not do one of the\ndelicate things a mischief!\n\nWas it that she was really grown more handy, or was it that with this\ngentle aunt she was quite at her ease, yet too much subdued to be\ncareless and rough?\n\nThe luncheon came; and after it, she drove with her aunt first to a few\nshops, and then to take up the Colonel, who had been with his lawyer.\nKate quaked a little inwardly, lest it should be about the Lord\nChancellor, and tried to frame a question on the subject to her aunt; but\neven the most chattering little girls know what it is to have their lips\nsealed by an odd sort of reserve upon the very matters that make them\nmost uneasy; and just because her wild imagination had been thinking that\nperhaps this was all a plot to waylay her into the Lord Chancellor's\nclutches, she could not utter a word on the matter, while they drove\nthrough the quiet squares where lawyers live.\n\nMrs. Umfraville, however, soon put that out of her head by talking to her\nabout the Wardours, and setting open the flood gates of her eloquence\nabout Sylvia. So delightful was it to have a listener, that Kate did not\ngrow impatient, long as they waited at the lawyer's door in the dull\nsquare, and indeed was sorry when the Colonel made his appearance. He\njust said to her that he hoped she was not tired of waiting; and as she\nreplied with a frightened little \"No, thank you,\" began telling his wife\nsomething that Kate soon perceived belonged to his own concerns, not to\nhers; so she left off trying to gather the meaning in the rumble of the\nwheels, and looked out of window, for she could never be quite at ease\nwhen she felt that those eyes might be upon her.\n\nOn coming back to the hotel, Mrs. Umfraville found a note on the table\nfor her: she read it, gave it to her husband, and said, \"I had better go\ndirectly.\"\n\n\"Will it not be too much? Can you?\" he said very low; and there was the\nsame repressed twitching of the muscles of his face, as Kate had seen\nwhen he was left with his sister Jane.\n\n\"Oh yes!\" she said fervently; \"I shall like it. And it is her only\nchance; you see she goes to-morrow.\"\n\nThe carriage was ordered again, and Mrs. Umfraville explained to Kate\nthat the note was from a poor invalid lady whose son was in their own\nregiment in India, that she was longing to hear about him, and was going\nout of town the next day.\n\n\"And what shall I give you to amuse yourself with, my dear?\" asked Mrs.\nUmfraville. \"I am afraid we have hardly a book that will suit you.\"\n\nKate had a great mind to ask to go and sit in the carriage, rather than\nremain alone with the terrible black moustache; but she was afraid of the\nColonel's mentioning Aunt Barbara's orders that she was not to be let out\nof sight. \"If you please,\" she said, \"if I might write to Sylvia.\"\n\nHer aunt kindly established her at a little table, with a leathern\nwriting-case, and her uncle mended a pen for her. Then her aunt went\naway, and he sat down to his own letters.\n\nKate durst not speak to him, but she watched him under her eyelashes, and\nnoticed how he presently laid down his pen, and gave a long, heavy, sad\nsigh, such as she had never heard when his wife was present; then sat\nmusing, looking fixedly at the grey window; till, rousing himself with\nanother such sigh, he seemed to force himself to go on writing, but\npaused again, as if he were so wearied and oppressed that he could hardly\nbear it.\n\nIt gave Kate a great awe of him, partly because a little girl in a book\nwould have gone up, slid her hand into his, and kissed him; but she could\nnearly as soon have slid her hand into a lion's; and she was right, it\nwould have been very obtrusive.\n\nSome little time had passed before there was an opening of the door, and\nthe announcement, \"Lord de la Poer.\"\n\nUp started Kate, but she was quite lost in the greeting of the two\nfriends; Lord de la Poer, with his eyes full of tears, wringing his\nfriend's hand, hardly able to speak, but just saying, \"Dear Giles, I am\nglad to have you at home. How is she?\"\n\n\"Wonderfully well,\" said the Colonel, with the calm voice but the\ntwitching face. \"She is gone to see Mrs. Ducie, the mother of a lad in\nmy regiment, who was wounded at the same time as Giles, and whom she\nnursed with him.\"\n\n\"Is not it very trying?\"\n\n\"Nothing that is a kindness ever is trying to Emily,\" he said, and his\nvoice did tremble this time.\n\nKate had quietly re-seated herself in her chair. She felt that it was no\nmoment to thrust herself in; nor did she feel herself aggrieved, even\nthough unnoticed by such a favourite friend. Something in the whole\nspirit of the day had made her only sensible that she was a little girl,\nand quite forgot that she was a Countess.\n\nThe friends were much too intent on one another to think of her, as she\nsat in the recess of the window, their backs to her. They drew their\nchairs close to the fire, and began to talk, bending down together; and\nKate felt sure, that as her uncle at least knew she was there, she need\nnot interrupt. Besides, what they spoke of was what she had longed to\nhear, and would never have dared to ask. Lord de la Poer had been like a\nfather to his friend's two sons when they were left in England; and now\nthe Colonel was telling him\u2014as, perhaps, he could have told no one\nelse\u2014about their brave spirit, and especially of Giles's patience and\nresolution through his lingering illness; how he had been entirely\nunselfish in entreating that anything might happen rather than that his\nfather should resign his post; but though longing to be with his parents,\nand desponding as to his chance of recovery, had resigned himself in\npatience to whatever might be thought right; and how through the last\nsudden accession of illness brought on by the journey, his sole thought\nhad been for his parents.\n\n\"And she has borne up!\" said Lord de la Poer.\n\n\"As _he_ truly said, 'As long as she has anyone to care for, she will\nnever break down.' Luckily, I was entirely knocked up for a few days\njust at first; and coming home we had a poor young woman on board very\nill, and Emily nursed her day and night.\"\n\n\"And now you will bring her to Fanny and me to take care of.\"\n\n\"Thank you\u2014another time. But, old fellow, I don't know whether we either\nof us could stand your house full of children yet. Emily would be always\namong them, and think she liked it; but I knew how it would be. It was\njust so when I took her to a kind friend of ours after the little girls\nwere taken; she had the children constantly with her, but I never saw her\nso ill as she was afterwards.\"\n\n\"Reaction! Well, whenever you please; you shall have your rooms to\nyourselves, and only see us when you like. But I don't mean to press\nyou; only, what are you going to do next?\"\n\n\"I can hardly tell. There are business matters of our own, and about\npoor James's little girl, to keep us here a little while.\" (\"Who is\nthat?\" thought Kate.)\n\n\"Then you must go into our house. I was in hopes it might be so, and\ntold the housekeeper to make ready.\"\n\n\"Thank you; if Emily\u2014 We will see, when she comes in I want to make up\nmy mind about that child. Have you seen much of her?\"\n\nKate began to think honour required her to come forward, but her heart\nthrobbed with fright.\n\n\"Not so much as I could wish. It is an intelligent little monkey, and\nour girls were delighted with her; but I believe Barbara thinks me a\ncorrupter of youth, for she discountenances us.\"\n\n\"Ah! one of the last times I was alone with Giles, he said, smiling,\n'That little girl in Bruton Street will be just what Mamma wants;' and I\nknow Emily has never ceased to want to get hold of the motherless thing\never since Mrs. Wardour's death. I know it would be the greatest comfort\nto Emily, but I only doubted taking the child away from my sisters. I\nthought it would be such a happy thing to have Jane's kind heart drawn\nout; and if Barbara had forgiven the old sore, and used her real\nadmirable good sense affectionately, it would have been like new life to\nthem. Besides, it must make a great difference to their income. But is\nit possible that it can be the old prejudice, De la Poer? Barbara\nevidently dislikes the poor child, and treats her like a state prisoner!\"\n\nHonour prevailed entirely above fear and curiosity. Out flew Kate, to\nthe exceeding amaze and discomfiture of the two gentlemen. \"No, no,\nUncle Giles; it is\u2014it is because I ran away! Aunt Barbara said she would\nnot tell, for if you knew it, you would\u2014you would despise me;\u2014and you,\"\nlooking at Lord de la Poer, \"would never let me play with Grace and Addy\nagain!\"\n\nShe covered her face with her hands\u2014it was all burning red; and she was\nnearly rushing off, but she felt herself lifted tenderly upon a knee, and\nan arm round her. She thought it her old friend; but behold, it was her\nuncle's voice that said, in the softest gentlest way, \"My dear, I never\ndespise where I meet with truth. Tell me how it was; or had you rather\ntell your Aunt Emily?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you,\" said Kate, all her fears softened by his touch. \"Oh no!\nplease don't go, Lord de la Poer; I do want you to know, for I couldn't\nhave played with Grace and Adelaide on false pretences!\" And encouraged\nby her uncle's tender pressure, she murmured out, \"I ran away\u2014I did\u2014I\nwent home!\"\n\n\"To Oldburgh!\"\n\n\"Yes\u2014yes! It was very wrong; Papa\u2014Uncle Wardour, I mean\u2014made me see it\nwas.\"\n\n\"And what made you do it?\" said her uncle kindly. \"Do not be afraid to\ntell me.\"\n\n\"It was because I was angry. Aunt Barbara would not let me go to the\nother Wardours, and wanted me to write a\u2014what I thought\u2014a fashionable\nfalsehood; and when I said it was a lie,\" (if possible, Kate here became\ndeeper crimson than she was before,) \"she sent me to my room till I would\nbeg her pardon, and write the note. So\u2014so I got out of the house, and\ntook a cab, and went home by the train. I didn't know it was so very\ndreadful a thing, or indeed I would not.\"\n\nAnd Kate hid her burning face on her uncle's breast, and was considerably\nstartled by what she heard next, from the Marquis.\n\n\"Hm! All I have to say is, that if Barbara had the keeping of me, I\nshould run away at the end of a week.\"\n\n\"Probably!\" and Lord de la Poer saw, what Kate did not, the first shadow\nof a smile on the face of his friend, as he pressed his arm round the\nstill trembling girl; \"but, you see, Barbara justly thinks you corrupt\nyouth.\u2014My little girl, you must not let _him_ make you think lightly of\nthis\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, no, I never could! Papa was so shocked!\" and she was again covered\nwith confusion at the thought.\n\n\"But,\" added her uncle, \"it is not as if you had not gone to older and\nbetter friends than any you have ever had, my poor child. I am afraid\nyou have been much tried, and have not had a happy life since you left\nOldburgh.\"\n\n\"I have always been naughty,\" said Kate.\n\n\"Then we must try if your Aunt Emily can help you to be good. Will you\ntry to be as like her own child to her as you can, Katharine?\"\n\n\"And to you,\" actually whispered Kate; for somehow at that moment she\ncared much more for the stern uncle than the gentle aunt.\n\nHe lifted her up and kissed her, but set her down again with the sigh\nthat told how little she could make up to him for the son he had left in\nEgypt. Yet, perhaps that sigh made Kate long with more fervent love for\nsome way of being so very good and affectionate as quite to make him\nhappy, than if he had received her demonstration as if satisfied by it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV.\n\n\nNOTHING of note passed during the rest of the evening. Mrs. Umfraville\ncame home; but Kate had fallen back into the shy fit that rendered her\nunwilling to begin on what was personal, and the Colonel waited to talk\nit over with his wife alone before saying any more.\n\nBesides, there were things far more near to them than their little\ngreat-niece, and Mrs. Umfraville could not see Lord de la Poer without\nhaving her heart very full of the sons to whom he had been so kind.\nAgain they sat round the fire, and this time in the dark, while once more\nGiles and Frank and all their ways were talked over and over, and Kate\nwas forgotten; but she was not sitting alone in the dark window\u2014no, she\nhad a footstool close to her uncle, and sat resting her head upon his\nknee, her eyes seeking red caverns in the coals, her heart in a strange\npeaceful rest, her ears listening to the mother's subdued tender tones in\nspeaking of her boys, and the friend's voice of sympathy and affection.\nHer uncle leant back and did not speak at all; but the other two went on\nand on, and Mrs. Umfraville seemed to be drinking in every little trait\nof her boys' English life, not weeping over it, but absolutely smiling\nwhen it was something droll or characteristic.\n\nKate felt subdued and reverent, and loved her new relations more and more\nfor their sorrows; and she began to dream out castles of the wonderful\ngoodness by which she would comfort them; then she looked for her uncle's\nhand to see if she could dare to stroke it, but one was over his brow,\nthe other out of reach, and she was shy of doing anything.\n\nThe dinner interrupted them; and Kate had the pleasure of dining late,\nand sitting opposite to Lord de la Poer, who talked now and then to her,\nand told her what Adelaide and Grace were doing; but he was grave and\nsad, out of sympathy with his friends, and Kate was by no means tempted\nto be foolish.\n\nIndeed, she began to feel that she might hope to be always good with her\nuncle and aunt, and that they would never make her naughty. Only too\nsoon came the announcement of the carriage for Lady Caergwent; and when\nAunt Emily took her into the bedroom to dress, she clung to that kind\nhand and fondled it.\n\n\"My dear little girl!\" and Aunt Emily held her in her arms, \"I am so\nglad! Kate, I do think your dear uncle is a little cheered to-night! If\nhaving you about him does him any good, how I shall love you, Katie!\" and\nshe hugged her closer. \"And it is so kind in Lord de la Poer to have\ncome! Oh, now he will be better! I am so thankful he is in England\nagain! You must be with us whenever Barbara can spare you, Katie dear,\nfor I am sure he likes it.\"\n\n\"Each wants me, to do the other good,\" thought Kate; and she was so much\ntouched and pleased that she did not know what to do, and looked foolish.\n\nUncle Giles took her down stairs; and when they were in the carriage, in\nthe dark, he seemed to be less shy: he lifted her on his knee and said,\n\"I will talk to your aunt, and we will see how soon you can come to us,\nmy dear.\"\n\n\"Oh, do let it be soon,\" said Kate.\n\n\"That must depend upon your Aunt Barbara,\" he answered, \"and upon law\nmatters, perhaps. And you must not be troublesome to her; she has\nsuffered very much, and will not think of herself, so you must think for\nher.\"\n\n\"I don't know how, Uncle Giles,\" said poor sincere Kate. \"At home, they\nalways said I had no consideration.\"\n\n\"You must learn,\" he said gravely. \"She is not to be harassed.\"\n\nKate was rather frightened; but he spoke in a kinder voice. \"At home,\nyou say. Do you mean with my sisters, or at Oldburgh?\"\n\n\"Oh, at Oldburgh, Uncle Giles!\"\n\n\"You are older now,\" he answered, \"and need not be so childish.\"\n\n\"And please one thing\u2014\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\nThere came a great choking in her throat, but she did get it out.\n\"Please, please, don't think all I do wrong is the Wardours' fault! I\nknow I am naughty and horrid and unladylike, but it is my own own fault,\nindeed it is, and nobody _else's_! Mary and Uncle Wardour would have\nmade me good\u2014and it was all my fault.\"\n\n\"My dear,\" and he put the other hand so that he completely encircled the\nlittle slim waist, \"I do quite believe that Mr. Wardour taught you all\nthe good you have. There is nothing I am so glad of as that you love and\nreverence him as he deserves\u2014as far as such a child can do. I hope you\nalways will, and that your gratitude will increase with your knowledge of\nthe sacrifices that he made for you.\"\n\nIt was too much of a speech for Kate to answer; but she nestled up to\nhim, and felt as if she loved him more than ever. He added, \"I should\nlike to see Mr. Wardour, but I can hardly leave your aunt yet. Would he\ncome to London?\"\n\nKate gave a gasp. \"Oh dear! Sylvia said he would have no money for\njourneys now! It cost so much his coming in a first-class carriage with\nme.\"\n\n\"You see how necessary it is to learn consideration,\" said the Colonel;\n\"I must run down to see him, and come back at night.\"\n\nBy this time they were at the aunts' door, and both entered the\ndrawing-room together.\n\nLady Barbara anxiously hoped that Katharine had behaved well.\n\n\"Perfectly well,\" he answered; and his face was really brighter and\ntenderer.\n\nIt was Kate's bed-time, and she was dismissed at once. She felt that the\nkiss and momentary touch of the hand, with the \"Bless you,\" were far more\nearnest than the mere greeting kiss. She did not know that it had been\nhis wonted good-night to his own children.\n\nWhen she was gone, he took a chair, and explained that he could remain\nfor a little while, as Lord de la Poer would bear his wife company. Lady\nJane made room for him on the sofa, and Lady Barbara looked pleased.\n\n\"I wished to talk to you about that child,\" he said.\n\n\"I have been wishing it for some time,\" said Lady Barbara; \"waiting, in\nfact, to make arrangements till your return.\"\n\n\"What arrangements?\"\n\n\"For forming an establishment for her.\"\n\n\"The child's natural home is with you or with me.\"\n\nThere was a little silence; then Lady Jane nervously caught her brother's\nhand, saying, \"O Giles, Giles, you must not be severe with her, poor\nlittle thing!\"\n\n\"Why should I be severe, Jane?\" he said. \"What has the child done to\ndeserve it?\"\n\n\"I do not wish to enter into particulars,\" said Lady Barbara. \"But she\nis a child who has been so unfortunately brought up as to require\nconstant watching; and to have her in the house does so much harm to\nJane's health, that I strongly advise you not to attempt it in Emily's\nstate of spirits.\"\n\n\"It would little benefit Emily's spirits to transfer a duty to a\nstranger,\" said the Colonel. \"But I wish to know why you evidently think\nso ill of this girl, Barbara!\"\n\n\"Her entire behaviour since she has been with us\u2014\" began Lady Barbara.\n\n\"Generalities only do mischief, Barbara. If I have any control over this\nchild, I must know facts.\"\n\n\"The truth is, Giles,\" said his sister, distressed and confused, \"that I\npromised the child not to tell you of her chief piece of misconduct,\nunless I was compelled by some fresh fault.\"\n\n\"An injudicious promise, Barbara. You do the child more harm by implying\nsuch an opinion of her than you could do by letting me hear what she has\nactually done. But you are absolved from the promise, for she has\nherself told me.\"\n\n\"Told you! That girl has no sense of shame! After all the pains I took\nto conceal it!\"\n\n\"No, Barbara; it was with the utmost shame that she told me. It was\nunguarded of me, I own; but De la Poer and I had entirely forgotten that\nshe was present, and I asked him if he could account for your evident\ndislike and distrust of her. The child's honourable feelings would not\nallow her to listen, and she came forward, and accused herself, not you!\"\n\n\"Before Lord de la Poer! Giles, how could you allow it?\" cried Lady\nBarbara, confounded. \"That whole family will tell the story, and she\nwill be marked for ever!\"\n\n\"De la Poer has some knowledge of child nature,\" said the Colonel,\nslightly smiling.\n\n\"A gentleman often encourages that sort of child, but condemns her the\nmore. She will be a by-word in that family! I always knew she would be\nour disgrace!\"\n\n\"O Giles, do tell Barbara it cannot be so very bad!\" entreated Lady Jane.\n\"She is such a child\u2014poor little dear!\u2014and so little used to control!\"\n\n\"I have only as yet heard her own confused account.\"\n\nLady Barbara gave her own.\n\n\"I see,\" said the Colonel, \"the child was both accurate and candid. You\nshould be thankful that your system has not destroyed her sincerity.\"\n\n\"But, indeed, dear Giles,\" pleaded Lady Jane, \"you know Barbara did not\nwant her to say what was false.\"\n\n\"No,\" said the Colonel: \"that was a mere misunderstanding. It is the\nspirit of distrust that\u2014assuming that a child will act dishonourably\u2014is\nlikely to drive her to do so.\"\n\n\"I never distrusted Katharine till she drove me to do so,\" said Lady\nBarbara, with cold, stern composure.\n\n\"I would never bring an accusation of breach of trust where I had not\nmade it evident that I reposed confidence,\" said the Colonel.\n\n\"I see how it is,\" said Lady Barbara; \"you have heard one side. I do not\ncontradict. I know the girl would not wilfully deceive by word; and I am\nwilling to confess that I am not capable of dealing with her. Only from\na sense of duty did I ever undertake it.\"\n\n\"Of duty, Barbara?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes\u2014of duty to the family.\"\n\n\"We do not see those things in the same light,\" he said quietly. \"I\nthought, as you know, that the duty was more incumbent when the child was\nleft an orphan\u2014a burthen on relatives who could ill afford to be charged\nwith her. Perhaps, Barbara, if you had noticed her _then_, instead of\nwaiting till circumstances made her the head of our family, you might\nhave been able to give her that which has been wanting in your otherwise\nconscientious training\u2014affection.\"\n\nLady Barbara held up her head, stiffly, but she was very near tears, of\npain and wounded pride; but she would not defend herself; and she saw\nthat even her faithful Jane did not feel with her.\n\n\"I came home, Barbara,\" continued the Colonel, \"resolving that\u2014much as I\nwished for Emily's sake that this little girl should need a home with\nus\u2014if you had found in her a new interest and delight, and were in\nher\u2014let me say it, Barbara\u2014healing old sores, and giving her your own\ngood sense and high principle, I would not say one word to disturb so\nhappy a state of things. I come and find the child a state prisoner,\nwhom you are endeavouring by all means to alienate from the friends to\nwhom she owes a daughter's gratitude; I find her not complaining of you,\nbut answering me with the saddest account a child can give of herself\u2014she\nis always naughty. After this, Barbara, I can be doing you no injury in\nasking you to concur with me in arrangements for putting the child under\nmy wife's care as soon as possible.\"\n\n\"To-morrow, if you like,\" said Lady Barbara. \"I took her only from a\nsense of duty; and it has half killed Jane. I would not keep her upon\nany consideration!\"\n\n\"O Barbara, it has not hurt me.\u2014O Giles, she will always be so anxious\nabout me; it is all my fault for being nervous and foolish!\" cried Lady\nJane, with quivering voice, and tears in her eyes. \"If it had not been\nfor that, we could have made her so happy, dear little spirited thing.\nBut dear Barbara spoils me, and I know I give way too much.\"\n\n\"This will keep you awake all night!\" said Barbara, as the Colonel's\ntender gesture agitated Jane more. \"Indeed, Giles, you should have\nchosen a better moment for this conversation\u2014on almost your first arrival\ntoo! But the very existence of this child is a misfortune!\"\n\n\"Let us trust that in a few years she may give you reason to think\notherwise,\" said the Colonel. \"Did you mean what you said\u2014that you\nwished us to take her to-morrow?\"\n\n\"Not to incommode Emily. She can go on as she has done till your plans\nare made. You do not know what a child she is.\"\n\n\"Emily shall come and settle with you to-morrow,\" said Colonel\nUmfraville. \"I have not yet spoken to her, but I think she will wish to\nhave the child with her.\"\n\n\"And you will be patient with her. You will make her happy,\" said Lady\nJane, holding his hand.\n\n\"Everything is made happy by Emily,\" he answered.\n\n\"But has she spirits for the charge?\"\n\n\"She has always spirits enough to give happiness to others,\" he answered;\nand the dew was on his dark lashes.\n\n\"And you, Giles\u2014you will not be severe even if the poor child is a little\nwild?\"\n\n\"I know what you are thinking of, Jane,\" he said kindly. \"But indeed, my\ndear, such a wife as mine, and such sorrows as she has helped me to bear,\nwould have been wasted indeed, if by God's grace they had not made me\nless exacting and impatient than I used to be.\u2014Barbara,\" he added after a\npause, \"I beg your pardon if I have spoken hastily, or done you\ninjustice. All you have done has been conscientious; and if I spoke in\ndispleasure\u2014you know how one's spirit is moved by seeing a child\nunhappy\u2014and my training in gentleness is not as complete as it ought to\nbe, I am sorry for the pain I gave you.\"\n\nLady Barbara was struggling with tears she could not repress; and at last\nshe broke quite down, and wept so that Lady Jane moved about in alarm and\ndistress, and her brother waited in some anxiety. But when she spoke it\nwas humbly.\n\n\"You were right, Giles. It was not in me to love that child. It was\nwrong in me. Perhaps if I had overcome the feeling when you first told\nme of it, when her mother died, it would have been better for us all.\nNow it is too late. Our habits have formed themselves, and I can neither\nmanage the child nor make her happy. It is better that she should go to\nyou and Emily. And, Giles, if you still bring her to us sometimes, I\nwill try\u2014\" The last words were lost.\n\n\"You will,\" he said affectionately, \"when there are no more daily\ncollisions. Dear Barbara, if I am particularly anxious to train this\npoor girl up at once in affection and in self-restraint, it is because my\nwhole life\u2014ever since I grew up\u2014has taught me what a grievous task is\nleft us, after we are our own masters. If our childish faults\u2014such as\nimpetuosity and sullenness\u2014are not corrected on principle, not for\nconvenience, while we are children.\"\n\nAfter this conversation, everyone will be sure that Mrs. Umfraville came\nnext day, and after many arrangements with Lady Barbara, carried off the\nlittle Countess with her to the house that Lord de la Poer had lent them.\n\nKate was subdued and quiet. She felt that she had made a very unhappy\nbusiness of her life with her aunts, and that she should never see Bruton\nStreet without a sense of shame. Lady Barbara, too, was more soft and\nkind than she had ever seen her; and Aunt Jane was very fond of her, and\ngrieved over her not having been happier.\n\n\"Oh, never mind, Aunt Jane; it was all my naughtiness. I know Aunt Emily\nwill make me good; and nobody could behave ill in the house with Uncle\nGiles, could they now? So I shall be sure to be happy. And I'll tell\nyou what, Aunt Jane; some day you shall come to stay with us, and then\nI'll drive you out in a dear delicious open carriage, with two prancing\nponies!\"\n\nAnd when she wished her other aunt good-bye, she eased her mind by\nsaying, \"Aunt Barbara, I am very sorry I was such a horrid plague.\"\n\n\"There were faults on both sides, Katharine,\" her aunt answered with\ndignity. \"Perhaps in time we may understand one another better.\"\n\nThe first thing Katharine heard when she had left the house with Mrs.\nUmfraville was, that her uncle had gone down to Oldburgh by an early\ntrain, and that both box and shawl had gone with him.\n\nBut when he came back late to Lord de la Poer's house, whom had he\nbrought with him?\n\nMary! Mary Wardour herself! He had, as a great favour, begged to have\nher for a fortnight in London, to take care of her little cousin, till\nfurther arrangements could be made; and to talk over with Mrs. Umfraville\nthe child's character, and what would be good for her.\n\nIf there was one shy person in the house that night, there was another\nhappier than words could tell!\n\nMoreover, before very long, the Countess of Caergwent had really seen the\nLord Chancellor, and found him not so very unlike other people after all;\nindeed, unless Uncle Giles had told her, she never would have found out\nwho he was! And when he asked her whether she would wish to live with\nColonel Umfraville or with Lady Barbara and Lady Jane, it may be very\neasily guessed what answer she made!\n\nSo it was fixed that she should live at Caergwent Castle with her uncle\nand aunt, and be brought up to the care of her own village and poor\npeople, and to learn the duties of her station under their care.\n\nAnd before they left London, Mrs. Umfraville had chosen a very bright\npleasant young governess, to be a friend and companion, as well as an\ninstructress. Further, it was settled that as soon as Christmas was\nover, Sylvia should come for a long visit, and learn of the governess\nwith Kate.\n\nThose who have learned to know Countess Kate can perhaps guess whether\nshe found herself right in thinking it impossible to be naughty near\nUncle Giles or Aunt Emily. But of one thing they may be sure\u2014that Uncle\nGiles never failed to make her truly sorry for her naughtiness, and\nincreasingly earnest in the struggle to leave it off.\n\nAnd as time went on, and occupations and interests grew up round Colonel\nand Mrs. Umfraville, and their niece lost her childish wildness, and\nloved them more and more, they felt their grievous loss less and less,\nand did not so miss the vanished earthly hope. Their own children had so\nlived that they could feel them safe; and they attached themselves to the\nchild in their charge till she was really like their own.\n\nYet, all the time, Kate still calls Mr. Wardour \"Papa;\" and Sylvia spends\nhalf her time with her. Some people still say that in manners, looks,\nand ways, Sylvia would make a better Countess than Lady Caergwent; but\nthere are things that both are learning together, which alone can make\nthem fit for any lot upon earth, or for the better inheritance in Heaven.\n\n\n\n\n***","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":" \n# Nietzsche & the Political\n\nNietzsche's political thought has long been dismissed for its alleged naivet\u00e9 and its antiliberal excesses. Yet, far from being of merely historical interest, his critique of late modernity in fact suggests a compelling alternative to the political models advanced by liberal, communitarian and postmodern theorists.\n\nIn _Nietzsche & the Political,_ Daniel W.Conway takes Nietzsche seriously as a political thinker. Unlike other writers on the subject, Conway neither idolizes not demonizes. He carefully explores the consequences of Nietzsche's critique of modernity for his political thought from his earliest writings through to his mature work. Conway's clear and even-handed analysis is free from the obfuscatory jargon often associated with Nietzsche scholarship.\n\n_Nietzsche & the Political_ is a comprehensive introduction to Nietzsche's political thought. It also offers a thorough survey of Nietzsche's political legacy, including his influence on such seminal thinkers as Foucault and Habermas and his continuing importance to contemporary liberalism and feminist theory. It will be required reading for students of Nietzsche in philosophy, politics and sociology.\n\n**Daniel W.Conway** is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Value Inquiry at Pennsylvania State University. He is the co-editor of _The Politics of Irony_ and _Nietzsche und die antike Philosophie._\n\n# Thinking the Political\n\nGeneral editors: \nKeith Ansell-Pearson, _University of Warwick_ \nSimon Critchley, _University of Essex_\n\nRecent decades have seen the emergence of a distinct and challenging body of work by a number of Continental thinkers that has fundamentally altered the way in which philosophical questions are conceived and discussed. This work poses a major challenge to anyone wishing to define the essentially contestable concept of 'the political' and to think anew the political import and application of philosophy. How does recent thinking on time, history, language, humanity, alterity, desire, sexuality, gender and culture open up the possibility of thinking the political anew? What are the implications of such thinking for our understanding of and relation to the leading ideologies of the modern world, such as liberalism, socialism and Marxism? What are the political responsibilities of philosophy in the face of the new world (dis)order?\n\nThis new series is designed to present the work of the major continental thinkers of our time, and the political debates their work has generated, to a wider audience in philosophy and in political, social and cultural theory. The aim is neither to dissolve the specificity of the 'philosophical' into the 'political' nor evade the challenge that 'the political' poses the 'philosophical'; rather, each volume in the series will try to show how it is only in the relation between the two that new possibilities of thought and politics can be activated.\n\nAlready published:\n\n * Foucault and the Political _by Jon Simons_\n * Derrida and the Political _by Richard Beardsworth_\n\n# Nietzsche & the Political\n\n## Daniel W.Conway\n\nFirst published 1997 \nby Routledge \n11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE\n\nThis edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.\n\n\"To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.\"\n\nSimultaneously published in the USA and Canada \nby Routledge \n20 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001\n\n\u00a9 1997 Daniel W.Conway\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.\n\n_British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data_ \nA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.\n\n_Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data_ \nConway, Daniel W. \nNietzsche and the political\/Daniel W.Conway. \np. cm.\u2014(Thinking the political) \nIncludes bibliographical references and index. \nISBN 0-415-10068-2 (Print Edition). ISBN 0-415-10069-0 (pbk.) \n1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844\u20131900\u2014Contributions in political science. I. Title. II. Series. \nJC233.N52C65 1996 \n320\u2032.01\u2013dc20 96\u20137867 CIP\n\nISBN 0-203-97938-9 Master e-book ISBN\n\nISBN 0-415-10068-2 (hbk) \nISBN 0-415-10069-0 (pbk)\n\n_For Shannon_\n\n# Acknowledgements\n\nThis book developed as a product of my friendship with Keith Ansell Pearson and David Owen, to whom I am deeply indebted for their encouragement and criticism. I am also grateful to Graham Parkes and Tracy Strong, both of whom read the entire manuscript and judiciously suggested salutary revisions. I am furthermore indebted to the many friends and colleagues who have discussed Nietzsche's political philosophy with me over the years, including Panos Alexakos, Babette Babich, Debra Bergoffen, Ann-Marie Bowery, Howard Caygill, William Connolly, Claudia Crawford, Simon Critchley, Brian Domino, Shannon Duval, Robert Gooding-Williams, Kathleen Higgins, Robert Irelan, Salim Kemal, Laurence Lampert, Duncan Large, Bernd Magnus, Alexander Nehamas, Kelly Oliver, Robert Pippin, Stanley Rosen, Richard Schacht, Alan Schrift, Charles Scott, Gary Shapiro, David Stern, John Seery, Robert Solomon, and Michael Zimmerman. The research for this book was made possible by a generous grant from the Research and Graduate Studies Office of the College of the Liberal Arts at The Pennsylvania State University; my special thanks to Dean Susan Welch and Associate Dean Raymond Lombra. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge permission to use portions of the following publications:\n\n\" _Das Weib an sich_ : The Slave Revolt in Epistemology,\" in _Nietzsche_ : _Feminism and Political Theory,_ ed. Paul Patton (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 110\u2013129.\n\n\"Love's Labour's Lost: The Philosopher's _Versucherkunst,_ \" in _Nietzsche,_ _Philosophy and the Arts,_ eds Daniel W. Conway and Salim Kemal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).\n\n\"Autonomy and Authenticity: How One Becomes What One Is,\" _St. John's_ _Review,_ vol. XLII, no. 2, May 1994, pp. 27\u201339.\n\n\"Comedians of the Ascetic Ideal: The Performance of Genealogy,\" in _The_ _Politics of Irony: Essays in Self-Betrayal,_ eds Daniel W.Conway and John E.Seery (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 73\u201395.\n\n\"Foucault, Michel,\" _The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Supplement,_ ed. David M.Borchert (Macmillan and Co.), pp. 201\u2013202.\n\n# List of abbreviations\n\nAll references to Nietzsche's works appear in the body of the text; individual writings are identified by the abbreviations listed below.\n\nSee Table\n\nRather than giving page references to any one particular edition, I have adopted a system that is widely used in Nietzsche scholarship and allows readers to identify the passages cited whatever edition they may be using:\n\n 1. All arabic numbers denote sections. For instance, GS 238 refers to section 238 of _The Gay Science._\n 2. All roman numbers denote parts or standard subdivisions in those works of Nietzsche where section numbers start anew with each part or subdivision. Thus GM 11:21 refers to the _Genealogy of Morals,_ essay II, section 21; and TI VII:3 refers to _Twilight of the Idols,_ essay VII, section 3.\n 3. Citations from the preface of a particular work are identified by \"P\", as in EH P:4\u2014a reference to _Ecce Homo,_ preface, section 4.\n\nOccasionally I have thought it helpful to include parts of the original German text from the standard critical edition of Nietzsche's works (Friedrich Nietzsche, _S\u00e4mtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 B\u00e4nden,_ ed. G.Colli and M.Montinari, Berlin: de Gruyter\/Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag); these German passages appear in square brackets.\nAC | _The Antichrist(ian),_ trans. Walter Kaufmann, in _The Portable Nietzsche,_ ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982). \n---|--- \nBGE | _Beyond Good and Evil,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966). \nBT | _The Birth of Tragedy,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967). \nCW | _The Case of Wagner,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967). \nD | _Daybreak,_ trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). \nEH | _Ecce Homo,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House\/Vintage Books, 1989). \nGM | _On the Genealogy of Morals,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J.Hollingdale (New York: Random House\/Vintage Books, 1989). \nGS | _The Gay Science,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974). \nH | _Human, All-Too-Human,_ trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). \nNCW | _Nietzsche Contra Wagner,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann, in _The Portable Nietzsche,_ ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982). \nSE | _Schopenhauer as Educator,_ trans. R.J.Hollingdale, in _Untimely Meditations,_ trans. R.J.Hollingdale, intr. J.P.Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). \nTI | _Twilight of the Idols,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann, in _The Portable Nietzsche,_ ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982). \nWP | _The Will to Power,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J.Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967). \nZ | _Thus Spoke Zarathustra,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann, in _The Portable Nietzsche,_ ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982).\n\n# Introduction: Voyage of the Damned?\n\n> At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, _our_ sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an \"open sea.\"\n> \n> \u2014 _The Gay Science,_ 343\n\nNietzsche tends to cast modernity in a blindingly negative light, alternately describing it in terms of the onset of European nihilism, the inexorable spread of decadence, the advent of the last will, the flaccid reign of the last man, the twilight of the idols, and so forth. But the shipwreck of modernity also produces in him a cathartic, liberating effect, granting him a measure of freedom from the superlative (albeit fading) values of the age. The horizon of modernity may not be bright, but it is at long last free, and Nietzsche hopes to exploit this freedom to impress his signature onto the successor age to modernity.\n\nNietzsche's contributions to politics, and to political philosophy, are notoriously difficult to reckon. He not only stands in defiant opposition to the general political trends of modernity, but also refuses the \"scientific\" methodologies preferred by his contemporaries. Deeply contemptuous of the reluctant advocates, unwitting valets, and involuntary memoirists who pose as original thinkers, he never undertakes to deliver a solemn, sonorous treatise on politics. Understandably wary of philosophical system-building, he conveys his political insights via lightning epigrams and apothegmatic proclamations, generally ignoring the quaint Alexandrian custom of furnishing evidence, arguments, and justifications. While his contemporaries celebrate the triumphs of the new _Reich_ or frolic in the surging tide of democratic reforms, he scours the premodern world for sober realists and exemplars of political wisdom. He chooses as his interlocutors such untimely figures as Homer, Manu, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Caesar, and St. Paul.\n\nIt is now a commonplace for scholars to attribute the difficulty of Nietzsche's political thinking to his writerly styles, experimental masks, pagan irreverence, antiquarian prejudices, arrested naivet\u00e9, resentment of modernity\u2014even to the palpable dissatisfactions of his personal\/sexual\/ emotional\/psychological life. These commonly cited idiosyncrasies collectively point, however, not so much to the difficulty of his political thinking, as to its inferiority. Nietzsche is commonly received as an incisive critic, or as an _agent provocateur,_ but not as a political philosopher of the first rank. He is an erratic, iconoclastic genius, whose prurient excesses we might contemplate in hygienic detachment (perhaps as a naughty diversion from our more serious work in political philosophy), but in the end he is utterly harmless to the prevailing idols of modernity. Prematurely dismissive of the democratic reforms and liberal ideals that define the highest achievements and aspirations of the age, he has nothing constructive to say to us about political life in late modernity. An outrageous critic, to be sure, but undeniably second-rate, and perhaps downright naive.\n\nThe difficulty of Nietzsche's political thinking is attributable not to any personal or epistolary quirks, but to its unusually grandiose scope. He wishes to return to the very ground of politics itself, to excavate the site of politics, and to retrieve the founding question of politics. He consequently has no use for the small-minded pomposity that often passes in modernity for political thinking. He is quite content to leave the details of government, regulation, production and distribution to his fussy German contemporaries. Although his philosophy has spawned many of the revolutionary, antifoundational insights that continue to contour postmodern and post-structuralist thought, his political thinking remains unmistakably modern (or even premodern) in its orientation and design. In fact, his political philosophy bears a closer resemblance to the conservative republicanism of his predecessors than to the progressive liberalism of his contemporaries.\n\nWhile most representatives of modernity are content to confect self-congratulatory justifications for its misguided projects, Nietzsche is inclined to ask after modernity itself: does it warrant the future of humankind? What might be made of its modest successes and colossal follies? What, if anything, might follow in its turbulent wake? Unless we raise such basic, decisive questions, politics amounts to nothing more than busy work for the petty managers and bureaucrats whom modernity produces in such sterile abundance.\n\nUnlike those prudent seafarers who seek shelter and anchorage, Nietzsche relishes the danger of voyages on the \"open seas.\" No other critic of modernity has dared to venture so far from the _terra firma_ of a (supposedly) foundational critical standpoint. No other seafarer has so boldly\u2014and foolishly\u2014renounced conventional routes and instruments of navigation:\n\n> We sail right _over_ morality, we crush, we destroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage there\u2014but what matter are _we!_ (BGE 23)\n\nTo pursue Nietzsche's critique of modernity is to set sail on uncharted seas. His odyssey transports him to various ports of call, none more exotic than the _terra_ _incognita_ of political legislation. Taking advantage of the palpable degeneration of modern political institutions, he dares to raise a calamitous, and previously unapproachable, question of political legislation: _what ought humankind to_ _become?_\n\nAlthough this might fairly be viewed as the founding question of politics, to which all political thinkers and legislators ought carefully to attend, Nietzsche insists that it is in fact rarely considered at all. This neglect is partially attributable to historical circumstances, for such questions can be raised only in the twilight of an age, when widespread failure and dissolution call into question the very meaning of human existence. That Nietzsche can raise the founding question of politics thus constitutes sufficient proof that previously satisfying justifications of human existence are no longer viable. This is no idle question, raised to satisfy an academic curiosity: as modernity stumbles toward exhaustion, the last will of humankind, \"the will to nothingness,\" looms on the horizon.\n\nThe prospect of the \"will to nothingness\" points to another reason for the pandemic neglect of the founding question of politics. Raised only in those historical periods in which humankind no longer feels worthy of its past glories, this question presupposes neither an affirmation nor a confirmation of the future of the species. Indeed, Nietzsche does not assume in advance of his daring voyages that humankind necessarily ought to become anything at all. He retrieves the founding question of politics in order to call humankind itself, and its future, into question. In light of the pervasive decay of modernity, he asks, should humankind capitulate to its \"will to nothingness\"? Or should political legislators devise measures to ensure the survival of humankind? If so, at what future expense to the species as a whole? At stake here is nothing less than the justification of humankind itself, the warrant for its future as a viable, thriving species.\n\nOf course, merely raising the founding question of politics implies neither one's willingness, nor one's capacity, to venture a definitive answer. Having raised the question, one might judge the extant responses to be adequate, or recoil in horror from the weight of the acquired responsibility, or defer the question to \"others\" (mortal or divine), or promptly shelve the question altogether. While Nietzsche is often criticized for failing to deliver a detailed articulation of \"his\" vision of the future of humankind, it is not clear that this is, or should be, his political task. Owing to the unique historical conditions under which this question becomes both intelligible and meaningful, those who would raise the question are in no position to answer it with any degree of specificity. Just as the crepuscular flight of the Owl of Minerva seals, for Hegel, the practical impotence of reason and understanding, so Nietzsche's attention to the _question_ of modernity signals the irreversible decline of modernity itself. Indeed, since his own critical perspective is tinctured by the decadence that besets modernity, we should receive any specific answer he might venture to the founding question of politics with heightened suspicions.\n\nYet the inherent danger of raising\u2014much less answering\u2014the founding question of politics is nevertheless grave, for one thereby glimpses the shores of that undiscovered country that Nietzschean cartography locates \"beyond good and evil.\" Once raised, this question cannot be returned to oblivion, and it must change us forever\u2014even if we refuse to answer it. Nietzsche likens the advent of European nihilism to the arrival at one's door of an \"uncanny\" solicitor, who demands entry into one's home, claiming it to be his home as well (WP 1). Just as one may choose to ignore the entreaties of this persistent guest, so one may choose either to refuse the founding question of politics, or to pretend that this question has already received a final, definitive answer. Toward this end, Nietzsche helpfully catalogs the various tricks, therapies, and penances devised over the years to distract human beings from the founding question of politics. What one may _not_ choose, however, is never to have heard this guest at one's door, never to have shunted off onto others the responsibility for determining the future of humankind.\n\nWhile a serious consideration of the founding question of politics need not commit one to a perfidious eugenics project, or to illiberal social engineering, it _does_ commit one to a potentially crippling dalliance with Nietzsche's \"immoralism.\" As astute critics have nervously warned throughout the twentieth century, _nothing Nietzsche says_ definitively rules out the illiberal political regimes with which his name has been linked. He neither discerns nor acknowledges any prima facie restrictions on the type of answer a lawgiver might formulate to the founding question of politics. According to Nietzsche, political lawgivers are bound in their deliberations by no moral considerations whatsoever \u2014all of which have been cast adrift in the passage beyond good and evil\u2014but only by a fidelity to their own respective visions of the future of humankind. The supposed priority of a liberal response to this question, a response that aims to secure the future of humankind by eliminating suffering and promoting individual freedom, is \"merely\" an accident of history, which attests more convincingly to the advance of decadence than to the political merits of liberalism itself.\n\nNietzsche proffers no assurance (and certainly no hope) that he will respect the liberal ideals of modernity, for he views the advent of the \"will to nothingness\" as a greater danger than the demise of liberalism. He aims simply to secure the future of the species, hoping to forestall the \"suicidal nihilism\" that threatens humankind. In light of the prevailing historical conditions of his political thinking, his account of his own \"destiny\" is perhaps fitting after all:\n\n> I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous\u2014a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up _against_ everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite... It is only beginning with me that the earth knows _great_ _politics._ (EH XIV:1)\n\n# 1 \nPolitical Perfectionism\n\n> I hear with pleasure that our sun is swiftly moving toward the constellation of _Hercules_ \u2014and I hope that man on this earth will in this respect follow the sun's example? And we first of all, we good Europeans!\n> \n> \u2014 _Beyond Good and Evil,_ 243\n\nNietzsche's attempt to retrieve the founding question of politics reflects his conviction that it is the business of politics to legislate the conditions of the permanent enhancement of humankind (BGE 257). Humankind is best enhanced, he believes, not through the Whiggish reforms and liberal ideals favored by modernity, but through the cultivation of those rare individuals who body forth an expanded complement of human powers and perfections. He consequently recommends that social resources should be reserved and mobilized for the production of great human beings.\n\nAs we have seen, Nietzsche treats the founding question of politics as a philosophical question of ultimate justification or legitimation. He thus asks: in what incarnation, if any, might humankind justify its continued existence and warrant its unsecured future? It is important here to bear in mind the historical context of Nietzsche's critical enterprise. In a famous note from 1886, he confirms the advent of European nihilism. This means, he explains, that humankind itself lacks an aim or purpose that might redeem the suffering endemic to its very existence: \"What does nihilism mean? _That the highest_ _values devaluate themselves._ The aim is lacking; 'why?' finds no answer\" (WP 2). A justification of human existence is furnished by any aim (or goal or purpose), whose pursuit promises to enable human beings to endure the suffering of their meaningless existence. In lieu of some such aim, human beings might be forced to find meaning for themselves in their own self-annihilation, in the will never to will again.\n\nHere we should note that Nietzsche does not automatically assume either that he will arrive at some such justification, or that human existence should necessarily continue. The \"highest values\" ever attained by Western civilization have now \"devaluated themselves.\" He must consequently begin anew, as it were, in the quest for a goal that might redeem humankind as a whole. Since he too is implicated in the besetting decadence of modernity, he is not optimally appointed to create new values and erect new ideals. For all of his celebrated love of life and _amor fati,_ moreover, he is also deeply impressed by the thanatonic wisdom of Silenus, who counseled his captors to retreat immediately into the unquenchable an aim or goal that might actually warrant the future of humankind, stream of the Dionysian _Ur-eine_. Nietzsche consequently seeks to discover rather than merely prolong the miserable existence of a dying, misbegotten species. As he sees it, humankind needs an erotogenic goal to galvanize the will, a promise of the future that would renew our confidence in the continued development of the species.\n\nThroughout his productive career, Nietzsche's political thinking centers around a simple, yet powerful, thesis: human existence is justified only by the presence of those exemplary individuals who re-define the horizons of human perfectibility. In perhaps his most (in)famous articulation of this thesis, he explains that\n\n> We ought really to have no difficulty in seeing that, when a type _[Art]_ has arrived at its limits and is about to go over to a higher type, the goal of its evolution lies not in the mass of its exemplars and their wellbeing, let alone in those exemplars who happen to come last in point of time, but rather in those apparently scattered and chance existences which favorable conditions have here and there produced... For the question is this: how can your life, the individual life, receive the highest value, the deepest significance? How can it be least squandered? Certainly only by living for the advantage of the rarest and most valuable exemplars _[du zum Vortheile_ _der seltensten und werthvollsten Exemplare lebst],_ and not for the advantage of the majority, that is to say those who, taken individually, are the least valuable exemplars. (SE 6)\n\nWhile it might be tempting to dismiss this passage (written in 1874) as a youthful indiscretion, a perusal of Nietzsche's later writings reveals a persistent fascination with the central political role played by superlative human beings. In one of his last books he proclaims that\n\n> The problem I thus pose is not what shall succeed mankind in the sequence of living beings (man is an _end_ ), but what type of man shall be _bred_ , shall be _willed_ , for being higher in value, worthier of life, more certain of a future. Even in the past this higher type has appeared often\u2014but as a fortunate accident, as an exception, never as something _willed._ (AC 3)\n\nAt the center of Nietzsche's political thinking thus stands his commitment to the position known as _perfectionism,_ which constitutes his general answer to the founding question of politics. He locates the sole justification of human existence in the continued perfectibility of the species as a whole, as evidenced by the pioneering accomplishments of its highest exemplars. In _Schopenhauer as_ _Educator,_ for example, he argues that it is the primary task of culture itself to oversee the production of great human beings:\n\n> It is the fundamental idea of _culture,_ insofar as it sets for each one of us but one task: _to promote the production of the philosopher, the artist, and_ the saint within us and without us and thereby to work at the perfecting of _Nature._ (SE 5)\n\nTranslating this \"fundamental idea\" into more familiar political terms, he insists that \"humankind ought to seek out and create the favorable conditions under which those great redemptive men can come into existence\" (SE 6). In order to correct for the profligacy of Nature, political legislation must ensure the conditions of the emergence of true genius. In this (relatively) early essay, Nietzsche advocates the precise social conditions\u2014including hardship, neglect, material disadvantage and institutional indifference\u2014under which both Schopenhauer and he emerged as philosophers.\n\nSince human existence derives enduring meaning only through the exploits of its rarest and most exotic specimens, the task of politics is to legislate the conditions under which such exemplars will most likely emerge. This task is by no means simple, for, as Nietzsche indicates in the passage cited above, exemplary human beings usually emerge only by accident, as \"lucky strikes\" on the part of careless peoples and cultures. The political lawgivers he envisions must consequently legislate against the indifference of Nature itself:\n\n> The accidental, the law of absurdity in the whole economy of humankind, manifests itself most horribly in its destructive effect on the higher men whose complicated conditions of life can only be calculated with great subtlety and difficulty. (BGE 62)\n\nHe thus describes the enormity of the task that awaits the \"new philosophers,\" to whom he entrusts the future of humankind:\n\n> To teach man the future of man as his _will_ , as dependent on a human will, and to prepare great ventures and over-all attempts _[Gesammt-Versuche]_ of discipline and cultivation by way of putting an end to that gruesome dominion of nonsense and accident that has so far been called \"history.\" (BGE 203)\n\nWith his \"help,\" Nietzsche believes, the successor epoch to modernity might suspend this cowardly reliance on chance and resolutely attend to the \"breeding\" of exemplary human beings.\n\nNietzsche's childlike fascination with the heroic exploits of world-historical figures is attributable to their respective contributions to the enhancement of humankind as a whole. Thucydides, Caesar, Michel-angelo, Napoleon, Goethe, Bizet, and so on\u2014all represent irreversible advancements on the part of humankind as a whole. In the prodigious shadow cast by this higher humanity, the meaning and value of human existence can never revert to the (anachronistic) standards revered in bygone ages. Like those intrepid wards of Prometheus, whose plucky accomplishments with the divine flame won from Zeus a stay of execution, this higher humanity confers a measure of dignity and grace onto an otherwise undistinguished species. The dice-throwing gods may continue to laugh at the folly of their puny human playthings, but they are sufficiently intrigued by these specimens of higher humanity to renew the spectacle. Even Christianity, that great leveler of humankind and enemy of perfectionism, recognizes the need to single out particular saints and martyrs as exemplary specimens of faith, piety, and suffering.\n\nA significant disadvantage of the term \"perfectionism\" is its misleading connotation of a _final_ perfection or completion of the species. While it is true that great human beings continually exceed the achievements of their predecessors, these transfigurative exploits are both chaotic and unpredicted; they expand the horizon of human perfectibility along any number of unanticipated planes and vectors. The enactment of previously unknown human perfections is furthermore not immediately visible in its full relief; centuries, even millennia, may pass before humankind as a whole acknowledges the unparalleled achievements of its highest exemplars. Any attempt to identify in advance the _final_ perfection of the human soul thus amounts to nothing more than an exercise in idealism, which Nietzsche comes to view in his post-Zarathustran writings as the philosophical antipode to his own \"realism\" (EH 11: 10).\n\nBased on his careful observations of human \"nature\" and history, Nietzsche assumes that the species as a whole is both dynamic and evolving. As far as he knows, humankind neither progresses inexorably toward some preordained omega point, nor fulfills a cosmic destiny that consigns the weak and infirm to a premature extinction. Through the signal exploits of its highest representatives, humankind reaches ever beyond itself, but it reaches for no pre-established goal or _telos_. Each successive transfiguration further limns the unknown depths and reaches of the human soul. Indeed, Nietzsche's perfectionism is at all intelligible only in the event that the human soul is in fact predicated of sufficient plasticity to accommodate the completion and perfection he envisions.\n\nThe emergence of great human beings contributes to the enhancement of humankind both directly, by advancing the frontier of human perfectibility, and indirectly, by encouraging (some) others to flourish as well. The ethical life of any thriving community draws its sustenance and vitality from such individuals, and it cannot survive without them. Far from the mere ornaments to which they have been reduced in late modernity, superlative human beings are in fact responsible for the catalysis of culture itself. Nietzsche adamantly maintains that \"only he who has attached his heart to some great man is by that act _consecrated_ _to culture_ \" (SE 6). He later maintains, apparently with no hyperbole intended, that\n\n> A people is a detour of Nature to get to six or seven great men.\u2014Yes, and then to get around them. (BGE 126)\n\nSuperlative human beings contribute to an enhancement of the species as a whole, for they embody, and thus reveal, heretofore unknown perfections resident within the human soul. By continually expanding the complement of extant human perfections, these exemplars confer upon the species as a whole a quasi-divine status, an ephemeral intimation of immortality.\n\nGreat human beings accomplish the catalysis of culture not as a consciously articulated goal, but as an indirect and unintended by-product of their \"private\" pursuits of self-perfection. While they directly enhance the lives only of themselves and those select few who share their refined aesthetic sensibilities, they indirectly enhance the lives of all who are even minimally invested in the project of culture. Indeed, everyone who enters \"the circle of culture\" stands to benefit from the production of exemplary human types, for a justification of human existence would be impossible in their absence. Hence the central paradox of Nietzsche's perfectionism: the enhancement of humanity and the enrichment of ethical life are dependent upon the exploits of \"immoral\" exemplars who hold no conscious or intentional stake in the lives of those whom they succor and renew. In fact, he insists, these exotic specimens must be allowed (and indeed encouraged) to free themselves from the chains of conventional morality if they are to contribute to the permanent enhancement of humankind.\n\nAn exemplary human being thus embodies a concrete way of life, a set of situated practices that not only demonstrate the perfectibility of the human soul, but also remind (some) others of the powers and perfections resident within themselves. One such exemplar, Nietzsche suggests, is the (pre-Pauline) Jesus, who bodied forth a \"deep instinct for how one must _live_...a new way of life, _not_ a new faith\" (AC 33). The redemptive and justificatory powers of these exemplary human beings are aptly expressed in the dexter king's unsolicited paeon to Zarathustra:\n\n> Nothing more delightful grows on earth, O Zarathustra, than a lofty, strong will: that is the earth's most beautiful plant. A whole landscape is refreshed by one such tree... Your tree here, O Zarathustra, refreshes even the gloomy ones, the failures; your sight reassures and heals the heart even of the restless. (Z IV:11)\n\nEven a decadent people or epoch stands to be renewed by the exploits of its representative exemplars. Reeling from the mediocrity and degeneration that make him \"weary\" of humankind as a whole, Nietzsche hopes to steal a tonic glimpse of \"a man who justifies _humankind,_ of a complementary and redeeming lucky strike on the part of humankind for the sake of which one may still _believe_ _in humankind!_ \" (GM 1:12) While these decadent \"heroes\" are not likely to be confused with the commanders and conquerors who populate vital epochs, they nevertheless serve to excite confidence in the future of humanity. One such \"hero\" is Aristophanes, whom Nietzsche describes as\n\n> that transfiguring, complementary spirit for whose sake one _forgives_ everything Hellenic for having existed, provided one has understood in its full profundity _all_ that needs to be forgiven and transfigured here. (BGE 28)\n\nThe example of Aristophanes is pertinent not only because Nietzsche too must negotiate the shades and shadows of a twilight epoch, but also because Aristophanes, the irreverent scourge of our beloved Socrates, does not resemble the familiar heroes of Greek antiquity. If Nietzsche is to introduce his readers to the representative exemplars of late modernity, then he must somehow divert our attention from traditional models of heroism, which are no longer applicable. In a preliminary education of his readers' sensibilities, he thus prefers Aristophanes to a more commonly revered contemporary:\n\n> Nothing...has caused me to meditate more on _Plato's_ secrecy and sphinx nature than the happily preserved _petit fait_ that under the pillow of his deathbed there was found no \"Bible,\" nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic\u2014but a volume of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life\u2014a Greek life he repudiated\u2014without an Aristophanes? (BGE 28)\n\n### The Lawgiver\n\nThe term \"perfectionism\" carries an indelibly negative connotation, but it accurately focuses our attention on the vital core of Nietzsche's political thinking. His commitment to perfectionism is perhaps best understood as the product of his attempt to accede to the perspective of the _lawgiver,_ who aspires to attain (and perhaps to implement) a panoptic vision of the future of humankind.\n\nThe lawgiver plays a unique role within the economy of Nietzsche's political thinking. Lawgivers are typically _not_ rulers, and they only rarely gain influence over actual rulers. That the lawgiver is typically ignored by modern rulers constitutes Nietzsche's general objection to modern politics, which succeeds largely in presenting the aimlessness and indolence of modernity as princely virtues. (Whether premodern rulers were more appreciative of the wisdom of the lawgiver, as Nietzsche occasionally suggests, remains to be demonstrated.) While actual rulers usually attend only to the local exigencies of personal or popular aggrandizement, the lawgiver attempts to legislate on behalf of humanity as a whole. Hence Nietzsche's attempt to retrieve the founding question of politics: what ought humankind to become?\n\nWhile most rulers formulate and justify their legislations by appealing to the prosperity of a particular people or polity over a specific, short-term duration, the lawgiver appeals exclusively to the permanent enhancement of humankind as a whole. Legislating from an \"immoral\" perspective beyond good and evil, the lawgiver cannot be concerned with (or even acknowledge) the \"rights\" and \"freedoms\" of individual tribes and peoples, much less those of individual human beings; nothing less than the future determination of the species is at stake. When appealing to the hyperopic perspective of the lawgiver, Nietzsche consequently sounds monstrously cold and cruel, especially to his liberal audiences of the twentieth century. Such is the nature not of the man himself, but of the \"immoral\" perspective he adopts as a political thinker. He too cares, in his own way, about distributive justice, social welfare, moral education, and other hallmarks of modern political life, though he neither ascribes to these goals the highest political priority, nor thinks them a worthy challenge for his prodigious intellectual gifts. _Qua_ lawgiver, no one can be concerned with the particular lives of individual human beings.\n\nCritics often respond that the \"immoral\" standpoint of the lawgiver is simply the wrong perspective for political thinkers to adopt. It is often remarked, in fact, that Nietzsche attempts thereby to usurp divine authority, daring to consider a question that mere mortals are neither meant nor fit to raise. The charge of impiety is essentially valid, but it is most helpful in framing the historical context of his political thinking. So long as superlative values and metaphysical systems perdure, there is no need, and no opportunity, to raise the founding question of politics. In the absence of any supernatural or metaphysical source of meaning, however, humankind must create for itself sufficient reason for its continued, imperiled existence. Meaning of this magnitude, Nietzsche believes, derives only from the \"heroic\" exploits of the highest exemplars of the human species. No other means of securing meaning for human existence is currently feasible. When the gods falter or flee, mere mortals must step into the breach.\n\nAlthough the secular, anthropocentric justification that Nietzsche promises will not be sufficient for those wretched souls who remain inured to the \"metaphysical comforts\" dispensed by Platonism and Christianity, it is the only mode of justification that it is possible to obtain in the shadow of the dead God. This is not to say, however, that the advent of nihilism marks the end of metaphysics and supernaturalism. Like his predecessor obituarist, the Madman (GS 125), Nietzsche realizes that his cognitive insight-into the death of God carries no volitional charge. While he still hopes, fatuously, to occasion a miraculous transformation in his God-fearing readers, he also concedes that \"given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which [God's] shadow will be shown\" (GS 108). Most human beings continue to prostrate themselves before the rotting corpse of the fallen god, either indifferent to, or enchanted by, its cadaverous stench. Even Nietzsche himself occasionally (if surreptitiously) pays his respects to the existentially challenged deity, appealing reverentially to \"divine\" truths and idols that he expressly disallows to others.\n\n### The Indeterminate Animal\n\nThe task of \"great politics\" is neither to destroy nor to transcend the all-too-human within us, but to bring the all-too-human to completion and perfection. But whence the need for the \"perfection\" of the species at all? Why is humankind in general, in any of its historical incarnations, dependent upon the redemptive exploits of its \"highest\" specimens? Why are the labors of \"ordinary\" human beings, however modest or clumsy they may be, insufficient to warrant the future of the species?\n\nNietzsche's earliest attempts to provide adequate answers to these questions pointed to the failure of Nature to preside over the timely production of exemplary human beings. Nature on its own is a \"bad economist\" (SE 7). If allowed to pursue the dilatory schedule to which it is accustomed, Nature would continue to produce great human beings, but always as unforeseen accidents, and never with the frequency and regularity that Nietzsche deems necessary for the healthy renewal of culture:\n\n> Nature wants always to be of universal utility, but it does not know how to find the best and most suitable means and instruments for this end... Nature is just as extravagant in the domain of culture as it is in that of planting and sowing. It achieves its aims in a broad and ponderous manner: and in doing so it sacrifices much too much energy. (SE 7)\n\nThe goal of politics, on this early account, is to assist Nature in attaining more efficiently the ends at which it consistently, if heedlessly, aims. The lawgiver must consequently intervene to arrange for a more productive distribution of Nature's (dis)array of resources. In a moment of feckless serendipity that he will later disown, Nietzsche presents the perfection of Nature and the perfection of humankind as dovetailing harmoniously in the production of the exemplary human being (SE 5).\n\nHe thus conceived of his early perfectionism as a relatively unobtrusive campaign to assist Nature in its dawdling production of exemplary human beings, and so as a contribution to the perfection of Nature itself. He later changes his mind on this point, attempting in his post-Zarathustran period to correct for the anthropocentric bias of his early writings. Although his account of the precise relationship between _nomos_ and _physis_ remains tricky throughout his productive career, he now situates Nature beyond good and evil. Nature appears no longer as a \"bad\" economist, but as an indifferent one, exhibiting no discernible attunement either to human interests or to human designs (BGE 9).\n\nNietzsche's early \"answer\" furthermore begs the question of the _need_ for redemptive human beings in the first place. If it is true that humankind requires _some_ of these heroes for its continued survival and justification, then it certainly stands to reason that _more_ of them might be desirable. But what, exactly, is involved in the process of \"perfection\" that these exemplary human beings must continue and guide? In what precise respects does humankind stand imperfect and incomplete?\n\nAs his critics often remark, Nietzsche does not present an adequately specific account of his vision of the eventual perfection of humankind. Yet he does provide a general sketch of the \"completion\" he has in mind. Here he draws from his speculative forays into philosophical anthropology, which assume ever greater importance in his post-Zarathustran writings. Vowing to proffer strictly naturalistic explanations for allegedly supernatural phenomena, he attributes the incompleteness of humankind not to some \"original sin\" or fall from \"grace,\" but to its desperate reliance on consciousness as an organ of internal regulation. Unlike all \"natural\" animals (including their pre-moral, hominid ancestors), human beings have forcibly renounced the pre-reflective guidance afforded them by their unconscious drives and impulses. In a pioneering insight that Freud would later borrow, Nietzsche traces the discontents of humanity to\n\n> the serious illness that man was bound to contract under the stress of the most fundamental change he ever experienced\u2014that change which occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and of peace. The situation that faced sea animals when they were compelled to become land animals or perish was the same as that which faced these semi-animals, well adapted to the wilderness, to war, to prowling, to adventure: suddenly all their instincts were disvalued and \"suspended.\"... [T]hey were reduced to thinking, inferring, reckoning, coordinating cause and effect, these unfortunate creatures; they were reduced to their \"consciousness\", their weakest and most fallible organ! (GM 11:16)\n\nThis violent transition to the peace and tranquillity of civil society left the human animal incomplete and indeterminate. Having refused Nature's original determination of its destiny, the human species must forge a destiny of its own, with unreliable consciousness as its only guide:\n\n> [M]an is more sick, uncertain, changeable, indeterminate _[unfestgestellter]_ than any other animal, there is no doubt of that; he is the _sick_ animal... [H] ow should such a courageous and richly endowed animal not also be the most imperiled, the most chronically and profoundly sick of all sick animals? (GM III:13)\n\nNietzsche consequently defines man as the _\"indeterminate animal [nicht_ _festgestellte Thier]\"_ (BGE 62), for only the human animal actively participates (though not always voluntarily and constructively) in the determination of its full complement of powers and perfections.\n\nThe transition from natural animal to human animal has been both painful and protracted, and it is by no means complete. In order to impress consciousness into service as a guide to living within the walls of civilization, human beings are obliged to direct _inward_ the instinctual energy that they would \"naturally\" discharge toward the external world:\n\n> All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly _turn inward_ \u2014this is what I call the _internalization_ of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his \"soul.\"... Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in change, in destruction\u2014all this turned against the possessors of such instincts: _that_ is the origin of the \"bad conscience.\" (GM 11:16)\n\nThe introjection of instinctual energy thus results in the pain of the \"bad conscience,\" which Nietzsche views as the non-negotiable, non-refundable cost incurred by all human animals upon entering the shelter of civilization. The onset of this \"illness\" initiates the ongoing transition from natural animal to human animal, forcibly investing human beings with the interiority that alone \"makes them interesting.\"\n\nIn addition to the insecurify of relying on a relatively inefficient organ of internal regulation, human animals must also secure for themselves some measure of relief from the affliction of their bad conscience. This relief usually arrives via the ascetic ideal, which bids human beings to accept the pain of the bad conscience as a just (albeit partial) punishment for their persistent incompleteness. The ascetic ideal thus \"relieves\" the pain of the bad conscience by pronouncing the guilt or indebtedness _[Schuld]_ of all human animals. Yet this moral\/metaphysical interpretation of the bad conscience only exacerbates the suffering of the \"guilty\" parties, who must attempt to repay their debts through the practice of self-inflicted cruelty. Under the aegis of the ascetic ideal, human beings _blame_ themselves for their misery, compounding the (involuntary) suffering of the bad conscience with the (voluntary) suffering of guilt. The ascetic ideal thus pretends to still the _existential_ suffering associated with the bad conscience by superposing upon it the _surplus_ suffering associated with guilt (GM III:15). Through the necromancy sponsored by the ascetic ideal, innocent sufferers are summarily transformed into guilty sinners.\n\nHaving nurtured the weakling human animal throughout its protracted childhood and arrested adolescence, the ascetic ideal has now outlived its usefulness to the continued development of the species. The surplus suffering of guilt has crippled the human animal to the extent that it can no longer tolerate the existential suffering of the bad conscience. Riddled with guilt, its will now aimed at securing final release from the torment of existence, the human animal once again contemplates the \"suicidal nihilism\" from which the ascetic ideal originally saved it (GM 111:28). Having survived thus far its quantum leap into civil society, the human animal must now somehow survive civil society itself. In order to complete the transition from natural animal to human animal, the human species must wean itself from the metaphysical comforts dispensed by the ascetic ideal.\n\nAs a consequence of their renunciation of the \"instinctual\" regulation provided by Nature\u2014an apostasy without precedent or parallel in the animal kingdom\u2014human animals must determine for themselves what they ought to will. Once wrenched from its natural, instinctual moorings, the human will has no natural or proper object to pursue. It consequently attaches itself to _any_ goal whose pursuit promises to deliver the threshold level of affective engagement, or feeling of power, that confirms the vitality of the human organism. Nietzsche thus cautions that \"the basic fact of the human will\" is its \" _horror vacui: it needs a goal_ \u2014and it would rather will _nothingness_ than _not_ will\" (GM 111:1). If bereft of life-affirming alternatives, an enervated will would eventually embrace the goal of self-annihilation, for any goal is better than none at all. This \"will to nothingness\" constitutes the \"last will\" of humankind, the will never to will again, and its advent signifies the impending demise of modernity itself.\n\nThe haunting specter of the \"will to nothingness\" thus exposes the grave danger involved in all measures designed to permit (and even encourage) the indiscriminacy of the will. Because the will has grown too weak to bear the yoke of external legislation, some political thinkers now celebrate the ochlocratic plurality of objects to which the will promiscuously attaches itself. While it has become popular in late modernity to entrust to each will the task of determining its own goal, thereby obviating the legislative role of the lawgiver, this trust is egregiously misplaced. If each will is left to its own witless devices, if lawgivers fail to provide and enforce a sustaining goal, then the enhancement of humankind will continue to occur, if at all, only by accident. More importantly, in light of the peculiar exigencies of late modernity, an unguided will may eventually constitute itself as the \"will to nothingness.\" Lawgivers must consequently legislate against the indiscriminacy of the human will, subjecting to their own design that which \"naturally\" falls to chance.\n\nAs Nietzsche sees it, exemplary human beings inadvertently assist lawgivers in correcting for the indiscriminacy of the human will. He regularly figures great human beings as intrepid navigators, who unwittingly serve as advance scouts for the drifting bark of humanity. These heroes turn the indiscriminacy of the will to the advantage of the species as a whole, experimenting with myriad, diverse goals and thereby testing the limits and plasticity of the human soul. From these dangerous experiments the species as a whole compiles a store of common wisdom, upon which the lawgiver draws in order to spare less robust souls the perils of similar experimentation. The extramoral genius consequently performs an indispensable political service, unknowingly providing lawgivers with the knowledge they need in order to compensate for the indiscriminacy of the human will.\n\nNietzsche thus advances both a general and a specific warrant for the production of those exemplary human beings who engender a renewed confidence in the future of humankind. He now realizes that Zarathustra's greatest fear, the somnambulant reign of the nodding, blinking \"last man\" (Z P5), has been eclipsed by a more ominous peril: the advent of the \"will to nothingness,\" whereby humankind orchestrates its own annihilation in a final, apocalyptic frenzy of Dionysian expenditure. While the legislation of a permanent object for the will remains the highest priority overall, Nietzsche defers this task to the \"philosophers of the future.\" His own task is to safeguard the endangered will until such time as new commanders and legislators arrive on the scene.\n\nToward this more modest end, he experiments with novel objects for the crippled will, gambling that virtually any constitution of the will is preferable to the \"will to nothingness.\" He thus advocates a politics of resistance rather than a politics of redemption or revolution. Although he hopes to contribute to the eventual legislation of a permanent object or goal for humankind, he can do no more than preside over the survival of the will in the twilight of the idols.\n\n### The Use and Abuse of Christian Morality\n\nNietzsche can do nothing to assuage the existential suffering of the bad conscience, and he evinces no inclination to do so. The \"sovereign individuals\" whom he envisions will not only endure the pain of the bad conscience, but also cherish it as yet another seduction to Life. His perfectionism thus aims at nothing less than the (eventual) production of human beings who require no external, metaphysical justification for their meaningless existence. He consequently aims to diminish, and eventually to eliminate, the surplus suffering (or guilt) that attends the dominant, Christian interpretation of the bad conscience.\n\nNietzsche regularly links the survival of the will with the self-overcoming of Christian morality, which he also claims as his ownmost task (D P4). The self-reflexive nature of this task is crucial to an understanding of his perfectionism, for his vision of the \"sovereign individual\" actually incorporates some powers and faculties that have been perfected under the discipline of Christian morality. It was under the aegis of Christian morality, after all, that the \"sovereign individual\" briefly and accidentally emerged, in whose chiseled visage Nietzsche spies a glimpse of a post-Christian future:\n\n> [L]ike only to himself, liberated again from morality of custom, autonomous and supramoral (for \"autonomous\" and \"moral\" are mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has his own independent, protracted will and the _right to make promises_ \u2014(GM 11:2)\n\nHe thus associates the self-overcoming of morality with the \"breeding\" of individuals who stand security for their own future, who acknowledge (and repay) debts only to themselves (GM 11:2). Christianity has made such individuals possible, and they will in turn abolish Christian morality and its emphasis on irremediable guilt.\n\nBecause Nietzsche envisions the completion (rather than the transcendence) of the all-too-human, his perfectionism aims not to absolve the indebtedness of the human animal, but to exploit it. The death of God does not absolve all human debts\u2014 _pace_ Feuerbach\u2014but it may, in some extraordinary cases, allow for \"sovereign individuals\" to assume full responsibility for the definition and payment of their debts. Just as Kantian autonomy delivers freedom not from the moral law itself, but from the _constraint_ of the moral law, so Nietzschean \"sovereignty\" promises absolution not of indebtedness _per se,_ but only of the constraint of one's indebtedness. The sovereign individuals he foresees thus augur the self-overcoming of Christian morality: they are debtors, to be sure, but only to themselves. Hence they are _also_ creditors, for they stand security for their own \"guilt.\" The transition from natural animal to human animal will be complete only when humankind is able to produce these sovereign individuals as a matter of design. It is to this end that Nietzsche devotes the political thinking of his mature, post-Zarathustran period.\n\nFor all of his enthusiasm, however, the cultural production of sovereign individuals is simply incompatible with the diminished resources at the disposal of his age. What modernity calls an \"individual,\" the pride of the Enlightenment, is nothing more than a \"moral milksop,\" a domesticated animal that has internalized the demands of culture and consequently operates under the illusion of self-legislated freedom. Even the \"sovereign individual,\" who possesses \"the _right to make promises_ ,\" owes his \"rare freedom\" to his _\"conscience,\"_ which, Nietzsche shows, is itself an implant of socially enforced heteronomy (GM 2:2). The conscience, a fiercely vigilant homunculus responsible for reckoning one's debts and obligations, represents the final\u2014and most forbidding\u2014barrier to genuine sovereignty.\n\nNietzsche snickers at the idea that the right to make promises stands as sufficient evidence of one's sovereignty, for he views the conscience as the internalized, mnemonic distillation of socially enforced punitive and carceral practices. Whereas the noble savage and blond beast require sturdy cages or constant external surveillance, \"men of conscience\" are sufficiently docile to police themselves. Even Nietzsche himself, the self-styled immoralist and Antichrist, continues to wear this \"venerable long pigtail,\" which makes him \"seem old-fashioned and grandfatherly-honorable\" (BGE 214). The closest thing we know to genuine, supramoral sovereignty is not the debt-paying, promise-keeping, originally positioned author of the social contract, but the criminal, the monster devoid of conscience, who personally shoulders the entire burden of his existential suffering. Nietzsche thus defines \"the criminal type\" as \"the type of strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick\" (TI IX:45).\n\nUnder the influence of Christianity, the institutions of Western civilization have for the most part implemented what Nietzsche calls \"moralities of taming\" (TI VII:3). Social practices of self-formation have succeeded in sickening (and thus domesticating) those individals whose \"virtues are ostracized by society.\" The conscience thus prevents individuals from straying far from the internalized norm, while the institutions of modernity marginalize or stamp out those singular, exotic plants that do manage to blossom. On a rare occasion, however, \"a man proves stronger than society: the Corsican, Napoleon, is the most famous case\" (TI IX:45).\n\nNapoleon thus represents the closest approximation known to Nietzsche of genuine sovereignty, for Napoleon approached the task of lawgiving (relatively) unconstrained by conscience and tradition. He consequently describes Napoleon as a \"return to Nature,\" which he defines as \"an _ascent_ \u2014up into the high, free, even terrible Nature and naturalness where great tasks are something one plays with, one _may_ play with\" (TI IX:48). Just as the taming disciplines of Christianity inadvertently made possible the emergence of the amoral criminal, who, in the person of Napoleon, returned to Nature, so the \"philosophers of the future\" may someday breed sovereign individuals by appropriating and adapting the signature practices of Christian morality. Until his nomothetic successors arrive, however, Nietzsche will take advantage of the demise of modernity to experiment with untested constitutions of the will, some of which may be successful in postponing the descent of the \"will to nothingness.\"\n\n### The _\u00dcbermensch_\n\nNietzsche's perfectionism attains its apotheosis in his enigmatic conception of the _\u00dcbermensch,_ or \"over-man.\" While the relevant textual evidence is simply too slight to authorize any particular interpretation of this difficult teaching, the _\u00dcbermensch_ is best understood within the context of Nietzsche's enduring admiration for heroic individuals and \"higher humanity.\" He thus conceives of the _\u00dcbermensch_ as embodying the perfection, rather than the transcendence, of humankind. The _\u00dcbermensch_ is any human being who actually advances the frontier of human perfectibility.\n\nImmediately after posing the problem of \"breeding\" superlative human beings, Nietzsche explains that this \"higher type\" of human being stands \"in relation to humankind as a whole, as] a kind of _\u00dcbermensch\"_ (AC 4). The central task of politics, then, is to produce (as a matter of design) those individuals who stand, \"in relation to humankind as a whole,\" as exemplary human beings. The production of the _\u00dcbermensch_ thus contributes to the enhancement of humankind, for the _\u00dcbermensch_ in turn embodies a perfection of the soul from which others may draw courage and inspiration. In a remark that dispels much of the mythology that popularly surrounds Nietzsche's teaching of the _\u00dcbermensch_[ 8, he immediately adds that\n\n> Such fortuitous accidents of great success have always been possible and _will_ perhaps always be possible. And even whole families, tribes, or peoples may occasionally represent such a _lucky strike [Treffer]._ (AC 4)\n\nWhile it is ordinarily irresponsible to privilege a single passage from Nietzsche's books, this brief discussion of the _\u00dcbermensch_ strikes me as decisive, and for several reasons. First of all, the _teaching_ of the _\u00dcbermensch_ more properly belongs to Zarathustra. Nietzsche himself mentions the _\u00dcbermensch_ in only a few passages outside the text of _Zarathustra,_ most of which shed no direct light on his political thinking. Indeed, Zarathustra's evolving doctrine of the _\u00dcbermensch_ often deviates significantly from the account Nietzsche provides in _The Antichrist(ian),_ and we have good reason to believe that Zarathustra did not fully understand the teachings entrusted to him. Especially when pandering to obtuse auditors throughout Parts I and II of his _Bildungsgang,_ Zarathustra regularly presents the _\u00dcbermensch_ as the transcendence, rather than the completion or perfection, of the all-too-human \"fragments and cripples\" littered about him (Z 11:20). He thus lapses regularly into idealism, allowing his prodigious resentment of modernity to invest his teaching of the _\u00dcbermensch_ with the particular content and determination that he expressly disallows. Zarathustra is a valuable guide through the labyrinths of Nietzsche's teachings, but he too must be subjected to critical scrutiny. We would do well not to confuse or conflate Nietzsche's account of the _\u00dcbermensch_ with Zarathustra's parabolic teaching.\n\nSecond, these telegraphic remarks in _The Antichrist(ian)_ contain Nietzsche's single most fully developed statement of his conception of the _\u00dcbermensch._ In contrast to Zarathustra's ambiguous teaching, Nietzsche's sketch of the _\u00dcbermensch_ in _The Antichrist(ian)_ is consistent with (and explicitly linked to) his more familiar discussions of the political role of exemplary human beings. On those rare occasions when he uses the term _\u00dcbermensch,_ he apparently has in mind the apotheosis of those specimens of \"higher humanity\" to whom he more regularly refers. While it may be important in certain contexts to distinguish between the _\u00dcbermensch_ and this \"higher humanity,\" we are justified in treating the two concepts as continuous within the economy of Nietzsche's thought. Indeed, the only salient difference between the _\u00dcbermensch_ and other, more familiar specimens of this \"higher humanity\" is that the emergence of the _\u00dcbermensch_ is _willed_ by those commanders and legislators who undertake the task of perfecting the all-too-human.\n\nThird, this brief sketch of the _\u00dcbermensch_ is further distinguished by the political import Nietzsche attaches to _The Antichrist(ian),_ as the statement of his \"revaluation of all values.\" Nietzsche is well aware that his conception of the _\u00dcbermensch_ has been widely misunderstood (EH III: l), and he knows that the political fate of his revaluation hinges in part upon the reception of his remarks on the _\u00dcbermensch. The Antichrist(ian)_ thus affords him an opportunity to clarify\u2014for some readers, at least\u2014the relation of his conception of the _\u00dcbermensch_ to the impending event of revaluation. Attempting to avoid (some of) the misleading connotations of the term _\u00dcbermensch,_ he employs it only sparingly in his post-Zarathustran writings, explicitly distancing himself from the idealism that distorts Zarathustra's teaching (EH III: 1).\n\nNietzsche seems especially keen to disabuse his readers of the popular interpretation of the _\u00dcbermensch_ as a moral ideal, for he views all forms of \"idealism\" as antithetical to the \"realism\" he champions:\n\n> The word _\"\u00dcbermensch\"_...has been understood almost everywhere with the utmost innocence in the sense of those very values whose opposite Zarathustra was meant to represent\u2014that is, as an \"idealistic\" type of a higher man, half \"saint,\" half \"genius.\" (EH III: 1)\n\nThis commitment to realism, which informs all of his writings from 1888, not only governs his laconic remarks on the _\u00dcbermensch,_ but also expresses the singular achievements of the _\u00fcbermenschlich_ type:\n\n> this type of man...conceives reality _as it is,_ being strong enough to do so; this type is not estranged or removed from reality but is reality itself and exemplifies all that is terrible and questionable in it\u2014 _only in that way can_ _man attain greatness._ (EH XIV: 5)\n\nThe _\u00dcbermensch_ is not simply another moral ideal, but a concrete, empirical type _[Typus]_ or kind [Art]. An ideal suggests to Nietzsche a \"flight from reality,\" a theoretical construct that may or may not admit of concrete instantiation, and which, in any event, implies an indictment of reality (EH III: 1; XIV:3). As an opponent of idealism, he thus maintains that\n\n> What justifies man is his reality\u2014it will eternally justify him. How much greater is the worth of the real man, compared with any merely desired, dreamed-up, foully fabricated man? with any ideal man? (TI IX:32)\n\nLest he slip into the unwanted idealism of Zarathustra, Nietzsche refrains from offering any antecedent designation or defining characteristics of the _\u00fcbermenschlich_ type, suggesting simply that we \"should sooner look even for a Cesare Borgia than a Parsifal\" (EH III: 1). He explains that the word \" _\u00dcbermensch\"_ designates \"a type of supreme achievement\" and that the _\u00dcbermensch_ stands in opposition to \"'modern' men, to 'good' men, to Christians and other nihilists\" (EH III: 1).\n\nFor Nietzsche, then, the _\u00dcbermensch_ operates as an extremely (if not perfectly) \"thick\" ethical concept, which can be grasped only through an empirical study of the highest human types that actually have emerged. He provides no abstract theory or account of _\u00dcbermenschlichkeit,_ and he relies almost exclusively on concrete examples\u2014Cesare Borgia, for instance\u2014to convey the meaning he attaches to the concept. Following his lead, we might profitably employ a strictly functional (or formal) designation of the _\u00fcbermenschlich_ type: _\u00dcbermenschen_ are simply those individuals who embody the \"supreme achievements\" of any culture or epoch\u2014regardless of the moral or aesthetic qualities they do or do not possess.\n\nNietzsche explicitly claims that \"such fortunate accidents of great success have always been possible\" (AC 4), which implies that _\u00dcbermenschen_ have existed throughout human history. Even a passing familiarity with Nietzsche's books yields a fairly impressive list of the exemplary historical figures he has in mind: Caesar, Pilate, Cesare Borgia, Napoleon, Goethe, Frederick II, and so on. Nietzsche also expresses his hope that such superlative human beings \"will perhaps always be possible,\" which implies that he may (or should) expect to encounter _\u00dcbermenschen_ even in late modernity. Although his contempt for modernity escalates his skepticism of the generative powers of the age, he certainly proceeds in his post-Zarathustran political deliberations as if some such exemplars might someday emerge from the gloaming; his continued advocacy of perfectionism would otherwise make little sense. Indeed, he describes these _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types as \"fortunate accidents\" precisely because they embody an enhancement of humankind, which is the end to which he directs his own energies.\n\nNietzsche describes these _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types as standing \"relative to,\" rather than independent of, \"humanity as a whole\" (AC 4). This description not only militates against defining the _\u00dcbermensch_ in absolute or ideal terms, but also directs our attention to the relationships that obtain between _\u00dcbermenschen_ and \"humanity as a whole.\" In fact, if these _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types stood independent of \"humanity as a whole,\" estranged altogether from the ethical life of the communities that produce them, then they could play no role in the permanent enhancement of humankind. It is within the domain of these (admittedly unique) relations that the distinctly ethical content of Nietzsche's perfectionism resides. His attention to these relations furthermore indicates that he understands the _\u00dcbermensch_ as constituting the perfection, rather than the transcendence, of humankind.\n\nThroughout the post-Zarathustran period of his career, Nietzsche portrays the \"genius\" as strictly an economic type, characterized by a relatively expanded range of vitality and affective expression:\n\n> The genius, in work and deed, is necessarily a squanderer: that he squanders himself, that is his greatness. The instinct of self-preservation is suspended, as it were; the overpowering pressure of outflowing forces forbids him any such care or caution. (TI IX:44)\n\nThe order of rank among individuals and types is thus determined by a measure of the relative capacity of excess affect that one can afford to reserve and expend. Nietzsche thus proffers a strictly formal account of the great individual, as an economic type endowed with a relatively _\u00fcbermenschlich_ capacity for reserve and expenditure: \"He shall be greatest who...is overrich in will. Precisely this shall be called _greatness:_ being capable of being as manifold as whole, as ample as full\" (BGE 212). He consummates this economic designation of the _\u00fcbermenschlich_ type by defining the genius as \"one who either _begets_ or _gives_ _birth,_ taking both terms in their most elevated sense\" (BGE 206). As we shall see later in more detail, he entrusts the future of humankind to these _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types precisely because they alone can afford to squander themselves in the catalysis of culture; for this procreative task, they need only be relatively greater than the humanity that surrounds them.\n\nIn fact, it is precisely the relations between exemplary human beings and \"humanity as a whole\" that make ethical life and moral development possible at all. The ethical life that springs up around _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types does not sustain a universal ethical community, nor a community founded on rational principles of legislation, nor a community sufficiently inclusive to mollify Nietzsche's liberal critics, but it sustains a thriving community nonetheless, complete with its own signature morality. As we shall see more clearly later on, the founding labors of the _\u00dcbermensch_ create a community of friends in the peculiarly Nietzschean sense, of fellow travelers who share a common aesthetic sensibility, who mutually elevate one another through conflict and contest.\n\nAs we have already seen, Nietzsche claims that entire communities of such exemplars\u2014\"families, tribes, peoples\"\u2014are possible (AC 4). This claim contradicts the popular caricature of the _\u00dcbermensch_ as an autarkic nomad who willfully estranges himself from all traditions, communities and shared tables of value. We therefore need not assume that Nietzsche imagines the _\u00dcbermensch_ as some sort of abomination or monstrosity unknown to the ethical community. Indeed, since Nietzsche defines the _\u00dcbermensch_ \"in relation to humankind as a whole,\" rather than in some absolute or ideal terms, we may furthermore expect these exemplary figures to reflect in certain respects the relative character of their respective epochs.\n\nNietzsche is often criticized for portraying these _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types on the model of the amoral, world-historical conqueror. While his romanticization of extramoral monsters _is_ often childish and offensive, it does not constitute the core of his political thinking. As the textual evidence indicates, he defines exemplary figures solely in terms of their embodied justification of the future of humanity, a political task for which they need be neither world-historical nor particularly monstrous. He praises artists, poets and thinkers as lavishly and as frequently as he praises commanders, lawgivers and beasts; depending on the people or epoch in question, either type may represent the highest expression of vitality. Healthy peoples and ages tend to produce world-historical commanders and lawgivers as their highest specimens, while decadent peoples and ages tend to produce philosophers and critics as their representative exemplars. We should therefore not be surprised to discover that the heroes of one epoch bear little external resemblance to those of another. Just as \"we moderns\" appear weak and impoverished in comparison with \"that lavishly squandering and fatal age of the Renaissance\" (TI IX:37), so the \"higher men\" of late modernity would seem sickly and pale beside the overflowing health of a Cesare Borgia.\n\nThe distinctly ethical role of the _\u00dcbermensch_ becomes even clearer if we unearth the Emersonian roots of this exotic plant. Nietzsche apparently models the _\u00dcbermensch_ on Emerson's notion of \"representative men,\" who, in their own private pursuits of self-reliance, display (and thereby represent) the potentialities for perfection resident within the human soul. By virtue of their embodied practices, representative men \"remind\" some others of the soul's natural (if ultimately futile) aspirations to transcendence. Representative men straddle the intersection of the human and the divine, of the temporal and the eternal, and they represent to some others the \"forgotten\" perfections attainable by all human beings.\n\nTheir contribution to ethical life is consequently predicated on their practice of aversion. They stand as living rebukes\u2014\"critics in body and soul\" (BGE 210)\u2014to the conformity and mediocrity into which human beings all too readily sink. Their pursuits of self-perfection stir similar longings within the souls of some others, thus galvanizing the ethical life of the community. In an early passage that conveys the extent of his debt to Emerson (as well as the provenance of his fascination with the prefix _\u00fcber),_ Nietzsche writes, \"[y]our real nature lies... immeasurably high above _[\u00fcber]_ you, or at least above _[\u00fcber]_ that which you usually take yourself to be\" (SE 1). Completing this Emersonian parallel, we might think of the _\u00dcbermensch_ as a \"representative individual,\" whose achievements in self-perfection illuminate the linkage between invidual human souls and the transpersonal oversoul of humankind.\n\nIn light of these decisive passages from _The Antichrist(ian),_ we need not endorse Zarathustra's gnomic claim that there has never been an _\u00dcbermensch_ (Z 11:4), nor relegate the _\u00dcbermensch_ to a distant and continually receding future, nor confine the _\u00dcbermensch_ exclusively to modernity, nor imagine the _\u00dcbermensch_ as an unattainable, strictly regulative ideal. Having separated Nietzsche's teaching from Zarathustra's, we may confidently interpret the _\u00dcbermensch_ in concrete terms, as the historically instantiated, fully attainable, concrete embodiment of human perfectibility\u2014an empirical type rather than a theoretical ideal\u2014around whom the ethical life of any thriving culture revolves. The _\u00dcbermensch_ is any higher human being whose \"private\" pursuit of selfperfection occasions an enhancement of the species as a whole, thus contributing to the perfection (rather than the transcendence) of the all-too-human. The _\u00dcbermensch_ thus instantiates a justification of humankind grounded in its reality, rather than in some abstract ideal.\n\nThe _\u00dcbermensch_ thus constitutes Nietzsche's general answer to the founding question of politics: \"we\" should undertake to breed a type of individual whose pursuit of self-perfection contributes to the enhancement of humankind and thereby justifies our own existence. \"We\" should undertake the establishment of a political regime that will in turn envision the _\u00dcbermensch_ as its unimaginable, singular product. Indeed, the single most salient characteristic of this type of regime is that _\u00dcbermenschen_ are produced by design. Nietzsche places extraordinary emphasis on the overt act of willing to assume responsibility for the future of humankind. Heroic human beings have emerged before to refresh the parched landscape of humanity, but always as \"lucky strikes\" on the part of an indifferent Nature. Never before have _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types been willed into existence, as the primary, overarching aim of a political regime.\n\nIt is important to note, however, that this interpretation of the _\u00dcbermensch_ deviates from Nietzsche's teaching in an important respect. Whereas I have cast the _\u00fcbermenschlich_ type as the highest achievement realized by any people or epoch, Nietzsche tends to reserve the title _\u00dcbermensch_ only for the representative exemplars of superlative peoples and epochs, and thus of humanity itself. It is entirely possible, then, that he would bristle at my suggestion that even the anemic, twilight cultures of late modernity might unwittingly produce _\u00fcbermenschlich_ types of their own. The ethical exemplars of late modernity are a far cry, admittedly, from the \"lightning\" and \"frenzy\" (Z P3) prophesied by Zarathustra, as well as from the redemptive man of the future \u2014the \"victor over God and nothingness\" (GM II:24)\u2014for whom Nietzsche romantically yearns.\n\nIn light of Nietzsche's abundant resentment of modernity, however, it is quite likely that he occasionally compromises his own teaching. Like Zarathustra, in fact, Nietzsche tends to depict the _\u00dcbermensch_ in traditionally personal terms, as a charismatic individual endowed with superlative nomothetic powers. He thus favors a model of agency that naturally lends itself to the redemptive and messianic interpretations that he claims to repudiate. Rather than take literally his (and Zarathustra's) pronouncements on the _\u00dcbermensch,_ we might instead attempt to situate this difficult teaching within the economy of Nietzsche's thought as a whole. We might then view the _\u00dcbermensch_ not as an individual agent _per se,_ but as a historically specific vortex of generative powers and transformative possibilities. His vision of the _\u00dcbermensch_ could be realized in a community, a discourse, a confluence of traditions, a network of social institutions, a constellation of cultural practices, an unanticipated mutation in the human phenotype\u2014perhaps even a cyborg mechanism.\n\nIf we apply to Nietzsche his own guiding insights, then we can compensate somewhat for the distortions imposed on his political thinking by his own decadent yearnings. Indeed, if we succeed in filtering out his own prejudices, then there is no need to anticipate the completion of his thought in the advent of a prophet, messiah, charismatic leader, conqueror, commander, dictator or _F\u00fchrer. \"\u00dcbermensch\"_ could simply refer to a propitious confluence of social, historical and material conditions, such as those that presided over the birth of tragedy in ancient Greece. This interpretation of the _\u00dcbermensch,_ which I will embellish in due course, is not only more faithful than the popular caricature to the (scant) textual evidence available, but also more promising as an interpretation of Nietzsche's ethical teaching.\n\n# 2 \nThe Uses and Disadvantages of Morality for Life\n\n> The genius, in work and deed, is necessarily a squanderer: that he squanders himself, that is his greatness... Yet, because much is owed to such explosives, much has also been given them in return: for example, a kind of higher morality. After all, that is the way of human gratitude: it _misunderstands_ its benefactors.\n> \n> \u2014 _Twilight of the Idols,_ IX:44\n\nThe ethical core of Nietzsche's perfectionism is often eclipsed by his scathing attack on the Western moral tradition. But his critique of morality is not inhospitable to all forms of morality, and it in fact clears a space for the \"morality of breeding\" that motivates his perfectionism. He actually intends his perfectionism to shelter a moral pluralism, informed by an order of rank, which yields a hierarchical organization of ethical communities.\n\n### Nietzsche's Defense of Moral Pluralism\n\nAlthough Nietzsche's perfectionism lies at the very heart of his political thinking, it remains one of the most obscure elements of his philosophy. His critics routinely dismiss his perfectionism, often assuming that he proposes a crude eugenics project, which will culminate in the savage, unprincipled rule of some blond beast or barbarian caste. John Rawls, for example, attributes to Nietzsche a version of \"teleological perfectionism\" that is not even worthy of consideration in the \"original position.\" The closest Rawls comes to a critical assessment of this \"teleological perfectionism\" is his terse observation that \"[t]he absolute weight that Nietzsche sometimes gives the lives of great men such as Socrates and Goethe is unusual.\" Rather than elaborate, Rawls moves on to consider the merits of a \"more moderate doctrine\" of perfectionism, which \"has far stronger claims,\" but which he rejects nonetheless as a source of viable principles of justice.\n\nRawls's response is typical in its summary rejection of the ethical claims of Nietzsche's perfectionism. Like Rawls, many readers conclude that Nietzsche's political thinking shelters virtually no ethical content whatsoever. Nietzsche himself is certainly responsible for much of the misunderstanding surrounding his perfectionism, for he often presents himself as an uncompromising opponent of morality _simpliciter._ He proudly describes himself as an \"immoralist,\" and he congratulates himself for being the \"first\" of this noble breed (EH XIV:6). Fully representative of his rhetorical excesses is the following \"definition of morality\":\n\n> Morality\u2014the idiosyncrasy of decadents, with the ulterior motive of revenging oneself against life\u2014successfully. (EH XIV:7)\n\nContinuing this telegraphic line of argumentation, he submits the following summary epigram: \"Morality as vampirism\" (EH XIV:8).\n\nEspecially when viewed from the broadly historical perspective that Nietzsche favors, however, the enterprise of morality encompasses far more than the universal prescriptions and metaphysical fictions that he so famously debunks. In fact, he regularly reminds his readers that the type of morality he opposes is only one among several possible moralities:\n\n> _Morality in Europe today is herd animal morality_ \u2014in other words, as we understand it, merely _one_ type of human morality beside which, before which, and after which many other types, above all _higher_ moralities, are or ought to be, possible. But this morality resists such a \"possibility,\" such an \"ought\" with all its power: it says stubbornly and inexorably, \"I am morality itself, and nothing besides is morality.\" (BGE 202)\n\nContinuing this critique of moral monism in his next book, _On the Genealogy of_ _Morals,_ he declares that contemporary morality, despite its claims to universality, is in fact descended from a \"slave\" morality, which in turn emerged only in response to the hegemony of a logically and historically prior \"noble\" morality. The history of morality, encrypted in the \"long hieroglyphic record\" that Nietzsche aims to decipher (GM P:7), thus contradicts the claim of _any_ morality, including the ubiquitous \"herd animal morality,\" to a privileged, monistic prerogative as the arbiter of ethical life. In his \"review\" of the _Genealogy,_ he explicitly identifies the \"slave revolt in morality\" with \"the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of _ressentiment_ \" (EH XI).\n\nRather than reject the enterprise of morality itself, Nietzsche instead rejects the claim of any single morality to universal scope and application.\n\nA universally binding morality would necessarily erect a monolithic moral ideal, thereby reducing a plurality of human types and kinds to a lowest common denominator. Ethical laws should (and do) bind collectively, but only across a limited number of individuals, such as constitute a people, race, tribe, or community. As Zarathustra puts it, \"I am a law only for my kind _[die Meinen],_ I am no law for all\" (Z IV:12). The dream of an ethical community comprising all human beings, or all sentient beings, thus spells political nightmare. The laws of an omni-inclusive ethical community would express only the commonalities and banalities of the individuals involved, rather than their unique strengths and virtues. Morality should always serve the enhancement of the ethical life of a particular people, and not the other way around:\n\n> _Morality_ \u2014no longer the expression of the conditions for the life and growth of a people, no longer its most basic instinct of life, but become abstract, become the antithesis of life\u2014morality as the systematic degradation of the imagination, as the \"evil eye\" for all things. (AC 25)\n\nNietzsche's critique of Christian morality is best understood within the context of his political opposition to moral monism. He has no quarrel, for example, with Christian morality in its \"pure\" forms, which he applauds for providing comfort and solace to the demotic strata of hierarchically organized societies. He goes so far as to praise the contributions of Christian morality to the \"hygienic\" maintenance of intramural political boundaries, readily acknowledging the value of moralities that serve the inwardly destroyed (BGE 62). As his commitment to moral pluralism would suggest, he objects to Christian morality only in its most virulent political form, insofar as it arrogates to itself a universal application across all of humankind; as we have seen, this objection is sustained strictly on political, rather than epistemological or theological, grounds. He consequently aims to disabuse his readers of the belief that Christian morality is coextensive with morality itself: \"I negate a type of morality that has become prevalent and predominant as morality itself\u2014the morality of decadence or, more concretely, _Christian_ morality\" (EH XIV:4). He thus explains that his self-awarded title, \"the immoralist,\" designates an opposition specifically to _Christian_ morality, which in his day held (or so he believed) a virtual monopoly over ethical life throughout the diverse cultures of Western civilization (EH XIV:6).\n\nAs an alternative to the moral monism he detects at the rotten core of Christianity, Nietzsche espouses a moral pluralism that reflects the rich diversity of human types, while reminding us that these moralities vary in worth as widely as the individuals whose needs and perfections they express:\n\n> Moralities must be forced to bow first of all before the _order of rank;_ their presumption must be brought home to their conscience\u2014until they finally reach agreement that it is _immoral_ to say: \"what is right for one is fair for the other.\" (BGE 221)\n\nIndeed, a primary aim of Nietzsche's perfectionism is to promote the design of hierarchically organized political regimes, each of which would simultaneously sustain several grades of morality. The aristocratic regimes he favors would shelter a pyramidal hierarchy of ethical communities, each equipped with a distinctive morality that reflects its unique needs and strengths. At the pinnacle of this pyramidal structure would stand the community of agonistic \"friends\" founded by the _\u00dcbermensch._\n\nAs modernity nears exhaustion, the pyramidal structure of this hierarchy of moral communities becomes deformed accordingly, flattened by the glacial advance of decadence. In times such as these, Nietzsche recommends a renewed vigilance to the order of rank that separates human types:\n\n> The more normal sickliness becomes among men...the higher should be the honor accorded the rare cases of great power of soul and body, humankind's _lucky strikes;_ the more we should protect the well-constituted from the worst kind of air, the air of the sickroom. (GM 111:14)\n\nIn order to resist collectively the decadence of late modernity, he urges his \"friends\" to band together, seeking strength in numbers and prophylaxis in seclusion:\n\n> And therefore let us have good company, _our_ company!... So that we may, at least for a while yet, guard ourselves, my friends, against the two worst contagions that may be reserved just for us\u2014against the _great nausea at_ _man!_ against _great pity for man!_ (GM 111:14)\n\nWhile it is not entirely inaccurate to portray Nietzsche as an amoral champion of autarkic individualism, we might think of him more precisely as a moral pluralist, who eschews the claims of any morality to a universal compass across the (potentially) wide expanse of human types:\n\n> what is fair for one _cannot_ by any means for that reason alone also be fair for others;...the demand of one morality for all is detrimental for the higher men; in short,...there is an order of rank between man and man, hence also between morality and morality. (BGE 228)\n\nThe most exacting moralities, those which assign the greatest privileges _and_ responsibilities, are operative in the lives of the rarest and most exotic human beings. As evidence of his own exemplary standing relative to most of his contemporaries, Nietzsche reserves a \"stricter\" morality for himself and his unknown \"friends\" (BGE 219, 226).\n\nJust as he opposes the moral monism of Christianity, so he refuses to prescribe his own \"stricter\" morality to those who are not of his kind. While he would clearly welcome the renascence of some descendant strain of the recessive \"noble\" morality, he just as clearly understands that any such morality would appeal only to a limited number of human beings. Indeed, although the ethical dimension of his perfectionism is not intended to serve demotic interests, it _is_ fully compatible with a demotic morality that is properly bounded in scope and application. He consequently prefers those aristocratic political regimes that shelter multiple moralities simultaneously, including a demotic morality designed to alleviate the suffering of the incurably sick and infirm.\n\nNietzsche's love of solitude is well known. The specific form of solitude he praises, however, derives its appeal from its dependence on a logically prior ethical community. As Zarathustra discovers only after repeated _Unterg\u00e4nge,_ solitude independent of community is indistinguishable from loneliness. Nietzsche speaks fondly and repeatedly of his unknown \"friends,\" precisely because they represent a community from which his self-imposed exile involves only a temporary respite. These \"friends,\" many of whom he draws from the pages of history or from the nether reaches of his febrile imagination, inspire him to persevere in his solitary task. The imaginary \"free spirits,\" for example, were summoned in order that their \"brave companionship\" might \"keep [him] in good spirits while surrounded by ills\" (H I: P:2).\n\nThese communitarian and pluralist currents in Nietzsche's political thinking furthermore reflect his lifelong yearning for a community in which he might realize his destiny as a philosopher and lawgiver. Here we recall his founding membership in Germania and the Leipzig Philological Society; his complicated Oedipal alliance with the Wagners in Tribschen; his fantasies (including Peter Gast, his friend and amanuensis) of a Knightly Brotherhood of the _gaya scienza;_ his proposal to Lou Salom\u00e9 and Paul R\u00e9e of an intellectual _m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois;_ and his imagination in 1887\u201388 of a \"subterranean\" Nietzsche cult growing among \"radical parties\" in Europe (excepting Germany) and North America.\n\nAs these examples indicate, however, Nietzsche's impulse toward community is characteristically deflected by his tendency to identify only with imaginary communities, including those of the mythical past and future. Availing himself freely of his prodigious powers of imagination, he regularly identifies himself as party to a contrived or fictitious collective: \"we scholars,\" \"we free spirits,\" \"we Hyperboreans,\" \"we Europeans\n\nof the day after tomorrow,\" \"we philologists,\" \"we psychologists,\" \"we revaluers,\" and so on. He readily admits, for example, that he invented the \"free spirits\" to whom he dedicated _Human, All Too Human,_ explaining that \"these brave companions and familiars\" served \"as compensation for the friends [he] lacked\" (H I:P2).\n\nSince he never specifies an existing audience with which he identifies his most basic hopes and desires (a luxury unavailable to his rival, the phonocentric Socrates), his ethical thinking operates at a level of generality and abstraction that is inimical to the creation of new communities and the cultivation of existing ones. Like (Groucho) Marx, Nietzsche would never deign to join a community that would have him as a member. Rather than identify his aims and aspirations with those of any existing community, he saves himself for a transhistorical community that is worthy of the allegiance of his beautiful soul.\n\nWhile this strategy of endless deferral surely involves a romantic flight from the present and the concrete, it also illuminates some of the perils of community, which Nietzsche's critics occasionally neglect to reckon accurately. His prolonged solitude clearly exacts a heavy toll, but it also enables him to resist the (decadent) impulse to seek recognition from those \"beneath\" himself. Since he cannot rely on the hygienic stratification of a hierarchical society to insulate him from the resentment of the weak and bedraggled, he must protect his pursuit of self-perfection by imposing his own regimen of prophylactic solitude. He thus identifies the refusal of community as a prerequisite of his own moral growth (EH 11:8), and he observes that the preference for solitude over unworthy company often constitutes a sign of health (EH 1:2).\n\nRather than treat solitude as necessarily a privation, to be recuperated by the flowering of community, Nietzsche views community as an accidental, outward extension of one's ownmost self, which, under the best of conditions, honors and commemorates the self-sufficiency of the noble soul. Healthy individuals thus value community not as the precondition of their redemption and becoming whole, but as an opportunity to revel in the externalized emanations of their own virtue and character. Hence only weak, corrupt souls, whose constitutive misery leads them to crave the distractions and diversions of facile companionship, need be alone in solitude: \"a well-turned-out person...is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes: he honors by _choosing,_ by _admitting,_ by _trusting_ \" (EH 1:2). A thriving moral community that requires no other living human members: perhaps no image conveys more accurately than this the peculiar ethical content of Nietzsche's perfectionism. As we shall see later on in more detail, he defends this principled aversion to unworthy community as a corollary to his highest (and sole) moral obligation.\n\nThere is no prima facie warrant, then, for excluding Nietzsche's perfectionism from consideration as the source of a bona fide ethical position. The point of his perfectionism is to shelter the delicate resources of ethical life and to preserve the possibility of the sort of moral development that constitutes an enhancement of humankind as a whole. The ethical content of his perfectionism may be objectionable to liberal critics, but these objections are themselves open to philosophical scrutiny and evaluation. Nietzsche himself would maintain that all such objections bespeak the pre-philosophical prejudices of his critics; as such, they would reveal much more about these critics than they do about his perfectionism.\n\n### Nietzsche and Manu: Moralities of Breeding\n\nNietzsche's discussion of a kindred political thinker sheds clarifying light on the ethical content of his perfectionism. Both in _Twilight of the Idols_ and _The_ _Antichrist(ian),_ he expresses his admiration for Manu, the legendary Hindu lawgiver. Nietzsche recommends the law of Manu not as a blueprint for political reform in late modernity, but as evidence of the importance \"noble\" cultures have traditionally attached to the morality of breeding. While the restoration of political aristocracy is simply out of the question for late modernity, a (modified) morality of breeding, as established by Nietzsche's perfectionism, is not.\n\nOn Nietzsche's reconstruction, Manu successfully enforced a political regime that enabled several distinct social classes to flourish simultaneously. Manu understood that the enhancement of Hindu culture would require the prophylaxis supplied by a fairly rigid social stratification. His regime effectively quarantined the relatively \"sick\" from the relatively \"healthy,\" while providing for the relative well-being of all social classes. The ethical motivation behind Manu's system is the perfectionism that Nietzsche too advocates: \"To set up a code of laws after the manner of Manu means to give a people the chance henceforth to become master, to become perfect\u2014to aspire to the highest art of life\" (AC 57).\n\nNietzsche consequently credits Manu with designing a political organization and social structure that reflect the order of Nature itself:\n\n> The _order of castes,_ the supreme, the dominant law, is merely the sanction of a _natural order,_ a natural lawfulness of the first rank, over which no arbitrariness, no \"modern idea\" has any power... The order of castes...is necessary for the preservation of society, to make possible the higher and the highest types. (AC 57)\n\nFollowing Manu (and Nature), Nietzsche endorses the pyramidal caste system, or \"natural aristocracy,\" as the supreme form of political regime.\n\nHis characterization of the three \"castes\" of Nature\u2014distinguished, respectively, by pre-eminent spirituality, pre-eminent strength \"in muscle and temperament,\" and by mediocrity (AC 57)\u2014bears a remarkable resemblance to Socrates' sketch of his pyramidal \"city in speech\" in the _Republic._ 6 As we shall soon see, Nietzsche also follows Socrates (and Manu) in furnishing a \"noble lie\" about the origins and justification of the political regime he recommends.\n\nNietzsche admires Manu for his commitment to _the morality of breeding,_ wherein the lawgiver establishes the social preconditions of a plurality of types, from which in turn rare and exotic specimens are most likely to emerge (TI VII: 3). Like Manu, Nietzsche tracks the enhancement of humankind to the proliferation of unanticipated, unimagined human types, and he endorses the political project of \"breeding\" these exemplary human beings. He contrasts this approach to political legislation with the _morality of taming,_ of which he cites Western Christianity as representative. Whereas \"breeding\" encourages the simultaneous flourishing of a plurality of forms of life, \"taming\" imposes upon all forms of life a single ideal, with respect to which the higher, more exotic types must be broken down:\n\n> Physiologically speaking: in the struggle with beasts, to make them sick _may_ be the only means for making them weak. This the church understood: it _ruined_ man, it weakened him\u2014but it claimed to have \"improved\" him. (TI VII:2)\n\nThese competing approaches to political legislation are predicated on diametrically opposed ethical principles. A morality of taming structures society in accordance with a predetermined ideal, while a morality of breeding establishes a political order in which a plurality of forms of life is pursued\u2014including, for the highest types, a form of life that is unfettered by all known ideals. He dismisses \"idealism\" in any guise as \"cowardice,\" as a \"flight from reality\" (EH XIV:3), for ideals invariably place preordained constraints on the range of human types that a society might produce. Like Manu, Nietzsche is an \"immoralist.\" He refrains from proposing a single ideal in accordance with which all types must be domesticated; instead he encourages an untamed proliferation of rare and exotic individuals.\n\nIf a morality of breeding is to succeed in producing exemplary specimens, then the lawgiver must eventually exclude those types that pose an immediate threat to the flourishing of the society as a whole. Hence the ethical arch-principle that engenders Nietzsche's admiration for hierarchically organized political regimes: \"That the sick should _not_ make the healthy sick...should surely be our supreme concern on earth\" (GM 111:14). The implementation of this hygienic principle thus affords each stratum of society the prophylactic luxury of _not_ associating with lower, pathogenic strata (GM 1:10).\n\nManu understood, as few since have, that only structure and stratification beget the fecund plurality from which rare specimens spring forth; the more exacting the discipline, the more exotic the emergent fruits and blossoms. Unlike Nature, which can afford to be a \"bad economist\" (SE 7), the lawgiver must legislate the terms of exclusion and expenditure. As a means of ensuring the success of the morality of breeding he implemented, Manu legislated the exclusion of the impure chandalas, whom his political regime simply could not accommodate. Manu understood the need both to exclude the chandalas _and_ to render them politically impotent, lest their exclusion strengthen and embolden them (TI VII:3).\n\nThe cruelty of Manu's exclusionary legislations is palpable, for the chandalas are in no way responsible for falling outside the arbitrary class designations that he enforces; nor do they deserve the harsh, inhuman treatment they receive. Yet some such cruelty is necessary if the morality of breeding is to succeed, and Manu's appeal to the purity of social caste furnishes his political regime with the sustaining myth it needs in order to \"justify\" the cruelty it inflicts. While it may be possible for modern lawgivers to temper the cruelty of Manu's legislations\u2014through improvements in technology and distributive justice, or through the invention of more humane forms of exclusion\u2014the practice of exclusion is itself unavoidable.\n\nNietzsche does not personally advocate the caste system developed by Manu, but he fully endorses the willed practice of political exclusion, which Manu's system was designed to convey. With respect to this precise point, he does not mince his words:\n\n> The essential characteristic of a good and healthy aristocracy, however, is that it...accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, _for its sake,_ must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments. (BGE 258)\n\nNietzsche thus presents slavery as a necessary, indispensable practice in those hierarchically organized societies that contribute to the permanent enhancement of humankind (BGE 44), a practice he associates with spiritual husbandry: \"Slavery is, as it seems, both in the cruder and in the more subtle sense, the indispensable means of spiritual discipline and cultivation, too\" (BGE 188).\n\nAlthough it turns out that he is more interested in the sort of \"slavery\" that one imposes on oneself in the cultivation of one's soul, his peculiar, metaphorical use of the term \"slavery\" is itself a concession to the besetting decadence of his epoch. If _real_ slavery were possible in late modernity\u2014that is, if the establishment of an aristocratic political regime were a viable option in the twilight of the idols\u2014then he would surely, and unabashedly, endorse it as a precondition of the perfectionism he advocates. And although he might prefer the practice of slavery in its \"more subtle sense,\" allowing the \"slaves,\" for example, an (illusory) feeling of their freedom and self-determination, he also justifies the institution of slavery by appealing to the \"moral imperative of Nature,\" which is directed, he insists, at humankind itself (BGE 188).\n\nNietzsche thus views the practice of exclusion as an inescapable element\u2014a \"necessary evil,\" as it were\u2014of political legislation in any regime. In order for a society to produce a few whole human beings, it must legislate and enforce the fragmentation of countless others. Only by virtue of this exclusion is culture\u2014an artificial subsystem sheltered within the indifferent economy of Nature\u2014possible at all. He thus insists that \"the greatest of all tasks, the attempt to raise humanity higher, includ[es] the relentless destruction of everything that [is] degenerating and parasitical\" (EH IV:4). It is simply the nature of politics, he believes, that all regimes must practice exclusion, whether or not they do so knowingly and resolutely. Despite their visceral aversion to Manu's grisly decrees, modern lawgivers are no more at liberty to dispense with political exclusion than to reprise his specific practice of it. The morality of taming too practices a form of exclusion, insofar as it forces all higher, singular types to lie in a Procrustean bed of its own mediocre design (TI IX:43); it too justifies its exclusionary practices by appealing to a sustaining myth, that of _\"equal_ rights for all\" (CW 7).\n\nWhile Manu is by no means alone in practicing exclusion, he distinguishes himself\u2014at least in Nietzsche's mind\u2014by subjecting this practice to willful legislation. Manu does not require the implementation of exclusionary stratifications; Nature does (AC 57). But Manu _wills_ the practice of exclusion, furnishing it with a particular aspect and _modus operandi_ within the caste system he designs; he unflinchingly inscribes the canon of Nature into the constitution of his political regime. Rather than consign to chance the regulation of his political regime, Manu legislates the exclusionary practices that will best promote his morality of breeding. Nietzsche consequently admires Manu not for practicing exclusion _per se_ (which all lawgivers must do), nor for the specific practices he implements, but for doing so as a matter of design.\n\nNietzsche is no champion of democracy, but he believes that demotic interests are best served in hierarchical political regimes devoted to the breeding and production of exemplary human beings. All members of a thriving community are, and should be, elevated by the \"immoral\" exploits of its highest exemplars. While this elevation is least visible (and least appreciated) within the demotic stratum of a hierarchical society, he nevertheless insists, like J.S.Mill, that some attenuated benefits of perfectionism trickle down to everyone. Unlike the \"flathead\" Mill, however, Nietzsche does not propose the benefits of involuntary cultural elevation as a justification for the perfectionism he legislates. With reference to the \"higher\" human types, he declares that\n\n> Their right to exist, the privilege of the full-toned bell over the false and cracked, is a thousand times greater: they alone are our _warranty_ for the future, they alone are _liable_ for the future of humankind. (GM 111:14)\n\nA utilitarian defense of perfectionism, such as the one Mill concocts, would not only yoke political legislation to the tyrannical whims of ochlocratic taste\u2014a problem Mill never adequately solved\u2014but would also presuppose that the _demos_ can in fact recognize and pursue its own best interests, which Nietzsche expressly denies. It is an unalterable fact of political life that most individuals fail to discern, much less appreciate, the spiritual and material elevation they derive from their involuntary contributions to the production of exemplary human beings. This fact is not sufficient, however, to deter Nietzsche from his promotion and defense of perfectionism.\n\nIn order to obviate the disaffection of the demotic stratum of a hierarchical society, and thereby attend to its genuine (as opposed to its perceived) self-interest, the lawgiver must always reinforce the perfectionist aims of the regime with a sustaining myth. Toward this end, Nietzsche recommends the use of state-sponsored religions to elevate the _demos_ against its will:\n\n> To ordinary human beings, finally\u2014the vast majority who exist for service and the general advantage, and who _may_ exist only for that\u2014religion gives an inestimable contentment with their situation and type, manifold peace of the heart, an ennobling of obedience, one further happiness and sorrow with their peers and something transfiguring and beautifying, something of a justification for the whole everyday character, the whole lowliness, the whole half-brutish poverty of their souls. Religion and religious significance spread the splendor of the sun over such ever-toiling human beings and make their own sight tolerable to them. (BGE 61)\n\nState-sponsored religions thus furnish and perpetuate the sustaining myths of a hierarchically organized society, which in turn supply \"ordinary human beings\" with the solace and comfort they need. It should be noted, moreover, that state-sponsored religions also function to co-opt the disaffections that invariably suffuse the barren souls of \"ordinary human beings,\" thereby preventing, or at least dampening, explosive outbreaks of resentment within the lowest strata of society.\n\nNietzsche often associates the perfectionism he advocates with aristocratic political regimes, which, as his critics observe, are incompatible with the depleted vitality he attributes to late modernity. If his perfectionism required the structure and discipline that aristocratic regimes alone can supply, then his ethical and political thinking would be hopelessly anachronistic; his vision of the future of humankind would be incompatible with his critique of modernity. He may yearn for the halcyon days of the Roman Empire and the Florentine Republics, but he is not so foolish as to confuse those days with his own. He unabashedly admires Manu as a lawgiver, but he neither recommends nor advocates Manu's aristocratic regime as a viable solution to the unique political problems of modernity. The institutions of modernity are simply too corrupt to impress into service as he would have us believe Manu did, and he is too decadent to supply the requisite nomothesis in any event. The \"philosophers of the future\" may someday successfully emulate Manu, Caesar or Napoleon in their political lawgiving, but Nietzsche cannot.\n\n### The _Pathos_ of Distance\n\nIn order to account for the legislative predilections that he shares with Manu and other \"noble\" souls, Nietzsche occasionally alludes to a _\"pathos_ of distance\" resident within himself. Although he usually associates this _pathos_ of distance with the aristocratic regimes he expressly admires, its existence is not dependent on any particular form of political regime. Indeed, his own _pathos_ of distance not only suggests the viability of his perfectionism in the twilight of the idols, but also secures his claim to the hyperopic perspective of the \"immoral\" lawgiver.\n\nNietzsche introduces the _pathos_ of distance as definitive of the \"noble\" mode of evaluation, describing it as\n\n> the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a \"below\"\u2014 _that_ is the origin of the antithesis \"good\" and \"bad.\" (GM 1:2)\n\nThis _pathos_ of distance, he later explains, is \"characteristic of every strong age,\" for it expresses \"the cleavage between man and man, status and status, the plurality of types, the will to be oneself, to stand out\" (TI IX:37). As we shall see, a diminished _\"pathos_ of distance\" not only is possible in decadent epochs like late modernity, but also may sustain in these twilight epochs a modest morality of breeding.\n\nThe _pathos_ of distance signifies an enhanced sensibility for, or attunement to, the order of rank that \"naturally\" informs the rich plurality of human types. According to Nietzsche, the _pathos_ of distance animates those aristocratic regimes that he most admires:\n\n> Every enhancement of the type \"man\" has so far been the work of an aristocratic society...that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or another. (BGE 257)\n\nHe furthermore associates the absence or diminution of this _pathos_ of distance with decadence and decline: \"Today nobody has the courage any longer for privileges, for masters' rights, for a sense of respect for oneself and one's peers\u2014 for a _pathos of distance_ \" (AC 43).\n\nWhile Nietzsche usually discusses the _pathos_ of distance in the context of his praise for aristocratic political regimes, the motivation for his celebration of this _pathos_ of distance\u2014and of aristocracy itself, for that matter\u2014is distinctly ethical. His perfectionism, which shelters the ethical core of his thought, not only is separable from the particular structure provided by political aristocracy, but also operates independently of this and any other particular form of political regime. As he explains, it is not the aristocratic political regime itself that stimulates human flourishing, but the _pathos_ of distance sustained therein:\n\n> Without that _pathos of distance_ which grows out of the ingrained difference between strata...that other, more mysterious _pathos_ could not have grown up either\u2014the craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretching, more comprehensive states\u2014in brief, simply the enhancement of the type \"man,\" the continual \"self-overcoming of man,\" to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense. (BGE 257)\n\nIn this passage, Nietzsche discloses the ethical core of his perfectionism. The permanent enhancement of humankind is attributable to the attainment of ever rarer states of the soul. This \"aristocracy of the soul\" is in turn the product of an internal _pathos_ of distance, a \"mysterious\" craving for multiplicity and stratification within the soul itself. Nietzsche thus believes that the internal _pathos_ of distance is itself instilled (or nourished) by the external _pathos_ of distance evoked by any stable political aristocracy. As we shall see later on, this mysterious craving for internal distance either is, or is related to, _er s._\n\nThe attraction for Nietzsche of aristocratic regimes thus lies in their capacity to accommodate and implement human design. The rigid hier archical stratification that he generally recommends is maximally effective at insulating political legislation from accident and chance. Aristocratic political regimes enable the lawgiver to intervene in Nature, to correct for Nature's indifference, and to assume (limited) dominion over the continued enhancement of the species. He consequently favors aristocratic political regimes, but only because they preserve and embellish the _pathos_ of distance, which he in turn reveres for its evocation of a craving for \"self-overcoming.\" As we shall see, \"self-overcoming\" is Nietzsche's preferred term for the moral content of his perfectionism.\n\nOur attention to the _pathos_ of distance thus reveals the ethical basis of Nietzsche's perfectionism. Natural aristocracy is the best form of political regime _not_ in the sense that all peoples and epochs ought to aspire to its grandeur, but in the sense that it expresses the highest degree of strength and vitality known to humankind. With few exceptions, political regimes will accurately reflect the vitality of the peoples and ages they serve; for the most part, human beings establish the best political regimes they can also afford to sustain. While aristocracy is grander than democracy as an expression of an epoch's vitality, it is not a better regime for those epochs that can afford only democracy. Nature always requires the pyramidal organization that aristocracy attains most perfectly, but it does not always supply the lawgiver with the tools and materials to fashion an aristocratic political regime. In that event, lacking the macropolitical resources needed to reprise the law of Manu, the lawgiver must aspire instead to reproduce Nature's pyramid in diminished miniature.\n\nNietzsche consequently defends aristocratic regimes, but only insofar as they nurture (or preserve) the _pathos_ of distance that alone enables moral development. His notorious fascination with the morality of breeding is similarly grounded in ethical concerns: by preserving the stratification of types\u2014and the _pathos_ of distance it evokes\u2014the morality of breeding sustains the possibility of moral progress. The morality of taming, on the other hand, elides the difference between types, thus threatening to extinguish the _pathos_ of distance that genuine moral progress necessarily presupposes.\n\nAs a political thinker, then, Nietzsche is a consequentialist, for he aims to impress politics into the service of ethics. Political regimes are valuable only insofar as they enable psychic regimes, rather than the other way around. He favors political aristocracy as the form of institutional organization that is most conducive to the \"aristocracy of soul\" that he associates with nobility, but it is by no means a necessary condition of self-perfection. The essential element of his political thinking lies not in his yearning for an institutionally reinforced hierarchy, but in his perfectionism. While the former requires a degree of strength and vitality unknown to late modernity, the latter is in principle compatible even with the depleted resources of Nietzsche's own epoch.\n\nWe need not conclude, then, that his political thinking is either hopelessly anachronistic or irrelevant to the peculiar conditions of late modernity, for his perfectionism _can_ operate independently of his romantic yearnings for political aristocracy. So long as a culture preserves some minimal _pathos_ of distance, expressed however faintly in some trace of pyramidal structure, the permanent enhancement of humankind remains possible. Isolating the ethical content of his perfectionism is crucial to our understanding of his project, for in the event that an aristocratic regime were no longer possible (as is the case in late modernity), he could still advocate the perfectionism that lies at the heart of his political thinking.\n\nNietzsche offers no further defense of his preference for the morality of breeding, and the reason for his silence is simple: the _pathos_ of distance does not admit of further, theoretical justification. Lawgivers are \"justified\" not by virtue of some epistemic privilege, divine decree, natural right or Promethean insight, but simply by virtue of their audacious desire to subject to design what naturally falls to chance. The sole justification for a lawgiver's decrees resides exclusively in the vision of humankind that informs them. Nietzsche consequently does not pretend to offer any further justification for his morality of breeding than the products of such \"breeding\" personally embody. One either shares his attunement to the _pathos_ of distance that motivates his perfectionism, or one does not.\n\nThe perceived need to advance or receive a theoretical justification of political legislation is symptomatic, he believes, of the decadence of modernity. A healthy people or age neither demands nor requires a discursive justification for its legislations:\n\n> What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. (TI II:5)\n\nNobility is expressed simply in the attempt to create or preserve an order of rank in the face of the indifference of Nature; the noble soul consequently requires no prior or independent justification of its creations. A decadent people or age, on the other hand, which cannot afford to squander its dwindling resources, generally resolves to expend itself only if given good reason to do so, usually in the form of a discursive justification. Only decadent peoples need to justify the practices and policies whereby they express their signature virtues, and only decadent peoples bemoan the absence of such justifications. The conspicuous failure of Nietzsche's critics to satisfy the very conditions of justification to which they hold him suggests that he may have a point.\n\n# 3 \nPerfectionism in the Twilight of the Idols\n\n> The whole of the West no longer possesses the instincts out of which institutions grow, out of which a _future_ grows: perhaps nothing antagonizes its \"modern spirit\" so much. One lives for the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called \"freedom.\" That which makes an institution an institution is despised, hated, repudiated: one fears the danger of a new slavery the moment the word \"authority\" is even spoken out loud.\n> \n> \u2014 _Twilight of the Idols,_ IX:39\n\nIn response to his own diagnosis of the decadence of modernity, Nietzsche rethinks his endorsement of political perfectionism. While he would like nothing better than to contribute to the establishment of an aristocratic regime, he also realizes that the depleted vitality of modernity is simply incompatible with the political perfectionism he envisions. His subsequent shift in emphasis to _moral_ perfectionism not only is consistent with his critique of modernity, but also conveys the priority he has always assigned to ethics over politics. In order to assess more precisely the moral content of his perfectionism, I turn now to examine his post-Zarathustran critique of modernity.\n\n### Nietzsche's Critique of Modernity\n\nNietzsche originally conceived of the production of exemplary human beings as a macropolitical task, which would mobilize (and justify) the political institutions of the modern nation state. Although he isolates the \"disease\" of modernity in its senescent educational institutions, he nevertheless believes that they can be rejuvenated sufficiently \"to establish a permanent alliance between German and Greek culture\" (BT 20). He actively opposes any political solution on the part of the newly established _Reich,_ but he nevertheless recommends a reorganization of German educational institutions, such that they might produce as a matter of design the exemplary individuals who have emerged heretofore only as accidents of Nature.\n\nWhile his public lectures on \"The Future of Our Educational Institutions,\" which he delivered early in 1872, warn of the creeping mediocrity of higher education, and of the yawning gulf that separates education from genuine culture, they collectively sound a call to arms rather than a requiem. The political macrosphere is still a salvageable shelter for ethical life, provided that he and Wagner can infuse the new _Reich_ with a tonic appreciation for tragedy:\n\n> Let no one try to blight our faith in a yet-impending rebirth of Hellenic antiquity; for this alone gives us hope for a renovation and purification of the German spirit through the fire magic of music. (BT 20)\n\nAs this passage demonstrates, the young, professorial Nietzsche exudes the very optimism that _The Birth of Tragedy_ disparagingly attributes to Socrates.\n\nFollowing his \"discovery\" of the decadence of modernity, however, Nietzsche realizes that his earlier faith in the salvageability of modern institutions was egregiously misplaced. He consequently withdraws his plans for macropolitical reform, and he does so in two identifiable steps. First, he acknowledges that the institutions of modern Europe are simply too corrupt to serve in the macropolitical capacity he had mistakenly reserved for them. Although he argues that institutions have functioned historically as the crucibles of culture, wherein human animals have been forcibly \"civilized,\" cruelly implanted with memories and painfully invested with \"the right to make promises\" (GM 11:2), he also insists that the institutions of Western civilization, those \"bulwarks of political organization\" (GM 11:18), have gradually usurped the task of consecrating individuals to culture. The institutional reinforcement of the morality of taming, euphemistically known as the \"improvement-morality,\" now threatens to extinguish the _pathos_ of distance upon which culture is founded.\n\nThe institutions of bygone epochs may have been amenable to the production of exemplary human beings, but the macropolitical resources of modernity are arrayed in a manner inimical to this task. \"In present-day Germany,\" he laments, \"no one is any longer free to give his children a noble education\" (TI VIII:5). Modernity is marked as an age by the cold, refined efficiency, the debilitating anonymity, of its sustaining institutions, which militate ever more perfectly against the emergence of singular human types. Great individuals now emerge only in opposition to institutional design, only in spite of the decadence of the age that spawns them (TI IX:44).\n\nSecond, he acknowledges that, independent of the macropolitical resources at his disposal, he is in no position to orchestrate the redemption of modernity. His critique of modernity may focus on the corruption of modern institutions, but it locates the cause or source of this corruption in an underlying cultural decadence, of which he interprets the demise of these institutions as symptomatic. He consequently observes that\n\n> Our institutions are no good any more: on that there is universal agreement. However, it is not their fault but ours. Once we have lost the instincts out of which institutions grow, we lose institutions altogether because we are no longer good for them... The whole of the West no longer possesses the instincts out of which institutions grow, out of which a _future_ grows. (TI IX:39)\n\nAny attempt to bolster our sagging political institutions, independent of addressing the decadence they manifest, thus betrays a disastrous confusion of cause and effect:\n\n> What will not be built any more henceforth, and _cannot_ be built any more, is\u2014a society _[Gesellschaft]_ in the old sense of the word; to build that, everything is lacking, above all the material. _All of us are no longer_ _material for a society;_ this is a truth for which the time has come. (GS 356)\n\nWe must not underestimate the enormity of Nietzsche's claim that the \"slave morality always first needs a hostile external world\" (GM 1:10). This means that any campaign to change, reform, or meliorate this \"hostile external world\" would also threaten to strip the \"slaves\" of their ownmost identity. As a consequence, the \"slave\" type, which supposedly dominates decadent epochs like late modernity, always maintains a vested interest in _not_ reforming the \"hostile external world\" that it identifies as the source of its victimization and oppression.\n\nIn his post-Zarathustran writings, Nietzsche acknowledges the complicity of his original call for political reform with the decadence it presumed to combat. The fatal anachronism of his plan to reawaken the tragic muse lay in his conviction that he was somehow immune to the cultural disarray he detected. Armed with a moral ideal of his own to purvey\u2014and a romantic ideal to boot\u2014 he unwittingly installed himself as yet another \"improver of mankind.\" Arrogating to himself the privilege of the physician of culture, he blithely prescribed redemptive measures designed to cure the ills of modernity. His prescription of a Wagnerian rebirth of tragic culture thus marked one more expression of the advancing decadence of modernity.\n\nHe consequently concludes that presently there exists no macropolitical solution to the problem of decadence in late modernity. The \"philosophers of the future\" may someday arrive at one, but Nietzsche himself, rooted inextricably in the decadence he so despises, cannot. His writings of 1888 candidly pronounce his own decadence (EH 1:2; CW P), thereby discrediting his presumed credentials as a physician of culture. In fact, his perception of a _need_ in late modernity for exemplary human beings, who generally arise as an expression of surfeit rather than of lack, itself confirms that they are unlikely to appear as the willed products of a morality of breeding. He thus concedes that neither he nor the political institutions that fashioned him are likely to produce anything but alternate permutations of decay:\n\n> It is a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists if they believe that they are extricating themselves from decadence when they merely wage war against it... [T]hey change its expression, but they do not get rid of decadence itself. (TI II:11)\n\nNietzsche thus regards the macropolitical agenda sketched in his early writings as historically naive, as woefully ignorant of the source of the decay of modern institutions:\n\n> I now regret...that I appended hopes where there was no ground for hope, where everything pointed all too plainly to an end!... That on the basis of the latest German music I began to rave about \"the German spirit\" as if that were in the process even then of discovering and finding itself again\u2014at a time when the German spirit, which not long before had still had the will to dominate Europe and the strength to lead Europe, was just making its testament and _abdicating_ forever... (BT AS:6)\n\nWhile he continues to voice his yearnings for a macropolitical \"cure\" for the decadence that besets modernity, he usually defers all such speculations to the \"philosophers of the future\" who will succeed him, or to his unreliable mouthpiece, Zarathustra. On topics such as these, to which he has no \"right,\" it behooves him \"only to be silent\" (GM II:25).\n\nHow can Nietzsche so calmly document the demise of the very political institutions in which he had originally invested his hopes for the future? Is this withering critique of modernity not inhospitable to his vision of the future of humankind? He understands, and frequently reiterates, that the corruption of modern institutions is not the cause of decadence, but its most telling symptom. That \"we are no good\" for these institutions thus signals the advance, rather than the advent, of decadence. He consequently ridicules the idea that we might combat decadence simply by easing the discomfort that attends it:\n\n> The supposed causes of degeneration are its consequences. But the supposed remedies of degeneration are also mere palliatives against some of its effects: the \"cured\" are merely one type of the degenerates. (WP 42)\n\nIn other words, the crisis of modernity is even more acute than he originally imagined, when he called for a rebirth of tragic culture. As a physiological affliction indelibly inscribed into the bodies of modern agents, decadence is encoded within the (disintegrating) ethos of modernity itself.\n\nYet the ethical resources of late modernity are not yet exhausted. The catalysis of culture continues, as evidenced by Nietzsche's own reliance on Schopenhauer as an _Erzieher_. The diffusion of the _pathos_ of distance, of which he interprets the pandemic spread of democratic reforms as symptomatic, is not yet sufficiently entropic to preclude the possibility of the continued enhancement of humankind. Since a form of ethical life has survived the demise of the sustaining institutions of late modernity, future enhancements of humankind remain possible. While it is true that Nietzsche must modify his political agenda to accommodate the decadence of late modernity, there is no need yet for him to abandon politics altogether. Here, he believes, he differs from Socrates, who could not afford to sustain his own personal war against decadence in the absence of institutional support (TI 11:12).\n\nRather than attempt directly to produce the redemptive exemplars who will warrant the future of the species, he undertakes to play a more modest and indirect role in the permanent enhancement of humankind. The overarching goal of his politics is to preserve the diminished _pathos_ of distance that ensures the possibility of ethical life and moral development in late modernity. It is his specific task to convoke a gathering of those individuals who are best suited to survive the twilight of the idols, and to train these unlikely \"heroes\" in the experimental disciplines that are most likely to stave off the will to nothingness. This revised task requires fewer macropolitical resources, but it shifts the (diminished) burden of political legislation squarely onto his own stooped shoulders.\n\n### The Political Microsphere\n\nNietzsche's odyssey on the \"open seas\" ultimately transports him to the political microsphere, a destination unknown to him in his pre-Zarathustran career. While involved in his campaign to orchestrate the redemption of modernity, he characteristically restricted his focus to the political macrosphere, to the dying institutions he hoped to resuscitate. In response to the self-referential implications of his critique of modernity, however, he subsequently relocates his political program from the macrosphere to the microsphere.\n\nIn order to convey a sense of Nietzsche's revised role in the production of superlative human beings, I distinguish between the macropolitical (or institutional) and micropolitical (or infra-institutional) incarnations of his perfectionism. The political macrosphere comprises the network of relations that obtain between a people's institutions and its representative exemplars, while the political microsphere comprises those relations between a people and its representative exemplars that are _not_ mediated by social institutions. Macropolitics governs the production of great human beings through the organization of institutional resources, while micropolitics governs the production and illumination of great human beings outside (or beneath) the institutional frameworks of civilization. Whether prosecuted in the macrosphere or in the microsphere, politics contributes to the enhancement of humankind through the legislative deployment of the ethical resources of the community.\n\nWe might think of the political microsphere on an organic model, as the vital core that engenders the signature legislations of a people or community, from which the political macrosphere extends outward as an involuntary, spontaneous outgrowth. The microsphere thus shelters the fund of vital resources upon which a people draws as it expresses (and memorializes) itself in the creation of institutions. Autochthonous folkways, tribal rituals, ethnic customs and memory traces, familial habits and mores, hieratic regimens of diet and hygiene: all contribute to the delicate, capillary network of ethical life in the political microsphere, from which the macrosphere emerges as a natural shell or mantle. These are the smoldering embers from which the Promethean fire of civilization draws its wondrous flame.\n\nIn a strong age overflowing with vital energy, externalized in the institutions and festivals of a healthy people, lawgivers would have neither the need nor the inclination to restrict their legislations to the political microsphere. But in a decadent age unable to sustain the vitality of a people's signature institutions, lawgivers have no choice but to legislate from within the political microsphere. If necessary, the micropolitical lawgiver must strategically inhabit the disintegrating institutions of the political macrosphere, parasitically draining their residual vitality for use in husbanding the resources of the microsphere. Indeed, Nietzsche's favorite \"simile\" for decadence is that of a vital core mantled within a dead husk or shell, such that \"The whole no longer lives at all: it is composite, calculated, artificial, and artifact\" (CW 7).\n\nNietzsche thus realizes that his contribution to the enhancement of humankind need not presuppose the macropolitical support of modern institutions. His perfectionism is compatible with cultures of virtually any degree of vitality, and it consequently requires only minimal institutional support. His retirement from macropolitics therefore does not signal the termination of his program to contribute to the production of superlative human beings. Rather than abandon entirely the idea of producing such exemplars by design, he relocates the site of this production to the political microsphere, where he and his fellow \"free spirits\" must foster the emergence of genius without the assistance of (and in fact in opposition to) institutional reinforcement. Indeed, his diagnosis of decadence suggests that the degeneration of modernity might actually contribute to the emergence of (a peculiar breed of) exemplary human beings:\n\n> Great men, like great ages, are explosives in which a tremendous force is stored up; their precondition is always, historically and physiologically, that for a long time much has been gathered, stored up, saved up, and conserved for them\u2014that there has been no explosion for a long time. (TI IX:44)\n\nEthical life continues to flourish in late modernity, but only in micro-communities that spring up around those representative exemplars whose selfperfections inscribe the canon of the law. Amid the collapse of the political macrosphere, these exemplars have assumed the mediating role traditionally played by political institutions. As we have seen, the relation between great human beings and \"humanity as a whole\" reflects the _pathos_ of distance that suffuses a people or epoch. So long as the _pathos_ of distance survives, an age will produce exemplary specimens, and so long as these heroes continue to perfect themselves, the _pathos_ of distance will survive. The representative exemplars of late modernity are perhaps obnubilated by the twilight, or overlooked amid the rubble of fallen idols, but they remain capable nonetheless of contributing to the permanent enhancement of humankind.\n\nThe central role of these exemplary individuals in Nietzsche's perfectionism is not affected by his emigration to the political microsphere. Perhaps more confidently than ever, he appeals in his post-Zarathustran works to the importance of those individuals who embody the perfectibility of the human soul. He consequently shifts the burden of his perfectionism, which he originally expected macropolitical institutions to bear, entirely onto the microspheric legislations of the representative exemplars of late modernity. He now understands that it is the micropolitical responsibility of individual philosophers to produce such specimens by design\u2014to become them if possible, and to invent them if necessary. Unable to rely on the macropolitical reinforcement of an aristocratic regime, he gambles that the \"aristocracy of soul\" exhibited by these exemplary types is sufficient to sustain and nurture an ethical community of unknown friends and followers.\n\nIt would be misleading, however, to suggest that Nietzsche's turn to micropolitics coincides with a wholesale disavowal of his investment in the macropolitical redemption of modernity. His \"longing for total revolution,\" and for its world-historical architects, persists to the conclusion of his productive career. In his \"review\" of _The Birth of Tragedy,_ for example, he renews his \"promise\" of a tragic age, though he postpones its advent to a more distant remove from the present; he also diverts the credit for this coming age from Wagner to himself (EH IV:4).\n\nNietzsche's attention to the political microsphere may occasionally neutralize these romantic yearnings, but it neither erases nor eliminates them. As expressions of his own decadence and resentment, however, his political sentiments are of considerably less interest than the form in which he presents them. Rather than recoil in horror from his retrograde elitist yearnings, we might more fruitfully inquire: of what relevance to micro-politics is his admiration for the morality of breeding? As we shall see, he (partially) recuperates his macropolitical yearnings by enlisting them in his campaign to acquaint his readers with the ethical resources of the microsphere.\n\nNietzsche's shift to the political microsphere also reprises a similar dislocation in his personal life. In order to become a philosopher and reclaim the task _[Aufgabe]_ reserved for him, he withdrew from the political macrosphere as he understood it, resigning his professorship at Basel and vanishing into a lonely, nomadic existence. Genuine philosophy, it would seem, requires an immersion in the quotidian contingencies and fragile relations of the microsphere. The real work of the philosopher is performed not in stuffy lecture halls and musty archives, but on long, solitary walks in the mountains, in poorly heated pensions, in deserted train stations, on unfamiliar beaches. Rather than harangue university students and continue to campaign for macropolitical reform, he courts anonymity as a wanderer and sun-seeker, connected to the \"world\" he leaves behind only through an erratic regimen of correspondence.\n\nNietzsche's immersion in the political microsphere thus reflects the experimental nature of his own life and work. In order to see himself as a political agent, he first had to situate himself within the microsphere of late modernity and discipline himself to acknowledge the ethical resources arrayed therein. He relocates his perfectionism to the political microsphere only after personally testing it for himself. This proved to be an extremely painful experiment, one which may have contributed significantly to his eventual breakdown. It is perhaps no coincidence that Nietzsche returns to the political macrosphere, promising to assassinate the religious and secular leaders of Western Europe, only under the delusions of grandeur wrought by his incipient madness.\n\n### Light Amid the Shadows: An Attempt at Aesthetic Education\n\nNietzsche's perfectionism thus remains viable even in the twilight of the idols, and we should expect superlative human beings to flourish even in the gloaming of late modernity. These twilight \"heroes\" will remind no one of the world-historical conquerors who populate Nietzsche's fantasies, for they must reflect the decadence of the age they represent. They may nevertheless contribute to the ongoing catalysis of culture.\n\nWhile it need not be the case, as Zarathustra seems to think, that late modernity is \"too late\" to produce _\u00dcbermenschen_ of its own, the \"higher men\" of our epoch are not readily apparent to us. Nietzsche and Zarathustra may be partially responsible for our faulty vision, for they have trained us to look out for the beasts and heroes who represent vital epochs rather than the fools and invalids who stand for dying epochs. In order to educate the sensibilities of his readers and prepare them to partake of ethical life in the political microsphere, Nietzsche must isolate and illuminate those queer _\u00dcbermenschen_ who labor in the twilight of the idols. As we shall see, the twin tasks of _creating_ and _discovering_ exemplary human beings are not readily distinguishable in the shadows of late modernity.\n\nAs a preparation for his revised political project, Nietzsche must refine somewhat the aesthetic sensibilities of his readers, thereby discouraging them from deferring to the world-historical heroes whom he and Zarathustra have led them to anticipate. He thus warns that\n\n> [O]ne misunderstands great human beings if one views them from the miserable perspective of some public use. That one cannot put them to any use, that in itself may belong to greatness. (TI IX:50)\n\nHe consequently attempts to illuminate the ethical resources of the political microsphere, and to acquaint his readers with the \"useless\" squanderers who currently preside over the catalysis of culture.\n\nBecause \"genuine philosophers\" live \"unphilosophically\" and \"unwisely\" (BGE 205), however, they may also live obscurely. Eclipsed by the twilight of the idols, their pursuits of self-perfection go largely unnoticed, along with the micropolitical legislations they enact. In light of his critique of modernity, in fact, the micropolitical exemplars he has in mind must necessarily appear to us as buffoons, fools, misfits, miscreants, criminals, rogues, creatures of _ressentiment,_ and anyone else who can muster even a minimal resistance to the decadence of modernity. In bringing to light the ethical resources of the microsphere, as we shall see, Nietzsche must become his own test case: the viability of his relocated perfectionism rests on his success in creating\/discovering himself as an _\u00dcbermensch._\n\nThroughout his career, his perceived contribution to politics was dominated by the historical necessity of a prelude or preparation. As a young scholar, he presented _The Birth of Tragedy_ as a prelude to a Wagnerian rebirth of tragic culture, and _Schopenhauer as Educator_ as a blueprint for German educational reform. He later advertised _Beyond Good and Evil_ as the \"prelude to a philosophy of the future,\" describing his task in general as a preparation for the mysterious \"philosophers of the future.\" His commitment to perfectionism similarly reflects this preparatory emphasis, for it obliges him to educate his readers to discern any _\u00dcbermenschen_ who might roam the microsphere. While he is certainly not a \"philosopher of the future,\" however, he must also beware of simply busying himself with the preparations for the future as he speculates on the advent of his successors. Once he relocates his political perfectionism within the microsphere, he must recover for himself the legislative role that he carves out for other micropolitical _\u00dcbermenschen._ Toward this end, he legislates his own self-creation as an exemplary human being.\n\nThis conclusion may prove difficult to accept, however, for Nietzsche obviously falls far short of the world-historical _\u00dcbermenschen_ whom he and Zarathustra have led us to anticipate. When casting about for exemplary human beings, Nietzsche's readers customarily search for world-historical redeemers and conquerors, and he is largely responsible for fostering this false expectation. In order for us to see this cranky, infirm hermit as an exemplary human being, and thereby partake of the catalysis of culture to which he contributes, we must consequently revise our opinions of both Nietzsche and the _\u00dcbermensch._ Such a revision would require the precise reversal of perspective\u2014wrought by an cultivation of aesthetic sensibilities\u2014that he hopes to induce in his readers.\n\n### Moral Perfectionism\n\nNietzsche's shift in emphasis to the political microsphere places into sharper relief the moral perfectionism at work in his thought. While the depleted vitality of his epoch is admittedly inimical to the _political_ perfectionism he wishes to pursue, the adverse conditions of late modernity are nevertheless compatible with his related project of _moral_ perfectionism. Indeed, he can sustain the (revised) political dimension of his philosophy only because his project of moral perfectionism requires no greater political support than the microsphere can in fact furnish.\n\nIn an explicit response to John Rawls, Stanley Cavell has recently attempted to recover the distinctly ethical dimension of Nietzsche's perfectionism. In defense of the position he calls _moral perfectionism,_ Cavell interprets both Emerson and Nietzsche as\n\n> calling for the further or higher self of each, each consecrating himself\/ herself to self-transformation, accepting one's own genius, which is precisely not, it is the negation of, accepting one's present state and its present consecrations to something fixed, as such, \"beyond\" one.\n\nCavell thus presents Nietzsche's moral perfectionism as an unintended (and unacknowledged) casualty of Rawls's refusal to weigh the claims of perfectionism in his original position. In rejecting Nietzsche's perfectionism as a potential source of viable principles of justice, Rawls inadvertently vetoes a program of moral education that is uniquely suited to the training of citizens in a democratic society:\n\n> [T]he view Emerson and Nietzsche share, or my interest in it, is not simply to show that [moral perfectionism] is tolerable to the life of justice in a constitutional democracy but to show how it is essential to that life... I understand the training and character and friendship Emerson requires for democracy as preparation to withstand not its rigors but its failures, character to keep the democratic hope alive in the face of disappointment with it.\n\nCavell thus contends that moral perfectionism alone provides the \"democratic training\" required of all citizens who must abide by (though never consent to) the imperfect justice delivered by contemporary democracies.\n\nCavell's eloquent response, however, does not directly address Rawls's specific objections to Nietzsche's perfectionism. While it is not the case that Cavell conflates the moral perfectionism he champions with the political perfectionism Rawls rejects, he does fail to distinguish sharply between the two positions; as a consequence, the precise relationships that obtain between the two forms of perfectionism are left unarticulated and unclear. In any event, it seems abundantly clear that liberals like Rawls should _always_ beware of political theories and regimes that promise to curtail individual freedoms, irrespective of the \"democratic\" moral sentiments indirectly expressed by their founders and champions. In this limited sense, then, Rawls's misunderstanding of Nietzsche is irrelevant, for _no_ moral teaching is sufficiently democratic to compensate for the illiberal excesses of Nietzschean perfectionism. In light of his pre-established allegiance to liberal ideals, Rawls is surely right (if not philosophically justified) to bar Nietzsche's perfectionism from consideration in the original position.\n\nAlthough Cavell fails to address, and so to deflect, Rawls's suspicions of Nietzschean perfectionism, he nevertheless succeeds in transplanting the tangled debate into a more fertile field of inquiry. Indeed, by diverting our attention to the ethical core of Nietzsche's political thinking, Cavell implicitly limns a distinction between Nietzsche's _political_ perfectionism and his less familiar _moral_ perfectionism. While Rawls prudently rejects the former position, as patently illiberal, his undisclosed recoil from the latter position constitutes the most glaring fault in the foundation of his theory of justice. As we have seen, Nietzsche's political perfectionism is largely a vehicle or conveyance for the moral perfectionism that lies at the very heart of his philosophical enterprise. In denying Nietzsche entry into the original position, Rawls may rid political philosophy of some very murky bathwater, but only by expelling the only baby for whom the construction of a \"theory of justice\" is warranted. Although Cavell presents his account of \"moral perfectionism\" as a friendly amendment to Rawls's theory of justice, it seems likely that Rawls's original position is constructed precisely to obviate the moral education and \"democratic training\" that Cavell applauds in Nietzsche and Emerson.\n\nFollowing Cavell's cue, we are now in a position to distinguish between the political and moral perfectionisms operative within Nietzsche's thought. Political perfectionism, as we have seen, provides for the rigid stratification and hierarchical organization of society and its resources, with the aim of producing, as a matter of design, those exemplary human beings whose exploits alone warrant the future of humankind. The aims of political perfectionism are best served by pyramidal aristocratic regimes, which not only reflect and preserve the natural order of rank among human types, but also encourage moral development by engendering a robust _pathos_ of distance. On Nietzsche's account, the priority of political perfectionism resides in its justificatory capacity, for no political arrangement can better protect citizens from the perceived meaninglessness of their existence.\n\nNietzsche's moral perfectionism is perhaps best characterized in terms of the conviction that one's primary, overriding\u2014and perhaps sole\u2014ethical \"obligation\" is to attend to the perfection of one's ownmost self. Any \"obligations\" that one might choose to observe to others are strictly derivative of, and secondary to, the imperative to perfect oneself. While this general imperative appears in many diverse forms and formulations in the history of moral thought, it is typically conveyed via the language of _autonomy_ and _authenticity._ Borrowing from Pindar, a predecessor moral perfectionist, Nietzsche exhorts himself and (some of) his readers with the slogan that he incorporates into the subtitle of his \"autobiography\": _become what you are._ 11\n\nAs this Pindaric slogan suggests, the project of moral perfectionism involves cultivating one's native endowment of powers and faculties; eliciting from within oneself the perfections that lie dormant, undiscovered, or incomplete; and so fortifying one's soul with the virtues constitutive of a sterling character. One is obliged, in short, to strive to produce oneself as an _\u00fcbermenschlich_ human being. All moral \"obligations\" to others are simply illusory, either because they are in fact continuous with the project of perfecting one's ownmost self (as in many cases of charity and gift-giving, such as potlatch), or because they are fabricated by the creative resentment of those who cannot abide the successful self-perfection of others.\n\nThese two forms of perfectionism do not logically entail one another. While it is true that some political thinkers\u2014Plato, Hegel and Nietzsche, for example\u2014cleave to both forms of perfectionism, other thinkers defend only one or the other. Emerson, Mill, Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Berlin, for example, enthusiastically endorse versions of moral perfectionism, but they all vehemently refuse the palpable tyranny of political perfectionism. On the other hand, political thinkers such as Machiavelli and Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, whose insights into human \"nature\" have been brutally implemented by totalitarian dictators, embrace the project of political perfectionism, while holding little hope for the general project of moral perfectionism. In an interesting hybrid case, Richard Rorty endorses the project of moral perfectionism (which he calls the pursuit of autonomy), but he relegates it to the private sphere; this may be tantamount to proscribing all vital forms of moral perfectionism. Still other theorists, such as Rawls, reject the claims of both forms of perfectionism, as inimical to the \"freedom from shame\" that is ideally enjoyed by self-respecting citizens of liberal democratic societies.\n\nIn Nietzsche's own case, political perfectionism serves in a largely instrumental capacity, as a vehicle for his more basic project of moral perfectionism. Although he publicly endorses both forms of perfectionism, he defends political perfectionism only because, and insofar as, it promises to deliver the social conditions that are most conducive to moral perfectionism. In decadent epochs like late modernity, however, which cannot muster the resources needed to sustain the hygienic stratification inherent in a stable aristocratic regime, the project of political perfectionism must be modified significantly, if not abandoned altogether. Nietzsche's critique of modernity thus occasions a shift in emphasis from political to moral perfectionism; while the former project is simply incompatible with the advanced decay of late modernity, the other is not.\n\nThe logical independence of these two forms of perfectionism is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche's post-Zarathustran political thinking, especially in light of his withering critique of modernity. As Cavell observes, those critics who, like Rawls, oppose Nietzsche's political perfectionism generally fail (or refuse) to detect its distinctly moral warrant and motivation. Though perhaps damaging in some way to his political perfectionism, their criticisms consequently fail to touch, much less to damage, his project of moral perfectionism.\n\nNietzsche himself does not use the term \"moral perfectionism.\" He describes Schopenhauer, whom he never met and with whom he later would express profound disagreement, quite simply as his \"teacher and taskmaster _[Lehrer und_ _Zuchtmeister]_ \" (SE 1). This rare combination of virtues (galvanized by a chance visit to a Leipzig bookshop) ordains Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's _Erzieher_ \u2014his educator. Indeed, the perfectionism for which Nietzsche is routinely vilified in fact shelters a program of moral education, which is supposed to produce as a matter of design those exemplary individuals who unintentionally and unwittingly preside over the catalysis of culture.\n\nNietzsche does not have in mind here the sort of Gradgrindian education that transforms people into \"machines\" by teaching them \"to be bored\" (TI IX:29). His understanding of moral education, as of the nature of ethical life in general, evinces his substantial intellectual debt to Emerson. The term _erziehen_ suggests a process of eliciting, or drawing out, the \"hidden\" powers and perfections resident in oneself and a few others. His political perfectionism thus establishes the social conditions that are most conducive to an education of the highest human types, while his moral perfectionism comprises this education itself. By provoking its greatest exemplars to embody perfections hitherto unknown to humanity, an educational program of this scope would contribute to the permanent enhancement of humankind itself.\n\nAs an aspiring _Erzieher_ in his own right, Nietzsche writes only for those who share his aesthetic sensibilities, and for those who _may_ someday accede to this lofty rank if properly educated. In both cases the pedagogical aim of his writing is neither to convert nor to \"improve\" his readers, but to announce himself to kindred spirits and fellow squanderers. His moral pedagogy is designed not to \"cure\" the sick and infirm, but to embolden and encourage the healthy\u2014much as his \"friends,\" the fictitious free spirits, served as \"brave companions and familiars\" during his own convalescence (H I:P:2). He not only addresses those readers who might be exemplary human beings, but also encourages anyone who can afford to do so to appreciate these exotic and endangered plants wherever they might bloom.\n\n### Moral Perfectionism and\/as Ethical Egoism\n\nNietzsche's moral perfectionism may very well amount to a version of ethical egoism, as critics often charge. Yet he is keen to purge \"egoism\" of the taint foisted upon it by Christian morality and other vehicles of resentment:\n\n> Rather it was only when aristocratic value judgments _declined_ that the whole antithesis \"egoistic\"\/\"unegoistic\" obtruded itself more and more on the human conscience\u2014it is, to speak in my own language, the _herd instinct_ that through this antithesis at last gets its word (and its _words)_ in. (GM 1:2)\n\nTaking up this defense of egoism, Zarathustra distinguishes between the selfishness _[Selbstsucht]_ born of health, which is marked by the \"thirst to pile up all the riches in [one's] soul,\" and that born of sickness, which \"sizes up those who have much to eat...and always sneaks around the table of those who give\" (Z 1:22.1). Echoing his loquacious \"son,\" Nietzsche declares that\n\n> \"Selflessness\" has no value either on heaven or on earth. All great problems demand _great love,_ and of that only strong, round, secure spirits who have a firm grip on themselves are capable. (GS 345)\n\nThis proposed rehabilitation of \"selfishness\" accounts for the only others to whom Nietzsche recognizes ethical obligations: one's \"friends,\" those members of one's \"kind\" or \"type,\" whose virtues and perfections mirror one's own. Following Aristotle, Nietzsche conceives of a friend as another \"I,\" as an external instantiation of one's own virtuous character. Friendship thus affords one the unique opportunity to behold\u2014and celebrate\u2014one's ownmost perfections from an \"external\" standpoint, as individuals possessed of sterling character are naturally inclined to do. Building on the pagan narcissism he applauds in Aristotle's thought, Nietzsche depicts friendship as a mutually empowering _agon,_ in which select individuals undergo moral development through their voluntary engagement in contest and conflict. On this agonistic model of friendship, one has no ethical obligations to those who cannot contribute to one's own quest for self-perfection, those for whom Zarathustra reserves the disapprobative term _neighbor_. One may, of course, acknowledge various political obligations to one's \"neighbors,\" but genuine ethical obligations to those outside one's \"kind\" are strictly ruled out. In fact, friends of high character must always guard their virtues jealously, lest vampiric \"neighbors\" insidiously distract them from the difficult task of self-perfection.\n\nA formidable obstacle to this project of moral perfectionism lies, in fact, in the difficulty involved in undertaking an honest inventory of one's native endowment of virtues and faculties. Those who would perfect themselves must first dare to stand beyond good and evil, for the conventional moral standpoint available to them will invariably discount their richest stores of affect, passion and fantasy. They will be urged to perfect themselves in the virtues and talents that constitute a conventional definition of \"goodness,\" regardless of any natural affinities or predilections they may or may not possess. Those who would remain true to their ownmost selves must consequently free themselves first from the constraints of convention and conformity.\n\nFor a moral perfectionist like Nietzsche, solipsism is, and must remain, a constant danger of ethical life. Especially in a decadent age, one must fiercely protect one's (diminished) store of ethical resources and assume only those ethical obligations that will truly enhance one's own character. To lapse occasionally into solipsism is far preferable to expending oneself in the service of bogus ethical obligations. Although the project of moral perfectionism need not presuppose the political perfectionism of an aristocratic regime, the absence of such a regime means that the project of elevating the _demos_ must be abandoned. One can afford to attend to the moral development only of oneself and of one's kind. In a decadent age, in which solipsism may indeed be inevitable, it is far nobler to consign oneself to loneliness and solitude than to surrender oneself to the parasitic ethical obligations that characterize the \"herd\" of humankind. Indeed, this is the philosophical motivation behind Nietzsche's experiment with self-imposed solitude, which may in the end have cost him his sanity.\n\nNietzsche's sketch of the mythical \"noble morality\" furnishes a broad-brushed blueprint for his moral perfectionism. The noble morality begins with the \"I\"\u2014embodied in its \"powerful physicality\"\u2014and moves outward, conferring \"goodness\" upon everyone and everything it touches or possesses; all else is \"other-than-I\" and therefore \"base\" (GM 1:2). In the rudimentary moral vocabulary of the noble, the term \"good\" is roughly equivalent to the term \"mine,\" while the designation \"bad\" is roughly equivalent to \"not-mine,\" or \"other.\" These crude evaluative terms thus admit of no independent reference and no antecedent meaning. For the nobles, the \"I\" is the ultimate, unchallenged arbiter and generative source of all goodness in the world; they consequently recognize no moral \"obligations\" to those who are unlike themselves. Nietzsche's sketch of the noble morality may be simplistic, and perhaps even childish at times, but it raises an important, and often neglected, ethical question: what is properly called _mine_?\n\nIn order to answer this question, Nietzsche, like Plato before him, employs the model of the _oikos,_ or household, to convey his commitment to the project of moral perfectionism. Human beings naturally seek to maintain that which is uniquely theirs, that which they call and make their \"home,\" which is the generative core from which all \"experiences\" ramify outward. Nietzsche thus introduces himself and his fellow \"men of knowledge\" by confiding that \"there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart\u2014'bringing something home'\" (GM P:1). One's sole moral \"obligation\" lies in regulating the economy of one's own soul, providing oneself with the care and nourishment needed to preserve and expand one's native holdings of virtue.\n\nIn order to maintain its self-imposed principle of internal regulation, a strong household will inevitably squander its lesser holdings, in the interest of continued growth and expansion. Although these squanderings are often mistaken, especially by poorer households, for alms and altruisms, they are in fact the inevitable waste products and excreta that issue forth from an efficiently regulated _oikos:_\n\n> Morally speaking: neighbor love, living for others, and other things _can_ be a protective measure for preserving the hardest self-concern. This is the exception where, against my wont and conviction, I side with the \"selfless\" drives: here they work in the service of _self-love,_ of _self-discipline._ (EH 11: 9)\n\nEven the \"gift-giving virtue\" extolled by Zarathustra (Z 1:22) falls within the contours of this regimen of self-perfection, creating a potlatch economy to ensure that one receives ever greater treasures in return for one's gifts.\n\nAltruism is consciously practiced only by those impoverished households that have no remaining native stores to protect. Having allowed, and even encouraged, the plunder of its ownmost holdings, a barren soul must attach itself parasitically to other souls, under the insidious, neighborly pretense of \"helping\" them to protect their remaining stores. Decadent souls are failed householders, for they give away what is truly precious and resolve to stand guard only over empty households. They cannot distinguish friend from foe, kin from stranger, virtue from vice, or triumph from collapse. Under the guise of \"altruism\" and \"neighborlove,\" they involuntarily infect other, unsuspecting households with their constitutive disarray, urging these \"neighbors\" similarly to divest themselves of their ownmost holdings.\n\nNietzsche thus traces the ultimate origin of altruism to the constitutive illness that compels individuals\u2014he studiously avoids calling it a \"choice\" or \"decision\"\u2014to endure the indignities of unfreedom. That one instinctively prefers slavery to death is not the _cause_ of a broken soul, but its primary symptom or effect. The \"slave morality\" arises precisely to preside over these barren souls, suffusing their bankrupt households with the prepotent (albeit transient) affects of hatred and resentment. Slave morality thus begins with a \"hostile external world\" and moves inward, designating as \"evil\" everything it encounters. While this gambit does not (directly) succeed in renewing the barren larders of the slave's soul, it generates sufficient affect to distract the slaves from their poverty and disarray. Through their blinding resentment of the \"evil\" external world, they gain temporary release (which they call \"goodness\") from the self-contempt that defines their agency. Of course, since their _faux_ \"goodness\" is secured only in contradistinction to the \"evil\" resident within the \"hostile external world,\" the slaves can never genuinely wish to reform the world that holds them hostage.\n\nLike Socrates, Nietzsche amplifies the single imperative of his moral perfectionism by figuring the soul as a treasury, whose precious holdings are naturally coveted by all. In his recommendation of the \"gift-giving virtue,\" Zarathustra thus teaches:\n\n> This is your thirst: to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves; and that is why you thirst to pile up all the riches in your soul. Insatiably your soul strives for treasures and gems, because your virtue is insatiable in wanting to give. You force all things to and into yourself that they may flow back out of your well as the gifts of your love. (Z 1:22.1)\n\nEchoing these sentiments, Nietzsche later introduces himself and his fellow \"men of knowledge\" with a similar image: \"It has been rightly said: 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also'; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are\" (GM P:1).\n\nMuch as Socrates spins his \"noble fiction\" of souls naturally veined with gold, silver or bronze, so Nietzsche figures the (healthy) soul as a treasure-laden citadel, which is under constant attack by clever, scheming vulgarians. Explaining his strategy for guarding his own fertility and reproducing his store of precious \"metals,\" he observes,\n\n> One must avoid chance and outside stimuli as much as possible; a kind of walling oneself in belongs among the foremost instinctive precautions of spiritual pregnancy. Should I permit an _alien_ thought to scale the wall secretly? (EH II:3)\n\nUnlike an impoverished or plundered household, a treasury is generally considered to be well worth the effort required to protect its boundaries and expand its _oikos._ Whether or not a particular soul actually harbors anything resembling treasure remains to be seen, but Nietzsche's intent is clear. As his noble lie indicates, the project of moral perfectionism need not presuppose a static, metaphysical conception of the self. In order to embark upon the painful project of moral perfectionism, one must first _believe_ that one's soul contains the aretaic equivalent of precious metals; souls can become treasure-houses only if they are treated as such. As in the case of Socrates' \"myth of the metals,\" Nietzsche's _pia fraus_ is justified, and ennobled, by its contribution to the project of moral perfectionism.\n\n# 4 \nRegimens of Self-Overcoming:\n\n## The Soul Turned Inside Out\n\n> For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is\u2014to _live dangerously!_ Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves!\n> \n> \u2014 _The Gay Science,_ 283\n> \n> _Nitimur in vetitum:_ in this sign my philosophy will triumph one day, for what has been forbidden so far as a matter of principle has always been\u2014truth alone.\n> \n> \u2014 _Ecce Homo,_ Preface, 3\n\nIt remains to be seen how Nietzsche can possibly afford to forgo the (admittedly scarce) macropolitical resources of late modernity. The relocation of his perfectionism to the political microsphere would seem to require him to abandon the legislative component of his perfectionism, which apparently presupposes the support of macropolitical institutions. According to Nietzsche, however, philosophers will continue to pursue this nomothetic task, even within the political microsphere, legislating the conditions under which great human beings would most likely emerge. In order to compensate for the creeping decay of modernity, he restricts the production of exemplary human beings to self-production, and the legislation of values to self-legislation. In the twilight of the idols, philosophers contribute to the enhancement of humankind by producing themselves as repesentative exemplars.\n\n### \" _Thus_ It _Shall_ Be!\" The Philosopher as Legislator\n\nThe legislative role of the philosopher is an enduring theme of Nietzsche's political thinking. As early as 1874, he insists that \"it has been the proper task of all great thinkers to be lawgivers as to the measure, stamp and weight of things\" (SE 3). In praising philosophers, however, he does not have in mind those narrow specialists, bookish scholars and petty \"laborers\" who are popularly identified as \"philosophers.\" Genuine philosophers are those intrepid thinkers who legislate a vision of human perfectibility, a goal toward the attainment of which the resources of humankind might be profitably gathered and directed.\n\nNietzsche's post-Zarathustran writings thus point ever more dramatically (and ever more autobiographically) to the philosopher as a lawgiver:\n\n> _Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators:_ they say, \" _thus_ it _shall_ be!\" They first determine the Whither and For What of man, and in so doing have at their disposal the preliminary labor of all philosophical laborers, all who have overcome the past. With a creative hand they reach for the future, and all that is and has been becomes a means for them, an instrument, a hammer. Their \"knowing\" is _creating,_ their creating is a legislation, their will to truth is\u2014 _will to power._ (BGE 211)\n\nAlluding to this legislative capacity, he thus describes the philosopher \"as a terrible explosive _[Explosionsstoff],_ endangering everything\" (EH V:3). This description in turn calls to mind his general account of \"great men\" as \"powerful explosives _[Explosiv-Stoffe]_ \" (TI IX:44), and it thus implies that he conceives of the philosopher-commander as a superlative human being. Invoking his designation of the _\u00dcbermensch_ as an economic type or kind, he directs our attention to \"the noble riches in the psychic economy of the philosopher\" (BGE 204).\n\nIn a healthier age, perhaps, these philosopher-commanders could marshall macropolitical resources to support their legislations, and this is precisely the image Nietzsche cultivates of the \"philosophers of the future.\" Philosophers in a decadent age, however, cannot expect to receive institutional reinforcement for their legislations. In fact, Nietzsche's uplifting sketch of the philosopher is usually judged to be self-congratulatory at best, and risible at worst. One is hard-pressed to summon any historical examples of the daring commanders he attempts to call to mind, and one need look no further than to his own writings for a definitive inventory of the cowards, frauds, con artists, valets, charlatans, demagogues, invalids, decadents, and buffoons who are characteristically accorded the title of \"philosopher.\" Indeed, if we are to appreciate his hagiographic portrait of these philosopher-commanders, then we must investigate more closely the unique nomothetic activity he attributes to them.\n\nThroughout his career, Nietzsche places unusual emphasis on the antagonistic relationship that prevails between philosophers and their respective epochs. In his _Untimely Meditation_ on Schopenhauer, he explains,\n\n> I profit from a philosopher only as he can be an example.... [T]he genius must not fear to enter into the most hostile relationship with the existing forms and order if he wants to bring to light the higher order and truth that dwells within him. (SE 3)\n\nAs his thinking matures, he comes to propose this \"hostile relationship\" as the destiny of genuine philosophers, which they are free neither to refuse nor to repeal:\n\n> More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being _of necessity_ a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and _had_ to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of humankind _[F\u00f6rderer des Menschen]_ whom one calls philosophers...have found their task...in being the bad conscience of their time. (BGE 212)\n\nIn this passage, he explicitly links the iconoclasm of philosophers with the enhancement of humankind, which we know to be the goal he sets for politics as a whole. Following Emerson, he believes that ethical life and moral progress\u2014culture in the broadest sense\u2014are dependent upon the \"aversive thinking\" of the philosopher.\n\nAlthough Nietzsche often describes the philosopher's \"hostile relationship\" and \"bad conscience\" in terms of outwardly directed rebellions of potentially macropolitical consequence, his later writings consistently characterize the goal of aversive thinking as the deliberate escalation of conflict within the philosopher's own soul. The philosopher's aversion to the reigning idols of the age should not be confused with a direct attempt to implement social reforms, even in the event that some such reforms eventually result as unintended by-products of his aversion. The primary targets of the philosopher's aversion are the manifestations and reflections of the age that prevail within himself:\n\n> What does a philosopher demand of himself first and last? _To overcome his_ _time in himself,_ to become \"timeless _[zeitlos]._ \" With what must he therefore engage in the hardest combat? With whatever marks him as a child of his time. (CW P, emphasis added)\n\nThe enduring value of the philosopher's aversion thus lies in its capacity to promote his own \"timelessness,\" which is the goal of Nietzsche's moral perfectionism. From this \"timeless\" perspective the philosopher may \"objectively\" survey the historical idols that spawned and sustain him, and thus, through a ruthless regimen of self-examination, take the measure of the age he involuntarily represents. Nietzsche consequently locates the genius of Schopenhauer in his campaign to \"conquer his age in himself\" (SE 3).\n\nFollowing Emerson, Nietzsche prizes aversion, resistance, and opposition because they contribute to the production of the philosopher's \"next\" self, each incarnation of which affords the philosopher a clearer glimpse of the truth of his age:\n\n> By applying the knife vivisectionally to the chest of the _very virtues of_ _their time,_ [philosophers] betrayed what was their own secret: to know of a _new_ greatness of man, of a new untrodden way to his enhancement. (BGE 212)\n\nAlthough bound like his contemporaries by the horizons of understanding that define their age, the antagonistic \"genius\" is able to illuminate the \"higher order and truth\" of the age as a whole. The philosopher gains an immanent critical perspective on his age by resisting those of its emanations that reside within himself. We consequently may learn from the philosopher how to take the measure of an age: \"through Schopenhauer we are all _able_ to educate ourselves _against_ our age\u2014because through him we possess the advantage of really _knowing_ this age\" (SE 4).\n\nThe precise target of the philosopher's aversion is not, strictly speaking, the indelible imprint of his age upon his soul, but his _consent_ to the reigning idols and values of his day. Although one cannot alter the concatenation of historical contingencies that have collectively fashioned one's present self, one _can_ oppose the particular constitution of one's present self, thereby refusing to consent to prevailing standards of human flourishing. The philosopher practices aversion not by \"coming to terms\" with his historicity, nor by meekly assenting to his historical destiny, nor by fatuously mouthing the Zarathustran refrain \"Thus I willed it!,\" but by railing against his voluntary participation in the signature prejudices of the age.\n\nWhile self-contempt is ordinarily quite destructive, a certain form of self-directed hatred is not only compatible with moral development, but absolutely indispensable to its successful fruition. When directed toward one's consent to the historical conditions of one's identity (rather than toward these conditions themselves), _shame_ can play a powerful role in one's moral growth, especially if it is inspired by the aversive labors of a great human being:\n\n> [T]he sign of [one's consecration to culture] is that one is ashamed of oneself without any accompanying feeling of distress, that one comes to hate one's own narrowness and shrivelled nature, that one has a feeling of sympathy for the genius who again and again drags himself up out of our dryness and apathy... (SE 6)\n\nShame frees the aversive philosopher not from the historical conditions that define him, but from the constraint of these conditions. By eliminating the constraint of his age upon himself, the philosopher may now turn his historical destiny to his advantage, as the condition of his accession to the \"next\" selves that await him. While the philosopher's \"next\" selves remain timely, necessarily reflecting the reigning forms and order of the age, they are also \"timeless,\" insofar as they are born of an aversion to these forms and order.\n\nNietzsche's controversial appeal to shame as a catalyst of moral development derives from his economic designation of human genius. While virtually any soul (and especially those that are already inwardly destroyed) can muster sufficient shame to drown the pain of the bad conscience in a flood of resentment, this familiar gambit signifies (rather than causes) the irreversible corruption of the soul in question. One may enjoy the analgesic properties of self-contempt only if one first construes one's continued existence as a ghastly, grotesque punishment; this desperate addiction must certainly end in suicidal nihilism. In order to produce and harbor sufficient self-hatred to propel oneself beyond the perceived limitations of one's present self, one must already possess a robust soul, informed by multiple striations of internal difference and rank. More importantly, only a fortified soul can withstand the explosion of self-hatred that is needed to wrench oneself from the inelastic moorings of conformity and convention; impoverished souls cannot afford to turn self-hatred to their constructive advantage. As we shall see, Nietzsche consequently recommends the generative power of shame only to those rare, _\u00fcbermenschlich_ individuals who can also afford to endure the delusional madness induced by _er s._\n\n### Self-Overcoming\n\nNietzsche proposes \"self-overcoming\" as his preferred model for the aversive activity that constitutes a regimen of moral perfectionism. As he understands it, self-overcoming comprises a discipline of self-perfection based on a principle of assimilation or incorporation. The goal of self-overcoming is to gain for oneself a measure of freedom from the limitations of one's age, in order that one might command an expanded range of affective engagement and expression.\n\nAnticipating his readers' desire for him to name for them the philosopher's regimen of self-directed aversion, Nietzsche remarks,\n\n> You want a word for it?\u2014If I were a moralist, who knows what I might call it? Perhaps _self-overcoming [Selbst\u00fcberwindung].\u2014_ But the philosopher has no love for moralists. Neither does he love pretty words. (CW P)\n\nNietzsche may not love \"pretty words\" like _self-overcoming_ , but he is \"moralist\" enough to suggest this term for the moral perfectionism he advocates. As his reluctance indicates, however, the term \"self-overcoming\" is ripe for misunderstandings and misappropriations, many of which are fostered by his own confusions and indirections.\n\nThe concept of _self-overcoming_ plays a uniquely complex role in the economy of Nietzsche's thought, encompassing both the psychological mechanism of personal moral development _and_ the logical transformation of transpersonal structures, historical movements and political institutions. Indeed, our attention to the _macrocosm_ of self-overcoming, and its logic of historical self-transformation, may shed clarifying light on the _microcosm_ of self-overcoming and its logic of personal self-perfection.\n\nNietzsche commonly employs two terms that are often translated as \"self-overcoming\": _Selbst\u00fcberwindung_ and _Selbstaufhebung._ While the former term appears more frequently throughout his writings (especially so in _Zarathustra),_ the latter term appears in passages of great importance to his post-Zarathustran project of self-presentation (cf. GM III:27; D P:4). Since he appeals to the logic of self-overcoming within both the macrocosm of transpersonal selftransformation and the microcosm of personal self-transformation, we might be tempted to designate the former process by _Selbstaufhebung_ and the latter process by _Selbst\u00fcberwindung._ While some such distinction clearly conveys the spirit of his post-Zarathustran political thinking, his actual use of these terms does not provide adequate textual evidence to support the distinction in question.\n\nHe apparently adapts the term _Selbstaufhebung_ from his dim understanding of Hegel, who similarly employed the term _Aufhebung_ to describe the logic of immanent self-transformation. Despite his admission that the facile dialectics of _The Birth of Tragedy_ emit \"an offensively Hegelian\" odor (EH IV:1), he nevertheless appeals to the saving logic of _Selbstaufhebung_ at crucial junctures throughout his productive career. He apparently intends to mark his distance from Hegel by juxtaposing the terms _Selbst\u00fcberwindung_ and _Selbstaufhebung,_ often in close proximity within a single passage. Witness, for example, his invocation of the quasidialectical \"law of Life\":\n\n> All great things bring about their own destruction through an act of self-overcoming _[Selbstaufhebung]:_ thus the law of Life will have it, the law of the necessity of \"self-overcoming\" _[\"Selbst\u00fcberwindung\"]_ in the nature of Life\u2014the lawgiver himself eventually receives the call: _\"patere legem,_ _quam ipse tulisti\"_ (GM III:27)\n\nNietzsche customarily treats the logical process of self-overcoming not only as inexorable\u2014thereby raising, once again, an \"offensively Hegelian\"\n\nstench\u2014but also as natural. Designating \"Life\" (rather than Hegel's _Geist)_ as the ultimate subject of self-overcoming, he charts the transformations that ensue when any \"great thing\" attempts to constitute itself in accordance with its favored account of its nature and destiny. The process of self-overcoming is complete when the \"great thing\" in question, having failed to articulate itself as originally promised, triumphantly constitutes itself as its opposite or \"other.\" Justice, for example, \"overcomes itself\" when, through a series of failed attempts at self-articulation, it finally constitutes itself as mercy (GM 11:10).\n\nWithin this process of self-transformation, moreover, the destruction and creation of \"great things\" are inextricably linked. For example, although Christian morality \"must end by drawing its _most striking inference,_ its inference _against_ itself\" (GM III:27), its demise will give birth to the \"other\" of Christian morality, which Nietzsche associates with himself (EH XIV:4). He thus intends the term _self-overcoming,_ despite its undeniably destructive connotation, to convey a sense of generative power and promise.\n\nMoving seamlessly from the macrocosm of \"great things\" to the microcosm of individual souls, he similarly treats personal self-overcoming as a complex process of destruction and creation. Nietzschean self-overcoming is not to be confused with the oleaginous tolerance and vapid affirmation that grip modernity in a suffocating stranglehold. The project of moral perfectionism requires that one repudiate one's current self as it comes to manifest the extent of one's odious complicity in conformity and convention. Yet the fashioning of a \"new\" or \"next\" self involves no act of creation independent of one's merciless aversion to one's current self.\n\nIndeed, because the promise of one's \"next\" self arises only in the practice of one's refusal of one's current self, the project of moral perfectionism is both risky and indeterminate. Those who set out on the path of self-overcoming are obliged to raze their old \"homes\" before new ones are yet in sight. Yet it is precisely the prospect of this \"homelessness\" that confers upon moral perfectionism its peculiar urgency and attraction:\n\n> Every time [philosophers] exposed how much hypocrisy, comfortableness, letting oneself go and letting oneself drop, how many lies lay hidden under the best honored type of their contemporary morality, how much virtue was _outlived._ Every time they said: \"We must get there, that way, where _you_ today are least at home.\" (BGE 212)\n\nThe philosopher's aversion thus enables the process of assimilation or incorporation that Nietzsche associates with self-overcoming. Whereas the practice of Christian morality operates on a principle of castration or elimination, self-overcoming incorporates as many, and as diverse, capacities as possible. One overcomes one's age, for example, not by obliterating from one's soul all traces of the prevailing idols and allegiances, but by integrating all such traces into one's identity, by appropriating them for one's own designs. This process of incorporation and integration lends depth and complexity to the economy of the soul, and it is constrained only by the vitality at the philosopher's disposal, which is in turn determined by the relative health of his epoch. \"The price of fruitfulness,\" Nietzsche intimates, \"is to be rich in internal opposition\" (AC 3).\n\nThe philosopher's self-overcoming thus exploits the plasticity of the human soul to engender internal difference and variegation. The greater the distances created within the soul, the greater the range of perspectives the philosopher can entertain and command. Rather than define \"objectivity\" in terms of disinterested contemplation from an abstract, disembodied standpoint, Nietzsche recommends that the philosopher command as many \"perspectives\" as possible:\n\n> There is _only_ a perspectival seeing, _only_ a perspectival \"knowing\"; and the _more_ affects we allow to speak about one thing, the _more_ eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our \"concept\" of this thing, our \"objectivity,\" be. (GM 111:12)\n\nThe philosopher may not aspire to a privileged, external perspective on his age, but he may venture an immanent critique of his age if he can afford to occupy a representative range of affects and \"perspectives.\" By engaging in aversive activity, the philosopher lends voice to the affective chorus resident within himself, overcoming his age by reprising its signature cacophony.\n\nSelf-overcoming thus presupposes the capacity to accommodate ever greater degrees of difference, opposition and contradiction within one's soul. Proffering a self-referential example of his model of self-overcoming, Nietzsche proclaims,\n\n> Facing a world of \"modern ideas\" that would banish everybody into a corner and \"speciality,\" a philosopher...would be compelled to find the greatness of man, the concept of \"greatness,\" precisely in his range and multiplicity, in his wholeness in manifoldness. He would even determine value and rank in accordance with how much and how many things one could bear and take upon himself... (BGE 212)\n\nUnlike those who seek simplicity, unity and uniformity of soul, the genuine philosopher courts the _monstrum in animo,_ whose propinquity prompted\n\nSocrates's cowardly obeisance to the \"counter-tyrant\" reason (TI 11:9). Once freed from the constraint of his historical identity, the philosopher may turn his \"timeliness\" to the advantage of his own \"untimely\" moral development.\n\nAs a general formula for the self-overcoming he has in mind, Nietzsche recommends turning the soul inside out. This is a painful, invasive process, which requires the philosopher to take up an evaluative standpoint beyond good and evil (GS 380). A project of self-overcoming obliges the philosopher to reclaim the previously estranged \"evil\" and \"sin\" resident within himself, by transforming vices into virtues and afflictions into advantages. Self-overcoming thus provides one with the opportunity to re-structure the \"commonwealth\" that informs one's soul (BGE 19), as one fashions a novel order of rank to accommodate the drives, impulses, pathologies, and homunculi that one has most recently exhumed. In order to contribute to the perfection of humankind, that is, the philosopher must experiment with various interpretations of its innocence, always asking himself, \"How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a craving?\" (TI V:l).\n\nThe reclamation of previously disowned drives and impulses does not return them to their \"original\" place within the economy of the mortal soul, for the soul is itself transformed in the process of self-overcoming. Self-overcoming neither restores a lost innocence, nor sanctions a \"return to nature\" in the romantic sense that Nietzsche (mistakenly) associates with Rousseau (TI IX:48). The very reliance of the philosopher on (self-directed) aversion ensures that his self-overcomings will contribute to the production of a \"new,\" second nature rather than to the restoration of an authentic, original nature. Just as a volcanic eruption augments the landscape it disfigures, so self-overcoming increases the dimensionality and surface area of the soul, allowing for an expanded range of capacities and expressions. Self-overcoming thus informs the philosopher's soul with an order of rank, but only by placing at risk the current psychic regime. An overflowing will necessarily destroy or sublate its previous configurations, thus fashioning a \"next\" self at the considerable expense of the integrity of one's current self.\n\nNietzsche apparently models the aversive mechanism of self-overcoming on the _agon_ or contest, which he proposed in an early (unpublished) essay as emblematic of the health and nobility of Homeric Greece. As a self-styled \"warrior\" who lives only to test himself in \"battle,\" Nietzsche strives not so much to win his quixotic contest with modernity\u2014which would, if it were possible, extinguish the _agon_ \u2014as to prolong its duration while continually raising the stakes of participation. His model here is probably the tragic hero, whose struggles against an uncompromising fate elicit our sympathy not because they promise success, but because they express a heroic strength of will. At least on Nietzsche's reconstruction of the _agon,_ aspiring \"warriors\" compete not so much to vanquish upstart opponents or to alter an ineluctable destiny, as to enact their overflowing, _\u00fcbermenschlich_ power, The _agon_ furnishes a public space within which contestants are invited to exceed themselves, to transform themselves momentarily into _signs_ of the superfluous vitality that courses through them. As we shall see, it is precisely this significatory capacity that enables the political dimension of Nietzsche's moral perfectionism.\n\n### Self-Creation vs. Self-Discovery\n\nA precise determination of Nietzsche's moral perfectionism is complicated by his apparent recommendation of two separate models of self-overcoming. On some occasions he deploys a set of strongly cognitive images and terms, urging us to _discover_ our true, authentic selves, while on other occasions he prefers a distinctly voluntarist vocabulary, exhorting us to _create_ the selves we wish to become. By relying on both sets of images, he indicates that the \"discovery\" and \"creation\" of one's \"next\" self are inextricably linked.\n\nNietzsche is best known for apparently promoting a volitional model of self-creation, which entrusts the project of self-overcoming to a titanic act of will. Speaking on behalf of his unknown \"friends,\" he proclaims, \"We, however, _want_ _to become those we are_ \u2014human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves\" (GS 335). As a general rule, he tends to convey this model of self-overcoming via a cluster of aesthetic metaphors. In an oft-cited passage, he recommends the project of self-creation by issuing an \"imperative\" to fashion one's life into a work of art:\n\n> To \"give style\" to one's character\u2014a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. Here a large mass of second nature has been added; there a piece of original nature has been removed\u2014both times through long practice and daily work at it. (GS 290)\n\nThis strongly voluntaristic model of self-overcoming is further reinforced by his ridicule of the Socratic\/Enlightenment ideal of self-knowledge or self-discovery, which presupposes that a true, authentic self lies within, waiting to be discovered. He counters the Delphic injunction by calling into question the very possibility of a definitive self-knowledge:\n\n> \"Everybody is farthest away\u2014from himself;\" all who try the reins know this to their chagrin, and the maxim \"know thyself!\" addressed to human beings by a god, is almost malicious. (GS 335)\n\nEvery gain in self-knowledge contributes to who or what one is, thus continually displacing one's \"true\" self and indefinitely postponing a conclusive self-discovery. The putative \"object\" of self-discovery continually changes as a result of the investigation itself: \"Learning changes us; it does what all nourishment does which also does not merely 'preserve'\u2014as physiologists know\" (BGE 231). Proponents of this volitional model of Nietzschean self-overcoming thus conclude that, because we can discover no authentic selves to which we might be true, it must be the case that we create our ownmost selves.\n\nFor all the textual support in its favor, however, this volitional model of self-overcoming fails to capture Nietzsche's full account of moral perfectionism. First of all, the project of self-creation runs aground on the shoals of idealism. Any attempt to fashion a more authentic self necessarily involves a \"cowardly\" flight from the empirical to the ideal. The determination that one's empirical self is inadequate, unsatisfactory, or defective in some respect potentially implicates one in the metaphysics of morals that Nietzsche's \"immoralism\" ostensibly opposes. Second, this model of self-creation is overly voluntaristic, for it fails to take into account the general limitations of one's creative capacities. One does not \"become what one is\" _simply_ by dint of an act of will; to preach otherwise verges upon cruelty. Third, the excessive voluntarism of this model of self-overcoming betrays the \"confusion of cause and effect\" that is pandemic among philosophers. What some philosophers call \"self-creation\" may be the effect, rather than the cause, of the accession to regency of a novel configuration of one's soul. Challenging the voluntarism that informs both Platonic and Christian ethics, Nietzsche observes that\n\n> [A] well-turned-out human being, a \"happy one,\" _must_ perform certain actions and shrinks instinctively from other actions; he carries the order, which he represents physiologically, into his relations with other human beings and things. In a formula: his virtue is the _effect_ of his happiness. (TI VI:2)\n\nFor these reasons, perhaps, Nietzsche also promotes a distinctly _cognitive_ model of self-overcoming, which sanctions a program of self-discovery. Especially in his post-Zarathustran works, he cautions against the misleadingly voluntaristic models of self-overcoming, warning that \"at the bottom of us, really 'deep down,' there is, of course, something unteachable, some granite of pure spiritual _fatum,_ of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined selected questions\" (BGE 231). Nietzsche's fatalism, which plays an increasingly important role in his post-Zarathustran writings, thus mitigates the optimism and exuberance conveyed by his rhetoric of self-creation. This \"spiritual _fatum_ \" comprises those intractable, relatively permanent elements of one's identity that one cannot readily change. It is crucial that one limns the contours of this spiritual _fatum,_ for it effec tively restricts the sphere of self-overcoming, thereby limiting the range of \"next\" selves one can become. On this strongly cognitive model, the task of self-overcoming will apparently require a healthy reverence for that _fatum_ within oneself that proves resistant to aesthetic rehabilitation. In deference, perhaps, to the importance of this project of self-discovery, Nietzsche proposes _amor fati_ as his \"formula for greatness in a human being\" (EH 11:10).\n\nWhile Nietzsche may appear simply to vacillate between these models of human flourishing, his actual goal is to propose a synthesis or composite of the two. One \"becomes what one is\" by overcoming oneself, which always involves elements of both self-creation and self-discovery. As we have seen, his readers customarily define his moral perfectionism through a process of elimination: selfovercoming is a matter either of creation or discovery, and we have good reasons for eliminating one of these options. Proponents of the model of self-creation, for example, arrive at their determination of Nietzschean self-overcoming not by way of actually creating themselves anew, but by way of their doubts concerning the possibility of self-discovery. Champions of the model of self-discovery similarly point not to their obvious success in gaining a definitive self-knowledge, but to the facile idealism involved in any campaign to create oneself anew. It is Nietzsche's intention, however, to expose the distinction between self-creation and self-discovery as sheltering a false dichotomy. While his voluntaristic rhetoric suggests the construction of selfhood, his fatalism recommends the discovery of an authentic self. One \"becomes what one is\" only by combining elements of cognition and volition, discovery and creation.\n\nThe composite nature of Nietzsche's moral perfectionism is crucial to his political thinking, for only the combination of self-creation and self-discovery engenders the _cruelty_ \u2014both to oneself and to others\u2014that ensures the nomothetic impact of self-overcoming. On their own, self-creation and self-discovery both fail to fascinate and to arouse. Both are eminently safe (and fatuous) strategies for \"becoming what one is,\" and they are likely to seduce no one. Only the volatile mixture of volition and cognition, which the philosopher's experiments cruelly detonate, can engender that dimension of Dionysian excess that simultaneously quickens and jeopardizes the economy of the soul. As we shall see in the next chapter, this potentially mortal expenditure in turn guarantees the self-inflicted violence that some others find so erotic. In order to become nomothetic, and thus political, a regimen of self-overcoming must combine elements of both volition and cognition.\n\n### Self-Overcoming and Self-Experimentation\n\nOwing to the inherent risks involved in self-overcoming, Nietzsche regularly recommends his moral perfectionism as an exercise in self-experimentation. Through self-experimentation, the \"genuine philosopher\" accedes to those \"next\" selves that enable an immanent critique of the age as a whole. But the philosopher who seeks to overcome his time in himself possesses no recipe or formula for becoming \"timeless.\" He must consequently experiment with a variety of aversive activities, all of which potentially place his soul at mortal risk.\n\nThe rebellion sanctioned by Nietzsche's model of self-overcoming is not merely theoretical or ideological in nature. In order to take the measure of their age, philosophers must always place themselves in grave danger, insofar as they unleash toward themselves the destructive power of self-contempt. The \"philosophers of the future\" are thus described as \"critics in body and soul,\" whose \"passion for knowledge force[s] them to go further with audacious and painful experiments than the softhearted and effeminate taste of a democratic century could approve\" (BGE 210).\n\nGenuine philosophers experiment with themselves not in the sense of trying on exotic fashions, causes and poses, but in the sense of turning _against_ themselves the excess affect that defines their destiny: \"the genuine philosopher...risks _himself_ constantly, he plays _the_ dangerous game\" (BGE 205). The project of moral perfectionism thus involves the philosopher in an ever-escalating regimen of reconstituting himself through the implementation of novel ascetic disciplines. As we shall see in Chapter 6, Nietzsche actually attempts to hijack the ascetic ideal for his own political campaign to secure the survival of the will.\n\nWhile Nietzsche often ridicules the limitations of human interiority, exposing the \"growth of consciousness\" as a \"danger\" and \"disease\" (GS 354), diagnosing the \"bad conscience\" as a potentially terminal illness (GM 11:16), and disparaging consciousness as a feeble organ of relatively recent development (AC 14), he nowhere advocates a renunciation of interiority or a flight from conscious activity. He likens the \"disease\" of the bad conscience to a \"pregnancy,\" which may someday culminate in the \"birth\" of the sovereign individual (GM 11: 2). His political project aims at the perfection (rather than the transcendence) of humankind, a task that requires the completion (rather than the reversal) of the transition from natural animal to human animal. The completion of this transition in turn involves perfecting the interiority upon which the human animal necessarily relies. Despite its inherent limitations, then, consciousness remains our best means of resisting the decadence of late modernity.\n\nThe eventual perfection of humankind may entail a selective amnesia of particular patterns of acquired behavior, but this forgetting will more closely resemble an active \"inpsychation\" than the _vis inertiae_ that is desperately embraced in late modernity (GM II:1). Rather than abandon consciousness and embrace its \"other,\" the philosopher must seize control of the cultural production of interiority and guide this production to a more satisfactory conclusion. While Nietzsche reserves this larger task for the \"philosophers of the future,\" he also contributes to its fruition by pursuing his project of moral perfectionism. The orientation of his own self-experimentation is prospective rather than retrospective, pointing forward to the creation of new, undiscovered selves.\n\nNietzsche occasionally registers a preference for aesthetically pleasing souls, which has prompted some readers to ascribe to him a strictly formal, Apollinian model of self-overcoming. For example, he identifies the \"one thing needful\" as the \"constraint of a single taste,\" which \"gives style\" to one's character (GS 290). On its own, however, a formally coherent soul might signify an incapacity to accommodate the internal contradictions that distinguish a healthy soul. Regardless of the \"style\" it displays, a two-dimensional, self-restrained soul is ill-suited to the self-overcoming Nietzsche recommends, for it cannot withstand the internal conflict on which moral perfectionism is predicated. In fact, he endorses \"the constraint of a single taste\" not for its own sake, nor for the aesthetic pleasure it may precipitate, but only insofar as it better prepares the soul to accommodate an ever excessive, overflowing will. By virtue of their aesthetically pleasing constitution, then, two-dimensional souls are probably safe from the dangers of self-overcoming, but only because their temperate \"style\" bespeaks an irrecuperable decay.\n\nNietzsche's model of self-overcoming _is_ strongly Apollinian, insofar as it promotes the mastery within a single soul of as many tensions and contradictions as possible. But this model is also undeniably Dionysian, for it promotes internal mastery only as a means of further expanding the capacity of the soul, an ever-escalating process that must eventually culminate in the destruction of the soul. The inherent dangers of self-overcoming are therefore great, for the human soul does not admit of an infinite degree of plasticity. The incorporation into the soul of additional distance and contradiction may secure the philosopher's claim to take the measure of his age, but it also exerts a potentially mortal strain on the economy of his soul. Indeed, the immediate goal of any regimen of self-overcoming is simply to secure the conditions of future self-overcomings; the philosopher cultivates and disciplines his soul only in order to place it at ever greater risk. The philosopher who constantly overcomes himself thus \"builds his city on the slopes of Vesuvius\" (GS 283), for he voluntarily stations himself on the brink of Dionysian excess and disintegration.\n\nNietzsche's model of self-overcoming thus suggests a hospitable context for his otherwise audacious claim that _\"genuine philosophers_... _are commanders and_ _legislators\"_ (BGE 211). He locates the essence of lawgiving _not_ in the redaction of positive law, but in the act and enactment of aversion itself. The outward signs of political legislation will vary in accordance with the vitality of the people or the age in question, but the internal mechanism of lawgiving remains constant throughout all epochs. Decadent philosophers too are lawgivers, even though their legislations are not reflected in the positive law of real cities, for they too engage in aversive activity. The seemingly idle declamations of Socrates and Nietzsche thus differ \"only\" in outward expression from the world-historical decrees of Manu, Caesar, and Napoleon.\n\nNietzsche thus conceives of philosophers as commanders and legislators, but only insofar as they stand in open contradiction to the reigning idols and values of their age. He also suggests that the sphere of the philosopher's legislative jurisdiction is strictly bounded by these enacted aversions. We should therefore expect these \"legislations\" to take the form of iconoclastic proclamations against the epoch as a whole. In order to discern and appreciate the legislations of decadent philosophers, we must attend not to the outward forms and expressions of their lawgiving, but to the nomothetic activity of aversion itself. The political consequences of this activity generally correspond to the residual vitality of the age in question.\n\n### The Case of Nietzsche\n\nThe case of Nietzsche provides us with an instructive, self-referential example of the model of self-overcoming he recommends. While he readily concedes his own decay, he also distinguishes between himself and another famous decadent: \"Well, then! I am, no less than Wagner, a child of this time; that is, a decadent: but I comprehended this, I resisted it. The philosopher in me resisted\" (CW P).\n\nAlthough it may be tempting to conclude that \"the philosopher\" in Nietzsche enabled him to _escape_ the decadence that besets modernity, this is not what he says. His relation to decadence, encapsulated in his enduring \"need\" for the loathsome Wagner, more closely resembles an involuntary affliction than a voluntary (and corrigible) affiliation:\n\n> When in this essay I assert the proposition that Wagner is harmful, I wish no less to assert for whom he is nevertheless indispensable\u2014for the philosopher. Others may be able to get along without Wagner; but the philosopher is not free to do without Wagner. (CW P)\n\nJust as a principled opposition to racism need not free an inveterate bigot from his defining prejudices, so Nietzsche's aversion to decadence fails to deliver him from the besetting affliction of modernity as a whole. To resist decadence is not to free oneself from decadence, but to become a specific type of decadent. His regimen of self-overcoming does not eliminate his \"periodic\" lapses, but it may enable him to express his decadence in the form of a \"timeless\" resistance to the decadence of his age. He consequently overcomes his decadence not by eliminating or reversing it, but by resisting it, by opposing it even as it constitutes his identity.\n\nIn order to overcome his decadence, Nietzsche implements a \"special self-discipline\" that requires him \"to take sides against everything sick in [him]\" (CW P). His \"convalescence\" takes the form of a gradual estrangement from the practices, customs, manners, idols, and people who either aggravated or prolonged his illness. Because he does not enjoy the anchoritic luxury of Zarathustra's mountaintop retreat, he must become a \"cave\" unto himself, into which he might withdraw to gain a critical distance from the signature forms and order of his day. Ensconced in virtual solitude, he declares war on his consent to the emanations of modernity lurking within himself.\n\nOn Nietzsche's (self-serving) account, this regimen of solitude has been a resounding success. He subsequently congratulates himself for having achieved the internal _pathos_ of distance that he associates with the noble soul:\n\n> For the task of a _revaluation of all values_ more capacities may have been needed than have ever dwelt together in a single individual\u2014above all, even contrary capacities that had to be kept from disturbing, destroying one another. An order of rank among these capacities; distance; the art of separating without setting against one another; to mix nothing, to \"reconcile\" nothing; a tremendous variety that is also the opposite of chaos... (EH 11:9)\n\nAs in all cases of self-overcoming, the proof of Nietzsche's success lies in his capacity \"to turn even what is most questionable and dangerous to [his] advantage and thus to become stronger\" (EH 11:6). He proudly describes himself as both a \"decadent\" and \"the _opposite [Gegenst\u00fcck]_ of a decadent,\" explaining that he always instinctively chooses \"the _right_ means against wretched states\" (EH 1:2). This dual experience with decadence has enabled him to \"master\" the art of reversing perspectives (EH 1:2). Although he remains a decadent, he now commands an immanent critical perspective on the decadence of modernity, such that he can take the measure of the age as a whole.\n\nThe logic of self-overcoming thus diverts our attention from the external targets of Nietzsche's polemics to their internal manifestations. The outwardly directed polemics for which he is famous\u2014against moralists, priests, dogmatists, and decadents\u2014are best understood as occasions for galvanizing an internal resistance to the moralists, priests, dogmatists, and decadents who inhabit his own polycentric soul. His resistance thus informs his crowded soul with an order of rank, which secures the \"happiness\" of the psychic \"commonwealth\" as a whole (BGE 19). His legislations too are best understood as primarily self-directed, and all of his post-Zarathustran writings bear the unmistakable stamp of an author cheerfully at odds with himself. These writings become the sites of his own political legislations, wherein he enacts his own self-overcomings.\n\nNietzsche resists the idols of modernity not in order to vanquish his decadence \u2014this disastrous gambit earlier plunged him into pessimism and despair (H I:P:3) \u2014but in order to transform himself into a more resilient type of decadent. Whereas the virile heroes of the Homeric myths would customarily test their strength against external opponents, such as enemies, gods or fate itself, Nietzsche is limited by his decadence to internal contests against the prevailing idols and values. He resists and opposes his own decadence simply to prove to his unknown friends that the will is still (relatively) strong in him, that his dying sun still burns bright. He consequently seeks to ensure that his self-overcoming does not reach a premature conclusion, lest his contribution to the enhancement of ethical life come to an end as well.\n\nIn order to transform himself into a sign, and thereby attract the audience he needs, he must adopt a regimen of self-overcoming that places his soul at mortal risk: \"[We] modern men, like semi-barbarians...reach _our_ bliss only where we are most\u2014 _in danger_ \" (BGE 224). When properly cultivated, that is, the soul becomes an internalized version of a heroic battlefield. onto which \"civilized\" warriors dare not tread.\n\n# 5 \nThe Philosopher's _Versucherkunst_\n\n> But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter... I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.\n> \n> \u2014Ralph Waldo Emerson, \"Circles\"\n> \n> A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest.\n> \n> \u2014Cormac McCarthy, _Blood Meridian_\n\nIt remains to be seen to what political end philosophers can turn their self-experimentation. Does Nietzsche's account of self-overcoming amount to anything more than a self-serving sketch of an unpolitical man? In order to understand how his project of moral perfectionism contributes to the enhancement of humankind, we must investigate the affinities that he detects between self-experimentation and the expenditure of excess vitality.\n\n### An Attempt at an Invitation to Temptation\n\nNietzsche's passion for wordplay and _double entendre_ furnishes some crucial insights into the nature of self-overcoming. The \"genuine philosopher,\" we know, is a _Versucher_ \u2014an experimenter and quester (BGE 205).\n\nHe further explains that\n\n> We opposite men, having opened our eyes and conscience to the question where and how the plant \"man\" has so far grown most vigorously to a height\u2014we think that...the art of experiment _[Versucherkunst]_ and devilry of every kind...serves the enhancement of the species \"man\" as much as its opposite does. (BGE 44)\n\nHere he identifies the practitioners of this \"art of experimentation\" as contributing to the enhancement of humankind. He thus implies that the philosopher's self-experimentation is irreducibly political in nature. This _Versucherkunst_ engenders the superlative human beings who alone warrant the future of the species.\n\nBut a _Versucher_ could also be a tempter, and the _Versucherkunst_ the art of seduction. The _Versuch einer Selbstkritik,_ for example, which Nietzsche prefixed to _The Birth of Tragedy_ in 1886, is obviously an \"attempt at self-criticism,\" but it might also comprise a _temptation_ or _invitation_ to self-criticism. The same is true of _The Antichrist(ian),_ which he advertised in his original subtitle as a _Versuch_ _einer Kritik des Christenthums_ \u2014an attempt at a critique of Christianity, to be sure, but perhaps a temptation as well. Indeed, his explicit association in the passage cited above of the _Versucherkunst_ with \"devilry _[Teufelei]_ of every kind\" overlays these \"invitations\" with the biblical evocation of leading his readers into temptation.\n\nAfter suggesting the name _Versucher_ for the \"new breed\" of philosophers he sees \"coming up,\" Nietzsche confides that \"This name itself is in the end a mere attempt _[Versuch]_ and, if you will, a temptation _[Versuchung]_ \"\u2014a name which confirms his own affinities with this \"new breed\" (BGE 42). He goes on to insist that \"the genuine philosopher...lives 'unphilosophically' and 'unwisely,' above all _imprudently,_ and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts _[Versuchen]_ and temptations _[Versuchungen]_ of life\" (BGE 205). Drawing attention to their \"attempts _[Versuchen]_ and delight in attempts _[Lust am_ _Versuchen],_ \" he proclaims that such philosophers \"certainly...will be men of experiments,\" who \"like to employ experiments in a new, perhaps wider, perhaps more dangerous sense\" (BGE 210). When imagining his \"perfect reader,\" he conjures those \"bold searchers and researchers _[Suchern, Versuchern]_ \" to whom Zarathustra relates his terrible riddle (EH III:3; cf. Z 111:2). Finally, the divided office of the _Versucher_ \u2014as both experimenter and seducer\u2014also boasts a divine lineage: Nietzsche describes Dionysus as \"that great ambiguous tempter-god _[jener grosse Zweideutige und Versucher Gott]_ \" (BGE 295).\n\nNietzsche's wordplay furnishes an important clue to the psychological mechanism involved in self-overcoming. In order to experiment on themselves, philosophers must gather and discharge excess stores of expendable affect. He describes the great human being as a \"calamity,\" and he likens the effects of self-overcoming to a river overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding countryside (TI IX:44). Indeed, the swollen will of the genius obliterates its observed boundaries naturally and involuntarily, evincing no concern or consideration for its ineluctable effects on others. Born of excess, the philosopher's \"private\" experiments leak uncontrollably into the public sphere, where they are received as temptations and invitations. While the philosopher's legislations remain exclusively self-directed, inscribed \"only\" into the canon of his own self-overcomings, the enactment of these legislations involves an expenditure of affect that eventually exceeds the bounds of private selflegislation.\" id=\"fn0Nietzsche's wordplay furnishes an important clue to the psychological mechanism involved in self-overcoming. In order to experiment on themselves, philosophers must gather and discharge excess stores of expendable affect. He describes the great human being as a \"calamity,\" and he likens the effects of self-overcoming to a river overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding countryside (TI IX:44). Indeed, the swollen will of the genius obliterates its observed boundaries naturally and involuntarily, evincing no concern or consideration for its ineluctable effects on others. Born of excess, the philosopher's \"private\" experiments leak uncontrollably into the public sphere, where they are received as temptations and invitations. While the philosopher's legislations remain exclusively self-directed, inscribed \"only\" into the canon of his own self-overcomings, the enactment of these legislations involves an expenditure of affect that eventually exceeds the bounds of private selflegislation.\">Nietzsche's wordplay furnishes an important clue to the psychological mechanism involved in self-overcoming. In order to experiment on themselves, philosophers must gather and discharge excess stores of expendable affect. He describes the great human being as a \"calamity,\" and he likens the effects of selfovercoming to a river overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding countryside (TI IX:44). Indeed, the swollen will of the genius obliterates its observed boundaries naturally and involuntarily, evincing no concern or consideration for its ineluctable effects on others. Born of excess, the philosopher's \"private\" experiments leak uncontrollably into the public sphere, where they are received as temptations and invitations. While the philosopher's legislations remain exclusively self-directed, inscribed \"only\" into the canon of his own self-overcomings, the enactment of these legislations involves an expenditure of affect that eventually exceeds the bounds of private selflegislation. Insofar as they also comprise \"invitations\" and \"temptations\" to others, the philosopher's \"attempts\" and experiments function as outward signs of the healthy discord raging within his soul.\n\nAs a residue or by-product of his regimen of self-overcoming, the philosopher involuntarily generates an excess of expendable affect. This expenditure emanates outward from its center, thereby transgressing any conventional boundary between public and private domains, and it constitutes itself in the public sphere as a dialogical sign. While the philosopher's regimen of selfovercoming remains essentially \"private,\" its sumptuary residue enters the public sphere as an invitation and temptation to others. On their own, independent of reception, these experiments are nomothetic only for the philosopher in question. They may eventually contribute to the founding of the positive law of a community, but only in the event that the recipients of this invitation endorse it as such.\n\nWhen successful, this internecine struggle arouses in the philosopher the _pathos_ of (internal) distance that only the well-ordered soul can afford to accommodate. Self-overcoming whets the \"craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself,\" contributing to the \"development of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretching, more comprehensive states\" (BGE 257). Resistance to the reigning idols of the age thus informs the philosopher's soul with an \"aristocratic\" order of rank, which Nietzsche proposes as the hallmark of the noble soul (BGE 257). Because this aversive activity produces additional \"next\" selves and further displays the hidden perfections of the human soul, Nietzsche associates the philosopher's self-overcomings with the enhancement of humankind as a whole. In the process of overcoming themselves, philosophers expand the envelope of human perfectibility.\n\nThe philosopher's _Versucherkunst_ not only informs his own soul with an \"aristocratic\" order of rank, but also, and unbeknownst to him, generates the significatory affect that tempts others to enter the \"circle of culture\" described by his expenditures. Schopenhauer, for example, is an educator, but only secondarily (and unwittingly) an educator of others.\n\nHe is an _Erzieher_ primarily of himself, insofar as he elicits and brings to light the hidden perfections resident within his own soul. In the process of educating himself, the philosopher inadvertently provokes others, by tempting them to attempt experiments of their own design. Schopenhauer can therefore provoke others like Nietzsche only because he has already educated himself. The task of \"creating\" worthy disciples, in preparation for which Zarathustra seized his cruel hammer (Z 11:2), has thus been radically recast: the philosopher \"creates\" a community only indirectly and unwittingly, through his expenditure of the excess affect required to turn the hammer on himself. He thus becomes a sign unto himself, irrepressibly projecting his self-directed legislations into the public space that surrounds him.\n\nHence it is the expenditure of excess affect that transforms the philosopher's experiments into temptations. Nietzsche's self-experimentation thus conveys both senses of the philosopher's _Versucherkunst: because_ the philosopher's experiments are self-directed and self-inflicted, they are _also_ temptations or invitations to others. While Nietzsche believes, following Emerson, that each invitation is radically singular in address, privately tempting _only_ the solitary individual who receives the unintended calling, he also believes that the invitations received by the various members of one's community or \"kind\" may overlap significantly, especially with respect to the public consequences they entail. The resulting imbrication of kindred regimens of self-overcoming enables Nietzsche to derive a fairly rich field of intersubjectivity\u2014a \"we\"\u2014from the radically subjective temptations individually received by the community's founding members.\n\n### The Manifold Genius: Philosopher, Artist, and Saint\n\nIn order to appreciate the political consequences of the philosopher's _Versucherkunst,_ we must determine how and why an expenditure of excess affect transforms an experiment into a temptation. With respect to those witnesses who receive his experiments as invitations, the exemplary human being appears in the multiple aspects of philosopher, artist, and saint. Unlike the awkward suitors whom Nietzsche lampoons for their bungling pursuit of Truth (BGE P), _his_ philosophers are always also artists and saints in their own right. Indeed, the coalescence of this triumvirate within a single soul accounts for the political dimension of self-overcoming. Hence it is in his conception of the manifold genius that he ultimately links politics and art, self-overcoming and self-creation.\n\n#### The Philosopher\n\nNietzsche never adequately explains the psychological mechanism that renders political the self-overcomings of exemplary individuals, but his writings contain sufficient clues to support a plausible reconstruction. In a remarkable passage from his _Untimely Meditation_ on Schopenhauer, he outlines the political role of the aversive genius:\n\n> It is hard to create in anyone this condition of intrepid self-knowledge because it is impossible to teach love; for it is love alone that can bestow on the soul...the desire to look beyond itself and to seek with all its might for a higher self as yet still concealed from it. Thus only he who has attached his heart to some great man is by that act _consecrated to culture._ (SE 6)\n\nHuman communities are founded on any number of principles and pretexts, but culture originates only in the love excited by, and bestowed upon, a great human being. Only those who \"attach their hearts\" to an exemplary figure may enter the \"circle of culture.\" Nietzsche thus identifies love not only as the impetus to self-overcoming, but also as the constitutive and unifying principle of culture itself. The existence of great human beings is therefore a precondition of culture, as are the measures required to produce them in any specific epoch. Hence his concern to continue his own regimen of self-overcoming in the face of the advanced decay that besets his age: even in the twilight of the idols, exemplary human beings are both possible and necessary, as objects of consecratory love.\n\nWhile Nietzsche ventures no further elaboration of this important thesis, the love he proposes as constitutive of culture closely resembles Platonic _er s._ 5 The consecratory properties to which he appeals suggest a love that is exclusive both in its attachments\u2014only great individuals are its proper objects\u2014and in its possession\u2014for the lover too must become, if only temporarily, a squanderer. Only a great human being introduces others to the \"next\" selves they might become, and only those individuals who are touched by the madness of _er s_ dare to enter \"the circle of culture\" described by the self-overcomings of a representative exemplar. This love is furthermore as rare and precious as the \"intrepid self-knowledge\" that leads the soul \"to look beyond itself.\" In a note from the spring of 1888, Nietzsche explicitly identifies love as the catalyst of self-perfection: \"And in any case, one lies well when one loves, about oneself and to oneself: one seems to oneself transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect _[vollkommener],_ one _is_ more perfect\" (WP 808).\n\nOther forms of love, such as _agape,_ the universal love, celebrated by some Christians, may certainly play an important role within specific cultural settings, but they cannot serve to found or constitute culture. The founding of culture requires as its catalyst nothing less than _er s,_ the most powerful, carnal, discriminating, and dangerous form of love known to humankind:\n\n> [L]ove as _fatum,_ as fatality, cynical, innocent, cruel\u2014and precisely in this a piece of Nature. That love which is war in its means, and at bottom the deadly hatred of the sexes!... Even God...becomes terrible when one does not love him in return. (CW 2)\n\nEthical life may be enriched by _agape,_ especially within the demotic stratum of a hierarchical society, but it is sustained and nurtured only by _er s._ Only _er s_ furnishes the psychological motivation to overcome oneself, to place one's soul at risk in the pursuit of self-perfection.\n\nIt is the business of politics, Nietzsche believes, to oversee the production of those rare, exotic individuals who, by virtue of their _\u00fcbermenschlich_ beauty, excite in others the stirrings of _er s._ Indeed, the production of such individuals is coextensive with the production of culture itself. He characteristically refers to such individuals as \"lucky strikes\" (AC 4), for they emerge only rarely as a matter of design; this means, then, that culture itself usually arises only as a fortunate accident within the sumptuary economy of Nature.\n\nExceptions to the political rule of chance are indeed rare, for they issue forth only from the untimely insight that genuine beauty, the source of the erotic attraction that founds culture, is \"no accident\":\n\n> The beauty of a race or family, their grace and graciousness in all gestures, is won by work: like genius, it is the end result of the accumulated work of generations... The good things are immeasurably costly; and the law always holds that those who _have_ them are different from those who _acquire_ them. (TI IX:47)\n\nIn order to oversee the founding of culture, the philosopher must first legislate the production of a genuinely beautiful human being, one whose perfections are sufficiently developed that others will \"attach their hearts\" to him and thereby enter the \"circle of culture.\"\n\nChristianity, Nietzsche charges, has reinforced the rule of chance by further complicating the task of producing exemplars of _\u00fcbermenschlich_ beauty. In order to secure for _agape_ a privileged place within culture, Christian morality demonizes the generative power of _er s:_\n\n> Thus Christianity has succeeded in transforming Er s and Aphrodite\u2014great powers capable of idealization\u2014into diabolical kobolds and phantoms by means of the torments it introduces into the consciences of believers whenever they are excited sexually... And ought one to call Er s an enemy? The sexual sensations have this in common with the sensations of sympathy and worship, that one person, by doing what pleases him, gives pleasure to another person\u2014such benevolent arrangements are not to be found so often in nature! (D 76)\n\nIn a more succinct account of the fundamental antagonism between _Er s_ and the Crucified, Nietzsche charges that \"Christianity gave _Er s_ poison to drink. He did not die of it but degenerated\u2014into a vice\" (BGE 168).\n\nAlthough _er s_ enables the psychological mechanism of his moral perfectionism, Nietzsche nowhere ventures an account of its nature and genesis. Wary perhaps of relapsing into romanticism, he misplaces _er s_ behind the unwieldy \"scientific\" vocabulary that dominates his later writings. Whatever its provenance, his failure to identify explicitly the role of _er s_ in the psychological mechanism of self-overcoming has contributed to the distortion of his philosophy. From his post-Zarathustran writings, however, we can reconstruct with some confidence the signal psychological insight that governs his political thinking: _ask sis_ begets _er s._ That is, the experimental disciplines developed by the philosopher arouse in (some) others the erotic attachment that alone forges the \"circle of culture.\"\n\n#### The artist\n\nExtremely conspicuous in its absence from Nietzsche's later writings, especially in comparison with _The Birth of Tragedy,_ is an appeal to _art_ as a potentially unifying cultural force. He retains an enduring interest in aesthetics, but he no longer believes that art can play in modernity the unifying macropolitical role he assigned to it in _The Birth of Tragedy._ He remains optimistic about art itself as a nomothetic medium, even suggesting that art may someday furnish an alternative to the ascetic ideal (GM III:25), but he no longer envisions art as a vehicle of macropolitical reform.\n\nAlthough it may appear that he has simply abandoned his earlier interest in the political efficacy of art, in favor perhaps of an apolitical interest in the physiology of aesthetics, this development in fact reflects his turn to the political microsphere. Rather than divorce aesthetics from politics, he shifts his focus to the psychology of the artist. The outward, public expressions of artistic creation may vary from epoch to epoch, but the \"physiological\" preconditions of art remain constant.\n\nDespite his uninspiring account of the political alternatives available to agents laboring in the twilight of the idols, he thus maintains his unshaken conviction that all art is irreducibly legislative in nature:\n\n> A psychologist, on the other hand, asks: what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? choose? prefer? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations... Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as _l'art pour l'art?_ (TI IX:24)\n\nHe furthermore links the nomothetic properties of art to its capacity for creating beauty, whose appreciation furnishes the psychological basis for self-overcoming: \"In the beautiful, man posits himself as the measure of perfection; in special cases he worships himself in it. A species cannot do otherwise but thus affirm itself alone\" (TI IX: 19). Even in peoples and ages marked by advanced decay, that is, great human beings function as artists, as the creators of surpassing beauty and the indirect founders of culture.\n\nNietzsche often speaks of self-overcoming in terms of _self-creation,_ and this fecund metaphor conveys his sense of the nomothetic influence of exemplary human beings. Great individuals are always artists in Nietzsche's sense, for, in the course of their self-overcomings, they inadvertently produce in themselves the beauty that alone arouses erotic attachment. By virtue of their self-creation, exemplary figures come to embody \"the great stimulus to life,\" unwittingly inviting some others to join them in the pursuit of self-perfection. Nietzsche consequently admires Goethe not so much for his creation of Werther and Faust, as for his self-creation, of which all else is derivative (TI IX:49). We should similarly admire Nietzsche for his creation of Zarathustra, but only if we understand this achievement as a symptom or expression of Nietzsche's own originary self-creation.\n\nThis capacity for self-creation is the common element that links all great human beings, whether they be the macropolitical redeemers of the past and future or the micropolitical philosophers of the present. It is only as artists, as producers of surpassing beauty, that exemplary human beings fulfill their social role as lawgivers. Owing to the nomothetic effects of self-creation, exemplary human beings also produce themselves as _\u00dcbermenschen_ and thus unwittingly contribute to the permanent enhancement of humankind.\n\nThe term \"self-creation\" also conveys the irresistibly public nature of the philosopher's self-overcomings. Independent of the philosopher's own aims and aspirations, his overflowing will enters the public sphere as a sign, presenting itself for reception by observers and witnesses who do not share his firsthand, artist's perspective. \"The first distinction to be made regarding works of art,\" Nietzsche decrees, is that between \"monological\" and \"dialogical\" art (GS 367). Monological art is produced by the artist who has \"forgotten the world,\" who disregards altogether the perspective of his likely audience, while dialogical art is produced by the artist who \"looks at his work in progress (at 'himself') from the point of view of the witness\" (GS 367).\n\nThis distinction is crucial to Nietzsche's political thinking, for it explains the difference between the philosopher's orientation to his own self-overcomings and that of his witnesses. A philosopher who maintains a monological orientation toward his own self-overcomings will inadvertently produce for his witnesses an incarnate work of art, whose dialogical significance remains unknown (and uninteresting) to him. This means that the nomothetic influence and consecratory properties of exemplary human beings are, to a great extent, unwitting and involuntary; the dialogical use made of them need bear no correlation to their own monological aims.\n\nFrom the dialogical perspective of the witness, in fact, the squanderings of the genius are often mistaken, especially by impoverished souls, for invitations and seductions. From the monological perspective of the artist, however, these same emanations appear (if at all) simply as the inevitable by-products of the philosopher's private pursuit of self-perfection. Indeed, the ethical life of any community is made possible only by the amoral self-creation of the exemplary human beings who found\u2014and then desert\u2014it.\n\nMuch as the young Nietzsche praised the transformative capacity of the tragic dithyramb, he now appeals to the transfigurative power of self-creation. Here his investigations into asceticism and aesthetics converge, for he also describes _art_ as the product of a swollen will:\n\n> If there is to be art...one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy _[Rausch]_... What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fullness... A man in this state transfigures _[verwandelt]_ things until they mirror his power\u2014until they are reflections of his perfection. (TI IX:8\u20139)\n\nThe \"frenzy of the will\" is thus responsible not only for the artist's own \"craving\" for internal self-overcoming, but also, as reflected in the artist's external \"transfigurations,\" for the _pathos_ of distance that inspires others to overcome themselves.\n\nArtists are defined, physiologically, by the involuntary, affective capacity to project outward their native vitality, to transform the world around them: \"this _having to_ transform into perfection is\u2014art\" (TI IX:9). Although this transformative capacity is most obviously reflected in the artist's externalized productions\u2014paintings, sculpture, opera, and so on\u2014Nietzsche cautions his readers not to equate the two. In fact, an artist's primary transformation, of which concrete aesthetic productions are \"merely\" outward expressions, pertains exclusively to himself. The artist always produces himself, albeit unwittingly and inadvertently, as an embodiment of _\u00fcbermenschlich_ beauty, and thus as an object of erotic attraction.\n\nThis insight is especially apposite in the case of decadent artists, who do not command the vital resources needed to transform the external world on a grand scale. Socrates, for example, never founds the city he so eloquently constructs in speech. Yet he remains an artist nonetheless, for in the process of \"building\" his \"city in speech\" he transforms himself into an incarnate work of art. His self-creation in turn awakens the _er s_ lying dormant in (some of) his interlocutors.\n\nIn their private pursuits of self-perfection, exemplary human beings inadvertently produce themselves as works of art for public reception.\n\nThis self-creation has the (unintended) effect on its witnesses of transfiguring \u2014and thus redeeming\u2014the suffering attendant to the ascetic practices deployed in self-experimentation. In a pioneering psychological insight, Nietzsche explains that\n\n> Man, the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does _not_ repudiate suffering as such; he _desires_ it; he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a _meaning_ for it, a _purpose_ of suffering. (GM 111: 28)\n\nWeaned on the ascetic ideal, the human animal avoids only \"meaningless\" suffering. If rendered purposeful within a context of interpretation, suffering actually enables the human animal to attain the threshold level of vitality associated with an enhanced feeling of power. A goal or aim is needed to galvanize an otherwise sclerotic will, and the ascetic ideal accomplishes this task by investing suffering with meaning.\n\nThe ascetic ideal provides meaning by proposing self-inflicted cruelty as constitutive of human flourishing. Our best, and perhaps only, access to the sublime consequently lies in our capacity to suffer meaningfully. The enduring erotic appeal of exemplary human beings thus derives from their power to transfigure, and thereby render meaningful, the otherwise meaningless suffering required by the ascetic ideal. The palpable suffering induced by the philosopher's self-inflicted cruelty is redeemed by the incarnate work of art he becomes in the eyes of his beholders. The philosopher's _Versucherkunst_ thus ensures that each self-overcoming is also a self-creation, that every experiment is also a temptation.\n\nNietzsche entrusts the future of humankind to these higher human beings precisely because of their capacity to transfigure the pain and suffering that necessarily attend self-overcoming. In the eyes of their witnesses, exemplary figures redeem their own suffering, which in turn emboldens these witnesses to attempt painful self-overcomings of their own. The philosopher's self-creation thus \"reminds\" others of their expanded capacity for affective expression, thereby rendering (potentially) sublime the suffering involved in self-overcoming. Nietzsche's philosophers may not be world-historical redeemers, but their self-experimentation always culminates in an act of self-creation. They contribute to the permanent enhancement of the species by advancing the frontier of human perfectibility, which in turn stimulates in others the erotic impulse to engage in self-overcomings of their own.\n\n#### The Saint\n\nIt remains to be seen, however, how the philosopher's self-creation might redeem the suffering of others. On precisely this point, Nietzsche's development as a psychologist is especially welcome, for his pre-Zarathustran works either overlook or underestimate the seductive attraction of ascetic practices. What initially alerted him to the Dionysian roots of tragedy, but what the \"offensively Hegelian\" argument of _The Birth of Tragedy_ failed to capture, was the enticing appeal of the tragic hero, whose sublime self-destruction paradoxically ignites our passions and enflames our own futile aspirations to heroism. Similarly absent from Nietzsche's praise for the triumvirate of philosopher, artist, and saint was an account of the seductive appeal of their self-imposed disciplines. In fact, all of his pre-Zarathustran writings failed to explain adequately the psychological, or transformative, effects of the exemplary human being's labors of self-overcoming. The \"aesthetic justification\" delivered by tragedy, the precise influence of Schopenhauer as _Erzieher_ , the promise of Wagnerian opera\u2014all remained mysteries even to Nietzsche himself.\n\nReturning afresh to the problem of tragedy, he issues the following amendment to his earlier findings: \"What constitutes the painful voluptuousness of tragedy is cruelty; what seems agreeable in so called tragic pity, and at bottom in everything sublime...receives its sweetness solely from the admixture of cruelty\" (BGE 229). Having \"reconsidered cruelty,\" he similarly revises his opinion of its self-inflicted manifestations:\n\n> There is also an abundant, overabundant enjoyment at one's own suffering, at making oneself suffer\u2014and wherever man allows himself to be persuaded to self-denial in the _religious_ sense, or to self-mutilation...he is secretly lured and pushed forward by his cruelty, by those dangerous thrills of cruelty turned _against oneself._ (BGE 229)\n\nWhile most individuals who are at war with themselves are merely enacting their fated dissolution, other souls are sufficiently robust that their internal struggles \"have the effect of one more charm and incentive of life\" (BGE 200).\n\nNietzsche thus believes that witnesses to the philosopher's self-creation are enticed to similar experiments of their own by the giddying prospect of _meaningful_ self-inflicted cruelty. The philosopher's self-creation redeems the suffering of others by furnishing a context of enactment, within which his own suffering is transfigured. By redeeming the suffering involved in all selfovercoming, the philosopher inadvertently participates in the founding of culture:\n\n> Almost everything we call \"higher culture\" is based on the spiritualization of _cruelty,_ on its becoming more profound: this is my proposition. That \"savage animal\" has not really been \"mortified\"; it lives and flourishes, it has merely become\u2014divine. (BGE 229)\n\nThus interpreted (and sublimated), self-inflicted cruelty becomes a source of an incipient erotic bond between the ascetic and his witnesses. The ascetic, who voluntarily embraces forms of suffering that most human beings would otherwise prefer to forgo, actually succeeds in arousing in some others an erotic attraction.\n\nBecause self-overcoming presupposes suffering, any attempt to \"abolish\" suffering in the name of \"modern ideas\" would spell disaster (BGE 44). Suffering is furthermore the art at which human animals excel most resoundingly. All that is valuable within the \"circle of culture\" represents the spiritualization of cruelty. Lest we disable the engine of moral progress, then, Nietzsche urges us not to indulge our pity \"for 'the creature in man,' for what must be formed, broken, forged, torn, burnt, made incandescent and purified\u2014that which _necessarily_ must and _should_ suffer\" (BGE 225). Genuine _Erziehung_ is both painful and dangerous, provoking and eliciting the uncharted plasticities of the human soul. Rather than abolish suffering, we must continue to fashion interpretive contexts in which the suffering endemic to self-overcoming becomes meaningful and sublime. For this reason, the ascetic, or saint, plays a central role in the founding of culture.\n\nThe erotic fascination inspired by the ascetic issues from his painful attempt to tame the will, a project that paradoxically requires of him a superhuman strength of will:\n\n> For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules a _ressentiment_ without equal, that of an insatiable instinct and power-will that wants to become master not over something in Life but over Life itself, over its most profound, powerful, and basic conditions; here an attempt _[Versuch]_ is made to employ force to block up the wells of force... (GM 111:11)\n\nAscetics awaken the _er s_ of others precisely insofar as they (appear to) squander themselves, for they are (believed to be) possessed of a strength of will that affords them the capacity to swallow even mortal doses of suffering. Nietzsche thus views the excitation of _er s_ as an unintended by-product or emanation of the swollen will, as exemplified by ascetics, and, at the extreme, by martyrs and saints.\n\nMartyrs \"convince\" others only erotically\u2014 _\"Is the cross an argument?\"_ (AC 53)\u2014and only insofar as they derive intense (and unexpected) pleasure from their ascetic disciplines. Seemingly unaffordable feats of self-overcoming awaken in others the _er s_ that conformity and convention have put to sleep:\n\n> So far the most powerful human beings have...sensed the superior force that sought to test itself in such a conquest, the strength of the will in which they recognized and honored their own strength and delight in mastery... [S]uch an enormity of denial, of anti-nature will not have been desired for nothing, they said to themselves. (BGE 51)\n\nOf course, not all ascetic disciplines are capable of arousing _er s,_ for not all ascetics are genuine squanderers. For those ascetics who cannot afford the requisite expenditure of affect, disciplines of self-denial engender a sacrifice rather than a squandering. It is not uncommon, however, for a sacrifice to be mistaken for a squandering; most martyrs are portrayed not as decadents desperately embracing the \"will to nothingness,\" but as heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals. As unintended signs, in fact, the philosopher's \"invitations\" and \"temptations\" are always ripe for misinterpretation. \"Blood\" is powerfully erotogenic, but it is also \"the worst proof of truth\" (Z 11:4). Nietzsche consequently locates the stimulation of _er s_ not in ascetic practices themselves, which may bespeak either a squandering or a sacrifice, but in the expenditure of excess affect.\n\nIn a surprising revision of his argument in _The Birth of Tragedy,_ Nietzsche announces that \"Socrates was also a great _erotic,_ \" for \"he discovered a new kind of _agon_ \"\u2014an _agon_ he waged with himself (TI 11:8). Socrates beguiled the youth of Athens because he appeared to master himself, subjecting his monstrous appetites to the cold, arresting glare of hyperrationality. His self-inflicted cruelty, which aroused in some witnesses ridicule, suspicion, and contempt, was welcomed by others as \"an answer, a solution, an apparent cure\" for the instinctual disarray that had stricken the citizens of Athens (TI 11:9). Socrates eventually cast his erotic spell on posterity by following his ascetic dicta to their logical conclusion.\n\nAccording to Nietzsche, however, the erotic charm of Socrates is attributable to a grand misunderstanding. Socrates was no squanderer, and he died not so much to honor noble ideals as to surrender to his consuming decadence. Socrates in fact orchestrated his own demise, gratefully quaffing a tonic draught of hemlock: \"Socrates _wanted_ to die: not Athens, but he himself chose the hemlock; he forced Athens to sentence him\" (TI 11:12). Other martyrs, including Jesus, have had a similarly erotic\u2014and similarly disastrous\u2014influence on their witnesses, for they too have been mistaken for squanderers: \"The deaths of the martyrs, incidentally, have been a great misfortune in history: they _seduced..._ The martyrs have _harmed_ truth\" (AC 53). The psychological genius of St. Paul lay in his political appropriation of Christ as a martyr, in order that he might exploit the erotogenic possibilities engendered by the unjust death of a Savior (AC 42). As a martyr or sacrifice, Christ awakened in countless others the _er s_ that his life on its own terms inspired in only a few loyal disciples.\n\nLike Plato, Nietzsche accounts for the excitation of _er s_ as a response to a perceived lack or deficiency:\n\n> This one is hollow and wants to be full, that one is overfull and wants to be emptied\u2014both go in search of an individual who will serve their purpose. And this process, understood in its highest sense, is in both cases called by the same word: love... (D 145)\n\n_Er s_ arises in response to the gulf that separates the exemplary human being from all others, and it naturally aspires to bridge this gulf. While the self-overflowing emanations of the will establish and preserve the _pathos_ of distance, _er s_ strives to eliminate or minimize the distance between lover and beloved. The excitation of _er s_ in turn fortifies the lover's will, enabling him to accept his beloved's unintended invitation to enter the \"circle of culture.\" (Although Nietzsche occasionally remarks favorably on heterosexual love, he typically favors male gender designations for both the lover(s) and the beloved.)\n\nAs he explains in a note written in the spring of 1888, the excitation of _er s_ transfigures the lover, elevating him\u2014if only temporarily\u2014to the lofty station of his beloved:\n\n> The lover becomes a squanderer _[Verschwender]:_ he is rich enough for it. Now he dares, becomes an adventurer, becomes an ass in magnanimity and innocence; he believes in God again, he believes in virtue, because he believes in love; and on the other hand, this happy idiot grows wings and new capabilities, and even the door of art is opened to him. (WP 808)\n\nBlinded by _er s_ to his beloved's indifference, \"this happy idiot\" mistakes his beloved's need to disgorge himself for an invitation to permanent union. He consequently \"grows wings\" and ventures to bridge the gulf that ordinarily separates them. In so doing he becomes, like his beloved, a squanderer, leaving comfort, conformity, and good sense behind.\n\nInspired to unimagined heights by the madness of _er s,_ the bewinged lover becomes acquainted with various perfections resident within his own soul, some of which he temporarily shares with his beloved. Nietzsche thus locates in _er s_ the power to create sublime illusions, which alone enable human beings to endure the suffering involved in moral development:\n\n> Love is the state in which man sees things most decidedly as they are not. The power of illusion is at its peak here, as is the power to sweeten and transfigure. In love man endures more, man bears everything. (AC 23)\n\nThe enraptured lover too transfigures the world around him, if only temporarily, for \"even the door of art is open to him.\" The sublime illusions produced in the lover by _er s_ thus enable _nomos_ (or human design) to perfect and complete _physis._ Only when engulfed in the madness of _er s_ will human beings ever attempt to overcome or transcend their natural limitations.\n\nAs _er s_ finally subsides, the temporary union of lover and beloved dissolves, and the \"natural\" gulf between them is restored, in accordance with the order of rank. Emptied once again of the superfluous affect that had burdened him, the beloved distances himself from his frustrated lovers and resumes his solitary pursuit of self-perfection. Lovers \"attach their hearts\" to a great human being and are thereby consecrated to culture, but their love is not reciprocated. Because _er s_ only strives ever upward, these exemplary figures never come to love those whose _er s_ they have inadvertently awakened. Their gaze fixed firmly on the shimmering horizon of human perfectibility, great human beings love only themselves and their \"next\" selves, which immediately vanish upon consummation. In a pithy statement of his own tragic view of the human condition, Nietzsche submits that all great love, by its very nature, stands unrequited.\n\nBut the recession of _er s_ nevertheless leaves the lover changed, for the \"circle of culture\" has been forged around him. As the madness of _er s_ fades, a sense of shame suffuses the neglected lover, who now cannot help but see himself as mired in a life unworthy of his \"next\" self, which he momentarily glimpsed in the visage of his beloved. If this shame is attached directly to the lover's failures and incompleteness, then his opportunity for moral growth is soon crushed by a swelling tide of resentment and self-contempt; he will spend his life in penitent atonement for his momentary affliction of madness.\n\nIf this sense of shame is directed instead to the lover's consent to his incompleteness, to his willingness to remain unworthy of his beloved, to his voluntary complicity in his current imperfections, then it may succeed permanently where _er s_ itself has failed, in spurring the lover to attain his \"next\" self. If the spurned lover resists his plight, refusing to consent to the imperfections of his current incarnation, then he may overcome himself, despite the \"melancholy\" and \"longing\" he feels upon \"discovering in himself some limitation, of his talent or of his moral will\" (SE 3). Although stricken by the unspeakable suffering of an unrequited love, he may now redeem this suffering through the various strategies of \"spiritualization\" presented to him within the circle of culture. Nietzsche thus conceives of culture as the consolation prize that _Er s_ bestows upon his abandoned children\u2014provided that they translate their numbing shame into aversion and moral growth.\n\nAs the founding catalyst of culture, _er s_ plays a central, if underdeveloped, role in Nietzsche's political thinking. It is in the excitation of _er s_ that he unites the twin senses of the philosopher's _Versucherkunst._ The philosopher's experiments are also temptations only if _er s_ is awakened by the self-directed violence involved in self-overcoming; the philosopher consequently tempts some others to attempt self-overcomings of their own. It is _er s_ , finally, that links the _pathos_ of distance with \"that other, more mysterious _pathos_...the craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself\" (BGE 257). If self-creation were not erotic, then the philosopher's attempts to nurture the _pathos_ of distance would never arouse in others a similar craving for internal distance and rank.\n\nBorn of the expenditure of excess affect, _er s_ both drives the mechanism of self-overcoming and secures the consecration of culture. The _er s_ aroused in others by the squandering of these exemplary individuals is ultimately responsible for founding the communities that spring up around them. These communities are grounded neither in democratic consensus, nor in informed consent, nor in a social contract, nor in any other rational or discursive principle, but in a similar capacity for affective engagement and expression. This capacity for squandering, which defines the community and its laws, is established through the self-directed legislations of the founding exemplars. The order of rank among such communities is similarly established by appeal to strictly economic considerations: how much squandering can the community afford and accommodate? How much suffering can the community redeem and transfigure? At the pinnacle of this order of rank, at least on Nietzsche's fanciful reconstruction, stand the ancient Greeks, whose tragic art expresses an affirmation of Life _as it is_ , complete with its ingredient suffering, demise, and dissolution.\n\nThe advent of the \"last will of humankind,\" the will to nothingness, marks the critical point of exhaustion at which the enervated will is no longer capable of awakening _er s,_ the point at which the _pathos_ of distance vanishes altogether. The advanced decay of late modernity thus signifies a state of affective entropy, a disaggregation of the will into quanta so discrete that they can no longer generate the _er s_ needed to sustain the ethical life of the community (CW 7). A dissipation of will would result in the irrecuperable desuetude of _er s,_ and a cessation of _er s_ would nullify the temptations of the _Versucherkunst._ The decadence that besets late modernity thus comprises an assault on beauty itself, as potential objects of erotic attraction are systematically debased. Indeed, if it were no longer possible to \"attach one's heart\" to a great human being, in whom one sees reflected one's own prospects for self-perfection, then one would have no means of redeeming one's hatred of oneself. The future of humankind as a whole would no longer be warranted, and the teachings of Silenus would become wisdom once again.\n\n### An Unintended Experiment: Resentment as Expendable Affect\n\nAs a general theory of the seductive appeal of ascetic practices, Nietzsche's account of the excitation of _er s_ seems plausible. It would also seem, however, that this account only serves to reinforce the futility of any political response to the decadence that besets modernity. If _er s_ is awakened only by an expenditure of excess affect, then how can late modernity, an anemic epoch verging on exhaustion, possibly produce the squandering exemplars who consecrate others to culture? This question becomes crystallized in the case of Nietzsche's attempt to orchestrate a strategic expenditure of his own residual vitality. If he is \"dynamite,\" then from whence does he derive his explosive force? He regularly portrays himself as a disciple of Dionysus, but where precisely might we locate the moment of excess in his own thought?\n\nAs we have seen, Nietzsche's self-creation admits of important political consequences. Although he limits himself to self-experimentation, the overflowing will required for such endeavors eventually exceeds its circumscribed bounds and spills over into the lives of his readers. His aversion to modernity causes him to expend his excess affect, whereby he becomes a sign of the swollen will pulsating within him. This significatory excess in turn awakens the _er s_ that transforms an experiment into a temptation and eventually consecrates others to culture. He consequently identifies his own self-overcoming as his greatest contribution to the permanent enhancement of humankind: \"my humanity does _not_ consist in feeling with men how they are, but in _enduring_ that I feel with them. My humanity is a constant self-overcoming _[Selbst\u00fcberwindung]_ \" (EH 1:8).\n\nIn his own self-overcomings, then, Nietzsche embodies the redemptive triumvirate hailed in _Schopenhauer as Educator:_ as a philosopher, he legislates the production of those exemplary individuals who alone warrant the future of humankind; as an artist, he creates beauty, which transfigures his own suffering; and as a saint, he seduces others to crave the suffering endemic to self-overcoming. In his resistance to decadence, he thus fulfills his destiny as a commander and legislator. Although he reminds no one of the modernity-crushing _\u00dcbermensch_ , his limited sphere of legislative jurisdiction is nevertheless perfectly consistent with the depleted volitional resources of his age. Through his self-experimentation, he hopes not only to resist his twin temptations, nausea and pity, but also to furnish his unknown \"friends\" with aversive strategies designed to postpone the advent of the will to nothingness:\n\n> We violate ourselves nowadays, no doubt of it, we nutcrackers of the soul, ever questioning and questionable, as if life were nothing but cracking nuts; and thus we are bound to grow day-by-day more questionable, _worthier_ of asking questions; perhaps also worthier\u2014of living? (GM 111:9)\n\nNietzsche's pre-Zarathustran works failed, both individually and collectively, in their avowed campaign to restore the voice of Dionysus. Rather than eliminate the distortions imposed on Dionysus by the anti-affective practices of Christian morality, his books contributed additional distortions of their own. Of _The Birth_ _of Tragedy_ he remarks, \"Here was a spirit with strange, still nameless needs, a memory bursting with questions, experiences, concealments after which the name of Dionysus was added as one more question mark\" (BT:AS 3). From the retrospective Preface of 1886 issues a startling admission: the author of _The Birth_ _of Tragedy_ either misunderstood the Dionysian impulse or possessed a merely theoretical grasp of it. In either event, he was unable to apply his understanding to his own circumstances\u2014an embarrassing lapse for a self-proclaimed disciple of Dionysus. As a consequence of this failure, _The Birth of Tragedy_ characteristically confined Dionysus to the measured, restrained precincts of Apollo. The \"music-practicing Socrates,\" for example, whom Nietzsche summoned in _The Birth of Tragedy_ as a symbol for his own youthful hopes, was as cheerful, optimistic and Apollinian as his unmusical counterpart.\n\nIn his post-Zarathustran writings, however, Nietzsche atones for his prior failure to isolate traces of the Dionysian impulse. True disciples of Dionysus, he now understands, affirm Life \"even in its strangest and hardest problems\" (TI X: 5). Since the \"strangest and hardest problem\" facing him is the problem of history, of the \"it was\" (Z 11:20), he must come to affirm not only modernity itself, but also his own resentment of modernity. In a remarkably autobiographical passage, he acknowledges that\n\n> The human being...who wants to behold the supreme measures of value of his time must first of all \"overcome\" this time in himself\u2014this is the test of his strength\u2014and consequently not only his time but also his prior aversion and contradiction _against_ this time, his suffering from time, his un-timeliness, his _romanticism._ (GS 380)\n\nNietzsche cannot eliminate his resentment of modernity, for it partially defines his destiny, but he _can_ overcome it. If he is to take the measure of his age, then he must somehow turn even his own resentment to his advantage.\n\nHere, it would seem, we have reached the outer limits of Nietzsche's experiment with self-overcoming, for his resentment of modernity would appear to defy incorporation into a healthy soul. How could he make use of such vile stuff as resentment, especially the impressive store he harbors? In order to answer this question, and continue to pursue his experiment with self-overcoming, we must part company decisively with his own official account of himself as a philosopher. He overcomes his resentment as he overcomes any other affect, by harnessing it as expenditure.\n\nLike any prepotent, expendable affect, resentment can escalate and intensify a philosopher's self-overcomings, which may in turn elicit from others an erotic response. Nietzsche's abundant resentment of modernity thus constitutes the elusive moment of excess within the economy of his soul and work. Here, in his unbridled ridicule of the puny aspirations and accomplishments of modern man, his vitality, power, and eroticism all attain their convergent heights. If it is true that \"nothing burns one up faster than the affects of _ressentiment_ ,\" and that \"no reaction could be more disadvantageous for the exhausted\" (EH 1:6), then perhaps his breakdown and collapse are best attributed to his self-enflamed resentment of modernity. Perhaps his vaunted \"revaluation of all values,\" which he promises will alter the course of human history (AC P), is nothing more than an \"explosion\" of pent-up resentment. Indeed, if a cure for decadence is out of the question, then an accelerated decay may be most advantageous for his political aims.\n\nAlthough Nietzsche reserves his most caustic invective for \"the man of _ressentiment_ ,\" he also grudgingly admits that _ressentiment_ is not bereft of generative value. _Ressentiment_ , after all, \"becomes creative and gives birth to values\" (GM 1:10). The man of _ressentiment_ \"understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble,\" and \"his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors\" (GM 1: 10). \"A race of such men of _ressentiment_ ,\" Nietzsche concludes, \"is bound to become eventually _cleverer_ than any noble race\" (GM 1:10). While the clandestine virtues of the \"man of _ressentiment_ \" are not likely to put anyone in mind of the noble warrior or the blond beast, they may be the only productive tools available to the enfeebled representatives of a decadent, epigonic age. Moreover, if Nietzsche cannot rid himself of his own resentment, then his swooning admiration for \"noble races\" and \"active forces\" is, in the end, simply irrelevant; he must either overcome his resentment or capitulate to the decadence of modernity.\n\nI do not mean to suggest that the appropriation of resentment represents a conscious or deliberate strategy on Nietzsche's part. He nowhere allows that he deploys any such strategy, and the success of his self-overcoming may in fact depend upon his ignorance of the nature of his own excesses. By his own account, the _worst_ judge of excess is always the enthusiast in question. The monological perspective of the genius is singularly inappropriate for reckoning the dialogic reception of his expenditures. If his resentment of modernity _does_ contribute to the signature excesses of his life and work, then we should not expect him to know very much about it. Because he is ignorant of the precise nature of his expenditures, his own account of his self-overcomings may deviate wildly from those offered by his witnesses.\n\nNietzsche consistently demonstrates in his self-reflective writings that he cannot accurately locate the moments of excess resident in his own life and work. He knows that his excesses transform him into a sign, but his own interpretations of this sign amount to little more than idealized self-portraiture. He insists, for example, that he is both \"free\" from and \"enlightened\" about _ressentiment_ , and he speaks proudly of the \"Russian fatalism\" that distinguishes him from the \"man of _ressentiment_ \" (EH 1:6). In an apparently autobiographical remark, he explains that\n\n> _Ressentiment_ itself, if it should appear in the noble man, consummates and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, and therefore does not _poison:_ on the other hand, it fails to appear at all on countless occasions on which it inevitably appears in the weak and impotent. (GM 1:10)\n\nIn his account of the genesis of _Zarathustra,_ moreover, he presents himself as a Dionysian vessel overflowing with spirit, health, inspiration, wisdom, beneficence, and other noble endowments (EH IX:6). He may need to believe, like Zarathustra, that his involuntary emanations are as salubrious as the sun's rays (Z P:l).\n\nI see no prima facie reason to accept his account of himself in _Ecce Homo_ , and I believe that we have strong Nietzschean reasons for subjecting it to further scrutiny. While he is clearly repulsed by acts and agents of resentment, his aversion to them _itself_ usually takes the form of resentment. He thus represents a peculiar type of \"man of _ressentiment_ ,\" and his sole mark of distinction within this ignoble lineage is his ability to turn his _ressentiment_ against itself. Just as in the case of the original \"slave revolt,\" which he vows to reverse, _ressentiment_ \"becomes creative\" in his thought, giving birth to the values that inform his resistance to decadence. His resistance is neither heroic nor noble, but it transforms the \"imaginary revenge\" of _ressentiment_ into a genuine deed _[That]_ , which he identifies as the \"true _[eigentliche]_ reaction\" (GM I:10). Although he never admits as much, he regularly harnesses as expenditure his own resentment of modernity\u2014just as he has led us to expect any decadent philosopher must do.\n\nHis grandiose political aims furthermore _require_ him to appropriate his resentment of modernity. He is neither as wise nor as clever as he thinks himself, and his stores of love, courage, beneficence, and resolve are all precariously low. With the exception of his abundant resentment, he commands no other reservoir of combustible affect to expend. If we are to take seriously his frequent references to himself as \"dynamite,\" then we must compile a realistic inventory of the \"explosives\" at his disposal.\n\nOnly in his resentment of modernity, and of Christianity, does he express the overflowing vitality that he regularly attributes to himself. His resentment of modernity, which earlier precipitated his plunge into romantic pessimism, now attests to the (relative) frenzy of his own swollen will, and so to his own decadent \"health.\"\n\nThe secret hero of late modernity is none other than the reviled \"man of _ressentiment_ ,\" who consumes himself in his own poisonous venom. While this assertion certainly contradicts Nietzsche's familiar rhetoric, his own critique of modernity confirms the failure of the epoch to produce more glamorous heroes. The \"man of _ressentiment_ \" spawns many avatars amid the rubble of modernity, but none so intriguing as Nietzsche himself. His expenditure of excess resentment helps to sustain ethical life in the fragile microsphere of late modernity, but it also leaves its indelible stamp on those whom it attracts. His bizarre pursuit of his \"next\" self, which he alternately sees reflected in Zarathustra, Dionysus, the millennial Antichrist, the \"philosophers of the future,\" and other \"untimely\" heroes, may be perverse, even obscene at times, but it might nevertheless lead to the founding of communities within the political microsphere. From Nietzsche's tragic fragmentation and self-division we may witness the excitation of _er s_ and the consecration of culture.\n\nIf successful in his experiments, he awakens in (some) others the dormant _er s_ that alone consecrates human beings to culture. His self-experimentation thus founds a community constituted by all those who can similarly afford to squander themselves in their aversion to the decadence of modernity. The public consequences of this _ask sis_ are crucial to Nietzsche's political enterprise, for it is his self-experimentation that ostensibly draws others to him and founds communities of resistance within the microsphere. His expenditure of resentment, channelled by self-imposed disciplines of resistance, arouses the _er s_ that draws these fellow travelers to him. Seduced by his \"tempting\" self-experimentation, these \"free spirits\" join him in his efforts to sustain the _pathos_ of distance and to survive the twilight of the idols. Nietzsche's _real_ \"children,\" of course, are not the \"noble warriors\" who populate his fantasies, but the nookdwelling creatures of resentment who have been consecrated to culture by a decadent philosopher. For this very reason, however, his real \"children\" may be uniquely suited to survive the demise of modernity.\n\nThe confusion surrounding the identity of Nietzsche's rightful heirs confirms the greatest danger involved in his own self-experimentation. From the dialogic perspective of their audiences, great human beings always appear, and function publicly, as _signs_ of the (relatively) robust vitality they propagate and expend. In order to orchestrate a timely \"explosion,\" Nietzsche attempts to exploit the significatory by-product of his self-overcomings. The public overflow of his private pursuit of self-perfection contributes a performative dimension to his teachings, supplementing his \"saying\" with a \"showing.\" Indeed, he is counting on this performative dimension to found the community of readers who will join him in shepherding the aimless will through the duration of modernity.\n\nThis significatory function enables the political dimension of Nietzsche's self-overcoming, but it also places the meaning(s) of his performances beyond the sphere of his authorial control. Although he voluntarily elects to engage in aversive activity, this choice marks the limit of his volitional control over his self-experimentation; he neither chooses nor foresees its consequences. \"To become what one is,\" he reminds us, \"one must not have the faintest notion _what_ one is\" (EH 11:9). By its very nature, then, his self-experimentation ultimately exceeds his own purview and control; he is neither privy to his own excesses, nor a reliable judge of their effects.\n\nThe dialogic reception and interpretation of his \"explosion\" need bear no resemblance to the meaning he monologically invests in it. He may attempt to anticipate his reception, by strategically adopting the dialogic perspective of his likely readers, but even this gambit will not protect him from gross misinterpretation and abuse. To transform himself into a sign is to place himself, and his precious teachings, in the hands of readers whom he neither trusts nor controls.\n\nIn Nietzsche's case this proved to be an extremely painful experiment, for it required him to overcome his abundant resentment of modernity, an age whose highest specimens fall pitifully short of the noble standards of bygone epochs. Like Socrates, whose interrogation of Athenian noblemen was designed to test the oracle's surprising pronouncement, he stubbornly resisted the conclusion that he might belong among the best his age has to offer. Indeed, the self-loathing displayed by Socrates and Nietzsche is apparently indicative of the aversive activities of all exemplary human beings who toil in twilight epochs.\n\nLike any representative figure, however, Nietzsche turns this resistance to his own advantage. By dint of his own self-overcomings, he validates the ethical resources scattered throughout the microsphere and draws our attention to the _Versucherkunst_ that produced him. Rather than simply describe the self-experimentation he recommends, he provides us with a map of its course and an embodied example of the success it can have\u2014provided we learn to \"see\" what has heretofore been invisible to us. His occasional bursts of expendable affect serve to mark the path for anyone who can afford to follow. Indeed, if we are to appreciate Nietzsche as an exemplary human being, then we too must overcome our resentment (and despair) of an age so exhausted that we too might legitimately aspire to greatness.\n\n# 6 \nComedians of the Ascetic Ideal\n\n> Around the hero everything turns into a tragedy; around the demigod, into a satyr-play _[Satyrspiel]_ ; and around God\u2014what? perhaps into \"world\"?\u2014\n> \n> \u2014 _Beyond Good and Evil,_ 150\n\nUnable to articulate a specific answer to the founding question of politics, Nietzsche resolves instead to attend to the survival of humankind, until that point at which the \"philosophers of the future\" create new values and found a new epoch. Toward this end, he undertakes a more modest, ancillary political task, which is consistent with his complicity in the decadence of modernity. It is his self-appointed task to safeguard the crippled human will throughout the twilight of the idols. He can certainly do no more than this, and even this task may prove too great for his diminished capacities.\n\n### The Ascetic Ideal\n\nThe political aims of Nietzsche's post-Zarathustran writings are obscured by his apparent ambivalence toward the ascetic ideal. On the one hand, he reveals that the dynastic reign of the ascetic ideal has culminated in a potentially apocalyptic \"will to nothingness.\" If necessary, human beings will orchestrate their own self-annihilation, for even this goal is preferable to no goal at all (GM 111:28). On the other hand, although he persuasively demonstrates that an alternative to the ascetic ideal would be desirable, and perhaps even redemptive, he fails to disclose any actual, viable alternatives that are presently available to us.\n\nThe \"philosophers of the future\" may someday succeed in framing a naturalistic, pro-affective alternative to the ascetic ideal, but Nietzsche himself will not. Seemingly reconciled to a continued reliance on the ascetic ideal, he registers his preference for a specific manifestation of it: \"All honor to the ascetic ideal _insofar as it is honest!_ so long as it believes in itself and does not play tricks on us!\" (GM 111:26). Despite its tone of apparent affirmation, however, this Apollinian statement of preference betrays a _pathos_ of defeat and despair. _Nietzsche_ , the self-proclaimed \"last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus\" (TI X:5), and an accomplished trickster in his own right, now demands constancy and fair play from his most formidable opponent? The manipulator of masks and purveyor of noble lies _par excellence_ now honors the ascetic ideal only in its honest and self-conscious incarnations?\n\nThis humble plea may not put us in mind of the millennial Antichrist, who audaciously promises to \"break history in two,\" but it faithfully conveys the profound sense of ambivalence with which Nietzsche approaches the ascetic ideal. Resigned to both the destructive force and the unchallenged hegemony of the ascetic ideal, he characteristically treats its reign as a necessary evil for the duration of modernity, and perhaps beyond.\n\nIn its most basic, essential form, the ascetic ideal enshrines the life of self-denial as the highest expression of human flourishing. Under the tragic aegis of the ascetic ideal, human beings seek to become \"whole\" and \"complete\" through complex operations of self-vivisection and self-laceration. Meaning is infused into one's otherwise meaningless existence through ever-escalating orgies of self-inflicted suffering. Although most human beings are unlikely to succeed in their quest for completeness, their immersion in ascetic disciplines will very likely distract them from their irremediable fragmentation. Unlike all other animals, human beings derive their threshold level of vitality (or, in Nietzsche's terms, their enabling feeling of power) indirectly and derivatively, as a consequence and by-product of the ascetic disciplines they impose upon themselves. Whereas other animals rely directly and pre-reflectively on their respective endowments of unconscious drives and impulses, the human animal is defined by the violent and irreversible introjection of its natural, instinctual heritage (GM 11:16). This originary wound, which Nietzsche calls the \"bad conscience,\" is the condition of all human life and achievement. In order to unleash the generative powers of this originary wound, human animals must fashion for themselves contexts of interpretation, which provide them with the baseline meaning they need in order to render sublime their existential suffering.\n\nWhile it has become common to distinguish between \"normal\" and \"extreme\" practices of self-denial, reserving the term \"ascetic\" only for the latter, the ascetic ideal itself sanctions no such distinction. It is the silent, signature work of the ascetic ideal to co-opt ordinary, everyday practices of self-denial, so that human beings might \"naturally\" attain the threshold level of vitality that alone confers meaning onto their otherwise meaningless suffering. The ascetic ideal indifferently sanctions any and all practices of self-denial, from those that build character to those that destroy bodies. Familiar, conventional training regimens, such as those required of religious and athletic initiates, are neither more nor less ascetic than bizarre, subterranean rituals of self-mutilation\u2014although particular cultures will invariably valorize the specific ascetic disciplines to which they assign a political preference.\n\nIn all of its forms and manifestations, the ascetic ideal thus sponsors the seemingly paradoxical contest of Life versus Life:\n\n> [P]leasure is felt and _sought_ in ill-constitutedness, decay, pain, mischance, ugliness, voluntary deprivation, self-mortification, self-flagellation, self-sacrifice. All this is in the highest degree paradoxical: we stand before a discord that _wants_ to be discordant, that _enjoys_ itself in this suffering and even grows more self-confident and triumphant the more its own presumption, its physiological capacity for life, _decreases._ (GM 111:11)\n\nAs Nietzsche wisely indicates, however, this paradox is only apparent. The ascetic ideal actually serves the interests of Life itself, by seducing its weakest, sickest forms\u2014those that attain their threshold level of vitality only in self-destruction\u2014 to a continued existence.\n\nAs we have seen, Nietzsche identifies the ascetic ideal as the dominant interpretation known to humankind of the existential suffering associated with the bad conscience. The ascension and authority of the ascetic ideal are therefore attributable to the onset of civilization, which, in exchange for the promise of peace and security, prohibits the spontaneous, outward expression of the unconscious drives and impulses. Indulging himself in a bit of speculative anthropology, he proposes that the ascetic ideal arose in response to a basic human craving for meaning:\n\n> _This_ is precisely what the ascetic ideal means: that something was _lacking,_ that man was surrounded by a fearful void... The meaninglessness of suffering, _not_ suffering itself, was the curse that lay over humankind so far \u2014 _and the ascetic ideal offered man meaning!_ (GM 111:28)\n\nAccording to Nietzsche, moreover, the ascetic ideal constitutes the _only_ response thus far to the suffering of the bad conscience (GM 111:28). The reign of the ascetic ideal is therefore coextensive with civilization itself. To be human is to gain meaning, power, and vitality through disciplines of self-directed violence. Indeed, the governing taboo of civilization forbids human beings from flourishing via any non- or extra-ascetic means, a general proscription of which Freud would later propose the incest taboo as both representative and symbolic.\n\nIn providing meaning for the pain of the bad conscience, the ascetic ideal has presided over the protracted evolution of the human animal. Because death alone can still the existential suffering that attends the forcible introjection of animal drives, we might think of the bad conscience as the ineliminable opportunity cost of human civilization. Civilization demands suffering, and the ascetic ideal renders meaningful the existential suffering that human animals involuntarily inflict on themselves. While acknowledging that most human beings have found this existential suffering to be bearable only under the analgesic influence of metaphysical comforts, Nietzsche nevertheless insists that the bad conscience, under the aegis of the ascetic ideal, has impregnated the species with a future, transforming humankind from a \"goal\" into \"a way, an episode, a bridge, a great promise\" (GM 11:16).\n\nIn light of Nietzsche's grim appraisal of the ascetic ideal, it is not surprising that many readers assume that he intends to offer or disclose an alternative ideal. Although he certainly ascertains the need for an alternative ideal, he nowhere exhibits the wherewithal to satisfy this need. He proclaims, for example, that _art_ is \"much more fundamentally opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science\" (GM III:25), but he refuses to identify the artist as an opponent of the ascetic ideal; in a typically evasive fashion, he instead promises, falsely, to \"return some day to this subject at greater length\" (GM III:25). At the end of essay II of the _Genealogy,_ he similarly invokes the image of a\n\n> man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism. (GM 11:24)\n\nBut at this point he breaks off abruptly, deferring obscurely to \"Zarathustra the godless\" and resuming his obtrusive silence on the question of an alternative to the ascetic ideal. For many readers, this disappointing aposiopesis serves to punctuate his chronic failure to provide \"serious\" solutions to the grave political problems he addresses.\n\nHe elsewhere alludes, cryptically, to a \"counter-ideal\" promulgated by Zarathustra (EH XI), but he neglects to identify for his patient readers the specific teaching(s) or speech(es) to which he refers. While it is certainly plausible to assume that he may have in mind here his gnomic teaching of eternal recurrence, this teaching is not currently available to us in the form of a \"counter-ideal.\" To _will_ the eternal recurrence, after all, \" _to crave nothing more_ _fervently_ than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal\" (GS 341), would seem to require a degree of vitality that is absolutely unknown to modernity. Zarathustra cannot distinguish \"his\" teaching of eternal recurrence from the various renditions of it that he rejects throughout his _Bildungsgang_ , and Nietzsche himself is surprisingly unfamiliar with (or uncharacteristically silent about) his own signature teaching of affirmation.\n\nIn light of his smug predictions for the reception of _Zarathustra_ , moreover, any \"counter-ideal\" sheltered therein would seem to be framed not for us, but for the preterhuman audiences of the postmodern future:\n\n> [H]aving understood six sentences from _[Zarathustra]_ \u2014that is, to have really experienced them\u2014would raise one to a higher level of existence than \"modern\" men could attain. Given this feeling of distance, how could I wish to be read by those \"moderns\" whom I know! (EH III:1)\n\nWhile it may still be the case that either Nietzsche or Zarathustra possesses an alternative to the ascetic ideal, any \"counter-ideal\" they might promulgate would necessarily outstrip the diminished faculties of their late-modern readers. Indeed, by the time receptive audiences finally arrive on the scene, this supposed \"counter-ideal\" may be entirely otiose.\n\nHence Nietzsche's enduring ambivalence toward the ascetic ideal: while the installation of a \"new\" ideal would be desirable, it is also incompatible with civilization and the human species as we know them. He consequently delegates the installation of an alternative ideal to his mysterious successors, while resigning himself to the maieutic task of bringing to term the troubled pregnancy of the bad conscience. He consequently undertakes to investigate\u2014by way of self-experimentation\u2014the unknown generative powers of the ascetic ideal. In order to mount a meaningful challenge to the hegemony of the ascetic ideal, that is, he must assume the difficult (and for him uncomfortably effeminate) role of the manly midwife.\n\n### Harming the Ascetic Ideal\n\nNietzsche's ambivalence toward the ascetic ideal reflects his (skeptical) appraisal of the limited political resources available to late modernity. Unable to depose the ascetic ideal, or to propose a viable successor ideal, he must attempt somehow to disrupt from within the \"closed system\" of the ascetic ideal. This endogenous disruption may in turn loosen the stranglehold of the ascetic ideal, so that he and his \"friends\" might implement experimental strategies for surviving the twilight of the idols.\n\nToward the end of his investigation of the ascetic ideal in the _Genealogy_ , Nietzsche finally entertains the question that his readers have long since formulated: \" _where_ is the opposing will that might express an _opposing ideal_?\" (GM III:23). He quickly rules out science, the reigning idol of modernity. \"Men of science\" are not the free spirits he seeks, for their signature faith in truth bears witness to their underlying belief that truth alone can redeem the human condition (GM III:23). This belief in turn betrays the conviction that the human condition stands in need of redemption, a conviction symptomatic of decadence. For similar reasons, he also disqualifies the \"unconditional honest atheism\" that had become so fashionable in his day. A genuine alternative to the ascetic ideal must neither promise nor anticipate the redemption of the human condition.\n\nHaving declined his most obvious and promising options, Nietzsche finally outlines _his_ strategy for challenging the ascetic ideal. In an almost offhand remark, he declares that \"the ascetic ideal has at present only _one_ kind of real enemy capable of _harming_ it: the comedians of this ideal _[die Kom\u00f6dianten_ _dieses Ideals]_ \u2014for they arouse mistrust of it\" (GM III:27). This, the only answer Nietzsche provides to the most important political question raised in the _Genealogy_ , is so strange and unsatisfying, especially in light of the rhetorical crescendo that builds up to it, that few readers can take it seriously. Nor does he deign to shed any additional light on these mysterious enemies of the ascetic ideal. Having raised the tantalizing possibility of meaningful opposition to the ascetic ideal, he quickly changes the subject. He neither divulges the identity of these comedians nor explains how one might join them in harming the ascetic ideal. He lavishes the orotund prose of the _Genealogy_ on such pressing political topics as diet, the chastity of philosophers, and German music, but he never again mentions these \"enemies\" of the ascetic ideal.\n\nIn a typical gesture of deferral, Nietzsche bequeaths to his readers the task of determining the identity and _modus operandi_ of these mysterious \"enemies\" of the ascetic ideal. Relying once again on a strictly functional account of the notion he wishes to convey, he tells us only what these comedians _do._ All we know about them is that they \"harm\" the ascetic ideal by \"arousing mistrust\" of it. How they do so, and to what effect, remains unsaid, if not unknown. Nor is it clear why a burgeoning mistrust would prove harmful to the ascetic ideal, especially with no viable counter-ideal in sight. The unchallenged hegemony of the ascetic ideal thus rules out several promising interpretations of Nietzsche's cryptic reference to the \"comedians of the ascetic ideal\": it would do little good simply to ignore, ridicule, mock, slander, or demean the ascetic ideal, for there exist no alternative ideals to which rebels and critics might pledge their allegiance and petition for asylum. Any apostasy from the ascetic ideal is only apparent, only temporary, and the inevitable \"return\" of the repentant apostate only serves to reinforce the hegemony of the ascetic ideal.\n\nNietzsche may be uncharacteristically laconic on the question of opposing the ascetic ideal, but he nevertheless furnishes some important clues. No one better fits his description of these comedians than Nietzsche himself. Although he nowhere identifies himself (or anyone else) as a comedian of the ascetic ideal, he regularly identifies himself as one of its opponents, claiming as his own the task he assigns to these mysterious comedians. He is furthermore uniquely suited to serve as a comedian of the ascetic ideal, both in terms of his knowledge of it and in terms of his historical situation. He may chafe at the notion that he must fulfill his destiny as a manly midwife, but his own account of the decadence of late modernity leaves him no greater political charge to fulfill. Finally, he could never know if he were actually a comedian of the ascetic ideal. Since these mysterious enemies are defined only by their function (irrespective of their avowed intentions), by their success in \"arousing mistrust\" of the ascetic ideal, only external witnesses can confirm the \"harm\" they have done. Only Nietzsche's readers can confirm that he is (or is not) in fact a comedian of the ascetic ideal, and their only criterion of judgment lies in the \"mistrust\" he has aroused in them.\n\nNietzsche's candid pronouncement of his own complicity in the besetting decadence of his epoch would seem to confirm his qualifications as a comedian of the ascetic ideal. Owing to the restricted confines of his historical situation, the only challenge he could hope to mount must be strictly immanent, exclusively internal to the economy of the ascetic ideal. While he does not explicitly identify the method of immanent critique as his preferred strategy for harming the ascetic ideal, he _does_ indicate why this strategy might be effective.\n\nOn two separate occasions he describes the ascetic ideal as a _\"faute de mieux\"_ (EH XI; GM 111:28). He thus suggests that the success of the ascetic ideal is attributable not to any characteristics or properties essential to the ideal itself, but to the utter lack of alternative ideals and external challenges. As a _faute de mieux_ , the ascetic ideal simply cannot tolerate competing estimations of the value of Life, and it owes its interpretive appeal solely to the monopoly it holds in the business of accounting for human suffering. It has sustained its hegemony not because its signature interpretation of suffering is _true_ , but only because no rival ideals have yet emerged:\n\n> The ascetic ideal has a _goal_ \u2014this goal is so universal that all the other interests of human existence seem, when compared with it, petty and narrow...it permits no other interpretation, no other goal; it rejects, denies, affirms, and sanctions solely from the point of view of _its_ interpretation... [I]t believes that no power exists on earth that does not first have to receive a meaning, a right to exist, a value, as a tool of the ascetic ideal, as a way and means to _its_ goal, to _one_ goal. (GM III:23)\n\nBecause the ascetic ideal represents a \"closed system of will, goal and interpretation\" (GM III:23), all potential alternatives are quickly subsumed within, and co-opted by, the ascetic ideal. This means that the ascetic ideal can be harmed only by _itself_ , in an inadvertent act of self-overcoming. If Nietzsche is to challenge the ascetic ideal, then he has no choice but to disrupt the economy of this \"closed system\" from within. He can harm the ascetic ideal only by contributing to its self-overcoming.\n\nAlthough Nietzsche furnishes no alternative to the ascetic ideal, he does provide an example of the sort of endogenous disruption that might contribute to its eventual demise. As we have seen, he acknowledges as his ownmost task the self-overcoming of Christian morality (D P:4), a task that requires him to orchestrate the sublation of Christian morality from within. In order to contribute to the self-overcoming of Christian morality, he must force its native will to truth to confront _itself._ If he can somehow induce Christian morality to draw \"its _most_ _striking inference,_ its inference _against_ itself\" (GM III:27), then Christian morality as we know it will perish by its own hand. It is within the context of his personal confrontation with Christian morality that Nietzsche operates, unwittingly, as a comedian of the ascetic ideal. He \"harms\" the ascetic ideal not by attacking it directly, but by arousing mistrust of its dominant, Christian interpretation.\n\n### Hijacking the Ascetic Ideal\n\nThe ascetic practices most familiar to us, those responsible for guiding our halting evolution from natural to human animals, have exhausted their usefulness for the continued development of humankind. They have furthermore engendered the \"will to nothingness\" that now threatens our very existence. In order to deflect the nihilistic impulse of our familiar complement of ascetic practices, Nietzsche attempts to institute an alternative set of ascetic practices, which, he believes, may enable him and his unknown \"friends\" to turn the _ask sis_ demanded by civilization to their own advantage. Unable to despose the ascetic ideal or install an alternative, he attempts instead to hijack it for his own campaign to endow the successor age with a naturalistic, anti-Christian ideal.\n\nWhile the ascetic ideal demands that all human beings practice self-denial, it does not require participation in any particular ascetic practices or disciplines. Nietzsche thus concludes from his genealogical investigations that no logical necessity binds the ascetic ideal to our current practices of self-denial and self-annihilation. Their linkage is the contingent, historically specific product of the dominant, Christian disposition of the ascetic ideal.\n\nHoping to exploit the historical contingency of the Christian disposition of the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche calls for a reversal of the process whereby the moral interpretation of the bad conscience gained ascendancy:\n\n> Man has all too long had an \"evil eye\" for his natural inclinations, so that they have finally become inseparable from his \"bad conscience.\" An attempt at the reverse would _in itself_ be possible\u2014but who is strong enough for it?\u2014that is, to wed the bad conscience to all the _unnatural_ inclinations, all those aspirations to the beyond, to that which runs counter to sense, instinct, nature, animal, in short all ideals hitherto, which are one and all hostile to life and ideals that slander the world. (GM 11:24)\n\nThe question he inserts into this otherwise promising passage conveys the enormity of the reversal he envisions: who would be \"strong enough\" to turn the ascetic ideal against its currently dominant disposition and impress the bad conscience into the service of the beleaguered affects?\n\nWhile Nietzsche himself is not \"strong enough\" to effect this reversal on his own, he nevertheless believes that he and his unknown \"friends\" might collaborate in the strategic appropriation of the ascetic ideal. He imagines the appropriation of the ascetic ideal on the model of the original \"slave revolt\" that it is designed to reverse, and he anticipates for it a similarly protracted course of conflict. He prophesies that for the next two centuries at least, the fate of the reversal he initiates will remain uncertain (EH XIV:1). This wearying conflict will prove well worth its collateral casualties, however, for its successful resolution would eventually result in the installation of a naturalistic alternative to the ascetic ideal. Turning the formative power of _ask sis_ to more constructive ends, the philosophers of the future would preside over the long-awaited completion of the human species. For the first time in their chequered history, human beings would stand security for their own future, subjecting to their design what had previously fallen to chance.\n\nIn order to play a modest preliminary role in realizing this redemptive vision of the future of humankind, Nietzsche aims to harness the corrosive power of the ascetic ideal for his campaign against Christian morality. Rather than overthrow or supplant the ascetic ideal, he attempts instead to foster mistrust of its reigning, Christian interpretation. He \"harms\" the ascetic ideal by multiplying its aspects, by providing an alternative to its dominant, Christian disposition. The endogenous shocks introduced by him into the economy of this closed system may temporarily disrupt and destabilize the dominant ascetic practices sanctioned by the institutions of Western culture. The ensuing slippage within the economy of the ascetic ideal may afford him an opportunity to promote his alternative interpretation of the ascetic ideal.\n\nHis goal for the remainder of modernity is to wed the bad conscience to the anti-affective \"second\" nature that humankind has acquired in the Christian period of its history. Because our \"original\" human nature is irretrievably lost to us, by virtue of our irreversible acculturation, any nature that we currently embody is an acquired, \"second\" nature. In essay II of the _Genealogy_ , he demonstrates that institutionally reinforced ascetic practices can effectively reinscribe the code of human \"nature,\" by engineering a \"second\" nature more amenable to the peculiar demands of particular, historically specific civilizations. Having set for itself the task of \"breed[ing] an animal _with the right to make_ _promises_ \" (GM 11:1), Nature creates the machine of culture, which, through the gradual institutionalization of mnemotechnics, establishes the techniques through which humankind develops. Owing to the plasticity of the human soul, what was once culture has now become \"second\" nature.\n\nUnable to legislate the completion of this transition from natural to human animal, Nietzsche undertakes instead to investigate the generative and recuperative properties resident within our largely unknown \"second\" nature. Hoping to turn our Christianized acculturation against itself, he experiments with ascetic disciplines that may safeguard the will and thereby enable humankind to survive the twilight of the idols. The immediate goal of his self-experimentation is to implement a set of ascetic practices that will redistribute the strain placed on the affects by the ascetic ideal, thus sparing them the mortal toll of any single, sustained ascetic discipline. He consequently attempts to divert the destructive focus of the ascetic ideal from our \"original,\" affective nature to our acquired, anti-affective \"second\" nature.\n\nGambling that the _ask sis_ required by civilization can be satisfied by an assault on the \"second\" nature that humankind has acquired, Nietzsche harnesses the erotic power of ascetic practices to tempt some individuals away from the anti-affective animus of Christian morality. For himself and his unknown comrades, he advocates what we might call\u2014anticipating the full force of the oxymoron\u2014an \"ascetic naturalism.\" Hoping to relieve the affects of the mortal strain exerted against them by the Christian-moral interpretation of the bad conscience, he inaugurates a set of ascetic disciplines that target those anti-affective impulses that have become \"second\" nature within us. His \"insane\" task, he explains, is\n\n> To translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text _[Grundtext]_ of _homo_ _natura._ (BGE 230)\n\nBy means of his naturalistic alternatives to the dominant ascetic strategies of Western civilization, he intends to scour \"the eternal basic text of _homo natura,_ \" gradually dissolving the moral accretions that have been \"scrawled and painted\" over it. He boastfully describes this experiment as his \"attempt to assassinate two millennia of antinature and desecration of man\" (EH IV:4).\n\nThe \"tragic age\" that Nietzsche foresees will be distinguished by the thoroughgoing naturalism of its sustaining values and ideals; metaphysical comforts will be dispensed only to those invalids whose existential suffering cannot otherwise be relieved. In preparation for this coming age, he must inaugurate\u2014or so he believes\u2014a campaign to eliminate the anti-natural vestiges of Christian morality. The goal of this campaign is to deliver to the \"philosophers of the future\" a fully naturalized model of the human soul, complete with the generative powers and faculties produced by two millennia of Christian acculturation.\n\nStrictly speaking, however, the logic of Nietzsche's \"ascetic naturalism\" describes a position of anti-anti-naturalism; the installation of an originary, non-reactive naturalism lies beyond the compass of his depleted resources. He must consequently prosecute his assault on Christian morality by waging an antinatural attack on the \"second\" nature humankind has acquired in the process of submitting to Christian disciplines of _ask sis._ As we have seen, Nietzsche himself is occasionally able to direct his own resentment of modernity against itself, thereby turning his antinatural affects against his acquired, \"second\" nature.\n\nThis practice of internal disruption derives its promise and plausibility from the totalizing impulse of the ascetic ideal. In order to sustain itself as a closed system and co-opt any emerging alternatives, the ascetic ideal must expend a great deal of energy in the maintenance and regulation of its monopoly. Because this diffuse energy can\u2014and must\u2014be harnessed by agents who serve the ascetic ideal, it might also be appropriated by agents who oppose the ascetic ideal. While disciplining agents to serve its monolithic ends, the ascetic ideal also invests these agents with residual discretionary powers, which can, under certain circumstances, simultaneously be turned _against_ the ascetic ideal itself. Owing to the lavish wealth of energy squandered by the ascetic ideal in the maintenance of its sprawling empire, agents who serve the ascetic ideal might also function as comedians of the ascetic ideal, provided that they can withstand the self-referential reverberations of their double agency. Indeed, these \"comedians\" would oppose the ascetic ideal, even as they continue to serve its ends.\n\nThe implementation of ascetic disciplines, especially those that place ever-escalating demands on the structural integrity of the soul, thus creates in some _\u00fcbermenschlich_ agents a feedback loop of heretofore unknown powers and faculties. In order to undergo the prescribed _ask sis,_ agents must first be invested with sufficient power and vitality to wield effectively the ascetic instruments entrusted to them. In most cases, the ascetic demands placed on agents more or less cancel out any residual powers created in them, leaving the self-disciplined agents with no net gain in freedoms or faculties. In some extraordinary cases, however, ascetic disciplines will have a fortifying, fructifying effect on agents, inadvertently endowing them with unanticipated freedoms and affording them greater political latitude.\n\nHence Nietzsche's enduring interest in the paradox of the saint: in order to _tame_ the will (as opposed to acknowledging one's weakness of will as a preexisting condition), one must already possess a superhuman will, which disciplines of \"taming\" actually strengthen and fortify. As opposed to lesser ascetics, the saint discovers that his monkish life of solitude and self-denial has in fact succeeded in inflaming his prepotent will. Rather than simply quiet his noisome affects and castrate his tumescent will, his _ask sis_ serves to arouse powers and faculties previously unknown to him. Nietzsche's own \"autobiography\" furnishes a related example of the feedback loop inadvertently created in extraordinary agents by ascetic disciplines. His own period of \"convalescence\" was governed by ascetic practices that not only enabled him to survive his bout with romantic pessimism, but also afforded him the novel perspective of a sickly, declining form of life. His \"wisdom,\" he later allows, lies in his ability to reverse perspectives at will (EH 1:1), which ability he unwittingly gained as a by-product of the ascetic disciplines that secured his convalescence.\n\n### Knowledge: A Form of Asceticism\n\nNietzsche's investigation into the history of morality is not merely academic, for he aims thereby to discover those ascetic practices that are most likely to be effective in deflecting the \"will to nothingness.\" He consequently attempts to catalogue the full range of ascetic disciplines known to humankind, for he believes that, depending on the agents in question, all ascetic techniques are potentially both coercive and empowering.\n\nWhile it is true that all ascetic practices declare war on the affective _Grundtext_ of human \"nature,\" it is also true that, in doing so, they invariably furnish (some) agents with a novel, heretofore undisclosed \"second\" nature. Nietzsche treats this acquired \"second\" nature as comprising, in extraordinary cases, a feedback loop invested with residual, and potentially productive, powers of self-denial. Under the aegis of the ascetic ideal (and often under the threat of death), human beings have learned to exploit the plasticity of the human soul. Self-denial is still the only game in town, but several millennia of ascetic experimentation have transformed the rules of this game and raised its stakes. The self that currently presents itself for _ask sis_ is far more complex and variegated than ever before.\n\nNietzsche's campaign to \"harm\" the ascetic ideal thus sanctions his experimentation with a vast array of ascetic disciplines and practices. The philosopher in late modernity must appropriate the ascetic heritage of Western civilization, turning it to the advantage of humankind as a whole. Seeking to persuade his unknown friends of the possibilities that reside for them in an ascetic heritage that they cannot escape in any event,\n\nNietzsche contends that\n\n> The most spiritual men, as the _strongest_ , find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experimentation _[Versuch]_ ; their joy is self-conquest; asceticism becomes in them nature, need and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens which crush others, a _recreation [Erholung]_. _Knowledge_ \u2014 _a form of asceticism._ (AC 57, emphasis added)\n\nBut how does one transform asceticism into a _recreation?_ Nietzsche's recourse to self-experimentation furnishes _his_ answer, which may or may not become our own. \"Knowledge as a form of asceticism\" is not simply the subject matter of his post-Zarathustran method of investigation, but its performative structure as well. His unique appropriation of _genealogy,_ for example, enables him to experiment with novel conceptions of agency, untested methods of inquiry, and previously undetected connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. In order to acquire genealogical knowledge, however, he must implement a specific set of ascetic disciplines, which exact, among other casualties, the supposed validity of his spurious claims to epistemic privilege. Indeed, the _Genealogy_ both is and is about an ascetic strategy for gaining knowledge, and it consequently tempts (some of) his readers to conduct similar experiments of their own. As practiced and performed by Nietzsche, genealogy becomes a _Versuch_ , an experiment _and_ a temptation, which entices (some of) his readers \"to play with burdens which crush others\" (AC 57). His self-experimentation in the pursuit of knowledge thus awakens the dormant _er s_ of (some of) his readers.\n\nTo his fellow Dionysian travelers, Nietzsche recommends genealogy as an ascetic discipline that both targets those anti-affective impulses that have become \"second\" nature to us and inoculates against the nihilism that attends the exhaustion of modernity. For those readers whose _er s_ Nietzsche awakens, the aim or topic of his genealogies may ultimately be irrelevant; it is his self-imposed _ask sis_ that piques their interest in him. His resistance to his own decay thus affiliates him with the exemplary individuals who alone warrant the future of humankind. While his experiments with genealogy will neither reverse nor arrest the advance of decadence in late modernity, they may lend unity and structure to the ethical life of the Nietzschean \"we.\"\n\nNietzsche's recommendation of asceticism as a \"recreation\" reflects his enduring fascination with the political significance of _play_. Referring explicitly to himself, he proclaims, \"I do not know of any other way of associating with great tasks than _play_ ; as a sign of greatness, this is an essential presupposition\" (EH 11:10). He similarly attributes to Napoleon a \"naturalness where great tasks are something one plays with, one _may_ play with\" (TI IX:48). While it has become popular to figure Nietzsche as a champion of innocence, nature, dance, song, spontaneity, and play, the ludic elements of his thought must be carefully situated within the context of his larger philosophical enterprise. The free play and spontaneity available to the philosopher issue not from the suspension of ascetic disciplines and practices, but from their cultivation and perfection. To experiment on oneself requires an unmistakable violence, to which ascetic instruments are uniquely suited. Nietzsche consequently praises \"the discipline of suffering, of _great_ suffering,\" for \"only _this_ discipline has created all enhancements of humankind thus far\" (BGE 225). As this passage indicates, only a select few, their battle-tested souls fortified by excruciating discipline and self-experimentation, may realistically come to view asceticism as a recreation; the rest of us can only play at playing.\n\nAs we have seen, Nietzsche tends to describe _ask sis_ as producing in us a \"second\" nature to replace our obsolete, \"original\" nature. While he steadfastly insists, _contra_ Rousseau, that our \"first\" nature is forever lost to us, we might wonder why he retains the residually romantic imagery of \"Nature\" at all. Indeed, as his own predilection for \"sloughing\" dead skins would seem to confirm (H 11: 2; GS P:4), he apparently conceives of Nature as irrepressibly regenerative, as unquenchably plenteous in its wealth and extravagance. He thus assumes that humankind will achieve its perfection within the economy of Nature, even if the \"complete\" human beings of the future bear little resemblance to their primitive forbears.\n\nIf we are to remain faithful to the experimental spirit of Nietzsche's philosophy, however, then we must identify and resist the prejudices that contour (and delimit) his own political thinking. While Nature has proven its resiliency time and again in this century, confounding all attempts by philosophers and scientists to vanquish it as a ground or condition of political life, the perfection of humankind may nevertheless lie _beyond_ the plenum of Nature, in a cyborg artifice or machinic similacrum of human \"nature.\" Indeed, it is entirely possible, especially against the shifting background of contemporary science and technology, that Nietzsche's vision of the _\u00dcbermensch_ will be realized only in the emergence of a post-natural being whose terrifying incarnation we have not yet begun to imagine.\n\n### Therapies of Survival: Educating the Body\n\nAlthough Nietzsche often describes the philosopher's self-experimentation as wild and unprincipled, his more sober reflections convey a sense of the great care and strict discipline required to turn one's soul inside out. The goal of self-experimentation in late modernity, as in any decadent epoch, is to contribute to the development of therapies of survival.\n\nLike Wittgenstein, Nietzsche ascribes to philosophy a salutary, if limited, therapeutic function. The general goal of self-experimentation is to develop a specific regimen of self-overcoming that better enables one to negotiate the practical exigencies peculiar to one's age. Nietzsche's own regimen of self-overcoming is designed to deliver him neither to autonomy nor authenticity, but to a strategically advantaged situation within his epoch, such that he might expend his residual vitality in the service of his aversion to the decadence of modernity. In light of the strict discipline required to develop the \"ascetic naturalism\" he envisions, he recommends self-overcoming only to those \"free spirits\" who can both afford and withstand the _ask sis_ involved in self-experimentation. These experiments are furthermore designed to produce only rare and exotic selves. There is no room for the \"letting go\" and _laisser aller_ prized by the _demos_ ; Nietzsche has no interest in reproducing bloodless permutations of the last man.\n\nAs an example of the disciplined self-experimentation he has in mind, Nietzsche extols the martial wisdom of Julius Caesar, who cultivated in himself those \"inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves\" (TI IX:38). Caesar's greatness lies not in the outward, macropolitical expressions of his legislations, but in his lawgiving itself, in which his unique regimen of self-overcoming is manifestly reflected. While orthodox historians locate Caesar's genius in the magisterial vitality that he involuntarily propagates, Nietzsche directs our attention to Caesar's unmatched capacity to manage and direct the vitality with which destiny endows him. He consequently treats the military and political exploits for which Caesar is famous as the expressions or by-products of a more basic regimen of self-overcoming.\n\nNietzsche similarly applauds Goethe for developing a regimen of self-overcoming that enabled him to master the inherent tensions and contradictions of his age. He describes Goethe as a\n\n> [M]agnificent attempt to overcome the eighteenth century by a return to Nature, by an _ascent_ to the naturalness of the Renaissance\u2014a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century... What he wanted was _totality;_ he fought the mutual extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling and will... (TI IX:49)\n\nBy \"creating himself,\" Goethe attained an immanent critical standpoint within the age that shaped him, and he conveyed his critique of the eighteenth century by means of the embodied reproach he disciplined himself to enact. By turning his destiny to his full advantage, Goethe elicits Nietzsche's highest praise:\n\n> Goethe conceived a human being who would be strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily matters, self-controlled, reverent toward himself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural... (TI IX:49)\n\nWhereas Goethe was spared the advanced decay of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche has no choice but to embody the diminished vitality of an age he describes as \"merely an intensified, _brutalized_ eighteenth century\" (TI IX:50). He therefore must fashion for himself a regimen of self-overcoming that is appropriate to the dwindling vitality of his epoch. Like Caesar and Goethe before him, he aims not to increase the residual vitality at his disposal, but to manage its expression efficiently and strategically. He consequently transforms himself into a specific kind of decadent, one who expresses his dwindling vitality by means of an aversion to decadence. This alternate expression of decadence, he gambles, may be sufficient to safeguard the will and guarantee its survival.\n\nToward this end, he develops a regimen of self-overcoming designed to produce in himself a modified \"second\" nature. While he cannot realistically hope to equip himself with an entirely new system of instincts, the modest \"counter-instincts\" he cultivates may succeed in mitigating slightly the decadence he involuntarily enacts. His volitional resources are limited, but so are his (revised) goals.\n\nIn attempting to modify the functional specifications of his own destiny, he aims to implement an insight that he attributes to the Greeks:\n\n> It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in the right place\u2014not in the \"soul\" (as was the fateful superstition of the priests and half-priests): the right place is the body, the gesture, the diet, physiology; the rest follows from that. Therefore the Greeks remain the first cultural event in history: they knew, they _did_ , what was needed; and Christianity, which despised the body, has been the greatest misfortune of humanity so far. (TI IX:47)\n\nLike the Greeks, then, Nietzsche begins his therapy of survival \"in the right place,\" by educating his body. Unlike the Greeks, however, who enjoyed the luxury of an overflowing will, he must carefully manage a dwindling store of vitality. We should therefore not expect his regimen of self-overcoming to fashion anything resembling the noble warriors of Greek antiquity, for late modernity simply cannot afford to stage such lavish productions.\n\nIn order to see how seriously Nietzsche takes the education of the body, one need only look to his \"autobiography.\" _Ecce Homo_ describes in detail the regimen of self-overcoming that delivered him to his \"destiny.\" Here he speaks not of his momentous and lasting achievements, but of \"all these small things which are generally considered matters of complete indifference\" (EH 11:10). When expressly dispensing the basic tenets of \"his morality,\" he speaks not of the _\u00dcbermensch,_ the Antichrist, active forgetting, or virile warriors, but of his insights into _diet_ (EH 11:1). When accounting for \"everything that deserves to be taken seriously in life,\" he turns not to the questions that exercise kings, judges, and priests, but to the more fundamental \"questions of nourishment, abode, spiritual diet, treatment of the sick, cleanliness and weather\" (EH XIV:8). Through his seemingly idle experiments with nutrition, location, climate, and recreation, he gradually became what he is: a modern who takes the measure of modernity, a decadent who opposes decadence, a truthful critic of truth, a manly midwife, and a pious Antichrist.\n\n_Ecce Homo_ thus conveys a sense of the subtle, nuanced transformations that Nietzsche undertakes, and it provides a more realistic picture of the self-experimentation he recommends to the highest specimens of a dying epoch. Whereas Zarathustra longs to wield his cruel hammer and release the _\u00dcbermensch_ imprisoned in the stubborn granite of humanity (Z 11:2), Nietzsche employs a much lighter touch, and a tuning-fork (TI P), in sculpting a destiny for himself. Rather than clarify important teachings, revise core insights or recant abandoned dogmas, he corrects a single note in the score of his lugubrious, and largely forgotten, _Hymn to Life_ : \"Last note of the A-clarinet, c flat, not c: misprint\" (EH IX:1).\n\nOf course, the magnitude of any feat of self-overcoming corresponds to the residual vitality at one's disposal. Nietzsche attends to \"all the small things\" only because he cannot afford to tackle anything greater. Like Wagner, \"who crowds into the smallest space an infinity of sense and sweetness,\" Nietzsche achieves his greatest success as a _miniaturist_ (CW 7). Unable to legislate on the grand scale to which he naturally aspires, he presides masterfully over the minute details of his own project of self-overcoming. Here he turns his destiny to his own advantage, artfully perfecting the limited domain to which his decadence confines him. He not only attains an unequalled mastery of the philosophical aphorism, abandoning the grand, systematic ambitions of his youth, but also permits his artist's gaze to settle, finally, on the subtle shades and delicate nuances of quotidian life. Pundits and potentates may ignore his angry little books, but Turinese costermongers honor him with their sweetest grapes (EH 111:2).\n\nWhich experimental selves should the decadent philosopher attempt to embody? While all techniques of the self are equally heteronomous, some will prove more advantageous (and more dangerous) in the pursuit of particular ends. Nietzsche, for example, is intent on discovering those ascetic disciplines that will prove most resistant to the advent of the \"will to nothingness.\" He consequently privileges those ascetic disciplines that promise to retard the deterioration of the affects. Since he does not know a priori which specific ascetic practices will be least threatening to a crippled will, he resorts to self-experimentation. He consequently probes the resiliency of decadence, implementing and embodying \"next\" selves that accommodate an increasingly greater range and depth of affective expenditure. He \"guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful,\" a gambit that proves that he \"has turned out well\" (EH 1:2). If successful in his guesses, he may seduce his fellow travelers to their \"next\" selves and perhaps help them to resist their own decadence. If unsuccessful in his guesses, or if slow to revise them, he may inadvertently hasten the exhaustion of late modernity.\n\nIn fashioning his therapy of survival, Nietzsche combats danger with danger. He can offer no assurance that self-experimentation\u2014either as a general strategy or in his own specific experiments\u2014actually succeeds in retarding decadence. It may be, as he suggests in his more pessimistic moments, that the project of resisting the decadence of modernity is simply futile. Or it may be, as he suggests in his more exuberant moments, that philosophers can successfully wage war with their age and thus resist those strains of decadence to which they are most vulnerable. All he \"knows\" from his genealogy of morals is that the available range of selves has been artificially and dangerously circumscribed in late modernity, and that the predilection for self-destructive techniques of the self threatens the very survival of the will. He thus hopes to contribute to a proliferation of rare and exotic selves, whose identities he cannot begin to predict.\n\nNietzsche's advocacy of self-experimentation, though deliberately outrageous, is neither purely rhetorical nor merely idle. In his own attempt to achieve the \"timelessness\" that he believed would expand the horizon of human perfectibility, he subjected himself to dangerous forms of self-experimentation. He regularly turned the scalpel on himself, flaying protective tissues of prejudice and probing the darkest recesses of his labyrinthine soul. Hoping to develop a regimen of self-overcoming that would enable him and his \"friends\" to resist more effectively the decadence of late modernity, he endured solitude, loneliness, physiological torment and exhaustion, wonder diets, miracle cures, panacetic drugs, and even the onset of madness. As is his wont, he presents a heroic face throughout, advertising his experiments as symptoms of his own _\"great_ health, that superfluity which grants to the free spirit the dangerous privilege of living _experimentally [auf den Versuch hin leben]_ and of being allowed to offer itself to adventure\" (H I:P4).\n\nMore emphatically than any other aspect of his life and work, however, this penchant for self-experimentation conveys his despair at the inexorable advance of decay in late modernity. In this respect, his experiments represent a desperate gamble, for his therapy of survival may actually contribute to the production of frightening monstrosities, and even to his own demise. Strategies of self-directed violence always run the risk of inflicting wounds that are not only significative, but also mortal. Nietzsche's own experiment with protracted solitude, for example, nearly killed him before securing his convalescence (GS P), and it may ultimately have hastened his departure from sanity. In the end, the urgency of his experimental spirit was rivalled only by that of his fears for the future.\n\n# 7 \nNietzsche's Political Legacy\n\n> I am no man, I am dynamite... It is only beginning with me that the earth knows _great politics._\n> \n> (EH XIV:1)\n> \n> The only valid tribute to thought such as Nietzsche's is precisely to use it, to make it groan and protest. And, if the commentators say I am being unfaithful to Nietzsche, that is of absolutely no interest.\n> \n> \u2014Michel Foucault, \"Prison Talk\"\n\nNietzsche's political legacy is notoriously difficult to reckon, in large part because his thinking so readily invites misinterpretation and misappropriation. \" _Non legor, non legar\"_ he boasts in his autobiography, perversely citing his lack of worthy readers as evidence of his untimely wisdom (EH 111:1). For all of his complaints about the numbing inadequacies of his readers, however, he did virtually everything in his power to encourage confusion and misunderstanding. Shifting masks, multiple personae, polytropaic paroxysms, nested ironies and self-referential parodies, wayward textual strategies, hastily conceived thought experiments, Zarathustran exotericisms, hagiographic autobiographies, insincere attempts at self-criticism\u2014all of these signature rhetorical ploys have contributed to the bewilderment of his readers. That he is not read, or not read well, may be the inevitable fruition of a self-fulfilling prophecy.\n\n### The Standard Reading of Nietzsche\n\nNietzsche's strategy of indirection has backfired egregiously and often. Rather than discourage unworthy readers from attempting to divine his Promethean wisdom, his rhetorical gyrations have in fact issued a blanket invitation to cranks and scholars alike. Encountering no insurmountable textual obstacles to their own interpretations of his elusive teachings, Nietzsche's readers regularly conscript him as the philosophical progenitor of their respective political schemes. As evidence of the runaway ramifications of his political legacy, his influence and inspiration are now claimed by virtually every possible constituency\u2014including many sects, movements, schools, and cults that he expressly repudiated in his writings.\n\nHitler's _Mein Kampf_ is littered with ersatz Nietzscheanisms, which Nazi ideologues dutifully cobbled together to serve as the philosophical platform for their insane, misanthropic vision of political dystopia. Nietzsche's defenders rightly point out that these anti-Semitic, progenocidal \"teachings\" were mercilessly wrenched from their subtle philosophical contexts, that he was heartlessly betrayed to the National Socialists by his self-appointed executrix, the opportunistic Elisabeth. Despite his obvious and well-documented animadversions to the brand of political thuggery exemplified by National Socialism, however, nothing he says rules out definitively the Nazi interpretation of his teachings. He deliberately orchestrated the proliferation of a multiplicity of diverse readings, and the resulting farrago of interpretations constitutes his true political legacy.\n\nAlthough roundly rejected as an interpretive abomination, the Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche's political thinking has nevertheless exerted an indirect influence on the articulation of its extant legacy. Owing in large part to the \"family resemblance\" obtaining between some of his teachings and certain tenets of Nazi ideology, even sympathetic readers have refused to take seriously his political thinking on its own terms. He is occasionally lauded as a perspicacious critic of liberalism, Christianity, or modernity itself; as a keen judge of the political resources and achievements of Greek antiquity; as a vocal champion of autonomy, self-reliance and authenticity; as a prescient opponent of the likely evolution of German nationalism; as an astute diagnostician of cultural malaise; as a vigilant sentry posted on the advancing frontier of postmodernity; and so on. But he is rarely considered, on the strength of his teachings, an important political thinker in his own right.\n\nIndeed, a standard reading has emerged of Nietzsche as a _failed radical_ _voluntarist_ , whose shrill call for the redemption of modernity, at the hands of the enigmatic _\u00dcbermensch_ , is simply incompatible with his trenchant critique of modernity. By fatuously entrusting the future of humankind to a titanic act of _\u00fcbermenschlich_ will, or so the story goes, Nietzsche betrays his own greatest insights into the complexities of political life in modernity. In doing so, he prematurely abandons the residual political resources of late modernity, which, many critics insist, shelter more promising possibilities of regeneration than the desperate hopes he invests in the coming of the redemptive _\u00dcbermensch_. In the end, his political thinking is compromised by a grave mismeasure of his own epoch, a misunderstanding so pervasive and systemic that it renders his political thinking irrelevant to the lives of modern agents.\n\nThis standard reading of Nietzsche as a failed radical voluntarist owes its authority in large part to Martin Heidegger's influential interpretation. Heidegger describes Nietzsche as the \"last metaphysican of the West,\" whose ingenious attempt to overcome the metaphysical tradition of Western philosophy ultimately founders, like all such attempts, on the shoals of subjectivism. Rather than signal his emigration beyond metaphysics (which Heidegger views as coextensive with nihilism), Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power constitutes the final stage in the development of metaphysical thinking:\n\n> Because thinking in terms of values is grounded in the metaphysics of the will to power, Nietzsche's interpretation of nihilism as the event of the devaluing of the highest values and the revaluing of all values is a metaphysical interpretation, and that in the sense of the metaphysics of the will to power.\n\nAccording to Heidegger, Nietzsche proposes an irreducibly subjectivistic solution \u2014a \"revaluation of all values\"\u2014to the problem of nihilism. He consequently remains a residually metaphysical thinker, albeit the \"last\" of this misbegotten breed: \"even Nietzsche's own experience of nihilism, i.e., that it is the devaluing of the highest values, is after all a nihilistic one.\" Nietzsche's residual subjectivism is crystallized, Heidegger believes, in his teaching of eternal recurrence, which entrusts to the will the Promethean task of \"eternalizing the moment.\" This desperate recourse to radical voluntarism may not succeed in overturning the metaphysical tradition, but it does succeed in constituting the \"final\" unfolding of this tradition, as it distills the whole of subjectivism into a single, transformative explosion of the _\u00fcbermenschlich_ will.\n\nAlthough Heidegger prefers to situate Nietzsche's failed voluntarism in the context of his ill-fated attempt to overcome the tradition of metaphysical thinking, this interpretation is readily translated into distinctly political terms: Nietzsche's otherwise promising confrontation with modernity is subverted by his stubborn insistence on a voluntaristic solution to the besetting problems of nihilism and decadence. This standard reading thus takes the form articulated in the following general outline:\n\n 1. Nietzsche advances a withering critique of the signature institutions of modernity: liberalism, Enlightenment, democracy, Christianity, and so on.\n 2. His critique exposes the abject failure of these signature institutions to fashion for themselves the rational justifications that allegedly distinguish them from the \"primitive,\" unjustifiable institutions of premodern political regimes.\n 3. Reacting to the failure of these signature institutions to ground and defend themselves rationally, Nietzsche desperately capitulates to the \"other\" of reason, declaring all claims of reason to be nothing more (nor less) than disguised expressions of will to power.\n 4. Because political life in modernity cannot justify itself by appeal to rational terms and principles, he appeals instead to will to power as the sole adjudicating standard of \"nobility,\" \"mastery,\" \"health,\" \"genius,\" and all other superlative political values.\n 5. As his critique of modernity demonstrates, however, the age itself is simply too decadent, too depleted in its native volitional resources, to sustain a \"noble,\" aristocratic political regime.\n 6. Blinded by his romantic, nostalgic allegiances to the manly political regimes of Greek and Roman antiquity, Nietzsche declares modernity to be irrecuperably decadent and sterile. He prematurely abandons the imperfect projects and institutions by means of which the epoch has defined itself.\n 7. Having judged modernity to be incapable of restoring and regenerating its signature projects and institutions, Nietzsche locates the salvation of modernity in the transformative volitional resources of those shadowy redemptive figures who someday will come: the \"free spirits,\" the \"philosophers of the future,\" the _\u00dcbermensch,_ and, finally, Dionysus himself.\n 8. Owing to Nietzsche's premature rejection of the regenerative powers resident within modernity, and to the irrational hopes he invests in a mysterious, redemptive act of _\u00fcbermenschlich_ will, his confrontation with modernity transgresses the recognizable boundaries of sane political thinking \u2014as confirmed, some would say, by his clinically diagnosed slide into madness.\n\nVariations on the general theme of Nietzsche's failed voluntarism are found in virtually all influential studies of his political thinking, including those proffered by Arendt, Kaufmann, Strong, MacIntyre, Yack, Schutte, Warren, Vattimo, Habermas, Detwiler, Ansell-Pearson, and Berkowitz. In all of these studies, Nietzsche is initially (if warily) applauded as an astute critic of political life in modernity, only to be dismissed in the end as a naive voluntarist. Rather than accurately assay the residual restorative powers of modernity (especially those contained within reason itself), he prematurely disowns the epoch as a whole. As a consequence of the failure of his radical voluntarism, Nietzsche's political thinking may be provocative, ingenious, insightful, and entertaining, but it is largely irrelevant to contemporary political life. Despite his engaging vitality, he has nothing to say of lasting constructive value to agents laboring in the twilight epoch of modernity. His standing in the canon of Western political thought remains that of a hideous scarecrow, whose horrifying, irrational excesses frighten us into renewing our tepid commitments to the democratic reforms and liberal ideals of modernity\u2014despite our nagging doubts about their continued value and efficacy.\n\nA strong case can be made for this standard reading of Nietzsche as a failed radical voluntarist, and the scholars mentioned above have collectively presented such a case. But is this the most promising line of interpretation to pursue? While this standard reading of Nietzsche is certainly plausible on a textual basis, its primary attraction lies, I believe, in the definitive judgment it renders against the National Socialists' appropriation of his political thinking. If Nietzsche is a failed voluntarist (and thus irrelevant to modern political life), then the Nazi ideology that grew out of this voluntarism is similarly bankrupt. In order to discredit the philosophical pretensions of National Socialism (and all kindred political monstrosities), the standard reading of Nietzsche discredits the source of these pretensions, which it locates in his irrational appeal to the transformative properties of the _\u00fcbermenschlich_ will.\n\nThe contribution of this standard reading to a condemnation of Nazi ideology is certainly commendable, but it is not so helpful in arriving at a clear understanding of Nietzsche's political thinking. I have attempted in this study to challenge the standard reading of Nietzsche's political thinking, to show that he works carefully within the context of his own critique of modernity, and to illuminate the relatively unexplored moral content of his political teachings. While his irrational voluntarism constitutes one branch of his tangled political legacy, it is neither the most prominent ramification nor the most fruitful to cultivate.\n\n### Nietzsche and Contemporary Liberalism\n\nNietzsche was an outspoken, unrelenting critic of liberal political ideals, which he interpreted as symptomatic of the irreversible decay of the modern epoch. For obvious reasons, then, most liberal theorists have refused to embrace his political legacy. As we have seen, his perfectionism does not fare very well in John Rawls's survey of potential sources for (liberal) principles of justice.\n\n#### Nietzsche and MacIntyre\n\nAnother critic of liberalism, Alasdair MacIntyre, actually proposes Nietzsche's political thinking as representative of the signature errors and failures of liberalism. Although Nietzsche may appear to be a critic of the Enlightenment project, his \"criticisms\" in fact reflect the natural, self-referential development of liberal individualism. Hence, MacIntyre insists, the irreducible irrationality of Nietzsche's political thinking:\n\n> The rational and rationally justified autonomous moral subject of the eighteenth century is a fiction, an illusion; so, Nietzsche resolves, let will replace reason and let us make ourselves into autonomous moral subjects by some gigantic and heroic act of the will\n\nMacIntyre thus cites Nietzsche's irrational excesses as evidence of the shipwreck of liberal political theory:\n\n> [T]he Nietzschean stance turns out not to be a mode of escape from or an alternative to the conceptual scheme of liberal individualist modernity, but rather one more representative moment in its internal unfolding.\n\nInterpreting the doctrine of will to power as the logical outcome of the project of Enlightenment, MacIntyre presents Nietzsche as a negative exemplar of modernity, whose misguided quest to produce the _\u00dcbermensch_ exemplifies the bankruptcy of liberal individualism:\n\n> _[E]ither_ one must follow through the aspirations and the collapse of the different versions of the Enlightenment project until there remains only the Nietzschean diagnosis and the Nietzschean problematic _or_ one must hold that the Enlightenment project was not only mistaken, but should never have been commenced in the first place.\n\nMacIntyre thus exploits the supposedly dead ends and blind alleys of Nietzsche's political thinking to call for a reconsideration of the Aristotelian moral tradition, whose premature rejection, he believes, constitutes the signal error of modernity:\n\n> [T]he defensibility of the Nietzschean position turns _in the end_ on the answer to the question: was it right in the first place to reject Aristotle? For if Aristotle's position in ethics and politics\u2014or something very like it\u2014could be sustained, the whole Nietzschean enterprise would be pointless.\n\nDespite his manifest allegiances to Aristotle, MacIntyre nevertheless subscribes to a surprisingly Nietzschean account of the political resources and options available to late modernity. The discontinuities and incommensurabilities that characterize moral discourse in late modernity are largely antithetical to a retrieval or recuperation of the Aristotelian moral tradition. Considerable time is needed to heal the wounds inflicted by the runaway excesses of liberal individualism, and MacIntyre bids us to begin this slow process of moral convalescence by founding, and cultivating, local ethical communities.\n\nThese micro-communities will not succeed in restoring the moribund Aristotelian tradition, but they may ensure that \"both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness.\" Invoking a remarkably Nietzschean image of the plight of moral agents in late modernity, MacIntyre expresses guarded optimism that ethical life may yet withstand the advance of decadence:\n\n> What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope... We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another\u2014doubtless very different\u2014St. Benedict.\n\n#### Nietzsche and Habermas\n\nMacIntyre's criticisms of Nietzsche are echoed in the work of J\u00fcrgen Habermas, who nevertheless deploys them in the service of his own spirited defense of the modern Enlightenment project. According to Habermas, MacIntyre is right about Nietzsche, but wrong about the Enlightenment project whose Nietzschean bankruptcy he declares:\n\n> Nietzsche enthrones taste...as the organ of a knowledge beyond true and false, beyond good and evil. But he cannot legitimate the criteria of aesthetic judgment that he holds on to because he transposes aesthetic experience into the archaic, because he does not recognize as a moment of reason the critical capacity for assessing value that was sharpened through dealing with modern art\u2014a moment that is still at least procedurally connected with objectifying knowledge and moral insight in the processes of providing argumentative grounds.\n\nNietzsche's irrational appeals to the will to power constitute the logical, self-referential consequences not of reason _per se,_ but of what Habermas calls \"subject-centered reason.\" As an articulation of subject-centered reason, the dominant philosophical discourse of modernity has indisputably reached a point of crisis and implosion, but this particular discourse is neither singular nor privileged within the political life of modern agents. According to Habermas, in fact, Nietzsche himself has contributed greatly to our growing appreciation of the crisis of subject-centered reason. Rather than abandon subject-centered reason in favor of a revised, more promising concept of reason, however, Nietzsche concludes his critique of rationality by enshrining the \"other\" of reason, the will to power:\n\n> The aesthetic domain, as the gateway to the Dionysian, is hypostatized instead into the other of reason. The disclosures of power theory get caught up in the dilemma of a self-enclosed critique of reason that has become total... [Nietzsche] could muster no clarity about what it means to pursue a critique of ideology that attacks its own foundations.\n\nAccording to Habermas, then, Nietzsche's own critique of modernity manifests contradictions and justificatory lacunae that are structurally similar to those he detects in subject-centered reason:\n\n> Like all who leap out of the dialectic of enlightenment, Nietzsche undertakes a conspicuous leveling. Modernity loses its singular status; it constitutes only a last epoch in the far-reaching history of a rationalization initiated by the dissolution of archaic life and the collapse of myth.\n\nAlthough Nietzsche's critique is both valid and valuable, it is insufficient on its own terms to sanction his subsequent (and precipitous) \"leap out of the dialectic of enlightenment.\" Had he responded to this crisis by returning to the \"counterdiscourse\" of modernity, his contribution to the Enlightenment might not have been strictly destructive.\n\nHaving prematurely rejected reason, as well as the \"counterdiscourse\" potentially available to him, Nietzsche has no choice but to consign the fate of modernity to those mysterious lawgivers and commanders who will follow:\n\n> On the one hand, historical enlightenment only strengthens the now palpable diremptions in the achievements of modernity; reason as manifested in the form of a religion of culture no longer develops any synthetic forces that could renew the unifying power of traditional religion. On the other hand, the path of restoration is barred to modernity. The religious-metaphysical world views of ancient civilizations are themselves already a product of enlightenment; they are _too rational,_ therefore, to be able to provide opposition to the radicalized enlightenment of modernity.\n\nTo Habermas, Nietzsche's lurid enactment of the shipwreck of subject-centered reason demonstrates not so much the eclipse of rationality itself (as many of Nietzsche's French scions have apparently concluded), as the need to articulate a more adequate concept of reason. Habermas consequently attempts to revive the \"counterdiscourse\" of modernity, wherein subject-centered reason has been intermittently confronted with the sorts of criticisms that Nietzsche and MacIntyre rehearse. A careful attention to this counterdiscourse, and especially to the critical clashes that have determined the course of its chequered career, reveals to Habermas a \"road not taken,\" i.e., the possibility of a concept of reason that is immune to the now-familiar objections to subject-centered reason.\n\nDrawing on his excavations thus far of the counterdiscourse of modernity, Habermas proposes the concept of \"communicative action,\" which, he believes, might enable us to construct a model of reason grounded in mutual recognition and reciprocity. Communicative action posits as its ideal the rational discourse that obtains within a non-strategic, distortion-free communication situation, between parties who freely agree to appeal to, and abide by, reciprocally binding validity claims. Within the intersubjective paradigm of communicative action, reason dispenses a restorative dose of enlightenment, which is precisely the prescription Habermas recommends for the ills diagnosed by Nietzsche and MacIntyre.\n\nHabermas reserves no part for Nietzsche in either the retrieval of the counterdiscourse of modernity or the ongoing articulation of the model of communicative action. Nietzsche's role in the renewed dialectic of Enlightenment is exclusively negative, as a warning to other philosophers who would prematurely abandon the claims of rationality. While Habermas may ultimately be justified in rejecting Nietzsche's political thinking, I hope to have shown in this study that he is mistaken to exclude Nietzsche from his attempts to revive the dialectic of Enlightenment. The popular interpretation of Nietzsche as a \"prophet of extremity,\" who fetishizes the \"other\" of reason, trades upon a caricature of his post-Zarathustran thinking. As I have attempted to demonstrate, Nietzsche actually continues his critique of subject-centered reason while experimenting with alternative concepts. In fact, Habermas's deflationary approach to Nietzsche's political thinking is remarkably similar in form and execution to the \"leveling\" operation that he accuses Nietzsche of undertaking with respect to modernity as a whole. As in the case of MacIntyre's grandiose polemic, many of the ethical and political resources Habermas seeks to recover can perhaps be found in the lair of his sworn enemy, Nietzsche.\n\nAlthough Nietzsche unequivocally declares bankrupt the grand, sweeping dream of the Enlightenment, his genealogical method nevertheless celebrates the subversive, unmasking power of local applications of reason. Drawing on a familiar image of Enlightenment, he praises the demystifying power of his _Genealogy_ : \"In the end, in the midst of perfectly gruesome detonations, a _new_ truth becomes visible every time among thick 5 clouds\" (EH XI). He subsequently advertises himself as the lone champion of truth, proudly claiming to be \"the first to _discover_ the truth\" and accounting for his \"calamitous\" destiny by representing himself as \"truth enter[ing] into a fight with the lies of millennia\" (EH XIV:1). In light of his complex political aims, a muted celebration of his own will to truth is perfectly understandable. If he is to contribute to the self-overcoming of Christian morality, then it _must_ be the case that he too labors in the service of the will to truth, that he too takes his flame \"from the fire ignited by a faith millennia old, the Christian faith, which was also Plato's, that God is truth, that truth is _divine_ \" (GS 344, cited in GM 111:24).\n\n#### Nietzsche and Rorty\n\nRichard Rorty has defended in recent years a \"postmodernist bourgeois liberalism,\" whose Nietzschean debts he readily acknowledges. Undeterred (and unimpressed) by Nietzsche's scathing critique of liberal ideals, Rorty undertakes a selective appropriation of the basic elements of his political thinking. The key to reconciling Nietzsche's overtly illiberal thought with the guiding ideals of liberalism lies in restricting his moral perfectionism to the private sphere. This reconciliation is possible, Rorty explains, because Nietzsche's cranky attacks on liberalism are not germane to his enduring philosophical insights:\n\n> Nietzsche often speaks as though he had a social mission, as if he had views relevant to public action\u2014distinctly antiliberal views. But, as also in the case of Heidegger, this antiliberalism seems adventitious and idiosyncratic \u2014for the kind of self-creation of which Nietzsche and Heidegger are models seems to have nothing in particular to do with questions of social policy.\n\nExplicitly building on the narrative model of self-creation that Alexander Nehamas attributes to Nietzsche, Rorty enlists Nietzsche to galvanize the ethical life of contemporary liberal democratic societies. Enamored of Nietzsche's anti-essentialism and perspectivism but repulsed by his recidivistic appeal to the metaphysics of the will to power, Rorty articulates a purified, postmodern interpretation of Nietzschean self-creation. To create oneself anew, Rorty explains, is simply a matter of fashioning for oneself an enabling narrative, in which one exercises and displays one's own \"final vocabulary,\" a designation he proposes for the evolving constellation of terms, concepts, and expressions whereby one conveys one's ownmost hopes, fears, and aspirations. The goal of narrative self-creation, which Rorty calls \"autonomy,\" is achieved when one successfully deploys a final vocabulary that one calls one's own. Rorty's postmodernist bourgeois liberalism would not only encourage such self-creation in its citizenry, but also foster a tolerance for the self-creation of others. Borrowing a Zarathustran image for his sketch of the \"liberal ironists\" who inhabit his political utopia, Rorty maintains that \"[a]ll any ironist can measure success against is the past\u2014not by living up to it, but by re-describing it in his terms, thereby becoming able to say 'Thus I willed it.'\"\n\nWhile Nietzsche's political thinking is undeniably inimical to the flourishing of liberal ideals, it poses a genuine threat to liberal democracy only if allowed to contour political discourse in the public sphere. The liberal ironists who populate Rorty's utopia may incorporate Nietzsche's moral perfectionism into their own private disciplines of self-creation, seeking to arrive at a final vocabulary that expresses their ownmost achievement of autonomy, but they publicly pledge allegiance only to the liberal ideals that protect and sustain their private pursuits of self-perfection. The fruits of their private labors of self-creation may eventually be imported into the public sphere, but _only_ insofar as they uphold the signature ideals of liberal democracy.\n\nRorty thus enshrines Nietzsche as a private hero, who, if refused access to the public sphere, indirectly furnishes the dynamism and vitality of a thriving democracy. In order to convey the essence of his postmodernist bourgeois liberalism, Rorty proposes the following \"compromise\":\n\n> _Privatize_ the Nietzschean\u2014Sartrean\u2014Foucauldian attempt at authenticity and purity, in order to prevent yourself from slipping into a political attitude which will lead you to think that there is some social goal more important than avoiding cruelty.\n\nIn this limited respect, Rorty's appropriation of Nietzsche as the unacknowledged progenitor of liberal democracy is not unlike Cavell's defense of Nietzsche's role in the moral education of democratic citizens.\n\nWhile Rorty's appropriation of Nietzsche's moral perfectionism is ingenious, we might wonder about the political value of an ideal of \"autonomy\" whose expression and enactment can realistically be limited to the private sphere. Nietzsche unequivocally insists that \"healthy\" self-creation is never strictly private. Any attempt to contain the public reverberations of moral perfectionism will succeed only in artificially restricting the range of possible \"next\" selves to be created. \"Healthy\" self-creation always involves a Dionysian element of excess or superfluity, which would obliterate Rorty's guiding distinction between public and private:\n\n> The genius, in work and deed, is necessarily a squanderer: that he squanders himself, that is his greatness. The instinct of self-preservation is suspended, as it were; the overpowering pressure of outflowing forces forbids him any such care or caution. (TI IX:44)\n\nIn order to maintain his guiding distinction, Rorty must repress (or otherwise contain) those elements of excess that Nietzsche claims are essential to selfcreation. Although Rorty sincerely invites the citizens of his utopia to create themselves anew, he also requires that whatever \"next\" selves they create will be compatible with the (conservative) liberal pluralism he envisions.\n\nOne possible \"solution\" to the problem of excess lies, of course, in the advancing decadence of modernity. If the pursuit and achievement of selfperfection _can_ be restricted to the confines of the private sphere, then Rorty's postmodernist bourgeois liberalism may constitute a feasible model for political life in late modernity. If Rorty _has_ accurately surveyed the compass of moral perfectionism in late modernity, however, then perhaps his postmodernist bourgeois liberalism should be collected under the rubric Allan Bloom proposes for Rawls's theory of justice: _A First Philosophy for the Last Man._ 24\n\n### Nietzsche and Feminism\n\nOn the basis of the textual evidence alone, we would be hard pressed to propose a less likely champion of feminist politics than Nietzsche. His occasional remarks on the status of women, or the problem of _das Weib an sich,_ are rivalled in their misogyny only by the retrograde musings of his _Erzieher,_ Arthur Schopenhauer. Although feminist scholars have recently devoted a great deal of productive energy to the strategic (and selective) appropriation of Nietzsche's political thinking, his greatest contribution to feminist politics remains both indirect and unintended. His political legacy for contemporary feminism descends most vitally from his critique of objectivity, which some feminist scholars have recently adapted for incorporation into the epistemological frameworks of their own political projects.\n\nNietzsche's perspectivism, an epistemic thesis conveyed via a host of masculinist and residually misogynist images, might seem an unlikely precursor of feminist epistemologies. But in fact Nietzsche articulates an epistemic position that both acknowledges and accommodates the radically situated experiences that are prized by feminist thinkers. In the following passage, which contains his most detailed and sustained discussion of the position now known as \"perspectivism,\" he both exposes the snares of traditional epistemology and points us in a more promising direction:\n\n> [L]et us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a \"pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject\"; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as \"pure reason,\" \"absolute spirituality,\" \"knowledge in itself\": these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing _something,_ are supposed to be lacking... There is _only_ a perspectival seeing _[perspektivisches Sehen],_ _only_ a perspectival \"knowing\"; and the _more_ affects we allow to speak _[zu_ _Worte kommen]_ about one thing, the _more_ eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our \"concept\" of this thing, our \"objectivity,\" be. (GM 111:12)\n\nIn this brief passage, Nietzsche records several observations with which feminist theorists have recently expressed agreement. First of all, he warns his readers to beware of the traditional interpretation of Objectivity as _disinterested_ _contemplation_. The goal of disinterested contemplation presupposes \"conceptual fictions\" and \"contradictory concepts,\" and it furthermore requires us to posit a disembodied, disinterested knowing subject, \"an eye turned in no particular direction.\" His perspectivism thus attempts to account for those affective ingredients and determinants of knowledge that traditionally have been ignored or discounted by orthodox epistemologists. His reconstituted notion of objectivity (consistently noted by his use of quotation marks) suggests that knowledge is a function of the embodied expression of our affective investment in the world. His perspectivism thus presupposes an account of knowing subjects as radically situated in the world and in their bodies.\n\nSecond, if we interpret these \"eyes\" as perspectives, whose \"interpretive forces\" are sustained by a suffusion of affect, then we see that, for Nietzsche, perspectives are not disembodied points of view that hover disinterestedly over the world. Indeed, his perspectivism is strategically designed to recuperate the metaphorics of vision that have dominated (and perverted) representational epistemology. In order to appropriate the metaphorics of vision for his reconstituted notion of objectivity, he deploys the twin sensory images of \"eyes\" and \"voices\":\n\n> [T]he _more_ affects we allow to speak about one thing, the _more_ eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our \"concept\" of this thing, our \"objectivity,\" be. (GM 111:12)\n\nEyes and affects, knowing and feeling, seeing and speaking, conception and perception, situation and expression: the pursuit of Nietzschean objectivity requires us to deconstruct these binary oppositions and integrate the supposedly antagonistic terms within each. His reconstituted notion of objectivity encourages a maximal expression of affective investment in the world\u2014a chorus of radically situated \"voices\"\u2014and thus stands 180 degrees removed from the traditional epistemological goal of disinterested, disaffected contemplation. In fact, he concludes his warning against disinterested contemplation by graphically likening the pursuit of Objectivity to an act of self-inflicted castration: \"to suspend each and every affect, supposing we were capable of this\u2014what would that mean but to _castrate_ the intellect?\" (GM 111:12).\n\n\"There is _only_ a perspectival knowing\" thus means that knowledge is possible only if one's affective engagement with the world is both recognized and expressed. If it is not, then one may lay claim at best to a desiccated, bloodless simulacrum of knowledge. Nietzsche's recuperation of the metaphorics of vision thus enables us to understand perspectives as _bodies_ : suffused with affect, inextricably situated in the world, and inscribed with the pain and torment inflicted by normalizing mores and institutions. He consequently reconstitutes the notion of objectivity to derive from an aggregation of radically situated perspectives (or bodies)\u2014none of which affords us an epistemically pure glimpse of the world. The task of the philosopher who aspires to Nietzschean objectivity is to compile an exhaustive aggregation of perspectives, to assemble an unprecedented chorus of affective voices.\n\nThird, Nietzsche recommends his perspectivism not for its epistemic purity, but for the strategic advantage that accrues to his reconstituted notion of objectivity. His discussion of \"perspectivism\" appears within the context of his analysis of the ascetic ideal, with which he associates the traditional understanding of Objectivity as disinterested contemplation. He frequently contends that the pursuit of Objectivity involves a concomitant assault on the affects, which in turn leads, paradoxically, to a diminution of our knowledge, to the subordination of situated knowledges to lifeless simulacra of knowledge. The strategic advantage of _his_ objectivity lies in \"the ability to _control_ one's Pro and Con and to dispose of them, so that one knows how to employ a _variety_ of perspectives and affective interpretations in the service of knowledge\" (GM 111: 12).\n\nFourth, Nietzsche willingly accepts the self-referential implications of his endorsement of situated knowledges. He readily acknowledges that his own perspectivism too is situated, that it reflects the peculiar political interests of its author. \"Perspectivism\" is itself perspectival in nature, for it is the product of the partial perspective and embodied affect peculiar to Herr Nietzsche. Rather than stake an illicit claim to epistemic purity, he quite openly voices the hostility and resentment that inform his own political campaign against the ascetic practices of traditional epistemology. It is no coincidence that his most illuminating articulation of his perspectivism appears in the _Genealogy,_ a book in which he both announces and displays his own vested political interests in compiling a genealogy of morals.\n\nNietzsche's perspectivism thus provides a promising epistemological model for feminist theorists. But let us be clear about the political costs of embracing his perspectivism: if we accept this reconstituted notion of objectivity, and seek an aggregation of radically situated perspectives, then we must abandon the quest for a privileged, epistemically pure, God's-eye perspective on the world. We need not disavow our cultural, genealogical or political preferences for certain perspectives, but we must be careful to situate these preferences within a discernible political agenda. The privilege of a particular perspective will derive entirely from its situation within the political agenda it expresses, and not from its internal coherence or privileged access to the real world.\n\nSeveral feminist theorists have recently acknowledged their debts to Nietzsche's \"perspectivism,\" which they have borrowed in order to articulate the theory of knowledge that underlies their political projects and agendas. Declaring a provisional truce with a potentially vicious opponent, these theorists join Nietzsche in rejecting the traditional epistemological ideal of Objectivity. Feminist theorists have long maintained that the pursuit of Objectivity would require agents to accede to a disembodied, trans-perspectival, patriarchal standpoint\u2014a chimerical gambit that Donna Haraway calls \"the God trick.\" As Susan Bordo argues, this \"view from nowhere\" acquires the privilege and cachet of a \"view from everywhere,\" and it effectively devaluates the experiences of those agents whose knowledges of the world are most obviously and ineluctably situated. These theorists thus conclude that the ideal of disinterested, detached Objectivity is pursued at the expense and exclusion of the situated knowledges of women, especially women of color. Traditional (patriarchal) epistemology consequently delivers only a simulacrum of objectivity, for its emphasis on disinterested detachment precisely discounts the partiality that defines a radically situated perspective.\n\nAt the same time, however, some feminist theorists are understandably reluctant to abandon the _notion_ of objectively valid knowledge as the goal of philosophical inquiry. According to Sandra Harding, some such critical standard is crucial to the very project of feminist epistemology:\n\n> What would be the point of a theory of knowledge that did not make prescriptions for how to go about getting knowledge or of a prescription for getting knowledge that did not arise from a theory about how knowledge can be and has been produced?\n\nA reconstituted notion of objectivity would provide a standard whereby theorists might claim, for example, that one scientific theory is better or more complete or more promising than another. In this light, we might think of one goal of feminist epistemology as the reconstitution of the notion of objectivity, such that feminist theorists might continue the critical enterprise of science without subscribing to its most pernicious concepts.\n\nThe legacy of Nietzsche's \"perspectivism\" is perhaps most vitally preserved within the experimental epistemologies of several radical feminist theorists. Following Nietzsche, for example, Donna Haraway contends that the objectivity of a perspective is a function of its _partiality_ :\n\n> The moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision... Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. In this way we might become answerable for what we learn how to see.\n\nThe partiality that Haraway prizes is achieved not through the disinterested detachment of subjects from the world, but through the radical situation of subjects in the world. Her suggested reconceptualization of \"feminist objectivity\" thus devolves from her more fundamental reconceptualization of the world we seek to know in terms of the world in which we live.\n\nHaraway's brand of feminism conveys a postmodern sensibility in large part because she has abandoned the quest for an epistemically pure, foundationally innocent standpoint. Indeed, a primary aim of her writing is to disabuse feminists of the perceived need for an untainted, originary standpoint from which they might launch their various political campaigns:\n\n> The science question in feminism is about objectivity as positioned rationality. Its images are not the products of escape and transcendence of limits, i.e., the view from above, but the joining of partial views and halting voices into a collective subject position that promises a vision of the means of ongoing finite embodiment, of living within limits and contradictions, i.e., of views from somewhere.\n\nPartiality thus stands as the sole determinant of objectivity, and there exists no verifiable epistemic relation between objectivity and standpoints informed by positions of exclusion, oppression or victimization:\n\n> A commitment to mobile positioning and to passionate detachment is dependent on the impossibility of innocent \"identity\" politics and epistemologies as strategies for seeing from the standpoints of the subjugated in order to see well.\n\nPostmodern feminists register a preference for the standpoints of excluded, subjugated women not because such standpoints are epistemically pure, but because \"they seem to promise more adequate, sustained, objective, transforming accounts of the world.\"\n\nThis preference is clearly political in nature, and Haraway makes no pretense of aspiring to epistemic purity or foundational innocence. For Haraway, any epistemic privilege necessarily implies a political (i.e., situated) preference. Her postmodern orientation elides the boundaries traditionally drawn between politics and epistemology, and thus renders otiose the ideal of epistemic purity. All perspectives are partial, all standpoints situated\u2014including those of feminist theorists. It is absolutely crucial to Haraway's postmodern feminist project that we acknowledge her claims _about_ situated knowledge as _themselves_ situated within the political agenda she sets for postmodern feminism; feminist theorists must therefore accept and accommodate the self-referential implications of their own epistemic claims.\n\nThe political agenda of postmodern feminism thus assigns to (some) subjugated standpoints a political preference or priority. Haraway, for example, believes that some subjugated standpoints may be more immediately revealing, especially since they have been discounted and excluded for so long. They may prove especially useful in coming to understand the political and psychological mechanisms whereby the patriarchy discounts the radically situated knowledges of others while claiming for its own (situated) knowledge an illicit epistemic privilege:\n\n> The standpoints of the subjugated...are savvy to modes of denial through repression, forgetting, and disappearing acts\u2014ways of being nowhere while claiming to see comprehensively. The subjugated have a decent chance to be on to the god-trick and all its dazzling\u2014and, therefore, blinding\u2014illuminations.\n\nBut these subjugated standpoints do not afford feminist theorists an epistemically privileged view of the world, independent of the political agendas they have established. Reprising elements of Nietzsche's psychological profile of the \"slave\" type, Haraway warns against the\n\n> serious danger of romanticizing and\/or appropriating the vision of the less powerful while claiming to see from their positions. To see from below is neither easily learned nor unproblematic, even if \"we\" \"naturally\" inhabit the great underground terrain of subjugated knowledges. The positionings of the subjugated are not exempt from critical re-examination, decoding, deconstruction, and interpretation; that is, from both semiological and hermeneutic modes of critical enquiry. The standpoints of the subjugated are not \"innocent\" positions.\n\nA subjugated standpoint may shed new light on the ways of an oppressor, but it in no way renders superfluous or redundant the standpoint of the oppressor. Because neither standpoint fully comprises the other, the aggregation of the two would move both parties (or a third party) closer to a more objective understanding of the world. If some feminists have political reasons for disavowing this project of aggregation, or for adopting it selectively, then they must pursue their political agenda at the expense of the greater objectivity that they might otherwise have gained.\n\nContinuing this Nietzschean line of investigation, Bat-Ami Bar On exposes the dangers involved in conceiving of \"mastery\" as emanating from a single, static center. Attempting to translate the guiding insights of Nietzsche's \"perspectivism\" into distinctly political terms, Bar On points out that in the complex societies of advanced industrial capitalism, virtually all agents simultaneously stand in relations of \"mastery\" to some and \"enslavement\" to others. As an alternative to the \"single-center\" theory of power preferred by traditional epistemologists, Bar On proposes a \"theorized dispersion of power among multiple centers.\" In a similarly Nietzschean vein, bell hooks warns that the romanticization of \"marginality\" may actually dispossess oppressed agents of a fruitful \"place of resistance.\" Here hooks follows Nietzsche in reminding feminist theorists not to discount prematurely the potentially restorative powers that conditions of oppression can, under certain circumstances, engender.\n\nHaraway completes the political appropriation of Nietzsche's epistemic legacy by exposing the dystopic by-products of a \"dream\" that continues to guide the political struggles of some feminists:\n\n> The permanent partiality of feminist points of view has consequences for our expectations of forms of political organization and participation. We do not need a totality in order to work well. The feminist dream of a common language, like all dreams for a perfectly true language, of perfectly faithful naming of experience, is a totalizing and imperialist one.\n\nThis \"dream\" of foundational innocence is not only epistemically bankrupt, but also politically disastrous, for it imposes upon feminist politics conditions of justification that are impossible to meet. Haraway's campaign to expose and debunk this \"dream\" effectively absolves feminists of any perceived responsibility for grounding or justifying a political agenda by appeal to epistemic criteria. Haraway regards both epistemology and politics as serious endeavors, but she does not require of the latter that it acquire its justificatory and motive force from the former\u2014especially if the former retains any residue of its familiar patriarchal cast. The \"privilege\" of any postmodern feminist agenda must and will be purely political; the desire or need for a further, epistemic privilege will only frustrate feminist political activity.\n\nAs an antidote to the dream of foundational innocence, Haraway proposes various imaginative exercises designed to liberate feminists from the perceived need for an originary, epistemically pure standpoint. As an enabling narrative for postmodern feminists, Haraway submits the myth of the cyborg, a composite, hybrid creature that enacts the irresolvable tensions and dualities that characterize late modernity. The cyborg represents the embodiment of purely prospective agency, an unhistorical mutant to which the past\u2014along with the allure of innocence, origin, and redemption\u2014is irretrievably lost. If feminists can imagine themselves in their political activity as cyborgs\u2014which, in reality, women have always been\u2014then they can perhaps exorcize the immobilizing specter of _das Weib an sich,_ which continues to haunt their political practices.\n\nHere too Haraway follows Nietzsche. The prototype cyborg is none other than Zarathustra, the consummate micropolitical agent of late modernity. Indeed, we might profitably read the _Bildungsgang_ of Zarathustra as something like a cyborg myth: operating in the shadow of the dead God, consigned by his crepuscular destiny to a belief in crumbling idols that he can neither respect nor reject, Zarathustra must somehow neutralize his romantic dreams of return and redemption. He eventually \"becomes what he is\" by turning that which oppresses him\u2014his destiny and fatality\u2014to his own strategic advantage. He is ineluctably both free spirit and ascetic priest, and he implements both strands of this dual heritage to found a micro-community of \"higher men\" (Z IV:2\u20139). This community is unstable and ephemeral, lacking altogether in theoretical justifications, institutional reinforcements, and foundational myths. This community of higher men is exclusively prospective in its orientation; it has no laws, no traditions, no mores, no history, and no goal above and beyond the survival of European nihilism.\n\nZarathustra founds this cyborg community, supplying it with a minimal micropolitical infrastructure in the form of an inaugural \"Ass Festival\" (Z IV:17\u2013 18), but he eventually withdraws from it. He comes to realize that his dual heritage renders him both life-giving and life-destroying. Although he has consecrated this micro-community in the twilight of the idols, he has also encouraged his new companions to invest their redemptive hopes in him. Sensing that he has surreptitiously enslaved them and usurped the station of the dead God \u2014having become someone for the sake of whom \"living on earth is worthwhile\" (Z IV:19)\u2014he banishes the higher men and dissolves the micro-community he founded.\n\nThe final scene of _Zarathustra_ , framed in cyclical imagery that suggests a closed system, captures the purely prospective agency of the cyborg. Restless in his sheltering solitude but chastened by the prospect of reprising the pathogenesis that doomed his previous political endeavors, Zarathustra rises nonetheless to greet the dawn. Bereft of hopes for ultimate success, armed solely with the will to survive the decadence of late modernity, Zarathustra departs his cave once again to found yet another, equally ephemeral, cyborg community.\n\n### Nietzsche and Foucault\n\nThe legacy of Nietzsche's political confrontation with late modernity endures most vitally in the work of Michel Foucault (1926\u20131984). Foucault largely accepts Nietzsche's general diagnosis of late modernity, as a distintegrating epoch fraught with contradictions and disarray, and he arrives at a similar inventory of the political resources and options available to agents in late modernity. While he resists the biologistic terms and categories that convey Nietzsche's critique of modernity, Foucault nevertheless agrees that the project of critique can continue only if philosophers acknowledge their participation and complicity in the cultural malaise they intend to investigate. As a response to the uncertainty and contingency that cloud philosophical investigation in the twilight of the idols, Foucault adopts Nietzsche's experimental methods and adapts them to his own unique fields of inquiry.\n\n#### Archaeology\n\nFoucault is perhaps most famous for the experimental method he called _archaeology,_ which he developed in order to explore the peculiar epistemic conditions of late modernity. The guiding aim of the archaeologist is twofold: 1) to identify historical periods of epistemic convergence across a cluster of sciences and disciplines; and 2) to chart the transformation, and eventual disintegration, of epistemic coherence within the discursive practices of science. He thus intends his archaeological investigations to reveal the epistemic principles governing a period of discursive convergence. Foucault introduced the term _episteme_ to designate the epistemic coherence of various discursive practices within a single historical period. The sciences and disciplines clustered within an episteme all share a common epistemic framework and specialized vocabulary; they consequently exhibit general agreement on the basic conditions and criteria of truth, knowledge, verification, and certainty.\n\nThe subject matter investigated by the archaeologist is the discourse of the human sciences. By \"discourse\" Foucault means not only the shared, common language of scientific disciplines, but also the background structures and practices that determine the form and content of this language. The discourse of the human sciences thus comprises the specialized language spoken by scientific authorities, as well as the extra-linguistic conditions that determine what can be said, and by whom, in the production and distribution of scientific knowledge. Archaeology ascribes primary agency not to the experts who claim to conduct scientific inquiry, but to the \"anonymous field of practices\" embedded within the discourse itself. The discourse thus produces its representative \"experts,\" as well as the knowledge they carefully disseminate. Unwittingly serving the hidden interests of the discursive practices in which they involuntarily participate, subjects contribute to the production and dissemination of knowledge, which they claim to discover through \"objective,\" scientific inquiry.\n\nLike Nietzsche, Foucault attempts to exploit the unique conditions of his historical situation, treating the advanced decay of modernity as an uncharted field for philosophical investigation. An archaeology of knowledge is possible only when an episteme begins to disintegrate, as the clustered sciences and disciplines become conscious of the nature\u2014and limitations\u2014of the common epistemic framework they share. Indeed, discursive practices become visible to the archaeologist only when they manifest their internal instabilities, as evidenced by the mounting failures of their defining epistemic projects. As an episteme disintegrates, its signature constellation of conditions and criteria for knowledge becomes both manifest (to the archaeologist) and epistemically bankrupt.\n\nA representative deployment of Foucault's archaeological method is found in _The Order of Things._ 41 Foucault is primarily concerned in _The Order of Things_ to document the \"profound upheaval\" that occurred at the end of the eighteenth century, when the episteme of the Classical Age began to disintegrate. The project of representation, which had served to unify the Classical episteme, proved itself incapable of accounting for the act and the agent of representing. \"Man,\" the supposed focus of inquiry in the human sciences, had eluded the frame of representation. Despite the systemic failure of the project of representation, and the disintegration of its corresponding episteme, \"man\" nevertheless remains the (faulted) object of scientific inquiry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Age of Man, Foucault proposes, is defined by a series of ingenious (and failed) schemes to derive from human finitude itself the conditions of scientific knowledge. Reflecting the fragmentation of their avowed subject matter, the human sciences now labor in the absence of the sort of epistemic convergence that presided over their birth and development. The very possibility of truth and knowledge is now in question, as the human sciences scramble to construct theories and propositions in the space vacated by their proper object of investigation.\n\nRather than bemoan the disappearance of \"man,\" or attempt to restore epistemic coherence to the human sciences, Foucault presents the irrecuperable fragmentation of \"man\" as legislating new directions for scientific inquiry. _The_ _Order of Things_ proposes human finitude not as a new certainty that might solve the epistemic riddles of the human sciences, but as a new possibility in its own right, within which fruitful experimental thinking might take place. Like Nietzsche, Foucault intends his investigations to limn the unacknowledged (and unanticipated) successes sheltered within the failures of modernity. The disintegration of the episteme may very well illuminate heretofore neglected ethical and political resources.\n\n#### Subjectivation\n\nFoucault designed his archaeologies to yield purely descriptive results. He neither claimed nor expected to derive from them a critical appraisal of the discourse or episteme under investigation. While archaeology afforded him the critical distance he sought from the discursive practices he wished to investigate, it did not enable him to address the concrete social problems that concerned him. The most significant development in his political thinking thus occurred in the late 1960s, when he diverted his primary focus from discursive practices to the power relations that inform and sustain them.\n\nBy virtue of their involuntary participation in discursive practices, human beings are transformed into specific types of subjects, uniquely enabled and disabled to serve particular regimes of power. The defining characteristic of power is its capacity for \"infinite displacement\" within a complex network of discursive practices. All discourse is ultimately concerned with power, albeit in complicated, disguised ways. Because power can be effective only when it remains partially hidden, it always shelters itself within a discourse about something else. Power is both ubiquitous and capillary in its manifestations, and it announces its presence only as a diversion from its more central activities.\n\nIn order to supplement his archaeological expeditions with a critical, political dimension, Foucault developed the method of historical investigation known as \"genealogy,\" which he self-consciously borrowed from Nietzsche. The genealogical method enabled Foucault not only to investigate hidden power relations, but also to deliver a critique of concrete social practices. Although he never abandoned his archaeological method, he eventually came to rely on genealogy to expose the subtle transformations that signal the consolidating movement of power toward domination.\n\nBy tracing the historical descent of authoritative discursive practices, the Foucauldian genealogist is able to chart the shifting relationships between power and knowledge within the historical transformation of these practices. The genealogist can glimpse power only as it adjusts and reconfigures itself within the social and political relations it strategically inhabits, as it silently transforms institutions and discursive practices. Foucault was especially concerned to investigate the exclusionary power of discursive practices, including those reponsible for the institutionalized definitions of madness, criminality, and sexual deviancy.\n\nFoucault's subsequent turn to ethics comprises an extension of the development of his genealogical method. His contribution to ethics involved neither the articulation of a new moral theory, nor the advo cacy of an alternative to the signature \"techniques of the self\" that govern late modernity. He was concerned rather to investigate the conditions under which particular \"docile\" subjects are formed, and to expose the hidden power interests that are served by these subjects. He consequently centered his ethical investigations on the process he called _subjectivation,_ whereby human beings are gradually transformed into subjects invested with unique powers and limitations. Of specific concern to him, especially in his final writings, were the techniques of subjectivation deployed by \"bio-power,\" which organizes the resources of modern societies under the pretense of attending to the care of the species and the health of individual human beings.\n\nIn his late writings on ethics, Foucault began to carve out for the subject a modest domain of agency and causal efficacy. His genealogies of the modern sexual subject revealed that the process of subjectivation is not strictly coercive and disabling. Power relations also manifest themselves in productive discursive practices, including those that distribute goods and information, satisfy limited desires, manage resources, and secure the material conditions of social harmony. Modern subjects are rendered docile through a battery of normalizing disciplines, but they can also turn the productive power invested in them against regimes of power that threaten to accede to domination.\n\nFoucault's ethical investigations thus revealed that regimes of power can realize their ends only if human beings are transformed into productive subjects, invested with a limited capacity for self-legislation. The subjects depicted in his later genealogies are not merely the unwitting products of clandestine discursive practices, for they are able to resist the totalization of power within its most ambitious and monolithic regimes. To expose the mobilization of power within mechanisms of transformation is to render it temporarily less effective and less dangerous. Power can neither be eradicated nor contained, but its inexorable tendency toward domination can often be neutralized within local regimes.\n\n#### Toward a Politics of Resistance\n\nNietzsche's experimentation with unexplored configurations of agency is taken up by Foucault in the later, \"ethical\" period of his career. Although Foucault located in the dominant regimes of bio-power a masked impulse toward domination, he also acknowledged their productive, empowering roles in the formation of the modern subject. At the end of his career, he attempted a partial recuperation of the agency of the subject, outlining the conditions under which subjects might constitute themselves in opposition to dangerous techniques of subjectivation. Under certain conditions, modern subjects can\u2014and do\u2014resist the totalization of power within specific structures and local regimes.\n\nFoucault's writings from the \"ethical\" period of his career thus approximate most closely the experimental politics of resistance outlined by Nietzsche. Especially in his investigations into _The History of Sexuality,_ Foucault seriously entertains Nietzsche's \"affirmative\" thesis that (some) modern subjects may turn ascetic disciplines to their own advantage. Techniques of subjectivation are always both repressive _and_ empowering, investing subjects with residual faculties that may be deployed in the resistance of domination. Acknowledging that the constitution of the subject produces, as an unintended by-product, a feedback loop of potentially generative powers, Foucault gestures toward an experimental investigation of the untested modes of agency available\u2014though perhaps unknown\u2014to modern subjects. His efforts to resist _domination,_ by which he means the totalizing consolidation of power within specific regimes of bio-power, thus emerge as analogous to Nietzsche's attempts to deflect the advent of the \"will to nothingness.\" For both thinkers, the immediate goal of political resistance is to safeguard the continued development of human subjectivity, such that it might someday stand security for its own future.\n\nUnlike Nietzsche, Foucault declined the mantle of the political lawgiver. Wary of his own complicities in the regimes of power he sought to illuminate, he refused to posit alternative ethical systems or \"techniques of the self,\" which might in turn serve as sites for the consolidation of power into structures of domination. He consciously limited himself to an investigation of the historical conditions that sustain the array of subject constitutions available to us. Here Foucault deviated most obviously from Nietzsche as a political thinker. In suspending his subversive genealogical practices to declare war on Christian morality, Foucault might say, Nietzsche unwittingly contributes to the formation of regimes of power that are potentially more dangerous than those manifested within the discourse of Christian morality. Foucault's stubborn refusal to situate himself on the \"political checkerboard\" was thus intended to minimize his own deleterious influence on the exploration of the novel configurations of agency he discovered. While it is doubtful that his strategy for neutralizing his own negative influences was, or could have been, entirely successful, his desire to avoid the fate of Nietzsche is certainly understandable.\n\nLike Nietzsche, Foucault never completed the ambitious genealogical agenda he set for himself. The guarded optimism conveyed by his final writings has been taken up by successor genealogists, and the articulation of a Foucauldian political position remains, for some, an ongoing project.\n\n# Notes\n\n### Introduction\n\n. Mark Warren draws a useful distinction between Nietzsche's political philosophy and his \"philosophy of power,\" in _Nietzsche and Political Thought_ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 1\u20138, 207\u2013223. According to Warren, Nietzsche's political philosophy does not merit further consideration because it belies the promise of his \"philosophy of agency\" and his \"critique of Western culture.\" Although I reject Warren's dismissive characterization of Nietzsche's politics as a \"neoaristocratic conservatism\" (p. 211), as well as his endorsement of Nietzsche's \"philosophy of power\" as a \"framework for a critically postmodern political philosophy\" (p. 207), his distinction helpfully illuminates the potential discontinuities that obtain between Nietzsche's antifoundationalist philosophical insights and his less revolutionary political sentiments.\n\n### 1 \nPolitical Perfectionism\n\n. Nietzsche's interest in \"breeding\" human types, as opposed to producing a \"successor\" species, would seem to militate against the thesis of Tracy Strong's pioneering study, _Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). Strong attributes to Nietzsche a \"politics of transfiguration,\" which undertakes \"the development of beings who simply do not live as human-all-too-human\" (p. 13), which in turn \"require[s] a change in the very stuff of humanity\" (p. 260). I am both sympathetic and indebted to Strong's general line of interpretation, but I find his emphasis on \"the politics of transfiguration\" to be misleadingly freighted with images of transcendence and radical discontinuity. If, as Nietzsche suggests in this passage, \"man is an _end_ ,\" then a \"politics of transfiguration\" would constitute an inappropriate, overzealous, and nihilistic response to the problem of modernity. As I hope to show in this study, Nietzsche's primary political goal is the perfection or completion of humankind, not its transfiguration.\n\n2. My reading of Nietzsche's perfectionism is indebted to Stanley Cavell's seminal essay, \"Aversive Thinking: Emersonian Representations in Heidegger and Nietzsche,\" in _Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of_ _Emersonian Perfectionism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 33\u2013 63. Cavell restricts his attention almost exclusively to the early essay _Schopenhauer as Educator,_ but his account of Nietzsche's perfectionism is relevant for an examination of the post-Zarathustran writings as well.\n\n3. Nietzsche explicitly recommends the conditions under which Schopenhauer emerged (SE 7), but if we endorse his later observation that his _Untimely_ _Meditations_ \"speak only of [him]\" (EH V:3), then the conditions he describes are (also) responsible for his own development as a genius.\n\n4. Nietzsche futher explains that \"This _instinct for freedom_ forcibly made latent\u2014we have seen it already\u2014this instinct for freedom pushed back and repressed, incarcerated within and finally able to discharge and vent itself only on itself: that, and that alone, is what the _bad conscience_ is in its beginnings\" (GM II:17).\n\n5. Bruce Detwiler suggests that \"Nietzsche distinguishes between what he calls the 'good conscience' characteristic of the noble type and the 'bad conscience' that characterizes the slavish type,\" in _Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic_ _Radicalism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 124. Detwiler's suggestion is especially helpful in explaining why Nietzsche believes that certain individuals are (or have been) spared the existential suffering that attends the introversion of the natural impulses. Whereas civilization demands of _everyone_ the inward discharge of the \"instincts,\" only those who are disadvantaged by the reigning social order are debilitated by the existential suffering of the bad conscience. On this interpretation, the \"good conscience\" would be the privilege of those whose social standing affords them the opportunity to compensate somehow for the introversion of their animal impulses.\n\n6. My distinction between the \"existential suffering\" of the bad conscience and the \"surplus suffering\" of guilt draws on Arthur C.Danto's distinction between \"extensional suffering and intensional suffering, where the latter consists of an interpretation of the former,\" in \"Some Remarks on _The Genealogy of Morals,_ \" in _Reading Nietzsche,_ ed. Robert C.Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 21.\n\n7. I am indebted for this particular formulation of the point to Cavell, pp. 58\u201359.\n\n8. Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, decrees that \"the _\u00dcbermensch_...belong[s] in the pages of a philosophical bestiary rather than in serious discussion.\" _After Virtue_ (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1984), p. 22.\n\n9. For a superbly rich account of the development of Zarathustra (and his teachings) throughout the course of his travels, see Laurence Lampert, _Nietzsche's Teaching_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). I take up the question of Zarathustra's reliability in my essay, \"Solving the Problem of Socrates: Nietzsche's _Zarathustra_ as Political Irony,\" _Political Theory,_ vol. 16, no. 2, May 1988, pp. 257\u2013280.\n\n10. Several scholars distinguish profitably between the _\u00dcbermensch_ and \"higher humanity.\" See, for example, Richard Schacht, _Nietzsche_ (London: Routledge, 1983), p. 339; and Ofelia Schutte, _Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 122. Wolfgang M\u00fcller-Lauter similarly maintains that the _\u00dcbermensch_ represents the \"apotheosis\" of \"higher humanity,\" in _Nietzsche: Seine Philosophie der Gegens\u00e4tze und die Gegens\u00e4tze_ _seiner Philosophie_ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), p. 127; cf. Schacht, p. 482.\n\n11. In a letter dated 20 October 1888, Nietzsche tells Malwida von Meysenbug that the _\u00dcbermensch_ is a type of human being who is \"a hundred times more similar\" to the type instantiated by Cesare Borgia than to the type instantiated by Christ. _Friedrich_ _Nietzsche, S\u00e4mtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe,_ ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter\/Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986), vol. 8, #1135, p. 458.\n\n12. Explaining his \"destiny,\" Nietzsche allows that he fears further misunderstandings of his teachings: \"I have a terrible fear that one day I will be pronounced _holy_ : you will guess why I publish this book before; it shall prevent people from doing mischief with me\" (EH XIV:1). The \"before\" refers here to the publication of _The_ _Antichrist(ian)_ , which Nietzsche intended to withhold until the reception of _Ecce_ _Homo_ had sufficiently reduced the likelihood of censorship and confiscation.\n\n13. For a measured critique of the interpretation of the _\u00dcbermensch_ as constituting an \"ideal type,\" see Bernd Magnus, \"Perfectibility and Attitude in Nietzsche's _\u00dcbermensch,_ \" _The Review of Metaphysics,_ vol. 36, March 1983, pp. 633\u2013659.\n\n14. Nietzsche again defines the _\u00dcbermensch_ in relational terms when he identifies \"the type of man\" that \"Zarathustra wants\" as \"a relatively superhuman _[\u00fcbermenschlicher]_ type\" (EH XIV:5).\n\n15. My interpretation of the founding labors of the _\u00dcbermensch_ is indebted to David Owen's discussion of \"agonism,\" and its capacity for contributing to the cultivation of _virt\u00f9,_ in _Nietzsche, Politics and Modernity_ (London: Sage, 1995), esp. pp. 132\u2013 154; and to William Connolly's Nietzsche-inspired account of \"agonistic democracy\" in _Identity\/Difference_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 184\u2013197.\n\n16. MacIntyre, for example, describes the _\u00dcbermensch_ as \"the man who transcends, finds his good nowhere in the social world to date, but only in that in himself which dictates his own new law and his own new table of the virtues... [T]he great man cannot enter into relationships mediated by appeal to shared standards or virtues or goods; he is his own only authority and his relationships to others have to be exercises of that authority\" (pp. 257\u2013258).\n\n17. According to J.P.Stern, for example, Nietzsche \"seems unaware that he is giving us nothing to distinguish the fanaticism that goes with bad faith from his own belief in the unconditioned value of self-realization and self-becoming\u2014that is, from his own belief in the Superman... No man came closer to the full realization of self-created 'values' than A.Hitler.\" _A Study of Nietzsche_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 117.\n\n18. Alexander Nehamas astutely observes that \"the characters Nietzsche admires...are overwhelmingly literary and artistic.\" _Nietzsche: Life as Literature_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 227.\n\n19. Emerson's commitment to the exemplary standing of \"representative men\" is evidenced throughout his essays and lectures. For a summary account, see his introductory essay on the \"Uses of Great Men,\" in _The Collected Works of Ralph_ _Waldo Emerson,_ vol. IV: _Representative Men: Seven Lectures,_ ed. Wallace E.Williams and Douglas Emory Wilson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 1\u201320.\n\n20. My reckoning of Nietzsche's psychological debts to Emerson is indebted to Graham Parkes, _Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche's Psychology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), esp. ch. 4.\n\n21. Gianni Vattimo argues that the _\u00dcbermensch_ can emerge only in a (future) world that has already been made _\u00fcbermenschlich_ \u2014a task which outstrips the volitional capacities of late modernity. The trajectory of Nietzsche's political thinking may consequently describe a vicious circle: the _\u00dcbermensch_ is its own precondition. _The Adventure of Difference: Philosophy after Nietzsche and Heidegger,_ trans. Cyprian Blamires and Thomas Harrison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 33\u201336; 55\u201358.\n\n22. Robert Pippin attributes to Zarathustra the realization that the _\u00dcbermensch_ represents \"a radically temporal, contingent 'ideal'; it answers _only_ the specific, practical incoherence of the ideals of late bourgeios culture.\" \"Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsche's _Thus Spoke Zarathustra,_ \" in _Nietzsche's New Seas,_ ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy B.Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 52.\n\n23. MacIntyre persuasively maintains that \"The concept of the Nietzschean 'great man' is also a pseudo-concept... It represents individualism's final attempt to escape from its own consequences.\" _After Virtue,_ p. 259.\n\n### 2 \nThe Uses and Disadvantages of Morality for Life\n\n1. John Rawls, _A Theory of Justice_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 325.\n\n2. Ibid.\n\n3. Ibid.\n\n4. Nietzsche finds a \"natural\" basis for the pyramidal structure he prefers for hierarchically organized societies, in the \"powerful pyramidal rock\" he spies near the lake at Silvaplana, at the time that the thought of eternal recurrence descends upon him (EH 111:1).\n\n5. Letter to Franz Overbeck on 24 March 1887. Friedrich Nietzsche, _S\u00e4mtliche_ _Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe,_ ed. G Colli and M.Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter\/ Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986), vol. 8, #820, p. 48.\n\n6. Nietzsche thus adds a third caste to the two-tiered system he proposed in H I:439.\n\n7. Nietzsche distinguishes himself from the \"whole European and American species of _libres penseurs,_ \" who \"still believe in the 'ideal'.\" Declaring himself \"the first _immoralist,_ \" he thus implies that immoralists no longer want \"to 'improve' humankind, in their own image\" (EH V:2).\n\n8. Nietzsche maintains that \"the claim for independence, for free development, for _laisser aller_ is pressed most hotly by the very people for whom no reins would be too strict. This is true _in politics,_ this is true in art\" (TI IX:41).\n\n9. As early as his _Untimely Meditation_ on Schopenhauer, Nietzsche proposed that the task of culture is to correct for the profligacy of Nature: \"Nature propels the philosopher into humankind like an arrow; it takes no aim but hopes the arrow will stick somewhere. But countless times it misses and is depressed at the fact... The artist and the philosopher are evidence against the purposiveness of nature as regards the means it employs, though they are also first-rate evidence as to the wisdom of its purpose\" (SE 7).\n\n10. Allowing that Manu \"found it necessary to be _terrible [furchtbar]_ \" in the struggle against \"the unbred man, the mish-mash man, the chandala,\" Nietzsche recounts some of the more grisly edicts of Manu's law (TI VII:3).\n\n11. While Nietzsche's endorsement of slavery may be irrecuperably offensive to contemporary liberal sensibilities, we should bear in mind the plethora of forms\u2014 many of them documented by Nietzsche himself\u2014that slavery has assumed over the millennia. Surely the most efficient forms of slavery are those psychological forms embraced by the slaves themselves, such that their slavery becomes the precondition for their perceived happiness or freedom. Although Nietzsche's perfectionism expressly dismisses the political claim of demotic interests, it could nevertheless inspire a \"Grand Inquisitor\" regime that rewards its \"slaves\" with material comforts and spiritual anesthesia. In his notes, he speculates that \"European democracy must become ultimately\" a \"new and sublime development of slavery.\" A political regime that could \"make use of\" democracy to further the enhancement of humankind would represent \"a kind of goal, redemption and justification for the democratic movement\" (WP 954).\n\n12. Mill argues that even those who do not benefit personally and directly from \"individuality\" should nevertheless endorse its promotion, for they derive an indirect benefit from the \"individuality\" of others. _On Liberty,_ ed. Elizabeth Rapaport, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), ch. 3: \"Of Individuality,\" esp. pp. 61\u201368.\n\n13. Nietzsche does argue that \"The philosopher and the artist...strike home at only a few, while they ought to strike home at everybody\" (SE 7), but his remarks on education later in that essay indicate that he does not intend a democratic justification of culture.\n\n14. Nietzsche's shift in orientation to the political microsphere deflects many of the criticisms leveled against his political thinking. Keith Ansell-Pearson, for example, argues that \"[Nietzsche] too demands a politics of transfiguration in which modern individuals are to elevate themselves through a process of 'going-down' and 'goingacross' to higher tasks and to higher responsibilities (the _\u00dcbermensch_ ). But the conditions\u2014namely, a tragic culture\u2014which would serve to cultivate such individuals are absent in modern liberal societies.\" _Nietzsche contra Rousseau_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 224. If Nietzsche _were_ invested in some such \"politics of transfiguration,\" then it might be true that \"modern liberal societies\" lack the resources \"to cultivate such individuals.\" But Nietzsche does not rely on the macropolitical resources of modern liberal societies to produce the exemplary human beings he has in mind. He is well aware that the macropolitical ambitions of his youth are simply incompatible with his historical situation.\n\n15. For a sympathetic treatment of Nietzsche's attempt to legislate an \"aristocracy of soul,\" see Leslie Paul Thiele, _Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), esp. chs. 3\u20134.\n\n### 3 \nPerfectionism in the Twilight of the Idols\n\n1. These unpublished lectures are reproduced in vol. 1 of the _Kritische_ _Studienausgabe,_ pp. 643\u2013752.\n\n2. For an excellent study of Nietzsche's attempt to articulate \"physiological\" diagnoses of the decadence of late modernity, see Daniel Ahern, _Nietzsche as_ _Cultural Physician_ (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), esp. ch. 1.\n\n3. In a note from 1888, which echoes several others from that year, Nietzsche writes, \"Basic insight regarding the nature of decadence: _its supposed causes are its_ _consequences_ \" (WP 41; cf. 42\u201345). He maintains that \"it is an error to consider 'social distress' or 'physiological degeneration' or, worse, corruption, as the _cause_ of nihilism\" (WP 1).\n\n4. I borrow this phrase from Bernard Yack's provocative study, _The Longing for_ _Total Revolution_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). As Yack \"supposes,\" he perhaps \"relies too heavily\" on the pre-Zarathustran writings in proposing this \"longing\" as representative of Nietzsche's political thinking as a whole (p. 313). While the persistence of this longing is difficult to dispute, Yack does not acknowledge the transformations and complexity introduced into Nietzsche's political thinking by the critique of modernity advanced in his post- Zarathustran writings.\n\n5. For example, Nietzsche expresses his \"hope\" for the advent of \"men of the future who in the present tie the knot and constraint that forces the will of millennia upon _new_ tracks\" (BGE 203).\n\n6. For a stimulating interpretation of Nietzsche's \"desperate\" turn (from aesthetics) to politics at the end of his sane life, see Tracy Strong, \"Nietzsche's Political Aesthetics,\" in _Nietzsche's New Seas,_ ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 153\u2013174.\n\n7. Responding to Rawls's decision to bar Nietzsche's perfectionism from the original position, Cavell remarks, \"[I]f Nietzsche is to be dismissed as a thinker pertinent to the founding of the democratic life, then so, it should seem, is Emerson, since Nietzsche's meditation on Schopenhauer is, to an as yet undisclosed extent, a transcription and elaboration of Emersonian passages. Emerson's dismissal here would pain me more than I can say, and if that is indeed the implication of _A_ _Theory of Justice_ , I want the book, because of my admiration for it, to be wrong in drawing this implication from itself.\" Stanley Cavell, \"Aversive Thinking: Emersonian Representations in Heidegger and Nietzsche,\" in _Conditions_ _Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Prefection_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 49.\n\n8. Ibid., p. 53.\n\n9. Ibid., p. 56.\n\n10. Cavell acknowledges a similar objection, commenting that \"This is important, but it does not seem to me enough to say\" (ibid., p. 102).\n\n11. Cf.Pindar, _Pythian Odes,_ II, 72. Nietzsche fondly recommended Pindar's imperative to Lou Salom\u00e9 just before their final estrangement. He closes his letter of 10 June 1882 with the sentence: \"Pindar sagt einmal, 'werde der, der du bist!'\" _S\u00e4mtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe,_ ed. G.Colli and M.Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter\/Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986), vol. 6, #239, p. 203.\n\n12. John Rawls, _A Theory of Justice_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 442\u2013446.\n\n13. Cavell, pp. 49\u201353.\n\n14. See Cavell, p. 59.\n\n15. For a fine account of Nietzsche's deployment of the image of the household, or _oikos_ , and of its Platonic origins, see Graham Parkes, _Composing the Soul: Reaches_ _of Nietzsche's Psychology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 42\u2013 52, 215\u2013225.\n\n16. Socrates proposes his noble lie, via the \"myth of the metals,\" in book III of the _Republic_ , at 414b\u2013417b.\n\n### 4 \nRegimens of Self-Overcoming\n\n1. This point is forcefully stated by Stanley Cavell, \"Aversive Thinking: Emersonian Representations in Heidegger and Nietzsche,\" in _Conditions Handsome and_ _Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) pp. 46\u201357.\n\n2. The theme of the philosopher's \"soulcraft\" is treated sympathetically and at length by Leslie Paul Thiele, _Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), esp. ch. 4.\n\n3. See Cavell, pp. 112\u2013113.\n\n4. See Cavell, pp. 47\u201348,\n\n5. In a passage ideally suited to establish the distinction I have suggested, Nietzsche observes no terminological distinction between macrosphere and microsphere: \"The self-overcoming _[Selbst\u00fcberwindung]_ of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming _[Selbst\u00fcberwindung]_ of the moralist, into his opposite\u2014into me\u2014that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth\" (EH XIV\u2013.3). Were Nietzsche inclined toward the distinction I have suggested, he presumably would have replaced the former instance of _Selbst\u00fcberwindung_ with _Selbstaufhebung._\n\n6. Wolfgang M\u00fcller-Lauter argues that this \"aggregate\" model of self-overcoming stands in tension with Nietzsche's praise of those individuals who command a single, monolithic perspective. As a consequence of this tension, M\u00fcller-Lauter concludes, Nietzsche alternately describes the _\u00dcbermensch_ in terms of the superhuman command of a single perspective, to the exclusion of all others, and in terms of a superhuman accommodation of a multiplicity of perspectives. _Nietzsche:_ _Seine Philosophie der Gegens\u00e4tze und die Gegens\u00e4tze seiner Philosophie_ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), pp. 116\u2013134.\n\n7. For an excellent treatment of Nietzsche's reliance on political metaphors for the cultivation of the soul, and of the Platonic provenance of these metaphors, see Graham Parkes, _Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche's Psychology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 346\u2013362.\n\n8. For an even-handed chronicle of Nietzsche's use and abuse of Rousseau, see Keith Ansell-Pearson's excellent study, _Nietzsche contra Rousseau_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. ch. 1.\n\n9. David Owen delivers an excellent reading of the \"agonism\" that emerges from this early essay in _Nietzsche_ , _Politics and Modernity_ (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 139\u2013169.\n\n10. Richard Rorty apparently derives his account of Nietzschean self-creation from his anti-essentialism and historicism. _Because_ no authentic self exists to be be discovered through cognitive processes, he reasons, the self is _therefore_ a construct. _Contingency, Irony and Solidarity_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), ch. 2. Rorty's reasoning is valid, of course, only in the event that his guiding disjunction\u2014discovery vs. creation\u2014is both exclusive and warranted.\n\n11. I develop this point further in my essay, \"Disembodied Perspectives,\" _Nietzsche-_ _Studien,_ vol. 21, 1992, pp. 281\u2013289.\n\n12. Nietzsche's revision of the motto he adopts from Pindar perhaps reflects this growing emphasis on self-discovery. \"Become who you are\" (GS 270) is replaced by \"Become what one is\" (EH; see also GS 335).\n\n13. Persuasively maintaining that Nietzsche never decides between the discovery of truth and its invention (p. 234), Nehamas works productively in the interstitial spaces between volition and cognition in Nietzsche's thought.\n\n14. Several commentators have located Nietzsche's \"solution\" to the problem of consciousness in his recommendation of a process known as \"active forgetting.\" According to Bernard Yack, for example, \"Self-conscious forgetting is the remedy that Nietzsche, the self-appointed doctor of sick cultures, prescribes.\" _The Longing_ _for Total Revolution_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 335. While Nietzsche explicitly describes forgetting as \"an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression\" (GM 11:1), and while he praises in Mirabeau the \"excess of the power...to forget\" (GM 1:10), I see little evidence that Nietzsche prescribes \"active forgetting\" (or anything else) to a dying culture. If Nietzsche's contemporaries were capable of \"active forgetting,\" then would they not, like Mirabeau, already be engaged in it\u2014even if unbeknownst to themselves? In light of the formidable epistemological problems involved in exhorting a dying culture \"to remember to forget,\" it comes as little surprise that Yack subsequently judges Nietzsche's \"prescription\" for modernity to yield \"paradox\" and \"self-contradiction.\"\n\n15. See, for example, Nehamas, pp. 184\u2013190.\n\n16. Nietzsche suggests this image of himself as a \"cave\" in his letter to Reinhard von Seydlitz on 12 February 1888. _S\u00e4mtliche Briefe,_ vol. 8, #989, p. 248.\n\n17. My attention here to Nietzsche's polycentric model of the soul is indebted to Parkes, esp. ch. 9.\n\n### 5 \nThe Philosopher's _Versucberkunst_\n\n1. My investigations of the rich _Versuch_ motif in Nietzsche's post-Zarathustran thought have been informed and contoured by the following studies: Eric Blondel, _Nietzsche: The Body and Culture,_ trans. Sean Hand (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), ch. 6; Jacob Golomb, _Nietzsche's Enticing Psychology of Power_ (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989); Laurence Lampert, _Nietzsche and_ _Modern Times_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 330\u2013334; and Henning Ottman, _Philosophie und Politik bei Nietzsche_ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1987), section V: \"Versuch \u00fcber Nietzsches 'Versuche,'\" pp. 346\u2013388.\n\n2. In his pathbreaking study, Walter Kaufmann calls attention to the perfectionism that lies at the heart of Nietzsche's moral philosophy. _Nietzsche: Philosopher,_ _Psychologist, Antichrist,_ 4th edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 242\u2013256. In accordance with his own campaign to rehabilitate Nietzsche's philosophy, however, Kaufmann insists that Nietzschean self-perfection is an exclusively private enterprise.\n\n3. The provocation unwittingly initiated by the _Erzieher_ is discussed at length by Emerson in his \"Divinity School Address,\" in _Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo_ _Emerson,_ ed. William H.Gilman (New York: Penguin, 1983), pp. 241\u2013257.\n\n4. For an eloquent reckoning of Nietzsche's inheritance from Emerson of the notions of \"intuition\" and \"provocation,\" see Tracy Strong, \"Nietzsche's Political Aesthetics,\" in _Nietzsche's New Seas,_ ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 158\u2013159.\n\n5. For a compelling account of Nietzsche's affinities to Plato, particularly with respect to _er s,_ see Graham Parkes, _Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche's_ _Psychology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), ch. 6.\n\n6. _Kritische Studienausgabe,_ vol. 13, 14 [120], p. 299.\n\n7. In an important insight, Strong notes that the philosopher creates himself not only as an artwork, but also as a \"source of this-worldly authority\" (p. 158). According to Strong, however, Nietzsche despairs toward the end of his life that the nomothetic properties of art are simply inadequate to the task of creating a \"source of this-worldly authority\" suitable to the peculiar conditions of late modernity. Abandoning aesthetics, Nietzsche \"comes in desperation to politics\" (p. 168). Although Nietzsche, according to Strong, \"is not a thinker of domination...at the end he can only try to prevent a politics of domination by proposing one of his own\" (p. 171).\n\n8. Bruce Detwiler offers an instructive account of the political role of the \"artist-philosopher\" in _Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), ch. 6. Detwiler's account suffers, however, from its strict association of the \"artist-philosopher\" with the \"new order\" that Nietzsche ostensibly envisions for the future. Detwiler consequently misplaces Nietzsche's own efforts as an \"artist-philosopher,\" as well as the communities he creates in response to the decadence of late modernity.\n\n9. Nietzsche speaks of himself in a similar way: \"when I described Dionysian music I described what _I_ had heard\u2014that instinctively I had to transpose and transfigure everything into the new spirit that I carried in me\" (EH IV: 4).\n\n10. On the indirect and ironic products of Socrates' political teachings, see Leo Strauss, _The City and Man_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 73\u2013 87 and 122\u2013127; and Allan Bloom's \"Interpretive Essay,\" in _The Republic of_ _Plato,_ 2nd edn, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), pp. 408\u2013412.\n\n11. On the self-creation of the philosopher, see Leslie Paul Thiele, _Friedrich Nietzsche_ _and the Politics of the Soul_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 131.\n\n12. Nietzsche later adds that \"Before tragedy, what is warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalia; whoever is used to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man praises his own being through tragedy\u2014to him alone the tragedian presents this drink of sweetest cruelty\" (TI IX\u2013.24).\n\n13. Drawing perhaps on his own limited experiences, he offers the following \"definition\" of heterosexual love: \"Has my definition of love been heard? It is the only one worthy of a philosopher. Love\u2014in its means, war; at bottom, the deadly hatred of the sexes\" (EH III:5).\n\n14. _S\u00e4mtliche Werke,_ vol. 13, 14 [120], pp. 299\u2013300. My attention to this passage is indebted to Martha C.Nussbaum's essay, \"The Transfigurations of Intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Dionysus,\" _Arion,_ vol. 1, no. 2, 1991, pp. 75\u2013111.\n\n15. In a cynical corollary to this thesis, Nietzsche maintains, \"The cure for love is still in most cases that ancient radical medicine: love in return\" (D 415).\n\n16. For an important political elaboration of Nietzsche's appeal to \"aesthetic communities,\" see Salim Kemal, \"Nietzsche's _Genealogy:_ Of Beauty and Community,\" _Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology,_ vol. 21, no. 3, October 1990, pp. 234\u2013249.\n\n17. This question perhaps illuminates the limitations of Georges Bataille's attempt to follow Nietzsche, to \"push the possibilities of his teaching to the limit,\" in Georges Bataille, _On Nietzsche,_ trans. Bruce Boone (New York: Paragon House, 1992), p. xxiv. Bataille characteristically locates Nietzsche's excesses in his _writing_ \u2014hence the importance for Bataille of his own writing\u2014but the nature of these excesses themselves, independent of their representative inscriptions, eludes Bataille's grasp.\n\n18. Nietzsche's depiction of the \"music-practicing Socrates\" trades on a reference to an early scene in Plato's _Phaedo_ (60c-d). In this scene, however, Socrates quite clearly understands his attempt to versify several of Aesop's fables as a tribute to Apollo (61a-b), who is ultimately responsible for ordaining Socrates the wisest of men. That Socrates has the time and leisure to \"practice music\" is attributable, moreover, to the festival of the Delia, which is itself a tribute to Apollo (58a-c). Finally, Asclepius, the physician to whom the \"music-practicing\" Socrates attempts to make advance payment (118a), is the son of Apollo. A more appropriate candidate for a \"music-practicing\" Socrates would be the Socrates who wears the wreath of Dionysus at the conclusion of Plato's _Symposium._\n\n19. Walter Kaufmann apparently agrees, for he presents Nietzsche as scoring a definitive triumph over his ressentiment: \"In _Ecce Homo_ Nietzsche embodies this triumph over _ressentiment_. Instead of bearing a grudge toward the world that treated him so cruelly, instead of succumbing to the rancor of sickness, he relates the story of his life and work in a spirit of gratitude\u2014and goes out of his way to pay his respects to Paul R\u00e9e and Lou Salom\u00e9, with whom he had fallen out.\" _On_ _the Genealogy of Morals\/Ecce Homo,_ trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), pp. 206\u2013207.\n\n20. Nietzsche actually defines resentment as a concoction of affects. He lists \"anger, pathological vulnerability, impotent lust for revenge, thirst for revenge\" as \"the affects of _ressentiment_ \" (EH 1:6).\n\n21. This thesis is persuasively advanced in Stanley Rosen's provocative essay, \"Nietzsche's Revolution,\" in _The Ancients and the Moderns_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 191\u2013198.\n\n22. Robert Solomon inventories the potentially productive properties of resentment in his essay, \"One Hundred Years of Resentment: Nietzsche's _Genealogy of Morals,_ \" in _Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's \"On the Genealogy of_ _Morals,\"_ ed. Richard Schacht (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 1994), pp. 95\u2013126. See also Henry Staten, _Nietzsche's Voice_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), ch. 2.\n\n23. Nietzsche attributes his \"cleverness,\" for example, to his economic hygiene: \"I have never reflected on questions that were none\u2014I have not squandered _[verschwendet]_ myself\" (EH 11:1).\n\n24. Hence the inadequacy of the influential distinction between \"active\" and \"reactive\" forces, as drawn by Gilles Deleuze in _Nietzsche and Philosophy,_ trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 39\u201372. Nietzsche's guiding distinction here is not between action and reaction, but between genuine _[eigentliche]_ reaction and imaginary _[imagin\u00e4re]_ reaction (GM 1:10). What Deleuze calls \"active forces\" do not stand in opposition to \"reactive forces\" but actually emerge from them, as unanticipated permutations and by-products.\n\n25. See Staten, p. 38.\n\n26. By 1887, Nietzsche was aware of, and took great delight in, his growing influence within the political microsphere. In a letter to Overbeck on 24 March 1887, Nietzsche reports \"a comic fact, of which I am becoming ever more conscious. I have gradually come to exert an 'influence,' very subterranean, as it understands itself. I enjoy an amazing and almost mysterious reputation among all radical parties (Socialists, Nihilists, anti-Semites, Orthodox Christians, Wagnerites). The extreme purity of the atmosphere in which I have placed myself is enticing _[verf\u00fchrt]._ \" _S\u00e4mtliche Briefe,_ vol. 8, #820, p. 48.\n\n### 6 \nComedians of the Ascetic Ideal\n\n1. In all fairness, we should note that Nietzsche's text is somewhat ambiguous: he could mean that _Zarathustra_ somehow presents the \"counterideal,\" perhaps in spite of Zarathustra himself. For a fruitful exploration of this possibility, see Laurence Lampert, _Nietzsche's Teaching_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 255\u2013 263.\n\n2. Maudemarie Clark arrives at this conclusion through a process of elimination: \"I can find only two serious candidates for the counterideal Zarathustra teaches: the _\u00dcbermensch_ and the ideal of affirming eternal recurrence... I argue that the _\u00dcbermensch_ ideal is still too closely tied to the ascetic ideal, and that, in the course of Z, affirming eternal recurrence replaces it as the true alternative to the ascetic ideal.\" _Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 253. Of course, Clark's deduction is valid only in the event that 1) she has successfully isolated the only two \"serious candidates for the counterideal Zarathustra teaches\"; and 2) Zarathustra\/ _Zarathustra_ actually promulgates to \"us\" the advertised counterideal.\n\n3. Tracy Strong has long maintained that Nietzsche's preoccupation with a politics of \"transfiguration\" or \"redemption\" compromises the relevance for modern readers of his political thinking. Most recently, Strong has claimed that \"at the end of Nietzsche's life...[he] comes to despair of the possibility of ever accomplishing such a transfiguration\" (\"Nietzsche's Political Aesthetics,\" in _Nietzsche's New_ _Seas,_ ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 13\u201314). As I hope to have shown in this study, by the end of Nietzsche's sane life, he had long since acknowledged the nihilistic ramifications of his youthful longings for a redemption of modernity. Strong thus chronicles the despair of a Nietzsche whom Nietzsche himself had long since subjected to a withering regimen of self-criticism.\n\n4. A notable exception here is Alexander Nehamas, who associates Nietzsche's \"comedy\" with the complex rhetorical task of resisting (while not renewing) the destructive impulse of the ascetic ideal. _Nietzsche: Life as Literature_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 130\u2013137.\n\n5. Nietzsche's sole prior reference to these comedians hardly inspires our confidence in their redemptive powers. In the previous section, he wonders \"how many _comedians_ of the Christian-moral ideal would have to be exported from Europe today before its air would begin to smell fresh again\" (GM 111:26).\n\n6. As Nehamas instructively points out, Nietzsche is uniquely suited to carry out the complex task involved in \"harming\" the ascetic ideal: \"[To be such a comedian] involves the effort to reveal the inner contradictions and deceptions of asceticism, to denounce it, and yet not produce a view that itself unwittingly repeats the same contradictions and deceptions, for to repeat these is to fail to arouse mistrust in the ascetic ideal; on the contrary, it is to offer a demonstration that it is inescapable\" (pp. 133\u201334).\n\n7. The experimental spirit of Nietzschean genealogy is conveyed by the essay competition Nietzsche proposes, in which scholars would explore the connections between morality and etymology, physiology, psychology, and medicine (GM I:17 _Anmerkung_ ).\n\n8. For a provocative, post-natural extension of Nietzsche's experimentalism, see Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, _Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,_ trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R.Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); and _What is Philosophy?,_ trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), especially their conclusion, \"From Chaos to the Brain.\"\n\n9. On the intersection of Nietzsche's self-experimentation and his evolving psychological model, see Parkes's epilogue, \"A Dangerous Life,\" in _Composing_ _the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche's Psychology_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 363\u2013381.\n\n### 7 \nNietzsche's Political Legacy\n\n1. A representative statement of this position is found in Mark Warren, _Nietzsche and_ _Political Thought_ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988). Warren writes, \"The key to understanding Nietzsche's actual political positions is not in his philosophy of power as such, but rather in his misunderstanding of essential features of modern society. This caused him to misconstrue the limits of social and political organization, as well as to distort the causes of modern nihilism\" (p. 237).\n\n2. Martin Heidegger, _The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,_ trans. and ed. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 95.\n\n3. Ibid., p. 105.\n\n4. For a trenchant critique of Nietzsche's alleged mismeasure of modernity, see Warren. Objecting to the \"politics of domination\" sheltered within Nietzsche's \"neoaristocratic conservatism\" (p. 211), Warren maintains that \"Nietzsche did not give his own philosophy a plausible political identity\" (p. 246). Notwithstanding his commendable \"philosophy of agency\" and \"critique of Western culture,\" Warren claims, \"[Nietzsche] failed to elaborate the broad range of political possibilities that are suggested by his philosophy\" (p. 246). Hoping to salvage Nietzsche's philosophy from his retrograde political prejudices, Warren allows that \"the politics of [Nietzsche's] philosophy [is] still to be determined\" (p. 210). Attempting his own elaboration of the \"broad range of possibility,\" Warren sketches a \"political vision\" featuring the \"values\" of \"individuation, communal intersubjectivity, egalitarianism, and pluralism\" (p. 247).\n\n5. Bernard Yack thus concludes, for example, that \"Nietzsche too must make a leap into the absurd, for the problem he seeks to resolve cannot be resolved without self-contradiction.\" _The Longing for Total Revolution_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 355.\n\n6. This point is forcefully made by Robert Eden: \"So much intelligence has been invested in saving Nietzsche from the Nazi vulgarization that it is demoralizing to realize that Nietzsche intended a veritable jungle growth of such partial or misunderstandings to spring from the fertile soil of his writings.\" _Political Leadership_ _and Nihilism_ (Tampa: University Presses of Florida, 1983), p. 226.\n\n7. Alasdair MacIntyre, _After Virtue_ (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1984), p. 114.\n\n8. Ibid., p. 259.\n\n9. Ibid., p. 118.\n\n10. Ibid., p. 117.\n\n11. Ibid., p. 263.\n\n12. Ibid.\n\n13. J\u00fcrgen Habermas, _The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures,_ trans. Frederick G.Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), p. 96.\n\n14. Ibid., p. 96.\n\n15. Ibid., p. 87.\n\n16. Ibid., p. 86.\n\n17. Ibid., p. 87.\n\n18. Rorty originally outlined this position in his 1983 essay, \"Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism,\" in _Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 197\u2013202. He later refines and expands this position, now known as \"liberal ironism,\" in _Contingency, Irony and_ _Solidarity_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), esp. ch. 4.\n\n19. Rorty, _Contingency,_ p. 99.\n\n20. Ibid., pp. 98\u201399.\n\n21. Ibid., p. 97.\n\n22. Ibid., p. 65.\n\n23. In keeping with the tenets of his \"liberal ironism,\" Rorty apparently would rather forgo the potential benefits of a self-perfection that exceeds the bounds of the private sphere than endure the inevitable harm it would cause. \"Cruelty is the worst thing we do,\" he maintains ( _Contingency,_ p. xv), and any incursion into the public sphere of an individual's private pursuit of self-perfection is potentially cruel.\n\n24. Allan Bloom, \"Justice: John Rawls versus the Tradition of Political Philosophy,\" in _Giants and Dwarves: Essays 1960\u20131990_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 345.\n\n25. For a representative sample of recent feminist appraisals of Nietzsche's thought, see _Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory,_ ed. Paul Patton (London: Routledge, 1993). See especially the excellent essays by Rosalyn Diprose, \"Nietzsche and the Pathos of Distance\"; Keith Ansell-Pearson, \"Nietzsche, Woman and Political Theory\"; Elizabeth Grosz, \"Nietzsche and the Stomach for Knowledge\"; and Frances Oppel, \"'Speaking of Immemorial Waters': Irigaray with Nietzsche.\"\n\n26. See, for example, Kelly Oliver's exemplary study, _Womanizing Nietzsche:_ _Philosophy's Relation to the \"Feminine\"_ (New York: Routledge, 1994).\n\n27. Donna J.Haraway, _Simians, Cyborgs and Women_ (London: Free Association Books, 1991), p. 189.\n\n28. Susan Bordo, \"Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender-Scepticism,\" in _Feminism\/_ _Postmodernism,_ ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 133\u2013156.\n\n29. Sandra Harding, \"Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is 'Strong Objectivity'?,\" in _Feminist Epistemologies,_ ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 72.\n\n30. Haraway, p. 190.\n\n31. Ibid., p. 196.\n\n32. Ibid., p. 192.\n\n33. Ibid., p. 191.\n\n34. Ibid.\n\n35. Ibid.\n\n36. Bat-Ami Bar On, \"Marginality and Epistemic Privilege,\" in _Feminist_ _Epistemologies,_ ed. L.Alcoff and E.Potter (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 83\u2013 100.\n\n37. Ibid., p. 94.\n\n38. bell hooks, \"Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,\" in _Yearning:_ _Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics_ (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990), pp. 150\u2013151.\n\n39. Haraway, p. 173.\n\n40. Haraway, ch. 8, \"A Cyborg Manifesto.\"\n\n41. Michel Foucault, _The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences_ (New York: Random House\/Vintage Books, 1973).\n\n42. My interpretation of _The Order of Things_ is greatly indebted to the compelling reading advanced by Charles Scott in _The Question of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault,_ _Heidegger_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), ch. 3, sections 3\u20134.\n\n43. For a discerning survey of the productive ethical implications arising from the \"death of Man,\" see Scott, pp. 79\u201393.\n\n44. In _Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,_ trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House\/Vintage Books, 1979), Foucault documents the role of the prison in (unwittingly) producing particular types of subjects and in policing the flows of knowledge and power. See especially Foucault's discussion of torture, pp. 32\u201369.\n\n45. My reckoning of the \"periodization\" of Foucault's scholarly activity draws upon Alan Schrift's excellent discussion in _Nietzsche's French Legacy: A Genealogy of_ _Modernity_ (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 34\u201358.\n\n46. Michel Foucault, _The History of Sexuality,_ vol. 1: _An Introduction,_ trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House\/Vintage Books, 1990), pt. 5: \"Right of Death and Power Over Life.\"\n\n47. Michel Foucault, _The History of Sexuality,_ vol. 3: _The Care of the Self,_ trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House\/Vintage Books, 1988).\n\n48. For a sympathetic reconstruction of Foucault's \"transgressive middle course in relation to power and resistance,\" see Jon Simons, _Foucault & the Political_ (London: Routledge, 1994), ch. 7.\n\n49. Michel Foucault, \"Politics, Polemics, and Problematizations: an Interview,\" in _The Foucault Reader,_ ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 383\u2013 386.\n\n50. For a provocative defense of the \"democratic sensibility\" that emerges from a consideration of Nietzsche through the lens of his Foucauldian legacy, see William Connolly, \"Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility of Michel Foucault,\" _Political Theory,_ vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 365\u201389.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"###### Campaign \u2022 49\n\n## Mons 1914\n\n###### The BEF's tactical triumph\n\n###### David Lomas \u2022 Illustrated by Ed Dovey\n\n###### _Series editor_ Lee Johnson \u2022 _Consultant editor_ David G Chandler\n\n### **CONTENTS**\n\nORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN\n\nOPPOSING COMMANDERS\n\nThe British Commanders \u2022 The French Commanders \u2022 The German Commanders\n\nOPPOSING ARMIES\n\nThe British \u2022 The French \u2022 The Germans \u2022 Orders of Battle\n\nTHE OPPOSING PLANS\n\nGermany's Schlieffen Plan \u2022 The French Plan XVII and the role of the BEF\n\nTHE CAMPAIGN\n\nThe arrival of the BEF \u2022 Lanrezac's change of plan\n\nTHE BATTLE OF MONS\n\nThe opening shots \u2022 Defence of la Bois Haut \u2022 The battle for the canal \nBlowing the bridges\n\nTHE RETREAT BEGINS\n\nII Corps runs into trouble \u2022 The Repulse of the German 6th Division \nThe 5th Division faces von Kluck \u2022 The Flank Guard action at Elouges \nRetreat to Le Cateau \u2022 Landrecies\n\nLE CATEAU\n\nThe decision to fight \u2022 The battlefield \u2022 The battle begins \nThe left flank \u2022 The retreat \u2022 Saving the guns\n\nAFTERMATH\n\nEtreux \u2022 N\u00e9ry \u2022 Villers-Cotter\u00eats\n\nWARGAMING MONS\n\n**THE BATTLEFIELD TODAY**\n\n**British troops, probably of the 8th Brigade, II Corps, resting on their way to Mons. Note the cobbled paved road surface which caused a good deal of discomfort to many soldiers. (Mons Museum)**\n\n## ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN\n\n'We're off to fight the bloody Belgians!' an enthusiastic British soldier informed an astonished listener in the first, exciting days of August 1914. The European war, so long predicted, so long feared, had come at last, sparked by a handful of shots fired by a consumptive Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo.\n\nThe _Entente Cordiale_ between Britain and France was little more than an understanding of mutual support should war come. The British had, though, given an assurance that the Royal Navy would not allow a foreign fleet into the English Channel and there was a further unspoken assumption that a British Expeditionary Force would help repel an invader from French soil.\n\nHenry Wilson, who became Director of Military Operations in 1910, was an obsessive Francophile. Entirely on his own initiative, he promised the French that a British Expeditionary Force of six infantry divisions and one cavalry division would be sent to France. Under Wilson's guidance, mobilisation plans were produced with a single aim \u2013 to get the BEF \u00e1cross the Channel quickly enough to join a French offensive planned to start 15 days after mobilisation. The French courteously dubbed Wilson's scheme 'Plan W'.\n\n**12 August 1914 \u2013 The 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards march out from Chelsea Barracks. (Private Collection)**\n\nOn the afternoon of 5 August 1914, Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minister, presided over a hastily arranged Council of War and discovered that Plan W was the only one available and capable of implementation. One change was made: two divisions \u2013 the 4th and the 6th \u2013 were kept back against the threat of a German invasion of Britain.\n\nA British Expeditionary Force of four infantry divisions and one cavalry division supported by an extra cavalry brigade would go to war. It would be commanded by Sir John French; the four infantry divisions would form I Corps, commanded by Sir Douglas Haig, and II Corps would be under Sir James Grierson. Major-General Allenby had command of the Cavalry Division.\n\n**German Guard Infantry in Berlin entraining for the front, August 1914. (Private Collection)**\n\nA few days later, Sir John French received his instructions from Lord Kitchener, the War Minister, and one of the few men who anticipated a long struggle. Kitchener had little faith in Sir John French's abilities and distrusted Henry Wilson. His words reflected this concern. Sir John French was 'to support and co-operate with the French Army. . . in preventing or repelling the invasion by Germany of French and Belgian territory and eventually to restore the neutrality of Belgium'. The instructions continued: 'It must be recognised from the outset that the numerical strength of the British Force. . . is strictly limited. . . the greatest care must be exercised towards a minimum of losses and wastage. Therefore, while every effort must be made to coincide most sympathetically with the plans and wishes of our Ally, the gravest consideration will devolve upon you as to participation in forward movements where large bodies of French troops are not engaged and where your Force may be unduly exposed to attack. In this connection I wish you distinctly to understand that your command is an entirely independent one, and that you will in no case come in any sense under the orders of any Allied General.'\n\nThey were phrases to make anyone pause. The BEF was to help throw back one million Germans and restore Belgian independence, but to avoid heavy losses while doing so. It was to be part of French plans, yet remain independent despite the fact that it was only one-thirtieth the size of the French army, and was operating on French soil and relying on French goodwill for railways and rolling stock, accommodation, communication and supply lines, and myriad other requirements. It was hardly a promising start.\n\n**The German Model 96 field gun, seen here with a crew from the 4th Bavarian Royal Field Artillery Regiment, created severe problems for the BEF in the first months of the war. It was an ominous portent for what proved to be a war in which artillery caused the greatest casualties. (Author's Collection)**\n\n## THE OPPOSING COMMANDERS\n\n##### **THE BRITISH COMMANDERS**\n\nField Marshal Sir John French was 62 years old in August 1914 and had an outstanding record of distinguished service, being one of the few senior officers who enhanced his reputation during the South African War.\n\n**Field Marshal Sir John French had resigned from his position as Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1914 in protest over the Government's Irish Home Rule Bill. When war was declared, he was offered command of the BEF. Quick-tempered to the point of explosive, French was personally brave and much liked by his men. (Author's Collection)**\n\nFrench was a cavalryman, and not at heart a staff officer but a fighting soldier, a quality which endeared him to his troops and gained both their respect and affection. He went to France full of confidence, convinced that he could lead the BEF to a part in a swift and decisive victory. French had a hot temper and was quick to take offence; he harboured grudges. Worse, for a commander, he suffered from mercurial changes of mood, plunging from enormous optimism to deep pessimism in a matter of moments.\n\nGeneral Sir Douglas Haig, commanding I Corps, was another highly regarded officer. As a pre-war Director of Military Training, Haig was not only the architect of Field Service Regulations which essentially prepared the British Army for a European war, but he had also been responsible for the organisation and training of the Territorial Army. Naturally shy, Haig was not a fluent speaker and was often tongue-tied in debate, a drawback which was to cause him many problems. He was, nonetheless, a very capable soldier who believed firmly in total attention to detail, and close and constant co-operation between all arms. Haig had the respect and admiration of his officers and earned intense loyalty from those who served closely with him. He was one of the few who believed that a European war would be a long and difficult struggle.\n\n**II Corps was originally under the command of Sir John Grierson; Grierson died suddenly on 17 August 1914 and Kitchener chose Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien to replace him. This was a move directly contrary to the expressed wish of Sir John French. Kitchener distrusted French and French and Smith-Dorrien loathed each other. Smith-Dorrien was, nonetheless, a very considerable soldier and his admirers will always remain convinced that it was his actions which saved the BEF from certain disaster during August 1914.**\n\nGeneral Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was sent to command II Corps by Kitchener when Grierson died shortly after the war began. His appointment was against the wishes of Sir John French, as the two officers disliked each other intensely. Smith-Dorrien was more of a regimental soldier than many of his contemporaries, serving for much of his career with the Sherwood Foresters, an unfashionable but hard-fighting infantry regiment. He fought in the Zulu War in 1879 (during which he was recommended for, but did not receive, the Victoria Cross), in the Tirah and Sudan campaigns, and in South Africa. Prone to uncontrollable outbursts of rage, he was a pugnacious soldier with an independent turn of mind.\n\n**Commander of the British I Corps' General Sir Douglas Haig was GOC Aldershot when the war began. I Corps was, in effect, the Aldershot Garrison and was at a high standard of readiness. Haig, appointed to Aldershot in 1912, had instituted a carefully planned training programme which paid total attention to detail and emphasised the co-operation between all arms. It worked and Haig had the respect and admiration of the professional soldiers under his command. Haig had won high approval for his work in reorganising the training of the Regular Army and that of the Territorials. He was a hard worker and inspired great devotion and loyalty amongst his staff. I Corps was to take only a minor part at Mons and Le Cateau. (Author's Collection)**\n\n##### **THE FRENCH COMMANDERS**\n\nGeneral Charles Lanrezac was 62 when he took command of the French Fifth Army. He was the man who would work most closely with the BEF. He was remarkably intelligent and brilliantly logical in his assessments; qualities which counterbalanced his tendency to bad temper, sarcastic comment and swearing. He became a controversial figure. To many French commentators, his decision to to retreat from the advancing Germans in August 1914 was extremely shrewd and saved the only intact army France possessed. Without it the Marne could not have been won. To the British, his withdrawal without warning them was a betrayal of an ally and a betrayal which placed the BEF in acute danger.\n\n**General von Kluck has been described as a typical Prussian general, arrogant and overbearing with a fierce disregard for anything less than outright victory. These were qualities needed by the commander of the German First Army which formed the extreme right wing. It is arguable whether the Schlieffen Plan could have succeeded given the conditions of 1914; von Kluck's errors in the opening campaign ensured that it would not. His dislike of von Bulow led him to refuse to become involved in capturing the fortress town of Maubeuge even though it lay directly in his line of advance. Von Bulow was forced to detach his own VII Corps to do the job, a move which was to have severe repercussions later. (Private Collection)**\n\n##### **THE GERMAN COMMANDERS**\n\nAlexander von Kluck, commander of the German First Army, had an overweening belief in his own abilities, and thought, not unjustifiably, his role to be the most important in the execution of the Schlieffen Plan. The First Army was the one which had to march the farthest and needed a ruthless commander dedicated to success. Von Kluck was extremely conscious of the rewards that a successful outcome would bring him personally. Obsessed with his own glory, his judgement was flawed. With a penchant for ignoring orders with which he did not agree, and an abrasive personality, von Kluck was a difficult man to deal with. The German cause was not helped by his detestation of the commander of the neighbouring Second Army.\n\nKarl von Bulow commanded the Second Army. He was not a resolute character, and the worries of high command made him depressed and anxious. He had earned a reputation in pre-war manoeuvres for his cautious tactics and the great importance he attached to units giving each other elaborate mutual support. Unable to get co-operation from von Kluck, he resorted to seeking the support of Supreme Headquarters on any point of difference between them, a procedure which came close to wrecking the advance.\n\n**General von Bulow, commander of the German Second Army, detested von Kluck and the feeling was certainly mutual. For a campaign in which close co-operation between the two armies was essential, this personal dislike was to have disastrous consequences. Von Bulow's caution and von Kluck's determination caused great problems once the war had begun. Von Bulow considered the defeat of the BEF to be entirely a matter for von Kluck and he therefore ignored any reports of the British movements as being irrelevant to his own. Von Kluck, in turn, either ignored or disobeyed orders or requests which came from von Bulow. (Author's Collection)**\n\n## THE OPPOSING ARMIES\n\n##### **THE BRITISH**\n\nThe tiny volunteer British Army of 1914 was not generally representative of the country as a whole. In many regiments officers needed a private income as it was almost impossible to live on the pay alone. An officer provided his own uniforms, cases, furniture and servant's outfit; there were mess contributions, field sports and social events. In the Cameronians, a private income of about \u00a3250 per year would suffice; the Guards anticipated that \u00a3400 a year was required. Cavalry regiments were even more expensive \u2013 a charger was essential, as were two hunters and three polo ponies.\n\nNearly half of all recruits to the ranks were registered as unskilled labourers on enlistment. Even those claiming a trade when joining were often unemployed. Many came from the slums of the industrial towns, were usually under-nourished and only just met the medical standard \u2013 5ft 3in tall, 33in chest and 112 pounds in weight.\n\nBarrack accommodation ranged from adequate to abysmal. Soldiers had no privacy and often ate in the rooms in which they slept. This was still an improvement on the slums of their home town, for their surroundings were clean, they received regular, if low, wages, adequate meals and were also educated, if necessary, at the Army's expense.\n\nA spirit of common endeavour had developed from the reforms of the late Victorian age. Officers were encouraged to work closely with the non-commissioned officers and to know their men. NCOs took much responsibility for the daily routine and training, and provided a vital link between the officer and the private soldier. Officers and men had a common bond in loyalty to their regiment.\n\n**French carabiniers in 1914. In their near-Napoleonic uniforms, these cavalrymen were photographed shortly after mobilisation waiting at the Paris Gare du Nord railway station. Armed with the sabre and a carbine which was described as 'no more than a pop-gun', the French cavalry had the habit of riding everywhere at the expense of their horses. A British cavalry officer noted with distaste that he could smell a group of French cavalry from a distance of 400 metres because of the saddle sores and the ungroomed state of their mounts. The British cavalry trooper was accustomed to walk as much as he rode and to keep his horse groomed, fed and cared for before himself if need be. (Private Collection)**\n\n**British infantrymen on the pre-1914 precursor of the modern assault course. Under the influence of Haldane, Haig and others, British Army training in the early years of the 20th century sought to instill not just physical fitness but a sense of self-reliance into the private soldier. (Author's Collection)**\n\nTraining was carefully planned, moving throughout the year from individual and platoon skills during the winter, to company and battalion exercises in the spring, brigade and divisional manoeuvres in the summer and a full army exercise in the autumn. There was particular emphasis on marksmanship and marching.\n\nShortage of money concentrated training on what was believed to be the immediate reality for the Army \u2013 the small colonial conflict, or a short war of movement in Europe. There was little expectation that there would be prolonged trench or siege warfare, and the British Army was neither equipped nor trained to deal with that eventuality.\n\nIn May 1914, the Regular Army was about 11,000 men short of its peacetime establishment of 260,000 men. The number of full-time soldiers in Britain, including recruits under training, was 137,000. The remainder were in the overseas garrisons of the British Empire. There were not nearly enough men to supply the number needed for the 48 infantry battalions, 16 cavalry regiments, five batteries of horse artillery, 16 brigades of field artillery, four heavy artillery batteries, eight field companies of engineers and motley collection of support services which the Expeditionary Force required.\n\nThe answer to the conundrum was the Reservist. Most men left the army after seven years and then served on the Reserve for a further five. Recalled by letter, telegram and public notices, some 70,000 men poured into regimental depots to bring a woefully under-strength British Army on to a war footing. In some units, more than 60 per cent of the men who were to sail to France were Reservists. One infantry battalion embodied 734 Reservists to bring it up to its war establishment of 992 men. Every unit had its complement of men who had served in South Africa, China, India, Burma and a score of other Imperial stations. Old soldiers they may have been, but their time away from the Army had inevitably softened them. There would later be a price to pay under a blazing sun on the dusty roads of France and Belgium.\n\n**German horse artilleryman, 1914. This studio portrait shows a Saxon soldier of von Hausen's Third Army which only marginally came into contact with the BEF in the very first days of the war. Later, at Ypres and elsewhere, it was to be a very different story. (Author's Collection)**\n\n##### **THE FRENCH**\n\nWhen mobilised, the French Army had more than one million men, and over three million if the Territorials and surplus Reservists were included. A French conscript served for three years, but his reserve training was virtually non-existent.\n\nThe French Army, too, suffered from parsimonious politicians. The infantry were still uniformed very much as they had been in the Franco-Prussian War, with blue tunics and bright red trousers. The cavalry looked almost exactly as their predecessors had done at Waterloo, particularly the cuirassiers with horsehair plumes trailing from crested helmets, steel breastplates and high boots. The uniforms appealed to the advocates of the offensive strategy. They felt it displayed the elan which was the special attribute of the French soldier. The economy involved in not providing the French soldier with a drab-coloured field service uniform became a positive virtue.\n\nTraining also recalled the days of Napoleon. The infantry were expected to advance in a solid mass, the cavalry to charge with lance and sabre, tactics which demanded a rigid and unthinking discipline. The ordinary soldier was required to do no more than to obey orders promptly and to advance with spirit when commanded. Their officers, as one observer recorded, 'were entirely ignorant of the stopping power of modern firearms and many of them thought it chic to die in white gloves'.\n\nThe French field artillery was superb. It was to prove itself time and time again, its quick-firing 75mm gun being one of the finest in service throughout the war. The field artillery was the one redeeming feature of an army equipped and trained, in many respects, for the campaigns of the first Napoleon.\n\n##### **THE GERMANS**\n\nThe German Army was a carefully structured organisation, designed to muster, with reserves, more than 5 million men when fully mobilised. At its heart was a well-trained officer corps, supported by 100,000 highly professional non-commissioned officers, who imposed a rigid discipline and demanded unquestioning obedience from its rank and file.\n\nAt the age of 17, every German male became liable for service in the _Landsturm_ , the organisation for home defence. At 20, the man moved to the active Army, serving two years in the infantry or three years in the cavalry and horse artillery. At the end of this time, he went to the reserve for four or five years, followed by 11 years in the _Landwehr_ and eventually back to the _Landsturm_ at the age of 39. Throughout his reserve service, there were two annual training periods.\n\nThe number of men available annually far exceeded Army requirements. More than one million reported for service each year of which only one-third were needed. This enabled the Army to pick the very best available men for active duty while turning over many thousands to the supplementary or Ersatz Reserve. The Ersatz Reserve yielded over one million reinforcements during the first three months of the war.\n\nIn its training, the German Army, unlike its British and French contemporaries, prepared for a European war. Observers were struck by an insistence on speed and the fierce march discipline \u2013 an essential requirement if the Schlieffen Plan was to adhere to its schedule. The infantry were trained in enveloping tactics, and to attack in dense waves at 500-metre intervals, supported by artillery and machine gun fire: such German assaults appeared unstoppable. Attacks were made in crescent formation, the enemy's flanks being overlapped and encircled while the centre was kept busy.\n\nGerman commanders believed in the interdependence of all arms, a theory they emphasised by including Jaeger battalions and horse artillery in the cavalry divisions. Under pressure, German cavalry were able to pull back to the protection provided by their own machine guns and field pieces.\n\nSize alone made the German Army a very formidable opponent. Trained to a high level, with an exceptionally professional officer corps, its rigid hierarchy discouraged delegation and inhibited individual initiative not only in the lower echelons, but among regimental and brigade commanders and even divisional and corps commanders. It was a failing that would only become significant if the plans, rehearsed to perfection on so many annual peacetime manoeuvres, went awry \u2013 and the German General Staff did not intend that they should.\n\n##### **ORDERS OF BATTLE**\n\nThe Orders of Battle do not, for reasons of clarity, include support and lines of communications troops, e.g. Royal Army Medical Corps, Army Service Corps, GHQ troops etc. The French and Belgian Orders of Battle have not been included.\n\n### **THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE AUGUST 1914**\n\nCommander-in-Chief: Field-Marshal Sir J.D.P French, GCB, GCVO, KCMG \nChief of the General Staff: Lieutenant-General Sir A.J. Murray, KCB, CVO, DSO \nMajor-General, General Staff: Major-General H.H. Wilson, CB, DSO \nGSOI (Intelligence): Colonel G.M.W. Macdonogh \nQuartermaster-General: Major-General Sir W.R. Robertson, KCVO, CB, DSO\n\n### **THE CAVALRY DIVISION**\n\nMajor-General E.H. Allenby, CB\n\n**1ST CAVALRY BRIGADE** | **2ND CAVALRY BRIGADE** \n---|--- \nBrigadier-General C.J. Briggs, CB \n2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays) \n5th (Princess Charlotte of Wales') Dragoon Guards \n11th (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars | Brigadier-General H. de B. de Lisle, CB, DSO \n4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards \n9th (Queen's Royal) Lancers \n18th (Queen Mary's Own) Hussars \n**3RD CAVALRY BRIGADE** | **4TH CAVALRY BRIGADE** \nBrigadier-General H. de la P. Gough, CB \n4th (Queen's Own) Hussars \n5th (Royal Irish) Lancers \n16th (The Queen's) Lancers | Brigadier-General Hon. C.E. Bingham, CVO. CB \nComposite Regiment of Household Cavalry 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers) \n3rd (King's Own) Hussars\n\n**5TH CAVALRY BRIGADE** \nGOC: Brigadier-General Sir P.W. Chetwode, Bart., DSO \n2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys) \n12th Lancers \n20th Hussars \n'D', 'E', 'I', 'J', 'L' Batteries, RHA\n\n### **I CORPS**\n\nGOC: Lieutenant-General Sir D. Haig, KCB, KCIE, KCVO, ADC-Gen. \nBGGS: Brigadier-General J.E. Gough, VC, CMG, ADC\n\n**1ST DIVISION** | **2ND DIVISION** \n---|--- \nMajor-General S.H. Lomax | Major-General C.C. Monro, CB \n**1st (Guards) Brigade** | **4th (Guards) Brigade** \nBrigadier-General F.I. Maxse, CVO, CB, DSO \n1\/Coldstream Guards \n1\/Scots Guards \n1\/Black Watch \n2\/Royal Munster Fusiliers | Brigadier-General R. Scott-Kerr, CB, MVO, DSO \n2\/Grenadier Guards \n2\/Coldstream Guards \n3\/Coldstream Guards \n1\/Irish Guards \n**2nd Brigade** | **5th Brigade** \nBrigadier-General E.S. Bulfin, CVO, CB \n2\/Royal Sussex Regiment \n1\/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment \n1\/Northamptonshire Regiment \n2\/King's Royal Rifle Corps | Brigadier-General R.C.B. Haking, CB \n2\/Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry \n2\/Worcester Regiment \n2\/Highland Light Infantry \n2\/Connaught Rangers \n**3rd Brigade** | **6th Brigade** \nBrigadier-General H.J.S. Landon, CB \n1\/Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment) \n1\/South Wales Borderers \n1\/Gloucester Regiment \n2\/Welch Regiment \n'A' Squadron, 15th Hussars \nXXV (113th, 114th, 115th Batteries), \nXXVI (116th, 117th, 118th Batteries), \nXXXIX (46th, 51st, 54th Batteries), \nXLIII (30th, 40th, 57th (How) Batteries) \nBrigades RFA \n26th Heavy Battery, RGA \n23rd, 26th Field Companies, RE | Brigadier-General R.H. Davies, CB (NZ Staff Corps) ** \n**1\/King's (Liverpool Regiment) \n2\/South Staffordshire Regiment \n1\/Royal Berkshire Regiment \n1\/King's Royal Rifle Corps \n'B' Squadron, 15th Hussars \nXXXIV (22nd, 50th, 70th Batteries), \nXXXVI (15th, 48th, 71st Batteries), \nXLI (9th, 16th, 17th Batteries), \nXLIV (47th, 56th, 60th (Howitzer) Batteries) \nBrigades RFA \n35th Heavy Battery, RGA \n5th, 11th Field Companies RE\n\n### **II CORPS**\n\nGOC: Lieutenant-General Sir J.M. Grierson, KCB, CVO, CMG, ADC-Gen. (Ded 17 August 1914) \nGeneral Sir H.L. Smith-Dorrien, GCB, DSO (assurned command 21 August) \nBGGS: Brigadier-General G.T. Forestier-Walker, ADC\n\n**3RD DIVISION** | **5TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \nMajor-General H.I.W. Hamilton, CVO, CB, DSO | Maj.-General Sir C. Fergusson, Bart., CB, MVO, DSO \n**7th Brigade** | **13th Brigade** \nBrigadier-General F.W.N. McCracken, CB, DSO \n3\/Worcester Regiment \n2\/South Lancashire Regiment \n1\/Wiltshire Regiment \n2\/Royal Irish Rifles | Brigadier-General G.J. Cuthbert, CB \n2\/King's Own Scottish Borderers \n2\/Duke of Wellington's (West Riding Regiment) \n1\/Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment) \n2\/King's Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry) \n**8th Brigade** | **14th Brigade** \nBrigadier-General B.J.C. Doran \n2\/Royal Scots \n2\/Royal Irish Regiment \n4\/Middlesex Regiment \n1\/Gordon Highlanders | Brigadier-General S.P. Rolt, CB \n2\/Suffolk Regiment \n1\/East Surrey Regiment \n1\/Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry \n2\/Manchester Regiment \n**9th Brigade** | **15th Brigade** \nBrigadier-General F.C. Shaw, CB \n1\/Northumberland Fusiliers \n4\/Royal Fusiliers \n1\/Lincoinshire Regiment \n1\/Royal Scots Fusiliers \n'C' Squadron, 15th Hussars \nXXIII (107th, 108th, 109th Batteries), \nXL (6th, 23rd, 49th Batteries), \nXLII (29th, 41st, 45th Batteries), \nXXX (Howitzer) (128th, 129th, 130th (Howitzer) \nBatteries) Brigades, RFA \n48th Heavy Battery, RGA \n56th, 57th Field Companies, RE | Brigadier-General \nA.E.W. Count Gretchen, KCVO, CB, CMG, DSO \n1\/Norfolk Regiment \n1\/Bedfordshire Regiment \n1\/Cheshire Regiment \nDorsetshire Regiment \n'A' Squadron, 19th Hussars \nXV (11th, 52nd, 80th Batteries), \nXXVII (119th, 120th, 121st Batteries), \nXXVIII (122nd, 123rd, 124th Batteries), \nVIII (Howitzer) (37th, 61st, 65th (Howitzer) \nBatteries) Brigades, RFA \n108th Heavy Battery, RGA \n17th, 59th Field Companies, RE\n\n### **III CORPS**\n\nGOC: Major-General W.P. Pulteney, CB, DSO\n\nBGGS: Brigadier-General J.P. Du Cane, CB\n\n**4TH DIVISION**\n\nGOC: Major-General T.D'O. Snow, CB\n\n**10th Brigade** | **11th Brigade** \n---|--- \nBrigadier-General J.A.L. Haldane, CB, DSO \n1\/Royal Warwickshire Regiment \n2\/Seaforth Highlanders \n1\/Irish Fusiliers \n2\/Royal Dublin Fusiliers | Brigadier-General A.G. Hunter-Weston, CB, DSO \n1\/Somerset Light Infantry \n1\/East Lancashire Regiment \n1\/Hampshire Regiment \n1\/Rifle Brigade \n**12th Brigade** | **19th Brigade** \nBrigadier-General H.F.M. Wilson, CB \n1\/King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment) \n2\/Lancashire Fusiliers \n2\/Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers \n2\/Essex Regiment \n'B' Squadron, 19th Hussars \nXIV (39th, 68th, 88th Batteries), \nXXIX (125th, 126th, 127th Batteries), \nXXXII (27th, 134th, 135th Batteries), \nXXXVII (Howitzer) (31st, 35th, 55th Howitzer \nBatteries) Brigades, RFA \n31st Heavy Battery, RGA \n7th, 9th Field Companies, RE | Major-General L.G. Drummond, CB, MVO \n2\/Royal Welch Fusiliers \n1\/Cameronians \n1\/Middlesex Regiment \n2\/Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders\n\n### **ROYAL FLYING CORPS**\n\nBrigadier-General Sir D. Henderson, KCB, DSO\n\n2nd Aeroplane Squadron\n\n3rd Aeroplane Squadron\n\n4th Aeroplane Squadron\n\n5th Aeroplane Squadron\n\n1st Aircraft Park\n\n**The popular image of the German soldier. A private of the 40th Infantry in 1914. (Author's Collection)**\n\n**The bicycling craze which began in the last years of Queen Victoria's reign had its effect on military thinking. German, Belgian, French and British armies all had specialist cycle troops who could use their mounts to move silently upon an enemy. Special bicycle tactics were introduced and the cycle-equipped soldier was looked upon as a pseudo-cavalryman \u2013 he could ride ahead and act as a scout. The lance-corporal appears to have lost his cap badge but his service issue mug is firmly attached to the front handlebars. (Private Collection)**\n\n**Annual training, 1910. The German system ensured that reserve troops received two weeks of annual training each year. This group were photographed in their old Prussian blue uniforms in the summer of 1910 shortly before receiving their new field-grey dress. (Author's Collection)**\n\n### **ORDER OF BATTLE GERMAN ARMIES 1914**\n\nChief of the General Staff: Generaloberst von Moltke\n\nDeputy Chief of the General Staff: General von Stein\n\n### **FIRST ARMY**\n\nGeneral von Kluck\n\n### **II CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Lisengen\n\n**3RD DIVISION** | **4TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**5th Brigade** \n2 Grenadier Rgt \n9 Grenadier Rgt | **6th Brigade** \n34 Fusilier Rgt \n42 Infantry Rgt | **7th Brigade** \n14 Infantry Rgt \n149 Infantry Rgt | **8th Brigade** \n49 Infantry Rgt \n140 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 3 Horse Grenadier Rgt \n **Artillery** 3 Bde: 2 F.A. Rgt \n38 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 12 Dragoon Rgt \n **Artillery** 4 Bde: 17 F.A. Rgt \n53 F.A. Rgt\n\n### **III CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Lochow\n\n**5TH DIVISION** | **6TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**9th Brigade** \n8 Body Grenadier Rgt \n48 Infantry Rgt | **10th Brigade** \n12 Grenadier Rgt \n52 Infantry Rgt | **11th Brigade** \n20 Infantry Rgt \n35 Fusiliers Rgt | **12th Brigade** \n24 Infantry Rgt \n64 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 3 Hussar Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 18 F.A. Rgt, 54 F.A. Rgt | 3 Jaeger Battalion \n **Cavalry** 3 Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 6 Bde: 3 F.A. Rgt, 39 F.A. Rgt\n\n### **IV CORPS**\n\nGeneral Sixt von Armin\n\n**7TH DIVISION** | **8TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**13th Brigade** \n26 Infantry Rgt \n66 Infantry Rgt | **14th Brigade** \n27 Infantry Rgt \n165 Infantry Rgt | **15th Brigade** \n36 Fusiliers Rgt \n93 Infantry Rgt | **16th Brigade** \n72 Infantry Rgt \n153 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 10 Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 7 Bde: 4 F.A. Rgt, 40 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 10 Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 8 Bde: 74 F.A. Rgt, 75 F.A. Rgt\n\n### **IX CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Quast\n\n**17TH DIVISION** | **18TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**33 Brigade** \n75 Infantry Rgt \n76 Infantry Rgt | **34 Brigade** \n89 Grenadier Rgt \n90 Fusiliers Rgt | **35 Brigade** \n84 Infantry Rgt \n86 Fusiliers Rgt | **36 Brigade** \n31 Infantry Rgt \n85 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 16 Dragoon Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 17 Bde: 24 F.A. Rgt. 60 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 16 Dragoon Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 18 Bde: 9 F.A. Rgt. 45 F.A. Rgt\n\n**Commander of the German II Cavalry Corps, which consisted of the 2nd, 4th, and 9th Cavalry Divisions, von Marwitz was a competent commander whose men were sent off on a wild-goose chase towards the Channel coast to cut off what von Kluck believed would be the British line of retreat. At N\u00e9ry on 1 September 1914, the 4th Cavalry Division became involved in one of the classic small-unit actions. (Private Collection)**\n\n**German Army divisions had an aviation detachment as an integral part of their organisation \u2013 a sharp contrast to both British and French practice in which the flying services were ancillaries under independent command. These Bavarian Air Service members pose for the camera just before the start of the last peacetime manoeuvres. The aircraft in the background, an Otto Pusher, was unique to the Bavarian Service. (Author's Collection)**\n\n### **III RESERVE CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Beseler\n\n**7TH RESERVE DIVISION** | **22ND RESERVE DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**13 Res. Brigade** \n27 Res. Infantry Rgt \n36 Res, Infantry Rgt | **14 Res. Brigade** \n66 Res. Infantry Rgt \n72 Res. Infantry Rgt | **43 Res. Brigade** \n71 Res. Infantry Rgt \n94 Res. Infantry Rgt | **44 Res. Brigade** \n32 Res. Infantry Rgt \n82 Res. Infantry Rgt \n4 Res. Jaeger Battalion | 1 Res. Jaeger Battalion \n**Cavalry** 1 Res. Heavy Cavalry Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 7 Res. F.A. Rgt (6 Batteries) | **Cavalry** 1 Res. Horse Jaeger Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 22 Res. F.A. Rgt. (6 Batteries)\n\n### **IX RESERVE CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Boehn\n\n**17TH RESERVE DIVISION** | **18TH RESERVE DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**81 Brigade** \n162 Infantry Rgt \n163 Infantry Rgt | **33 Res. Brigade** \n75 Reserve Rgt \n76 Reserve Rgt | **53 Reserve Brigade** \n84 Res. Infantry Rgt \n86 Res. Infantry Rgt | **36 Reserve Brigade** \n31 Res. Infantry Rgt \n90 Res. Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 6 Res. Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 17 Res. F.A. Rgt (6 Batteries) | 9 Res. Jaeger Battalion \n **Cavalry** 7 Res. Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 18 Res. F.A. Rgt (6 Batteries)\n\n**The apparent check to the German advance by the forts which ringed the Belgian town of Li\u00e8ge created great enthusiasm in Britain. A popular song rashly claimed that 'Belgium put the kibosh on the Kaiser' and the** _Daily Mirror_ **echoed the popular feeling of the time. (Author's Collection by courtesy of Mirror Newspapers)**\n\n### **SECOND ARMY**\n\nGeneraloberst von B\u00fclow\n\n### **GUARD CORPS**\n\n**1ST GUARD DIVISION**\n\n**1 Guard Brigade** \n1 Ft. Guard Rgt \n3 Ft. Guard Rgt | **2 Guard Brigade** \n2 Ft. Guard Rgt \n4 Ft. Guard Rgt \n---|---\n\n**Artillery** 1st Guard Bde: 1st Gd. Rgt. 3rd Gd. Rgt\n\n**2ND GUARD DIVISION**\n\n**3 Guard Brigade** \n1 Grenadiers Rgt \n3 Grenadiers Rgt | **4 Guard Brigade** \n2 Grenadiers Rgt \n4 Grenadiers Rgt | **5 Guard Brigade** \n5 Grenadiers Rgt \n5 Foot Rgt \n---|---|---\n\n**Artillery** 2 Guard Bde: 2 Gd. F.A. Rgt. 4 Gd. F.A. Rgt\n\n### **VII CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Einem\n\n**14TH DIVISION** | **13TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**27th Brigade** \n16 Infantry Rgt \n53 Infantry Rgt | **79th Brigade** \n56 Infantry Rgt \n57 Infantry Rgt | **25th Brigade** \n13 Infantry Rgt \n158 Infantry Rgt | **26th Brigade** \n15 Infantry Rgt \n55 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 16 Uhlan Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 14 Bde: 7 F.A. Rgt. 43 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 16 Uhian Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 13 Bde: 22 F.A. Rgt. 58 F.A. Rgt\n\n### **X CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Emmich\n\n**19TH DIVISION** | **20TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**37th Brigade** \n78 Infantry Rgt \n91 Infantry Rgt | **38th Brigade** \n73 Fusiliers \n74 Infantry Rgt | **39th Brigade** \n79 Infantry Rgt \n164 Infantry Rgt | **40th Brigade** \n77 Infantry Rgt \n92 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 17 Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 19 Bde: 26 F.A. Rgt. 62 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 17 Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 20th Bde: 10 F.A. Rgt, 46 F.A. Rgt\n\n**There was little doubt in Britain that the tiny BEF would rapidly halt the German advance and drive Kaiser Wilhelm's army back to Berlin with its tail between its legs. This postcard appeared within the first weeks of the outbreak of war and at least acknowledges a French presence by including the tricolour! (Author's Collection)**\n\n**The tiny Belgian Army had little enough with which to fight. This photograph of Belgian troops digging a trench shows a touching na\u00efvety. The Belgian soldiers are wearing a peculiar headgear reminiscent of the American Civil War Hardee hat and are clearly unconcerned about the possible proximity of the enemy! (Author's Collection)**\n\n### **GUARD RESERVE CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Gallwitz\n\n**3RD GUARD DIVISION** | **1ST GUARD RES. DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**5th Guard Brigade** \n5 Ft. Rgt \n5 Grenadiers Rgt | **6th Guard Brigade** \nGuard Fusiliers \nLehr Rgt | **1 Guard Res. Brigade** \n1 Guard Reserve Rgt \n2 Guard Reserve Rgt | **15th Res. Brigade** \n64 Reserve Rgt \n93 Reserve Rgt \n| Guard Res. Sniper Battalion \n**Cavalry** Guard Res. Uhian Rgt | \n**Artillery** 5 Guard F.A. Rgt, 6 Guard F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** Guard Res. Dragoons (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 5 Guard Res. F.A. Rgt. \n3 Guard Res. F.A. Rgt\n\n### **VII RESERVE CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Zwehl\n\n**13TH RESERVE DIVISION** | **14TH RESERVE DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**25 Reserve Brigade** \n13 Res. Infantry Rgt \n56 Res. Infantry Rgt | **28 Reserve Brigade** \n39 Res. Infantry Rgt \n57 Res. Rgt | **27 Reserve Brigade** \n16 Res. Infantry Rgt \n53 Res. Infantry Rgt | **28 Brigade** \n39 Fusiliers Rgt \n159 Infantry Rgt \n7 Res. Jaeger Battalion | \n| **Cavalry** 8 Res. Hussars Rgt (3 Sqns) \n**Cavalry** 5 Res. Hussars Rgt \n **Artillery** 13 Res. F.A. Rgt (6 Batteries) | **Artillery** 14 Res. F.A. Rgt (6 Batteries)\n\n### **X RESERVE CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Kirchbach\n\n**2ND GUARD RESERVE DIVISION** | **19TH RESERVE DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**26 Reserve Brigade** \n15 Res. Infantry Rgt \n55 Res. Infantry Rgt | **38 Reserve Brigade** \n38 Res. Infantry Rgt \n91 Res. Infantry Rgt | **37 Reserve Brigade** \n73 Res. Infantry Rgt \n78 Res. Infantry Rgt | **39 Reserve Brigade** \n74 Rese. Infantry Rgt \n92 Res. Infantry Rgt \n10 Res. Jager Battalion | 79 Res. Infantry Rgt (2 Battalions) \n| 10 Res. Jager Battalion \n**Cavalry** 2 Res. Uhian Rgt (3 Sqns) | \n**Artillery** 20 Res. F.A. Rgt (6 Batteries) | **Cavalry** 6 Res. Dragoon Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 19 Res. F.A. Rgt (6 Batteries)\n\n25th Landwehr Brigade (later to become part of 25th Landwehr Division)\n\n29th Landwehr Brigade (later to become part of 29th Landwehr Division)\n\n4 Mortar battalions\n\n1 10-cm gun battalion\n\n2 Heavy Coast Mortar Battalions\n\n2 Pionier regiments\n\n**World War I has been called the second large war of the Industrial Age, the first being the American Civil War. Mass transportation made it possible to quickly move large numbers of men and vast quantities of munitions and supplies. For Germany, in particular, the railways were an integral part of her war planning and the officers who manned the Railways Directorate of the German General Staff were the best available \u2013 it was on them that the smooth running of the whole German war machine depended. (Private Collection)**\n\n### THIRD ARMY\n\nLieutenant-General Freiherr von Hausen\n\n### **XI CORPS**\n\n**22ND DIVISION** | **38TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**43 Brigade** \n82 Infantry Rgt \n83 Infantry Rgt | **44 Brigade** \n32 Infantry Rgt \n167 Infantry Rgt | **76th Brigade** \n71 Infantry Rgt \n95 Infantry Rgt | **83rd Brigade** \n94 Infantry Rgt \n96 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 6 Culrassier Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 22 Bde: 11 F.A. Rgt, 47 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 6 Culrassier Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 38 Bde: 19 Rgt, 55 Rgt\n\n### **XII (1ST SAXON) CORPS**\n\nGeneral d'Elsa\n\n**23RD DIVISION** | **32ND DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**45 Brigade** \n100 Grenadiers Rgt \n101 Grenadiers Rgt \n12 Jaeger Battalion | **44 Brigade** \n108 Fusiliers Rgt \n182 Infantry Rgt | **63 Brigade** \n102 Infantry Rgt \n103 Infantry Rgt | **64 Brigade** \n177 Infantry Rgt \n178 Infantry Rgt \n**Cavalry** 20 Hussar Rgt \n **Artillery** 23 Bde: 12 F.A. Rgt, 48 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 18 Hussar Rgt \n **Artillery** 32 Bde: 28 F.A. Rgt, 64 F.A. Rgt\n\n**There was no doubt in the mind of the German soldier as to the enemy nor the aim of the invasion \u2013 Paris would be occupied in a matter of days!**\n\n### **XIX (2ND SAXON) CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Laffert\n\n**24TH DIVISION** | **40TH DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**47 Brigade** \n139 Infantry Rgt \n179 Infantry Rgt | **48 Brigade** \n106 Infantry Rgt \n107 Infantry Rgt | **88 Brigade** \n104 Infantry Rgt \n181 Infantry Rgt | **89 Brigade** \n133 Infantry Rgt \n134 Infantry Rgt \n| 13 Jaeger Battalion \n**Cavalry** 18 Uhlan Rgt | \n**Artillery** 24 Bde: 77 F.A. Rgt, 78 F.A. Rgt | **Cavalry** 9 Hussar Rgt \n **Artillery** 40 Bde: 32 Rgt. 68 Rgt\n\n### **XII (SAXON) RESERVE CORPS**\n\nGeneral von Kirchbach\n\n**23RD RESERVE DIVISION** | **24TH RESERVE DIVISION** \n---|--- \n**45 Reserve Brigade** \n100 Res. Grenadiers \n101 Res. Infantry Rgt | **46 Reserve Brigade** \n102 Res. Infantry Rgt \n103 Res. Infantry Rgt | **47 Reserve Brigade** \n104 Res. Infantry Rgt \n106 Res. Infantry Rgt | **48 Reserve Brigade** \n107 Res. Infantry Rgt \n133 Res. Infantry Rgt \n12 Res. Jaeger Battalion | 13 Res. Jager Battalion \n**Cavalry** Res. Hussar Rgt (3 Sqns) \n **Artillery** 23 Res. F.A. Rgt (9 Batteries) | **Cavalry** Saxon Reserve Hussar Rgt \n **Artillery** 24 Reserve F.A. Rgt (9 Batteries)\n\n47th Landwehr Brigade (later 47th Landwehr Division)\n\n2 Mortar Battalions\n\n1 Pionier Rgt\n\n### **I CAVALRY CORPS**\n\nLieutenant-General Freiherr von Richtofen\n\n**GUARD CAVALRY DIVISION \n5TH CAVALRY DIVISION**\n\n### **II CAVALRY CORPS**\n\nLieutenant-General von der Marwitz\n\n**2 CAVALRY DIVISION**\n\n**4 CAVALRY DIVISION**\n\n**9 CAVALRY DIVISION**\n\n## THE OPPOSING PLANS\n\n##### GERMANY'S SCHLIEFFEN PLAN\n\nGermany's offensive plan, produced by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the General Staff from 1891 to 1906, was a response to the Franco-Russian military pact of 1894 which had created the spectre of a war on two fronts. Germany could anticipate such an event by attacking first, but was not strong enough to combat both countries together. One had to be defeated before the other could be tackled.\n\nVon Schlieffen believed that the greater danger came from France and calculated that it would take the Russians six weeks to launch an offensive. He aimed to repeat the result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when the French Armies were defeated in just 33 days, and the war reached its climax at Sedan, a classic envelopment battle. If the French could be beaten as swiftly again, the German Army could then be sent to the Eastern Front to destroy the Russians.\n\nFor the French, the final humiliation of 1870 was the loss of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. Their obsession with regaining the lost territory became a vital part of von Schlieffen's thinking. The 150 miles of common frontier with France was between Luxemburg and Switzerland. It was an area of woods, mountains and rivers, with fortresses at Verdun, Toul, Nancy, Epinal and Belfort. Attacks here stood little chance of achieving the necessary swift success.\n\nVon Schlieffen therefore proposed a vast swinging hook through Belgium to France, through Artois and Picardy, bypassing Paris before moving eastward to take the French forts in the rear. Allowing 39 days for the defeat of France, the plan needed an army of five million men, enormous industrial capacity and a first-class railway system subordinated to military need.\n\nBritish mobilisation was equally dependent upon a first-rate rail system allied to a carefully planned scheme for shipping men and munitions across the Channel. Here troops of the 11th Hussars are seen approaching Le Havre on 16 August 1914. (Mons Museum)\n\nIn its final form, the plan called for a mere ten divisions to hold Russia in the East; 62 divisions would face France, 54 of them, spread among the First to Fifth Armies, would carry out the assault. The other eight were allocated to the Sixth and Seventh Armies on the Franco-German frontier. They would retreat in the face of the anticipated French attack in Alsace and Lorraine and lure their opponents into a trap. As the French dashed forward, they would leave their rear unprotected. In the words of the historian Liddell Hart, the Schlieffen Plan was like a revolving door: 'if a man pressed heavily on one side, the other would swing round and hit him in the back'. It would be another Sedan.\n\n**After landing, the British Army moved to Maubeuge, on the left flank of Lanrezac's Fifth French Army. These troops, assembled at a base camp, would shortly start their march north towards the advancing German First and Second Armies. (Mons Museum)**\n\nVon Schlieffen wanted 'the right sleeve of the right-hand man to brush the Channel', but after his retirement in 1906, consistent revisions shrivelled the proportionate weight of the right and left wings from six to one, to two to one. The right wing would no longer follow the coast but be well inland. It was an alteration which would eventually lead the German First Army to Mons.\n\n##### **THE FRENCH PLAN XVII AND THE ROLE OF THE BEF**\n\nAfter 1870 French military thinking had concentrated on defence but, in the early 1900s, these ideas became anathema to a fresh generation of officers. At its most basic, the new doctrine asserted that attack was all-important and particularly well suited to the temperament of the French soldier. The concept of 'the massed onslaught at the decisive point' where, irrespective of all else, the surging battalions smashed through an enemy, recalled the days of glory of the First Empire. Bonaparte's battles against the Austrians were cited approvingly; the Peninsula and Waterloo were ignored.\n\n#### THE CONCENTRATION OF THE ARMIES \u2013 AUGUST 1914\n\nThe new discipline of the offensive reached its zenith with Plan XVII issued in February 1914. It opened with a startling lack of appreciation of German intentions, as well as a blithe disregard of French Intelligence assessments: 'From a careful study of information obtained,' it began, 'it is probable that a great part of the German forces will be concentrated on the common frontier.' After this unpromising start, Plan XVII continued: 'Whatever the circumstances, it is the C-in-C's intention to advance with all forces united to the attack of the German Armies.'\n\n**The reality was this \u2013 German cavalry advancing in August 1914 \u2013 a surreptitious photograph. These troops were the actual spearpoint of the German advance. This is a photograph of an invasion. (Private Collection)**\n\nImpressive results were anticipated. On the extreme right, the Army of Alsace would take the area where the French, German and Swiss borders met; along the common frontier, the First and Second Armies would advance through Lorraine and the Saarland to occupy Mainz. On the left wing, the Third and Fifth Armies would attack to the east unless the Germans had violated Belgian neutrality. In this event, they would advance through Luxemburg and the Ardennes to strike at the left flank of the German Army. Any invasion of Belgium by the Germans would be, in the opinion of the French planners, limited to a small area east of the River Meuse.\n\nThe left flank of the Fifth Army would be at Hirson, close to the Franco-Belgian border, and would be extended by the arrival of the BEF. Between them and the Channel ports was a 100-mile gap garrisoned by three poorly trained French Territorial divisions. The BEF would be part of a general advance which would crush the unprotected German right flank.\n\nThe Fourth Army, which was largely made up of Reserve divisions, would be ordered forward to occupy Berlin once the other armies had defeated the enemy.\n\nDetails of reserves and timetables were scant, but it was confidently assumed that nothing could go wrong. The whirlwind offensive would completely dislocate German plans. Plan XVII further ignored any possibility of a major German attack through Belgium and that meant that there would not be one. Plan XVII could not be wrong. It was a theory that would cost the French Army more than 250,000 casualties in August 1914.\n\n## THE CAMPAIGN\n\n##### THE ARRIVAL OF THE BEF\n\nThe first British soldiers arrived at Mons on 21 August. They were patrols from the 9th Lancers and 18th Hussars, probing northward for signs of the enemy. Local residents and refugees spoke of the roads south of Brussels being filled with marching Germans.\n\nThe next morning, north of Mons at Casteau, at about 7am, Cpl. Drummer Thomas of 'C' Squadron of the 4th Dragoon Guards fired at a mounted figure and claimed a hit. Whether it was or not, a British Army bandsman had fired the first British shot in the First World War. His target was probably from the 4th Cuirassiers, for an hour later four or five suspicious troopers from that unit came warily along the road towards the eager British.\n\nTwo troops of dragoons rode to engage them. The outnumbered cuirassiers retreated and the dragoons gave chase. The Germans reached their squadron which retreated further. After a hot pursuit over another two miles, the dragoons caught the enemy and in the skirmish which followed about 15 Germans were killed and eight taken prisoner.\n\nLater that day, the Royal Scots Greys, fighting a dismounted action, persuaded a strong German force from the 13th Division of the VII Corps and part of Second Army's I Cavalry Corps to retreat under the impression they were fighting a full brigade. The 16th Lancers met two companies of Jaegers in the open and charged them with the lance. A number of the enemy were speared for the loss of a handful of British troopers.\n\n**Although aircraft were being used for reconnaissance, all the combatant armies relied on their cavalry to probe ahead of the main infantry force and act as scouts. This postcard, entitled 'Uhlans In The Vanguard!', shows a cavalry patrol asking questions from a helpful Belgian civilian \u2013 it came as a rude shock to Kaiser Wilhelm's High Command that the Belgians actually resisted the German advance. (Michael Solka)**\n\n**Their armies' advance into France and Belgium was presented as an unrelieved triumphal progress in the German newspapers of the time. Unlike the British, the German Army had its own photographers who were soon supplying a stream of pictures to the home front to keep up civilian morale. In this shot a typical German infantryman 'snatches a moment during the advance to write a personal postcard home to his loved ones'. (Private Collection)**\n\nThe cavalry reports went back to GHQ their conclusions being that strong German forces were advancing on Mons. Twelve reconnaissance missions made by the infant Royal Flying Corps also reported the presence of large masses of enemy troops. The information made little impact at GHQ, as French and his staff were concentrating on plans for a general offensive.\n\nIt had been a busy time for the BEF since mobilisation on 4 August. The advance parties left for France on 7 August, and the main elements began their journey on the 12th. Southampton was the main embarkation port for the troops, except for those stationed in Ireland, who left from Dublin, Cork and Belfast. Motor transport (the British Army was the most mechanised in Europe) and petrol left from Avonmouth and Liverpool, stores and supplies were despatched from Newhaven. Ports and railways were put to a severe test; 80 trains were required to move a division, and 1,800 special trains were needed during the five days it took to get the BEF and its supplies to the embarkation points. On the busiest day, there were 137 sea crossings as the troop ships and transports laboured back and forth. By the evening of 17 August, the vast majority of the BEF had disembarked at Le Havre, Rouen and Boulogne.\n\nThey received a rapturous welcome and were deluged with flowers and kisses, wine and food. Cap badges and shoulder titles were handed over to enthusiastic admirers. An infantry officer, marching through the cheering crowds on the trek to Maubeuge, recalled years later that 'I felt like a king among men'.\n\nSince 4 August, the German Army had ploughed across Belgium. Li\u00e8ge was captured on 16 August, and von Kluck's First Army was swinging round to the west and advancing towards the French frontier. Von Bulow's Second Army was south of Li\u00e8ge and the Third Army under Gen. Hausen was moving through the Ardennes. Von Moltke, the Chief of the German General Staff, in order to control the pace and alignment of the right, decided to form the three armies into an Army Group under the control of von Bulow. Von Kluck was furious, his reaction simple. He merely ignored all orders from his nominal superior.\n\nThe Germans entered Brussels on 20 August, and on the same day, Sir John French issued Operation Order No 5 which instructed the BEF 'to march north'. This was in accordance with the rapidly crumbling Plan XVII, which required Lanrezac, commander of the French Fifth Army of which the BEF was now an appendage, to move into Belgian territory east of the River Meuse if the Germans breached Belgian neutrality. It was thought the joint force would meet only light opposition.\n\n#### THE ADVANCE ON MONS \u2013 AUGUST 1914\n\n**The BEF was greeted with enormous enthusiasm by the French population. Many British troops lost cap badges and shoulder titles in response to urgent appeals for souvenirs. This picture, taken by a press photographer, emphasises the high level of mechanisation of the British Army compared to its Continental rivals. Thanks to the 'Subsidy Scheme' under which commercial companies received from the War Office part of the cost of buying and operating approved lorries and vans in return for yielding up the transport if needed in time of war, the British Army could claim to be one of the most highly mechanised in the world. Many of the vehicles initially went to France in their civilian livery \u2013 a point much appreciated by the aircrew of 5 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, who used their scarlet and gold painted lorry (from the makers of HP Sauce) as a homing device during the constant moves of the Advance to Mons and the subsequent Retreat! (Private Collection)**\n\n###### **Lanrezac's change of plan**\n\nIn fact, Lanrezac was facing 700,000 men in the three German armies. He had already started to have second thoughts about the wisdom of an offensive. As time passed and more reports came in, he became more cautious. By 21 August, he was sure. The French Fifth Army, he reasoned, held the high ground on the south bank of the Sambre, was protected on the right by the Meuse and was thus in a first class defensive position. It would be madness to leave it to meet an enemy who was in great strength. Therefore, he would delay the attack until the time was opportune. The BEF, unaware of Lanrezac's change of opinion, was marching confidently northwards.\n\nLanrezac was right. The planned advance would neatly deliver the Fifth Army into a salient where it could be destroyed from three sides.\n\nMatters got worse. On the afternoon of 21 August, the 'excellent defences' on the Sambre were breached by the German Second Army. Despite talk of counterattacking the next day, Lanrezac decided on retreat. His concern was to save his Army. Intact, it could still fight; destroyed or captured, the route to Paris was wide open. The Fifth Army, along with the Fourth Army on its right, began to fall back the next day under constant pressure from the Germans.\n\nGeneraloberst von Kluck, meanwhile, had his own problems. He was concerned about his right flank. Under the impression that the BEF had probably landed at Ostend, Dunkirk and Calais, he was anxious to move towards the coast to intercept any threat from the Channel ports. Von Bulow, however, disagreed. Living up to his reputation as a cautious commander who believed in mutual support, he was more concerned about the growing gap between the First and Second Armies, and ordered von Kluck to turn south-west in case 'the First Army might get too far away and not be able to support the Second Army'. Von Kluck protested, but Supreme Headquarters intervened to support von Bulow. Von Kluck fumed but had to conform.\n\n**Belgian cyclist troops 'advancing towards the enemy' if the original caption is to be believed. Interestingly, in the original photograph a car on the left of the picture appears to be filled with British officers \u2013 presumably retreating from the enemy! (Author's Collection)**\n\nSo it was that a Royal Flying Corps crew reported on Saturday 22 August that they had seen a huge column of enemy troops marching towards the BEF. It was von Kluck's II Corps and they were on their way to Mons.\n\nIt was Lt. Spears, the British liaison officer at Lanrezac's headquarters, who saved the BEF from extinction. Learning on the Saturday afternoon of Lanrezac's decision to retreat, as well as getting some indication of the size of the German assault, he set off for GHQ along roads jammed with transport and refugees. It took him four hours. He arrived at eight o'clock in the evening to discover the staff busy with final arrangements for continuing the advance. Spears made his report to Sir John French and the planning was abruptly discontinued. New instructions were issued to halt the advance and prepare for battle.\n\nThere was to be a final surprising request. As the orders went out to the BEF to hold its ground, one of Lanrezac's staff officers arrived. Lanrezac wanted the BEF to swing to the east and attack von Bulow's Second Army to take pressure off the Fifth Army. This would have exposed the flank of the BEF to the full weight of von Kluck's assault. As it was, Sir John French agreed to hold his existing position for 24 hours.\n\n## THE BATTLE OF MONS\n\nThe main body of the BEF had already reached Mons. II Corps spread out along the line of the Mons-Cond\u00e9 Canal which ran directly westwards from the town. I Corps occupied the salient to the east of Mons. By nightfall the BEF was nine miles ahead of Lanrezac's retreating Fifth Army, with a ten mile gap on the right between the British and French. On the left, there was intermittent contact with the 84th French Territorial Division, and Allenby's Cavalry Corps was ordered across to support the left.\n\nThe last elements of the BEF did not reach Mons until 3am on 23 August after a long and gruelling three days' march. 'We were saddled with pack and equipment weighing nearly eighty pounds and our khaki uniforms, flannel shirts, and thick woollen pants, fit for an Arctic climate, added to our discomfort in the sweltering heat,' one Reservist recalled. New boots, the heat, and the strain of continual marching along cobbled roads brought many soldiers to a state of collapse.\n\nMons was the centre of the Belgian coal mining area. A string of dreary villages, interspersed with slag heaps, factories and coal tips, ran along the 16 mile length of the canal. Eighteen bridges crossed it. No more than two metres deep, and with a width of about 20 metres, the canal was hardly an obstacle. The view to the north, from which the attack would come, was obscured by grim terraces of cottages, factories and slag heaps. The higher ground was fringed with trees which made both movement and vision difficult for the defenders.\n\n**Behind the cavalry trudged the indomitable infantry, suffering badly in the August heat. Germans, French, Belgians and British alike recall sweltering August conditions. This group of British senior NCOs were caught by the camera in northern France just before the move into Belgium. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**Countering the Allied claims of 'Hun atrocities' in Belgium and France rapidly became a priority for the German propaganda service. There is little doubt that atrocities occurred \u2013 von Moltke, the German Commander-in-Chief, expressed his own shock at the brutal behaviour reported to him. Favourable stories and photographs of German activities were supplied to the press in neutral countries \u2013 German soldiers were forever rescuing Belgian children from flooded streams, swirling mill ponds and deep canals \u2013 together with stories attempting to justify repressive action on the part of the German authorities. The US Ambassador to Belgium recalled that the continual German justifications made him feel that the burgemeesters or mayors of Belgian towns had bred a special race of children, so often was the reason advanced for a particular atrocity that the son or daughter of a local burgemeester had attacked an innocent or unarmed German soldier. This picture was one of a series purporting to show the warm welcome offered to the occupiers by the Belgians. (Author's Collection)**\n\nThe BEF dug in, borrowing picks and shovels from the local civilians to eke out their own supply. Both Haig and Smith-Dorrien were concerned about their ability to hold their positions. II Corps, in particular, with some 36,000 men in total, had the almost impossible job of defending a 21 mile long front line running from the bridge at Le Petit Cr\u00e9pin in the west to the bridge at Obourg in the east. The canal curved round the town of Mons to join the River Sambre and this created a salient which included the road and railway bridges into Mons itself. On the right of Smith-Dorrien's position, I Corps faced east so that the whole length of the British position looked a little like a walking stick with a curved handle.\n\nSensibly and conventionally enough, the British infantry were concentrated to deny the bridges to the advancing foe. Outposts were deployed on the northern side of the canal to cover the approaches to the bridges. The soldiers scraped holes where they could, erected barricades from anything they could find, concealed themselves wherever possible and waited for morning.\n\nSmith-Dorrien had commanded II Corps for only a day. He had been sent hastily from England to replace Sir James Grierson who had died suddenly on 17 August. Smith-Dorrien had enjoyed a less than harmonious interview with Sir John French, who had instructed him to give battle along the line of the canal. Smith-Dorrien had asked if it was an offensive or a defensive operation and received the not altogether encouraging response that he should obey orders.\n\nSmith-Dorrien's doubts were not eased during a personal visit by Sir John French early in the morning of 23 August. With one of those contradictory instructions which baffled those who served under him, he told Haig, Allenby and Smith-Dorrien 'to be prepared to move forward, or to fight where they were', and to ready the bridges across the canal for demolition. He further assured his corps commanders that 'little more than one, or two, enemy corps with perhaps a cavalry division' were advancing on the BEF. This optimistic assessment was totally at variance with the reports of both the British and French Intelligence staff. They estimated that a minimum of three German Army corps were approaching Mons.\n\n**Reports of clashes between German and British cavalry led to a rash of popular pictures in both countries; cavalry actions were dashing and romantic, evoking past eras of combat. This illustration, produced early in the war, shows a determined German cuirassier spearing a terrified British opponent. (Michael Solka)**\n\n**The German army entered Brussels on the 20th August, 1914. Long horse-drawn columns of guns and transports, interspersed with marching infantry, relentlessly singing themselves hoarse as they passed through the Belgian capital, brought home to watching civilians the awesome power that they faced. It took three days and nights for the Germans to go through Brussels and, as one witness dolefully recalled, it was the non-stop singing of marching songs that was the worst part of it. (Private Collection)**\n\nSmith-Dorrien expressed his worry about his position along the canal. He had already reconnoitred a new defence line two miles south of the canal which eliminated the town of Mons and the salient. He told French that he was preparing orders for his troops to retire to this line if they were in danger of being cut off by the advancing Germans. Smith-Dorrien was later to claim that Sir John had agreed with his views and approved his plans, a conclusion which the Commander-in-Chief subsequently denied. Sir John then departed for Valenciennes, leaving his army to fight its first battle of the war. GHQ was to issue no further written orders until the morning of 24 August and Sir John French's contact with his army became extremely haphazard.\n\n###### **The opening shots**\n\nEven as the commanders talked, the first skirmishes had started. In a drizzling, misty dawn, the Germans began a short bombardment which caused about 20 casualties, and the 4th Middlesex opened fire on a German cavalry patrol pushing forward to the salient east of Mons. Lt. von Arnim of the Husaren Regiment Nr. 1 was taken prisoner. He was shot through the knee and would walk with a limp for the rest of his days. As the sun came out, clearing the mist and rain, more German cavalry were seen along the whole length of the line. They were the advance guard of the 3rd, the 9th and the 2nd Cavalry Corps of the First Army.\n\nVon Kluck, still smarting under his changed orders, had little idea of the location of the BEF. His troops stumbled upon British forces by chance. Instead of co-ordinated attacks, there were thus a series of small-scale actions. If von Kluck had concentrated the full weight of the four Army Corps at his disposal upon the BEF, history would have been very different. As it was, he believed that only cavalry were in front of him, that the main BEF was still somewhere to the south, and allowed the action to develop piecemeal.\n\n#### THE BATTLE OF MONS 23 AUGUST 1914\n\n**The BEF's first encounter with von Kluck's First Army. Along a line approximately nine miles long, nine and a half British battalions hold four German Divisions at bay for most of the day.**\n\n**The main Belgian field army retreated to Antwerp on 20 August. As the Germans occupied Brussels, the Belgians prepared their defences. Optimism was high. This detachment of Belgian infantry demonstrates exactly how they would defend an Antwerp canal against the invader. (Author's Collection)**\n\nAt about 9am, the German 9th Corps artillery once more opened fire on the salient on the British right. The bombardment was followed by an assault from the 18th Infantry Division, pushing forward between Obourg and Nimy against the 4th Middlesex and the 4th Royal Fusiliers. Eight battalions attacked four companies. The German soldiers approached in a solidly packed mass of close columns and were met by a hail of fire from the entrenched British infantry.\n\n'They went down like a regular lot of Charlie Chaplins,' one British soldier wrote to his wife, 'every bullet hitting home, sometimes taking two men at a time.' Column after column advanced to be met by the same withering fire. Finally, the German attack shivered to a halt and the survivors retreated to the cover of the tree line. Desultory artillery fire continued and after 30 minutes, a new attack was launched.\n\nThis time, the Germans came in extended order over a wider frontage; they were joined by the infantry of the 17th Division, and their attacks were pressed home with great courage. The Middlesex, in the east of the salient, suffered under a continuous artillery bombardment, but the infantry attacks were thrown back with heavy German losses. Eventually, the German troops began to operate in smaller groups. Determined parties of enemy infantry managed to cross the canal and infiltrate the flanks of the Middlesex position.\n\nThe situation became confused and communication a problem as the shells rained down, but the 'stubborn resistance' which Smith-Dorrien had pressed upon his brigade commanders continued. By mid-morning, despite support from the machine gun section of the 2nd Royal Irish, the Middlesex had begun to fall back, and shortly after midday they were fighting desperately to prevent the German assault from encircling them.\n\n**British cavalry entered Mons on 21 August 1914. This photograph, taken by a French liaison officer, shows a patrol on its way forward into Belgium on the 20th August. (Mons Museum)**\n\n###### **Defence of la Bois Haut**\n\nOn their right, the 1st Gordons and 2nd Royal Scots, dug in on higher ground at la Bois Haut, were resisting stubbornly as the 17th Division tried to turn the British flank. From this higher ground, the British artillery had both good observation and fields of fire. The German infantry was caught in the open by the gunners of 6, 23 and 49 batteries and suffered heavily from the hail of shrapnel with which they were showered.\n\nThe salient was being assaulted on three sides and British losses rose steadily. As the officers were killed or wounded, the individual initiative of the lower ranks became a vital ingredient of the resistance. By noon, German troops were over the canal in reasonable strength and the enemy artillery was making life extremely unpleasant for the British infantry. The position of the 4th Middlesex was rapidly becoming untenable, and the Royal Irish Regiment, ordered up to support them, found their task complicated by the attentions of the German guns. A German cavalry attack was beaten back by the Irish machine gunners but the enemy's artillery eventually zeroed in and caused severe casualties.\n\n**These troopers of the 9th Lancers entering Mons on the 21 August 1914, were the first British soldiers to reach the town. (Mons Museum)**\n\nATTACK OF THE GERMAN 18TH DIVISION AT MONS, 23 AUGUST 1914 \n **Following a bombardment by the German 9th Artillery Corps at about 09.00 the German 18th Division launched an assault against the 4th Middlesex and the 4th Royal Fusiliers between Obourg and Nimy. Eight battalions attacked four companies in close column formation and were cut down in a hail of fire from the British.**\n\n**The British Army moved northwards behind its cavalry screen which duly sent back a stream of patrol reports. Allied to those of the RFC squadrons, they gave an accurate enough picture of the looming menace in front of the British. Unfortunately, both the British and French staffs considered the reports to be greatly exaggerated. On 21 August 1914, the Cavalry Division received an order telling them that the 'information you have acquired and conveyed to the C-in-C appears to be somewhat exaggerated'. Henry Wilson, convinced of the excellence of the French Plan XVII and sceptical of any German advance on the right, was the signatory. It was, not surprisingly, a cavalryman who fired the first British shot of the First World War, the first shot fired in anger on the Continent since the Battle of Waterloo. At Casteau, just north of Mons, Corporal Drummer Thomas of the 4th Dragoon Guards fired at a distant German cavalryman at about 7am on 22nd August 1914. He was forever convinced that he had hit his man. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**Two British 18th Hussars question members of the local populace at Mons on 21 August 1914. Note the sun hood worn by one of the riders and the fringed tassels over the horses' eyes to keep away flies. (Mons Museum)**\n\nThe withdrawal from the salient began at about 2pm. The Royal Fusiliers retired slowly, stubbornly, and reluctantly from the bridges, a task made more difficult because they were in full view of the enemy. At Nimy, Lt. Maurice Dease, the machine gun officer of the Royal Fusiliers, held back two battalions of German infantry as they tried to capture the bridge. Although wounded time and again, Dease fought until he died. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. It was the first of 628 to be awarded during the First World War. Pte. Sidney Godley, also of the machine gun section, won the second. Remaining on the bridge to cover the withdrawal of the Fusiliers late in the afternoon, already badly wounded, he held his position until everyone else had got away. As a final gesture, he dismantled his machine gun and threw the pieces into the canal. He then crawled back to the main road where he was found by two Belgian civilians and taken to hospital in Mons.\n\nThe Fusiliers withdrew through Mons itself and then to Ciply and Nouvelles to the south of the town. Their retreat was covered by the 1st Lincolns who had set up barricades through which the exhausted survivors of the day's fighting passed. The enemy showed no inclination to pursue.\n\nIn the remainder of the salient, the fighting became increasingly bitter as the afternoon wore on. The Germans tried to outflank their opponents by moving forward to Hyon. This caused problems for the 4th Middlesex and the Royal Irish as they pulled back. The Middlesex, having moved through the Royal Irish, fought a desperate rearguard action on the outskirts of Hyon itself; as the Royal Irish, in their turn, started their withdrawal, they found the Germans behind them and were forced to detour through la Bois Haut.\n\n**Two British cavalrymen and their French interpreter on the Canal du Centre on 21 August 1914. This very poor photograph is nonetheless an interesting moment frozen in time. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**The Grand-Place at Mons \u2013 soldiers of 'A' Company of the 4th Royal Fusiliers, part of the 7th Brigade of 3 Division in Smith-Dorrien's II Corps, shown at rest on the afternoon of 22 August, 1914. From this position today, the facade is virtually unchanged. By the next morning, these soldiers had moved on to Nimy, some 7 kilometres to the north, where they fought off the full weight of the 18th Division of von Kluck's IX Corps. Note the Belgian civilians mixing with the troops. (Mons Museum)**\n\nTHE BRIDGE AT NIMY 23 AUGUST 1914 \n **To help cover the retreat from the salient Lieutenant Maurice Dease held back two battalions of German infantry attempting to capture the bridge. Repeatedly wounded he fought until he died. Private Sidney Godley took over and remained until everybody had escaped. Although badly wounded he managed to dismantle the gun and throw it into the canal as a final gesture before crawling to the road where he was found by two civilians who took him to hospital. Both soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross.**\n\n**The 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers won the first two Victoria Crosses of the war. The first to go to a private soldier was that awarded to Private Sidney Godley (see text). Godley was badly wounded in the action defending the bridge at Nimy and was captured when the Germans occupied Mons. His picture, appearing in the papers when his award of the VC was announced, is reputed to have provided Bruce Balrnsfather with the likeness for 'Old Bill'. Certainly, a photograph of Godley in civilian clothes, taken at a subsequent Buckingham Palace reception for Victoria Cross holders, shows a stocky and cheerfully pugnacious figure who could well pass for Bairnsfather's creation. (Imperial War Museum)**\n\n###### **The battle for the canal**\n\nWest of the salient, along the line of the canal, the battle had taken longer to develop. The 6th Division of III Corps came upon the British positions at Mariette three miles west of Mons at about 11am. Marching down the road in close column of fours, they were sent reeling sharply backwards by the concentrated fire of the 1st Northumberlands. The Germans tried again, this time being ambushed against a barricade and a wire entanglement. There was a lull while two German field guns were brought up to demolish the Northumberlands' defences; the Fusiliers were then astounded to see a group of Belgian schoolgirls coming down the road towards them.\n\nThe enemy, taking advantage of the fact that the British were holding their fire in the face of civilians, rushed forward, and the Northumberland outposts were forced to withdraw across the canal. Whether this was a deliberate ploy by the German attackers or a simple case of civilians being caught up in the fighting is now impossible to determine.\n\nStill further west, more assaults by 6th Division against the bridge at Jemappes were severely punished by the 1st Royal Scots. Again, the Germans attempted to counter the threat by bringing up artillery, but the German field gunners were firing blind. Casualties among the scattered British troops were light and at noon both the Northumberlands and the Royal Scots were still comfortably fending off any attempt to take their bridges.\n\nAt St Ghislaine, to the left of the 1st Royal Scots, the 1st Royal West Kents were faced by the 12th Brandenburg Grenadiers of the 5th Division. Amazed British soldiers watched as the German troops advanced, firing from the hip. It was, one considered, 'like watching a military tattoo', but it was also remarkably ineffective, the bullets flying high above Kentish heads. The British battalion had advanced north of the canal and occupied a glass factory. From its cover, they massacred the first attacks without loss to themselves. Faced with increasing odds as the Brandenburg Grenadiers were reinforced, the Kents slipped away as dusk came and took up new positions on the embankment. The final German attacks were stopped some 300 yards north of the canal, great havoc being wrought by four guns of 120 Battery of the Royal Field Artillery which was on the canal towpath.\n\n**The 4th Dragoons at Mons. An officer and men in their sandbagged position. (Mons Museum)**\n\nLike many survivors of the German regiments that tangled with the BEF that day, the Brandenburgers believed the deadly 'mad minute' concentrated rifle fire of the British was the work of machine gunners. It was an understandable mistake; 700 concealed infantrymen, each firing once every four seconds, not only make a lot of noise. They cause many casualties. The vast majority of the attackers had never been under fire before, and the sheer power of the defence was an enormous shock to them.\n\n**The 1st Northumberland Fusiliers building a barricade across the road from Mons to Jemappes. Note the members of the local population who not only gave tools to the British soldiers but joined in to help build the defences. This picture was taken on the morning of 23 August 1914. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**Private B. Barnard of the 4th Royal Fusiliers, one of the men who defended the bridge at Nimy. The action here was one of enormous determination against substantial odds. Barnard survived the action and personally gave this photograph to the Mons Museum after the war. (Mons Museum)**\n\nAt Les Herbi\u00e8res, to the left of the West Kents' position, the 52nd Infantry Regiment from the German III Corps at first seemed to have learned the painful lesson being taught elsewhere. This area was held by the 2nd King's Own Scottish Borderers and the 1st East Surreys. The KOSB outposts came under attack by small parties of German infantry. Once these were driven in, the German artillery began a short fierce bombardment before another assault was launched. It was the same as those further along the east of the line. Two closely-packed battalions advanced and met the same fate as every other German massed attack. They were cut down in droves as they emerged from a wood a mere 200 metres from the East Surreys' defensive line. The German soldiers continued to advance despite their severe losses, but courage alone was not sufficient. A British officer later remembered walking down the line, hitting his men on their backsides with his sword and telling them to fire low. The range was so short that many were firing high.\n\nOn the extreme left, the 1st Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry did not get into action until 4.45pm, when they easily repulsed a horde of German cavalry. Shortly afterwards, the 7th and 8th Divisions of the German IV Corps found the left flank of the British position at the bridge at Pommeroeul and Conde. It was 5pm. Von Kluck had finally fumbled his way to a decisive point but it was too late. The British beat back the mass assaults as they had elsewhere. The defenders were hardly troubled, and repulsed the initial German attacks easily. If IV Corps' onslaught had been co-ordinated with those of III and IX Corps, von Kluck could have struck a decisive blow. As it was, the piecemeal blows at the British position had achieved little of value.\n\nElsewhere, the outnumbered BEF was coming under increasing pressure. It was only a matter of time before the enemy would be across the canal in force. Even so, nine-and-a-half British battalions had held four German divisions at bay for much of the day.\n\n**British troops, probably from the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers of 9 Brigade, at Jemappes, 22 August 1914. The local population turned out to greet them and feed them. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**A barrier of carts and wagons being constructed across the road from Mons to Quesney on 23 August 1914. Again, the local inhabitants willingly assisted the British troops. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**A house in Mons being barricaded during the evening of 22 August 1914. These troops may well be from the 1st Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. There are a number of soldiers on the upper storeys of the house and even after more than eighty years something of the picnic atmosphere that pervaded the BEF comes through. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**Just before the battle: Two private soldiers of the 1st Gordon Highlanders and two medical orderlies of the 2nd Royal Irish, troops of the 8th Infantry Brigade, pictured on the Mons-Beaumont main road on the morning of Sunday, 23 August 1914. Civilian onlookers, mingle happily with the soldiers. Shortly after this photograph was taken, the area came under attack by the 17th Division. (Mons Museum)**\n\n###### **Blowing the bridges**\n\nThe slow withdrawal from the salient was repeated along the line of the canal, not as a general retreat or retirement, but in a series of independent movements. Platoons and companies pulled back as their positions became impossible to hold. The Northumberland Fusiliers stayed on the canal line to cover the efforts of Capt. Theodore Wright of the Royal Engineers to destroy the Mariette road bridge. Despite repeated attempts, and suffering from two bad wounds, he did not succeed, but received the Victoria Cross for his gallantry under the most persistent German fire. At Jemappes, L\/Cpl. Charles Jarvis also won a Victoria Cross. In spite of heavy German fire, he worked alone for 90 minutes to bring down the bridge covered by the 1st Royal Scots.\n\nThe sound of the bridges being blown was the signal for the British infantry to make its way back to the shorter defensive line that Smith-Dorrien had already earmarked. Not all of the bridges were destroyed; a shortage of exploders left some intact. The Germans failed to capitalise on this. The rough handling they had received at the hands of the BEF had left them understandably hesitant about rushing forward.\n\nThe final attack of the day was launched against the 1st Gordons and 2nd Royal Scots who were still holding the eastern slope of Bois la Haut along the line of the road from Harmignies to Mons. German troops had already advanced through Mons and reached the rear of the British position. They ambushed the 23rd Battery of the Royal Artillery as it descended from the summit. The leading teams and drivers went down, but the Gordons promptly counterattacked just as a further assault developed on their front. It was a critical period, but the Gordons and the Royal Scots, supported by two companies of the Royal Irish Rifles, were well entrenched. Their devastating musketry annihilated the assault. The 75th (7th Bremen) Regiment der Infanterie alone lost five officers and 376 men in a matter of minutes. The German commanders had had enough. The British heard enemy bugles sound 'Cease Fire' all along the line. Unmolested, the 23rd Battery, joined by the 6th Battery, cleared its guns from the slopes and the Gordons and Royal Scots followed them.\n\nBLOWING THE BRIDGE AT JEMAPPES, 23 AUGUST 1914\n\n**As the retreat continued along the line to the west of Mons the destruction of the bridges over the canal would have been a great achievement. Lance Corporal Charles Jarvis set the charges under Nimy bridge, pausing only to send his assistants from the Royal Scots Fusiliers back to their company as the fire became too intense. Having worked for 90 minutes under fire and placing and setting 22 charges, Jarvis successfully demolished the bridge. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.**\n\n**Soldiers of the 1st Lincolns, part of II Corps Reserve, digging trenches near Ciply on the morning 23 August 1914. (Mons Museum)**\n\nThis costly thrust, pressed home with enormous bravery, was the last of its type. There would be a significant change in German tactics. In the future, the field-grey infantry would use their full artillery support. This time the BEF were able to escape to their new defence line without further interference.\n\nII Corps was pleased with itself. The canal bridges had been held until dusk and its soldiers knew that they had inflicted considerable damage on the enemy. They believed that, man for man, they were superior to their foe. 'It was like a Third Division team playing the First Division,' one soldier wrote home later, 'the Germans were beaten thorough.'\n\nThe total British loss during the day's fighting was 1,642 killed, wounded and missing. Of these, 40 came from Haig's I Corps on the right and south of Smith-Dorrien's line. II Corps had taken the brunt of the casualties and most of these were in the 4th Middlesex and the 1st Royal Irish Regiment. The Middlesex lost more than 400 men, the Royal Irish over 300. German losses are more difficult to compute; their system of returns does not allow casualties for a particular action, or even day, to be easily established. Most estimates agree that they were not less than 6,000 and could have been as high as 10,000. Individual German soldiers fought with great gallantry and tenacity, but were defeated by the murderous fire of the British infantry.\n\n## THE RETREAT BEGINS\n\nDuring the evening of 23 August, Sir John French finally accepted that the BEF was facing an enemy with an overwhelming superiority in numbers, and that Lanrezac's Fifth Army was withdrawing. The conclusion was inescapable. If the BEF did not retreat, its flanks would be left unprotected and it would be swallowed as von Kluck's First Army continued its relentless advance. Sir John's belief that he was being left in the lurch by his ally now became a major feature of his thinking.\n\nInstead of immediately issuing orders to his corps commanders, Sir John French sent for their chief staff officers. He announced his intention to pull back the BEF eight miles and instructed the corps commanders to work out the order of retirement among themselves. The only definite instruction was that I Corps would cover II Corps by occupying a line from Feignies to Bavai. Because of this peculiar and time-consuming procedure, Smith-Dorrien did not receive the order until 3am in the morning of 24 August. His headquarters was, in any event, without a working telegraph or telephone line and it was not until 4.30am that the first of his battalions was told to withdraw.\n\n**To German minds, the tiny BEF represented no threat at all. It was the French who were the major enemy and it was deeds of gallantry and crushing victories against the despised French which filled contemporary German newspapers and magazines. Postcards also glorified the defeat of a traditional enemy \u2013 this one shows Uhlans capturing French artillery pieces with remarkable ease. (Michael Solka)**\n\n**The Kaiser's eldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, commanded the German Fifth Army and its successful exploits were seized upon with relish by the German press. The capture of some French guns in a spirited action at Longwy on 22 August 1914 \u2013 the day before the Battle of Mons \u2013 inspired this picture which was widely reporduced throughout Germany. (Michael Solka)**\n\nVon Kluck now had some idea of the location and strength of the BEF and decided to force it back to the fortress of Maubeuge where it could be bottled up. He reasoned also that the British would try to retire towards the Channel ports, so he sent II Cavalry Corps under von Marwitz to head them off and decided to envelop the British left in order to stifle any attempt by the BEF to retreat west. Accordingly, he had made little attempt to attack I Corps on the right; it was the left flank that would need to feel the pressure. II Corps would again find itself outnumbered and fighting desperately against a determined and gallant foe.\n\nSir John French had already considered and resisted the temptation to retire behind the walls of Maubeuge. He was only too aware of the fate of Marshal Bazaine at Metz in 1870 who had 'in clinging to Metz, acted like one who, when the ship is foundering, should lay hold of the anchor'. The BEF was instructed to fall back towards Le Cateau.\n\nVon Kluck's attacks on 24 August were a catalogue of errors and misunderstandings. Haig received the orders to retire before Smith-Dorrien. At 4am, 1st Division of I Corps began to move out, followed some 45 minutes later by the 2nd Division. The German IX Corps received no orders to chase I Corps until 8am, by which time Haig had moved his men too far away to be engaged with any realistic chance of being driven into Maubeuge. Despatching von Marwitz's cavalry to the west had been von Kluck's first serious mistake in his attempts to destroy the BEF. This was his second.\n\n###### **II Corps runs into trouble**\n\nSmith-Dorrien already had two major problems before he could extricate his troops. His first was to clear unit transport from the roads, which had been brought up to support the general advance and was the reason why the BEF had marched to Mons in the first place. This was not a simple task and was made worse by the hordes of refugees already on the limited number of roads. The second problem was a manoeuvre which was complicated under peacetime conditions let alone when in imminent danger of enemy assault. Smith-Dorrien had decided to switch the positions of his two divisions. The 3rd, which had taken the brunt of the German attacks the previous day, would retire first. The 5th Division would follow and have less distance to cover when it began its withdrawal on the left.\n\n**To the right of the 4th Royal Fusiliers, the 4th Middlesex and the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment spent 23 August 1914 in a ferocious defence of their position against odds calculated of at least six to one. They faced elements of both the 17th and 18th Divisions as well as the artillery of IX Corps. XL Brigade of the RFA with their 18-pounders caused great havoc amongst the attackers. (Mons Museum)**\n\nIf Smith-Dorrien had received his orders earlier, he could probably have withdrawn in the darkness unmolested. As it was, a severe German bombardment started before dawn, initially against the British positions in the villages of Ciply and Frameries, but rapidly extending along the whole of 3 Division's front as far as Wasmes and Hornu. The lessons of the previous day had not been lost on the German commanders. To the assault infantry, waiting impatiently for the barrage to lift, it seemed as if the British would be easy targets. Ciply and Frameries were occupied by the 2nd South Lancashires and the 1st Lincolns. They were the rearguards of the 7th and 9th Brigades and were supported by 109 Battery of the Royal Field Artillery.\n\n**When the 4th Middlesex finally retired, they left behind one of their drums which was subsequently retrieved from the battlefield and hidden from the Germans. At the end of the war, the drum and three from other units recovered after the battle, were proudly displayed in the Mons Museum. In the inter-war years, they were joined by a further 22 drums presented by regiments who had fought in the battle. The 4th Middlesex drum still hangs, with its companions, in a place of honour in the Museum. (Author's Collection)**\n\n###### **The repulse of the German 6th Division**\n\nThe barrage ceased and the British troops gazed yet again on the now familiar sight of a mass infantry attack. The two battalions were about to feel the full weight of an assault by the entire 6th Division of III Corps. Ordered to hold British attention in the centre while the attack on the British left flank was being prepared, units of the 24th Brandenburg Regiment, the 20th Infantry Regiment and the 64th Infantry Regiment, among others, surged forward, fully confident that the British would have been totally cowed by the artillery fire.\n\n#### THE RETREAT AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1914\n\nIt was the German infantry who suffered. The bombardment had been peculiarly ineffective in the built-up area. There had been much noise, dust and falling masonry which served merely to provide extra cover for the defenders. As the Germans advanced, they once again ran into the devastating rifle fire of the regular British soldier. 'Tommy seems to have waited,' wrote one German officer later, 'for the moment of the assault. He had carefully studied our training manuals, and suddenly, when we were well in the open, he turned his machine guns on.' The greatest tribute to the musketry of the BEF was the consistent German belief that they faced massed machine guns.\n\n**The 4th Middlesex were ably supported by the 2nd Royal Irish during their action. Amongst the day's heroes was QMS T.W. Fitzpatrick of that regiment. Cut off from his unit, he defended the La Bascule cross-roads on the eastern outskirts of Mons from noon until sunset with 40 men who were mostly bandsmen. Seven were killed and 17 were so severely wounded that they were unable to move. At midnight, Fitzpatrick retired with the 16 others across the hills of Panisel and Bois-le-Haut to rejoin his battalion the next day near Quey-le-Grand. For his exploits he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Later commissioned, he finished the war as a colonel. (Mons Museum)**\n\nTo add to the attackers' woes, 109 Battery opened up with shrapnel as the German troops went forward. The advance was shredded, casualties in the assaulting units running at 30 to 40 per cent. Gallantry was not enough. The Germans broke under a hail of rifle fire and shrapnel and fell back to their start line.\n\nIn the lull that followed, the 8th Brigade, made up of the sorely tried 4th Middlesex, 1st Gordon Highlanders, 2nd Royal Scots and 2nd Royal Irish Regiment was able to get away from Nouvelles without difficulty.\n\nA new artillery bombardment followed, and a new mass assault. The result was the same. If anything, German losses were even heavier this time. The 1st Lincolns and 2nd South Lancashires kept firing, the enemy soldiers kept falling. The attack was beaten off, and at 9am the 9th Brigade withdrew from Frameries in good order, the rearguard of 1st Lincolns keeping a tight watch on advance parties of German infantry.\n\nFinally, and after some delay, it was time for 7th Brigade to pull out of the neighbouring village of Ciply. Their route led through Frameries and the retreat of the rearguard through the village proved to be costly. There had been enough time for the Germans to set up machine guns in enfilade among the slag heaps. Originally intending to fire upon the 1st Lincolns, the German gunners wreaked severe damage upon the 2nd South Lancashires as they pulled back. Nearly 300 men were lost in a very short time, more than half of 3 Division's total casualties that day.\n\nGerman losses in the attacks on Frameries and Ciply are not known. They were certainly very high. The 24th Brandenburg alone lost three out of six company commanders, half of its remaining officers and one third of its men. It is without question that the German infantry made no effort to pursue and, in the words of the Official History, 'handled 3rd Division on this day with singular respect'.\n\n###### **The 5th Division face von Kluck**\n\nTo the left of the British line, the 5th Division was less fortunate. They had been largely untroubled during the battle of Mons, their total casualties being less than 400. They would now receive a proper baptism as von Kluck tried to turn the British flank. The 5th Division would be attacked by three German divisions that day \u2013 the 6th Division of III Corps and the whole of IV Corps.\n\nThe defensive line ran north-west from Paturages to Hornu. The 2nd Duke of Wellingtons held the Paturages position and Hornu was covered by the 1st Bedfords and 1st Dorsets. The German artillery began its preparatory bombardment at about 8.30am. Once the artillery fire ceased at about 10am, the same familiar pattern was seen, as the German infantry, drawn from the 5th Division and part of 6th Division of III Corps, came forward in column to be met by rapid rifle fire and close-range shrapnel from the British artillery. The conflict developed rapidly into a confused series of running fire-fights among the slag-heaps and cottages. The individual training given to the British soldier again showed its worth as personal ingenuity and courage came into their own. 37th Battery of the Royal Field Artillery at Hornu fired its howitzers 'as if they were machine guns', while the infantry, in small groups, repeatedly drove back the German attacks.\n\n**The Band of the 2nd Royal Irish Regiment shortly before the war. It was these men who were led by QMS Fitzpatrick in his defence of the La Bascule crossroads. (Mons Museum)**\n\nThe 12th Brandenburg Grenadiers, who had suffered so badly the day before on the canal when they met the Royal West Kents, had another testing time. They came under fire not only from the British, but from their own artillery as well. As a result, the regiment seems effectively to have been wiped out.\n\nBy about 11am, 5th Division began its retirement, pulling back as the 3rd Division on its right began its withdrawal. There were some incidents. The 20th Infantry Regiment, used in the attack on Frameries, was able to infiltrate the British position, but its ambush of the Dorsets' regimental transport was remarkably unsuccessful, lacking both energy and enterprise, and the transport escaped unscathed.\n\nMore costly was the failure to get withdrawal orders to the 2nd Duke of Wellingtons. Together with their artillery, and reinforced by two companies of the Royal West Kents, they held on to their original positions and came under heavy German artillery and small arms fire. Losses rose, but when the Germans finally came forward en masse to deliver the final blow, they received a devastating hail of fire which stopped them in their tracks and allowed the defenders to slip away. Six German battalions had been held at a cost of nearly 400 casualties.\n\n**German accounts of the battle of Mons refer time and time again to the British use of machine guns; in fact, the first British provision of machine guns was precisely that of the German Army \u2013 2 per battalion. The army had made representations before the war to increase the numbers of machine guns to 6 per battalion. This extravagant request was promptly refused by the Treasury (the Chancellor of the Exchequer was Lloyd George) and the Army Vote was also decreased. Haig and other generals were thus forced to concentrate their efforts on highly specialised training in an attempt to avoid the limitation placed on tactics by inferior firepower. In musketry this led to what the press called the 'mad minute' \u2013 each man, both infantry and cavalry, firing 15 aimed rounds per minute. Some soldiers were even credited with 30 rounds per minute. The effect of 15 rounds per minute from each of the soldiers in this firing line can easily be imagined. (Author's Collection)**\n\nIt was on the left flank that matters became really serious, with a situation developing during the morning which could have destroyed the whole of II Corps. The independent 19th Infantry Brigade and the Cavalry Division had retired without mishap earlier in the day. Apart from some desultory firing before first light, there had been few signs of the Germans \u2013 not surprisingly, because von Marwitz's cavalry had left to patrol the routes to the Channel ports. By 11.30am, at just the time when the 2nd Duke of Wellingtons was beating back their last attack, the Cavalry Division and the 19th Brigade were back behind the left of the 5th Division.\n\n**By the morning of 24th August 1914, German troops were in full occupation of Mons and were to remain there until the very end of the war. Taken from an upper floor window of a house in the Grand-Place, this photograph shows troops of the German 18th Division, IX Division, IX Corps, in the town that same morning. The bandstand has now vanished but the ambulances outside the Hotel de Ville indicate its use as a temporary hospital. (Mons Museum)**\n\n**Numbers of wounded British soldiers were rescued by the civilian inhabitants of Mons who hid them from the invader. Posters \u2013 this one dated 25 August 1914 \u2013 warned the population of dire retribution if they sheltered British soldiers. This one demands that all English soldiers capable of walking are to report to the town hall with their arms before 6pm. If soldiers were so badly hurt that they could not report in person, the citizen finding them was to make a declaration to that effect. Failure to do so would result in a considerable communal fine upon the town. Despite this threat \u2013 and worse \u2013 the local population helped many soldiers to evade capture and eventually rejoin their units. A few stayed hidden in the vicinity throughout the whole period of the war. (Mons Museum)**\n\nAt this point the full weight of IV Corps artillery opened up from the Quievrain area against the now exposed flank of the British line. Von Kluck had at last got the right hook into operation, and the whole of IV Corps, consisting of the German 7th and 8th Divisions, was taking part. Von Kluck's aim was to swing round against Elouges, smash against the flank of the 5th Division and send it reeling towards Maubeuge. The steady withdrawal of the 5th Division could have been turned into a rout.\n\nThe commander of the 5th Division, Maj.-Gen. Sir Charles Fergusson, sent for help to the Cavalry Division. Allenby responded swiftly, sending the 2nd and 3rd Cavalry Brigades, supported by 'D', 'E' and 'L' Batteries of the Royal Horse Artillery. In the interim, Fergusson despatched his last remaining reserves, the 1st Norfolks, 1st Cheshires and 119 Battery of the RHA, all under the command of Col. Ballard of the Norfolks, to face the four German divisions advancing towards the gap between Elouges and Audregnies about two miles away. The orders were simple: they must stop the German advance.\n\n###### **The Flank Guard action at Elouges**\n\nIn the following action, two British infantry battalions, four batteries of artillery and parts of two cavalry brigades faced 24 battalions of German infantry and nine artillery batteries on a battlefield of some six square miles. If von Marwitz's cavalry had also been available to the Germans, then 5th Division would have been annihilated.\n\nThe British infantry had no time to dig in. The Cheshires took the left of the line, the Lincolns the right, with 119 Battery along a little ridge which gave them a clear field of fire across the cornfields towards Quievrain. The position was soon reinforced by the arrival of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade. The 9th Lancers and the 4th Dragoon Guards took up a position away on the left of the British line.\n\nAt 12.45pm, at least six battalions of German infantry, supported by six or more batteries of artillery, started their advance in two columns from Quievrain and Basieux. Their route led them across the front of the British cavalry and the target they presented was too much for the cavalry to resist. An order to attack the enemy infantry, if necessary by mounted action, became the signal for an all-out charge.\n\nThe 9th Lancers, with two troops of the 4th Dragoons, immediately galloped towards the enemy who were about 2,000 yards away. They came under fire as the German infantry reacted and the charge was brought to an ignominious halt by a wire fence bordering a sugar factory. As men and horses milled about, they were an easy target for the German guns. Most of the cavalry went to the right, some taking cover behind the sugar factory and some slag heaps, the others galloping across the front of the British infantry before re-forming. The gesture \u2013 one which Wellington would certainly have recognised and abhorred \u2013 cost 250 men and 300 horses and had little effect on the German advance which continued with hardly a pause.\n\nNonetheless, the action, much magnified and distorted by the popular press, became an important ingredient in boosting morale in Britain. It became known as the 'Charge to Save the Guns', harking back to earlier wars in which wire fences and machine guns were unknown.\n\n**A rare photograph of wounded British survivors of the battle with their Belgian rescuers. Taken only a few days after the flight, the location is the Hornu-Wasmes mine. The colliery sick bay was used as an operating theatre and hospital and some 40 British officers and men were hidden there. The Germans did not discover the British wounded until early September by which time some had already made an escape. Others got away subsequently, being passed down escape routes which included, amongst others, that operated by Nurse Edith Cavell. (Mons Museum)**\n\nA mile further to the west, the 3rd Cavalry Brigade was north of Angre. Supported by the 13-pdrs. of 'D' and 'E' Batteries of the RHA, they also charged the right flank of the German 8th Division, the 4th Hussars leading, supported by the 5th Lancers. Their losses were not as heavy but, again, they only marginally delayed the German onslaught.\n\nThe six guns of 'L' Battery, positioned to the left of the Cheshires, came into action at 1pm and began to sweep the advancing Germans with enfilading fire. At 2,000 yards range, the shrapnel tore great holes in the masses of enemy infantry. Hardly surprisingly, the German infantry stopped short and retreated. Re-formed, they tried again, displaying remarkable bravery, but with the same shattering results. All along the line, the pattern was repeated. By all military logic, the British troops should have been quickly steam-rolled into oblivion, but they continued to fight against odds which were at least six to one.\n\n**Mons remained under German occupation until the end of the war and the museum provides a valuable record of the period. There are sections devoted to the French, Belgian and Italian armies as well as the German invaders. (Author's Collection)**\n\nChecked on the left, the Germans tried to work themselves further south, outside the range of the defenders. On the right of the British line, the assault from the 7th Division began to press more heavily. German tactics were altering in response to the stubborn defence; counter battery fire against the RHA was largely inaccurate, but was causing problems. 'L' Battery itself was attacked by four German batteries, but suffered only 12 casualties. On the right, 119 Battery fared rather worse. It lost 30 men, one-quarter of its strength, and came under fire from three German batteries as well as machine guns at close range.\n\nBy mid-afternoon it was clear that the position could not be held; the rest of 5th Division had retired safely and it was time for the rearguard to disengage. 119 Battery withdrew under intense fire, its guns being manhandled away by the gunners and a group of 9th Lancers. Two Victoria Crosses were won at this stage, one going to the battery commander, Maj. Alexander, the other to Capt. Francis Grenfell of the 9th Lancers.\n\nRemarkably, the artillery did not lose a single gun in the engagement, even though every battery left under enemy fire. In the three hours in which they were in action, each battery fired about 450 rounds and caused havoc among the enemy troops.\n\nBy 5pm, with the artillery safely to the rear and the cavalry falling back, Col. Ballard ordered the infantry to retire. The Norfolks managed to withdraw but the message, sent three times, never reached the Cheshires. They continued to hold their line, stubbornly resisting for a further three hours, and causing heavy casualties among the German infantry. As the German attacks continued, the battalion was slowly split into small groups some of which were finally overwhelmed by ever-increasing numbers. Others managed to slip away, but the action cost the Cheshires some 800 casualties, killed, wounded and missing.\n\nII Corps, led by an exceptional soldier, Horace Smith-Dorrien, had once again completely frustrated the enemy's attacks. The British casualties for the day were more than 2,000, of which 1,650 were in the 5th Division. I Corps had again escaped most of the fighting, its losses amounting to about 100 men. On the German side, the attack on the rearguard alone is estimated to have cost some 3,000 to 5,000 men; combined with the costly efforts on the right of the British line, the total loss has been estimated at anything between 6,000 and 10,000 casualties. The disappearance of some regiments from the order of battle suggests that it may have been far worse.\n\nThere were tangible results to the day's fighting although they were not immediately apparent. Von Kluck's advance had been slowed. During the whole day, his army had covered just over three miles and the BEF had eluded his grasp yet again. Despite an overall superiority in men and in guns, he had failed to destroy the BEF. It was an error for which the German Army would pay a high price.\n\nHungry, exhausted, the British troops stumbled into their rest areas. New orders had already arrived from GHQ: 'The Army will move tomorrow, 25th inst,' began Operation Order No 7, 'to a position in the neighbourhood of Le Cateau, exact positions will be pointed out on the ground tomorrow.' The Retreat continued.\n\n**Many photographs purporting to show British troops on the Retreat from Mons were, in fact, taken at the time of the Battle of Loos by Paul Maze, a French liaison officer. This, however, is the genuine article. An RFA crew, with 18-pounder gun and limber, shortly after being in action \u2013 note the empty shell cases.**\n\n**This helpful Boy Scout, with the British cavalry, is carrying a Lee-Enfield rifle and wearing an ammunition bandolier as well as other British Army-issue items \u2013 one of which appears to be an infantry webbing belt. This suggests a date during the retreat itself. The town is clearly in a French-speaking area and the tramlines suggest a substantial community. Boy Scouts were not generally employed as combatants but, equipped as above, this one would incur the considerable wrath of any German soldier who met him and would hardly escape a firing squad. (Private Collection)**\n\n###### **Retreat to Le Cateau**\n\nBy the morning of 25 August, Sir John French thought only of saving the BEF in accordance, as he believed, with Kitchener's instructions. Cooperation with the French was forgotten. The British Commander-in-Chief entertained some astounding ideas. One plan was to retreat pell-mell to Le Havre, turning the port into a fort, until the BEF was ready to fight again. That this manoeuvre would have required a march across the whole front of von Kluck's advancing troops is sufficient comment on its practicability.\n\nThere was one piece of good news. Kitchener had sent the 4th Division as reinforcements. It arrived in the battle area on the 24th, minus its cavalry, cyclists, signallers, field ambulances, engineers, ammunition columns and heavy artillery. Nevertheless, it was a welcome and valuable addition to the steadily diminishing numbers of the BEF.\n\nRetreat to Le Cateau produced a problem. To the rear of I and II Corps was the Mormal Forest, roughly ten miles long and four miles wide. Two roads ran from east to west across the wood, only a few rough tracks ran from north to south, the direction in which the BEF was travelling. The dangers in trying to squeeze along them were obvious. The only choice was to use the roads on either side of the wood. To move the whole of the BEF down one side or the other would cause even more chaos and confusion on the crowded roads, create delays and possibly expose the BEF to another onslaught from the German First Army.\n\nSir John French decided, with some misgivings, to split the BEF in two; I Corps would retreat down the eastern side of the wood, II Corps would withdraw down the west and the BEF would be reunited at Le Cateau, 25 miles to the south.\n\nAdditionally, there were supply problems. Everything had been planned in the expectation that the BEF would be advancing northwards, not retreating southwards. The forward dumps had been overrun and the lines of communication disrupted. With limited telephone facilities and constant movement, it became impossible to discover where individual units were and what they needed. In a brilliant piece of improvisation, Maj.-Gen. Robertson, the BEF's Quartermaster-General, ordered his men to off-load supplies at every crossroads and junction along the line of the retreat.\n\n**The stand by Smith-Dorrien's II Corps at Le Cateau is one of the great actions of the British Army. It was Allenby, admitting that his cavalry was 'pretty well played-out' whilst reporting that von Kluck's infantry were only a few hours distant, that decided Smith-Dorrien. Allenby proved to be an exceptional cavalry commander although he and his small staff suffered along with everyone else during the retreat. Most of their personal kit was lost and they could muster only one razor between them for several days! (Author's Collection)**\n\nBoth Haig and Smith-Dorrien faced difficulties. I Corps was faced with a meandering route which first crossed the River Sambre and then re-crossed it on two later occasions. The problems were exacerbated because the road was crammed with soldiers from Lanrezac's Fifth Army as well as hordes of refugees. In the stifling August heat, I Corps averaged only about two miles per hour as it trudged wearily onwards. To add to Haig's woes, he was suffering severely from diarrhoea, a condition which hardly helped his concentration or normally imperturbable reactions.\n\nFortunately, there was little sign of the foe. The BEF was eight miles south of Von Kluck when it halted the previous evening. The First Army commander was still essentially mistaken about the movements of the BEF and believed he had succeeded in pushing it towards Maubeuge. Further, he assumed that he had forced the whole of the BEF, six divisions as he believed, in that direction. The location of Haig's I Corps was unknown to him. Reacting to a series of confusing and contradictory reports, von Kluck gave orders for the First Army to wheel south-east. It was a movement which in fact took them behind the rear of II Corps and towards the flank of I Corps.\n\n###### **Landrecies**\n\nApart from odd skirmishes with advanced patrols, I Corps spent another day out of reach of the enemy. As evening approached, the tired troops began to reach their billets. The Corps HQ went to Landrecies, where there was a bridge over the Sambre, sharing the village with the 4th (Guards) Brigade. The 6th Brigade settled down further east at Maroilles, two miles from another crossing point of the Sambre.\n\nFor the advance elements of the German III and IV Corps, it was also a tiring day. They, too, were looking forward to settling down in billets for the night. The 14th Regiment der Infanterie of III Corps was anticipating a quiet time at Landrecies; the 48th Regiment der Infanterie was equally anxious to reach Maroilles.\n\nShortly after Haig reached Landrecies at about 4pm, a flood of refugees arrived and claimed that German Uhlans were close behind them. A check revealed no sign of the enemy, but prudently, No 3 Company of the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards, with two machineguns, went to the north-west to guard the road from Le Quesnoy. The remainder of the brigade prepared defences in the town itself.\n\nAt Maroilles, two troops of the 15th Hussars were guarding the bridge when the first patrols of the 48th Infantry arrived. There was a fierce skirmish which lasted nearly an hour before the Germans brought up a field gun. The Hussars fell back and were then reinforced by the 1st Royal Berkshires. It was 7pm and getting dark. In a sharp action involving savage hand-to-hand fighting along a stone causeway leading to the bridge, the Berkshires lost about 60 men. The Germans held on to the bridge and the frustrated Berkshires finally abandoned their attempts to take it.\n\nIt was dark at Landrecies when Capt. Monck, in command of the guard on the road, heard the sound of approaching troops. A challenge got a reply in French. A moment later the Coldstream were charged by the Germans. In the confusion, the Germans managed to snatch a machine gun but it was promptly recaptured.\n\nNo 1 Company of the Coldstream Guards came up as reinforcements. The German attacks continued, but each charge was thrown back by the steady fire of the Guards. By careful use of cover, the Germans eventually enfiladed the Coldstream line, forcing the Guards back towards a line of cottages. A small haystack was set on fire and by its light a single German field gun was able to shell the British position at close range. Pte. West of the Coldstream Guards twice dashed out under heavy fire and managed to put out the flames.\n\nThe fighting went on until after midnight, ending finally when a howitzer of 60 Battery arrived and disabled its German counterpart with its third round. A diversion was mounted by the Irish Guards and, eventually the disgruntled Germans withdrew to the southern edge of the Mormal Forest. Casualties on both sides were very similar. Twelve Coldstream Guardsmen had been killed, 105 were wounded and there were seven missing. The German official figures admitted 127 casualties, but with a higher proportion of killed. To the west of the town, the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards were involved in a series of confused actions. When the dawn came, their total losses amounted to seven men.\n\nThe affair at Landrecies was no more than a skirmish, but it was to have a profound effect. In the town itself, the belief rapidly spread that it was surrounded. Haig, normally calm and placid, reacted strongly to the reports he received. After giving orders for the defence of the town, he instructed his staff to burn all secret papers and resolved to sell his life dearly. After the first excitement had subsided, he reasoned that the enemy line was probably thin and decided that the Corps staff should make a bid to escape. This was sensible. Little would be gained if the whole of the Corps staff were taken prisoner.\n\nHaig, with a combination of luck and judgement, was able to rejoin the main body of I Corps with his staff at about 1.30am. He immediately set about rescuing the 4th (Guards) Brigade from what he believed to be a difficult situation. The 1st Division was ordered to mount a rescue operation at dawn. He then telephoned GHQ to report the attack and he assessed the situation as 'very critical'. Two hours later, at 3.50am, he spoke again to GHQ, asking this time for Smith-Dorrien's II Corps, eight miles away on the other side of the Sambre, to be sent to help him. Haig believed that I Corps was about to be attacked in force.\n\nSmith-Dorrien was unable to help. He had already decided that his only course of action was to stand and fight at Le Cateau, which was precisely where von Kluck's army was marching.\n\n## LE CATEAU\n\nThe progress of II Corps along the western side of the Mormal Forest was extremely difficult. The 3rd Division on the left of the Corps were harassed by von Kluck's right wing, which pushed forward in yet another attempt to outflank the weary BEE Throughout the day, the rearguards of the 3rd Division, the 19th Infantry Brigade and the Cavalry Division fought a series of running engagements against an unenthusiastic enemy. Von Kluck's divisions were also suffering from the punishing marches along the sun-baked roads.\n\nThere was a sharp action at Le Quesnoy during the day when the 1st and 3rd Cavalry Brigades engaged in a fierce skirmish. At Solesmes, a small town on the route, there was considerable confusion as streams of refugees, transports and troops eddied around the narrow streets. A determined German attack at this point would have been disastrous; as it was, the 2nd South Lancashires and 1st Wiltshires, the rearguard of 7th Infantry Brigade, were able to discourage the tentative German IV Corps from approaching too closely. By mid-afternoon, the 3rd Division had disengaged, covered by two brigades of the 4th Division, leaving the Germans to settle down in and around Solesmes. The day's work had cost the cavalry more than 100 casualties, the infantry a further 350.\n\nThe 5th Division did not see the enemy at all, but their route to Le Cateau was thronged with civilian refugees, French soldiers and wagons of all types. Worst of all was the sweltering heat, and many men dropped out of the ranks. As evening came, there was a heavy thunderstorm. The troops who straggled into Le Cateau were wet, weary and very hungry.\n\n**Some of the British infantry positions at Le Cateau were far from ideal. This photograph purports to show part of the battle but is, without doubt, not the genuine article, either being posed or a film still. It nonetheless gives an idea of the actual fighting. (Private Collection)**\n\n###### **The decision to fight**\n\nThat evening GHQ ordered a continuation of the retreat south-westwards towards Peronne. Smith-Dorrien well knew the exhausted condition of his men and had grave doubts about how much more marching they could take; he had no information as to the location of Allenby's Cavalry or Gen. Snow's newly arrived 4th Division. He knew nothing of the rearguard action of the 3rd Division. None of them would be accounted for until midnight. He was unaware of what had happened at Landrecies, and assumed that I Corps would be close to Le Cateau covering his right flank in accordance with previous orders. The conviction grew upon him that he should consider fighting instead of retreating. A thorough infantryman, he felt that 'a stopping blow under cover of which we could retire,' was not merely possible, but essential.\n\n#### THE BATTLE OF LE CATEAU - 26 AUGUST 1914\n\nSmith-Dorrien's belief that he should stand was reinforced when Allenby arrived to see him at 2am. Allenby's message was stark. His cavalry brigades were scattered, with men and horses 'pretty well played out'. Allenby believed that unless II Corps could move at once and get away under cover of darkness, they would be forced to fight at dawn because the enemy were so near.\n\nSmith-Dorrien sent for Gen. Hamilton, commander of the 3rd Division. Hamilton responded bluntly when asked if he could move his Division without delay. The earliest he could start would be 9am. Smith-Dorrien knew that what was true for the 3rd Division would apply also to the 5th and the 19th Infantry Brigades. He asked Allenby if he would be prepared to take orders and act as part of II Corps. Allenby assented at once. 'Very well, gentlemen,' Smith-Dorrien said calmly, 'we will fight and I will ask Gen. Snow to act under me as well.' Well aware of the fact that he was disobeying specific orders from GHQ, Smith-Dorrien's decision was a brave one. When he eventually learned that I Corps was still eight miles away and was continuing its retreat at first light, it was too late to change the orders again.\n\nIt was still a close thing. Smith-Dorrien personally went to 5th Division Headquarters to instruct Gen. Fergusson, while Allenby and Hamilton passed on the new orders to their own men. Both Fergusson and Snow were relieved at the decision to make a stand, but time was desperately short. Snow did not receive the changed instructions until 5am. Some units were already preparing to move out; others had no chance to make any form of defence other than hastily scraping shallow rifle pits in the rock-hard soil.\n\n###### **The battlefield**\n\nThe battlefield of Le Cateau lacked the strings of mining villages and slag heaps as at Mons. It was open, undulating countryside which provided impressive fields of fire. Mons was an infantry battle. Le Cateau would be one in which artillery played the dominant role.\n\n**Once news of the encounters with British troops reached Germany, there was a flood of illustrations depicting the battles. This spirited picture shows the German Cavalry \u2013 inevitably Uhlans to the British Press \u2013 charging 'English Highlanders' \u2013 an imaginative concept \u2013 and is typical of many of this period. (Michael Solka)**\n\nII Corps' position can be described as a flattened arrow head with a length of about ten miles, the point of which was at Caudry along the line of the Le Cateau to Cambrai road. To the left, 4th Division, composed of the 10th, 11th and 12th Brigades, faced north-west, forming what is technically known as a refused flank. Here they were in contact with the French Cavalry Corps under the command of Gen. Sordet who, in turn, maintained a link with Gen. d'Amade's Territorials who covered the gap all the way to the French coast. The French played an important, if rarely acknowledged, role that day by fighting off the German II Corps and preventing it from joining the main battle.\n\nThe centre of the line, from just east of Beauvois and running through Caudry and Inchy, was held by the 3rd Division facing slightly north-east. 5th Division continued the line which followed the road to Le Cateau and eventually curved round to face due east at the crossroads before the town itself. It was not a bad position, but the right flank was open. The 1st Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and two companies of the 1st East Surreys had been sent there to link up with Haig's I Corps.\n\nBehind the infantry was the cavalry. The 4th Brigade was at Ligny behind the centre of the line. The 1st Brigade and some of the 2nd was on the right and the 3rd Brigade was away to the east trying to make contact with I Corps.\n\nAgainst them, von Kluck sent four divisions drawn from III and IV Corps, the three divisions of II Cavalry Corps and, later in the day, the artillery and a further division of IV Reserve Corps. He still believed he was facing a BEF consisting of six divisions, all of which were in front of him. Obsessed with the idea that the BEF would try to make for the Channel ports (a not unshrewd reading of Sir John French's mind), he was convinced his enemy would be aligned in a north-south position between the Sambre and Cambrai. The encounters at Landrecies and Maroilles had done nothing to alter this belief.\n\nVon Kluck's plan was simple. Both flanks would be attacked and the British crushed like a walnut between a pair of crackers. Von Kluck therefore ordered II Corps to Cambrai; von Marwitz's II Cavalry Corps, recalled from its wanderings in the west, was to hold down the left of the British position until the arrival of IV Reserve Corps. In the centre, IV Corps would divert attention from III Corps as it swung across to envelop the right of the British line. The result would be the simultaneous rolling up of both flanks and total destruction of the British force. As at Mons, however, von Kluck's troops ran piecemeal into the British positions and the battle was done before their full strength could be used.\n\n###### **The battle begins**\n\nDawn came with a thick mist. It was 26 August, the anniversary of the battle of Crecy in 1346, when the English archers had each fired 12 arrows a minute to destroy their enemy; in 1914, the Short Lee-Enfield rifle would do the same task with 15 aimed rounds a minute.\n\nThe battle of Le Cateau began at about 6am as German artillery began a bombardment all along the British line. The lessons of Mons had been absorbed. The British infantry would be shelled into submission before the main assault began. The British artillery reacted swiftly, the guns coming right forward to protect their infantry. In the centre, the British troops strung out along the Le Cateau-Cambrai road endured stoically as the enemy artillery sought to pin them down while the main assaults hit the flanks.\n\nOn the right flank, the battle was especially fierce. It was here that the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and East Surreys had tried to link up with I Corps. Having found no sign of Haig's men, they were formed up and ready to march off when they were surprised by German infantry. The Germans, from the 7th Division of IV Corps, had taken advantage of the dawn mist to infiltrate their way into and through Le Cateau itself. The ambush developed into a savage action as the British, fighting stubbornly in small groups, fell back along the Selle Valley towards the high ground south-east of the town. The 3rd Cavalry Brigade came up in support, as did 'L' Battery of the RHA. By noon, the detachment had rejoined the main body of its parent 14th Brigade. The action had cost 200 casualties, but the Germans made no attempt to pursue their quarry as they moved away from the valley. The German infantry pressed on along the Selle Valley. The mist hid their movements as they pushed out to occupy higher ground to the east, an area which would provide an excellent platform for the German artillery to enfilade their enemy.\n\nIt was not long before a very serious situation, fraught with danger for the British, developed. A successful German attack to the west of Le Cateau allowed them to move more artillery up to the high ground north of the Cambrai road. The British right flank was held by the 13th, 14th and 19th Brigades; the order to stand and fight had not reached brigade level when the German attack started and they were brought to combat in positions they had not anticipated holding.\n\nThe British artillery, on the ridges behind the infantry, came as close as it could to the front line, firing from just 1,200 yards into the German positions. They provided a prime target for their German counterparts who began to concentrate on destroying the British guns. The 11th Battery RFA, in particular, suffered heavily. By 10am the battery had lost all of its officers and only one gun was still in action. It was then that heavy German infantry assaults developed, huge masses pushing forward in overwhelming numbers.\n\nBy about 11am, the British positions along the ridge were enfiladed on both sides. The 2nd Suffolks and the 2nd King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, together with two companies of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders endured a hail of artillery and machine gun fire but, with an intense and desperate courage, they drove back every German assault.\n\n**The BEF was poorly equipped with heavy artillery \u2013 another tribute to official parsimony \u2013 in comparison with its enemy and its ammunition was very largely shrapnel rather than high explosive. At full recoil this is one of the 16 60-pounders that accompanied the BEF to France. The total BEF establishment of artillery pieces of all calibres was 490 guns \u2013 less than the Germans concentrated for the siege of Namur alone! (Private Collection)**\n\nThe Royal Artillery gunners, firing 'as calmly as if they were on the practice range', contributed to the maelstrom of defensive fire. Every attempt by the German infantry to develop a firing line and assault position close to the British was thwarted. The 122nd Battery was involved in an extraordinary incident when a platoon of German infantry came over a ridge in close formation. The battery fired a single salvo and the platoon was obliterated.\n\n**Supplying the retreating BEF was a nightmare. The Quartermaster-General, Sir William Robertson, ordered his men to dump supplies at crossroads and along the routes down which the BEF would pass. This simple and inspired action saved many men who would otherwise have simply given up. Robertson holds the unique record of having held every rank in the British Army from cavalry trooper to field-marshal. (Author's Collection)**\n\nBy a combination of fighting skill, quite exceptional courage and a fierce determination not to give way, the two infantry battalions forming the right flank of the British position held out against nine German infantry battalions, their supporting machine gun companies and the greater part of the artillery resources of three divisions.\n\nAn attempt to send the 2nd Manchesters and the remainder of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders forward as reinforcements virtually foundered as they came under intense German fire from the right flank. By noon, 11th Battery RFA had finally succumbed, its last gun being put out of action; the German infantry, still huge in numbers, was steadily and stealthily getting closer; the enemy's artillery fire was sweeping the British positions; and machine gun posts were raking the survivors. By every yardstick, the position was impossible to hold, but after six hours of intense fighting the line was still unbroken.\n\nIn the centre of II Corps' position, in the area of Caudry, there were no serious German attacks during the morning. Caudry had been the target of intense German shelling, but what little enemy infantry activity there was was quickly discouraged by the British defenders. The Germans succeeded briefly in occupying Inchy but were swiftly driven out. Throughout the morning, British casualties came to something under 200 men.\n\n###### **The left flank**\n\nOn the left flank, it was a different tale altogether. It was here that the other half of the pincer envelopment was planned and where Gen. Snow's 4th Division, the new boys who had arrived in France just one week earlier and thus missed the advance to Mons, the battle there and its exhausting aftermath, had their first real taste of action. As on the right, the British were surprised. The 4th Division, without cavalry or cyclists, had little ability to mount far-ranging patrols. The area between them and Cambrai in the distance was patrolled by French cavalry; the first indication that anything was amiss was the sight of two distant French cavalrymen turning and galloping away. Almost immediately, heavy machine-gun and artillery fire hit the British positions.\n\nThe 1st King's Own were caught in the open, forming up in close formation to move to a new position, and their casualties were heavy. Lying down, their formation was such that only the front rank of each platoon could fire at their opponents, troops of the 2nd Cavalry Division. The King's Own lost 400 men within minutes, but were aided by the intervention of the 1st Hampshires to their right. Two companies of the 1st Royal Warwicks (among them a young subaltern by the name of Bernard Law Montgomery) forced their way forward in a brave but expensive gesture of support.\n\nThe 4th and 7th Jaeger Battalions quickly tried to outflank the British position. Supported by dismounted cavalry, the Jaegers swarmed forward, forcing the King's Own and the Hampshires to retire. Before the Hampshire pulled back, though, they demonstrated once more the telling power of British rifle fire. In open country, just 1,000 yards from their line, a German field battery set up position. In less than a minute, the concentrated fire of the Hampshires forced its retirement.\n\nEven so, the Jaegers pushed hard. Moving on towards the battalions on the left of the position, the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers and 2nd Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, there was a fierce fire-fight which lasted some two hours. Supported by 21 machine guns, five batteries of horse artillery and the dismounted cavalry \u2013 who were not, according to some observers, over-enthusiastic about fighting on foot \u2013 they came very close indeed to rolling up the British position.\n\nThe 7th Jaegers enfiladed the Lancashires and moved on through a cornfield, unaware that the Inniskilling Fusiliers were waiting for them. Within seconds, the Jaegers were reeling back, with 47 dead lying amidst the ripened corn while the Inniskillings suffered not a single casualty.\n\nThe artillery of the German IV Reserve Corps was hurriedly brought up to contibute to the bombardment, which reached a new crescendo before a final, desperate assault. The familiar German mass, firing from the hip, surged forward with stubborn and determined gallantry only to be mown down by a torrent of fire. The Germans showed outstanding bravery, but were repulsed with heavy casualties. The defenders themselves suffered severe losses in an action which was savage in its intensity. By 10am, in the words of the British Official History, the two battalions 'had fought 2nd Cavalry Division to a standstill'.\n\nIn the same area, to the right, the 1st East Lancashires, 1st Rifle Brigade, 1st Somerset Light Infantry and 1st Hampshires, who comprised the 11th Brigade, all suffered badly under heavy artillery and small arms fire. They, too, held their ground in the face of repeated assaults, even venturing counterattacks. Sometimes driven from their line by savage shrapnel, they regained every position.\n\n###### **The retreat**\n\nThere was now a mid-morning lull, punctuated by exchanges of fire between the opposing artillery and some unenthusiastic and ineffective attempts by the German infantry to go round the left flank of the 4th Division. Snow realised, however, that the time was fast approaching when he would have to disengage. His casualties were steadily mounting and the Germans would inevitably overwhelm his line.\n\nOn the right flank, affairs were becoming even more perilous. Although they had suffered heavy losses, the German infantry displayed a consistent gallantry and had, by late morning, enfiladed both flanks of the 5th Division. The German attack had been reinforced by their 5th Division of III Corps, and the British forces \u2013 four infantry battalions and two Royal Field Artillery brigades \u2013 faced the onslaught of at least 12 German infantry battalions and the combined artillery of three divisions. Under massive attack from the front and both sides, the situation shortly after noon was grim indeed. It was not surprising that some British soldiers began to slip away. Gen. Fergusson was acutely aware of the danger. There was no chance of reinforcement; the only choices were to die where they stood, or retire, and the retirement had to begin soon if it was not to become a rout.\n\nSmith-Dorrien agreed and issued orders to all of II Corps to retire. The withdrawal would take place from right to left, 5th Division first, then the 3rd and finally the 4th. It was one thing to issue the order; it was another for it to reach the troops involved. With the very few available field telephone wires cut, orders had to be delivered personally. Messengers died as they tried to get forward through a torrent of shrapnel and bullets. It took 20 minutes for the retirement order to travel less than two miles, the distance between the headquarters of II Corps and 5th Division. It was another hour before it reached the front line units, and some never received it at all.\n\n###### **Saving the guns**\n\nThe 5th Division units not involved on the ridge retired with little difficulty. The 15th Brigade and three battalions of the 14th Brigade pulled back without interference. It was a different story for the troops on the ridge. The first priority was to save the artillery. The guns were almost directly in the infantry's firing line, their crews having suffered so badly that none of the batteries were any longer capable of sustained action. It was now that some quite remarkable feats of gallantry occurred. The 11th Battery teams galloped up during a lull in the fighting and retrieved five out of six of their guns. The sixth team was shot down by startled German infantry. The 80th Battery also retrieved five of its guns. The 52nd Battery had to abandon all of its guns as every team was brought down in the attempt.\n\nSAVING THE GUNS AT LE CATEAU, 26 AUGUST 1914 \n **On the ridge to the south-west of Le Cateau the XV Brigade guns retreated under heavy fire. The 37th Battery had pulled back four out of six howitzers and no longer had sufficient horses and limbers to return for the remaining guns. Once back at the rear, Captain Reynolds, the battery commander, called for volunteers to fetch the guns. Two teams set off, only one returned. For their gallantry Captain Reynolds and Drivers Luke and Drain received the Victoria Cross.**\n\nShortly afterwards, 122 Battery gathered their guns in a dashing action which 'brought the infantry cheering to their feet'. As the gun teams were sighted by the enemy, they were engulfed by shrapnel and bullets. The officer was killed and one team went down in a tangle of shrieking horses. Three guns were limbered up, two of them rattling away under a hail of fire. The third was shot to pieces, the horses being machine-gunned from German positions north of the Cambrai road. Four guns were abandoned, surrounded by dead and wounded artillerymen and horses.\n\n**Every day of the Retreat from Mons brought more casualties. This one stands beside a Quarter-master sergeant of the Royal Army Medical Corps. (Private Collection)**\n\nThe guns of the 123rd and 124th batteries which were even further forward could not be saved. Their surviving crews removed the breech blocks and smashed the sights before abandoning them to the enemy.\n\nThe 37th Battery was able to claim, under persistent enemy fire, four out of six howitzers in its first foray. They could do no more as enemy action had already cut down the number of horses they had available. Once back at the rear, the battery commander, Capt. Reynolds, called for volunteers to rescue the two abandoned howitzers. Two teams returned. Both howitzers were limbered up under intense fire from German infantry, now only 100 yards distant. One team was brought down before it could move, but the other galloped clear with its howitzer. It was an act of astonishing gallantry and Capt. Reynolds, along with Drivers Luke and Drain, the survivors of the successful team, received the Victoria Cross. Driver Coby, the third member of the team, had been killed on the approach to the guns.\n\nThe withdrawal of the infantry was even more perilous. The Suffolks and the supporting Argylls and Manchesters faced enemy infantry, including the 26th Infantry at their front, their right and the rear. Overwhelmed, the survivors still managed to retire in relatively good order, fighting their way back and preventing every effort by the Germans to work their way round the flank.\n\nThe 2nd KOYLI, on the left of the Suffolks, never received the order to retire. They had already taken a severe hammering during the morning's action and their first intimation of the withdrawal was the sight of the German 66th Infantry approaching in mass down the ridge to their front. The British waited until the Germans were well within range before subjecting them to a withering fire which left the ground littered with dead and wounded. The retirement on their right meant that the KOYLI were swiftly surrounded. They continued a gritty defence, shooting down large numbers of German troops and stopping every enemy attempt to set up machine gun posts. The action of 'B' Company is typical of the battalion. Reduced to 19 men, faced with a surging mass of enemy troops advancing towards them, the company's commander, Maj. Yate, ordered his men to charge the enemy. They were, as one of their opponents acknowledged, 'incomparable soldiers'.\n\nBy about 4pm, it was all over for the survivors on the ridge. Their stubborn defence nonetheless paid enormous dividends, as they prevented any serious pursuit of the remainder of the 5th Division as it escaped down the Selle Valley and by six o'clock that evening, the 5th Division had successfully broken contact with the enemy.\n\nIn the centre, the 3rd Division came under severe attack during the afternoon. There had been heavy artillery fire throughout the morning. This intensified in the early afternoon and was combined with infantry attacks by elements of the 8th Division, 4th Cavalry Division and 9th Cavalry Division. The outskirts of Caudry were occupied by the enemy, but an attack to the east, on Audencourt, was thwarted at a heavy cost to the German infantry.\n\nThe 3rd Division began its retirement at about 3.30pm with little interference from the Germans, although the area was still being shelled. The artillery suffered some losses: the 107th and 108th Batteries each lost a section, and a German salvo destroyed three complete teams of the 6th Battery as it withdrew. As on the right flank, however, there were communication problems. The 1st Gordons, in the very centre of the British line at Audencourt, together with two companies of the 2nd Royal Irish and some 2nd Royal Scots, were the rearguard of the 8th Infantry Brigade. The order never reached them so they simply stayed put and fought off every attack that was launched against them.\n\nGerman troops from the 8th Infantry Division advanced across a field of beetroot, only to run into devastating fire from the Scots. For an hour, the Germans tried to break through but failed; they attempted to outflank the British position but, as darkness approached, their casualties were so high that the whole attack stalled. This bought enough time for the rest of the 3rd Division to move away. By midnight the commanding officer, Col. W.G. Gordon VC, decided it was time to leave. Moving through the darkness, the Gordons ran into substantial enemy forces and after a heavy exchange of fire were forced to surrender.\n\nFor the 4th Division, retirement was a little more difficult. The Germans had withdrawn the 2nd and 9th Cavalry Divisions and replaced them with the 7th Reserve Division of the IVth Reserve Corps which had made a forced march from Valenciennes. These fresh troops came forward vigorously, pushing the 11th Brigade back to Ligny. The rearguard, 1st Rifle Brigade, supported by XIV and XXIX Brigades of the RFA, stopped the German advance with such purpose that the attack on Ligny petered out. Caught in the open, the Germans suffered very severely from the combined onslaught of the British infantry and artillery.\n\nThe German commander then tried to turn the British flank, but was foiled by the arrival of the artillery attached to the French Cavalry Corps under Gen. Sordet. Their vicious 75mm guns threw the German attackers into disarray and the 4th Division started to disengage. There was great confusion as the infantry pulled out, units becoming intermingled or finding themselves surrounded by advancing German troops. Two companies of the 1st Royal Warwicks had an interesting time. For the next three days, they marched between the German cavalry screen and its following infantry, moving only by night and hiding by day, until they were able to rejoin the BEF.\n\nII Corps was severely mauled at Le Cateau. The official casualty figures show Smith-Dorrien lost 7,812 men and 38 guns. German losses are not known. No figures are available, and estimates range from 15,000 to 30,000 dead, wounded and missing. Without doubt, the casualties were very severe. Von Kluck was convinced that he had been fighting all six divisions of the BEF, as well as its cavalry and several French Territorial divisions. The next morning his pursuit was to the south-west as he was still positive the British would make for the Channel ports.\n\nII Corps went southwards with the luxury of a 12 hour start. For the rest of the retreat, as Smith-Dorrien himself wrote, II Corps 'were no more seriously troubled ... except by mounted troops and mobile detachments who kept at a respectful distance'. No soldier in II Corps afterwards ever believed anything other than that they had saved the BEF from utter defeat. Smith-Dorrien's gamble had paid off.\n\nTHE CHARGE OF THE 12TH LANCERS AT C\u00c9RIZY, 28 AUGUST 1914 \n **During the retreat the British rearguard was attacked by pursuing Germans. Seeing an opportunity for a British counterattack at C\u00e9rizy, just south of St Quentin, the British commander ordered the 12th Lancers to charge over a ridge to catch the German infantry in the open. With little or no time to fire at the charging cavalry the Germans were ridden down and cut to pieces.**\n\n## AFTERMATH\n\nIt was not the end. The retreat continued and it was a hard road. I and II Corps drifted apart for a while on the long plod south, being separated by about 15 miles before their paths once again converged. There were days when bitter meetings left huddled bodies in khaki or field-grey in the fields and woods of France.\n\n###### **Etreux**\n\nThere was a fiercely contested action at Etreux on 27 August when the Guard Cavalry Division of I Cavalry Corps and X Reserve Corps came upon the rearguard of 1 Division. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, aided by two guns of 118 Battery RFA and two troops from 'C' Squadron of the 15th Hussars, fought for nearly 12 hours against a minimum of nine German battalions and four artillery batteries. The Munsters vanished from the British Order of Battle, the only survivors being the remnants of two platoons.\n\n###### **N\u00e9ry**\n\nAt N\u00e9ry, the 1st Cavalry Brigade, made up of the Queen's Bays, 5th Dragoon Guards and 11th Hussars, with the ubiquitous 'L' Battery of the RHA, was surprised in the early morning mist on 1 September by the 4th Cavalry Division. Heavy artillery and small arms fire from a ridge outside the village hammered into the Bays \u2013 whose horses stampeded \u2013 and the RHA gunners. Three of 'L' Battery's guns were soon disabled; the surviving crewmen helped man the three remaining. One was quickly knocked out. The other two kept firing until every member of its crew was dead or wounded. The last gun continued to fight on for nearly an hour despite the combined fire of 12 German guns against it.\n\n**This photograph is of British troops lining a roadside ditch. This bears a strong resemblance to the northern French countryside, but the distance between the riflemen is a not inaccurate portrayal of the meagreness of the British line. (Private Collection)**\n\nAt last, manned by Capt. Bradbury, the 2 i\/c of 'L' Battery, Battery Sgt.-Maj. Dorrell and Sgt. Nelson, the lone gun came to the end of its resistance. Bradbury was mortally wounded fetching ammunition; Nelson and Dorrell fired their last shell at 8.10pm. All three were awarded the Victoria Cross. Meanwhile, the rest of the Brigade reacted sharply. 'L' Battery had covered them as they worked their way round the German flanks where they pinned down the enemy. Fresh troops arrived. The 4th Cavalry Brigade, 'I' Battery of the RHA, the 1st Middlesex and part of 10th Infantry Brigade came up and opened an annihilating fire on the ridge, forcing the Germans back in great disorder. Eight of the German guns were abandoned where they were, and the other four were found next day in a nearby wood. The German 4th Cavalry Division was so badly damaged that it was withdrawn from the Cavalry Corps and sent to the IV Reserve Corps.\n\n**The graves of Captain Bradbury VC and Lieutenant John Campbell at N\u00e9ry, photographed a few days after the action. The N\u00e8ry action was publicised throughout the world, one account appearing in a Mexican newspaper. The story so aroused the admiration of a Japanese businessman resident in Mexico that he commissioned three signet rings, each engraved with the word 'Hero' in Japanese script, for presentation to the families of three selected participants. One of these was Lieutenant Campbell. German accounts of the battle insisted that the 4th Cavalry Division was greatly outnumbered by British infantry columns supported by cavalry and artillery. (Imperial War Museum)**\n\n**'L' Battery, RHA, just before embarkation for France in 1914. In the action at N\u00e9ry, three of its members were to win the Victoria Cross. Twenty three would be killed and 31 wounded, thus effectively removing the unit from the BEF Order of Battle. (Imperial War Museum)**\n\n'L' Battery lost three officers killed and two wounded, 20 men killed and 29 wounded, a total of 54 out of the 135 British casualties at N\u00e9ry.\n\n###### **Villers-Cotter\u00eats**\n\nThat same day, the rearguard of the 2nd Division, at Villers-Cotter\u00eats about 15 miles east of N\u00e9ry, came into brutal contact with advance troops of III Corps and the 2nd and 9th Cavalry Divisions. The rearguard, the 4th (Guards) Brigade, was on the northern edge of a forest, criss-crossed by wide tracks which provided natural fields of fire. From about 10.45am onwards, there was a hard and confused battle among the woodland as the Guards struggled clear. The early attacks hit the 2nd Coldstream and the 1st Irish Guards. Col. Morris, the CO of the Irish Guards, was killed by a machine gun burst. Two platoons of the 2nd Grenadier Guards were surrounded and fought to the end. The brigade lost more than 300 officers and men, and the 6th Brigade, which covered the Guards withdrawal, lost another 160.\n\nThe BEF went on to halt the German offensive later in the month at the battle of the Marne, forcing them to retreat to the Aisne. Later in the autumn, the BEF turned north again and found themselves at Ypres. It was to be the graveyard of the old British Regular Army.\n\n## WARGAMING MONS\n\nThe heady days of August 1914 have always been popular with both boardgamers and miniatures players. The opening weeks of the Great War are effectively the end of the 'horse and musket' era. At a tactical level, this period is at once visually appealing and intellectually challenging. Reasonably complete ranges of figures are available in 25-, 15- and 5mm scales, and important troop types overlooked by the manufacturers are easily converted from nineteenth century ranges. At operational level, the challenge of manoeuvring the BEF in the path of the oncoming juggernaut soon generates great sympathy for Sir John French and, indeed, the commanders of the other armies. The German commanders are under terrible pressure, trying to sustain a very optimistic march schedule in the face of stubborn opponents and an intractable logistics problem. The French try to make a fighting withdrawal with an army trained and armed for the offensive, while the Belgians make a gallant defence in the face of overwhelming numbers. Misunderstandings and clashes occurred within each army as well as between notional allies, offering great scope for multi-player games.\n\n###### **Tactical games**\n\nThe Mons campaign witnessed a succession of small-scale actions of the sort that easily fit on a wargames table. The epic defence of N\u00e9ry, the Guards brigade's rearguard action at Villers-Cotter\u00eats and the 5th Cavalry Brigade at C\u00e9rizy all involve a handful of battalions\/squadrons against larger (although equally exhausted) German forces. Obviously, if you re-fight these specific actions the Germans must be constrained from taking advantage of hindsight; historically, they never knew exactly what they were facing. In north-east France during high summer, the frequent early morning mists hampered aerial reconnaissance and enabled rearguards to withdraw or ambush their pursuers at will.\n\nAs a foot- or saddle-sore German advance guard pressed onwards, it would frequently deliver a hasty attack wherever opposition showed itself. However, a few British infantry companies or cavalry squadrons could deliver a formidable weight of fire. Determined resistance or even a spirited counter-attack (like the charge of the 12th Lancers at C\u00e9rizy) often led the Germans to conclude they were facing much larger forces, in the same way von Kluck believed he had fought the whole BEF at Le Cateau.\n\nA representative scenario might feature a British infantry or cavalry brigade deployed on a map, with figures placed on the table only when their location is revealed by firing or by Germans blundering into close combat. They would seldom occupy anything more than shell-scrapes, as men who had been marching all day and half the night had neither the time nor inclination to dig more comprehensive defences. Incidentally, Walter Bloem's account of Mons confirms that this was not a 'British disease': the 12th Brandenburg Grenadiers were equally reluctant to entrench even when a British counter-attack threatened. German forces, say a cavalry brigade followed by an infantry division, arrive on table in dribs and drabs. I write unit identities on index cards, add some blanks and draw one per (hourly) turn. Some cards provide a cavalry regiment, others a whole infantry brigade. The British, of course, are ignorant as to what they are facing until it hoves into view. What might have begun as a successful rearguard operation might turn to catastrophe if powerful German reinforcements arrive in time to outflank and trap the defenders. As the Munsters discovered, withdrawal from close contact with such an enemy is all but impossible. However, this sort of d\u00e9b\u00e2cle can be the beginning of an alternative scenario where a cut-off detachment attempts to break through the German forces to safety.\n\nWhen framing a set of miniatures rules, or modifying a commercially-available one, the _Field Service Pocket Book 1914_ is an invaluable aid, providing vital data on lengths of marching columns, the times required to prepare field defences etc. One item deserves emphasis: in both board- and figure-games, defenders of buildings are generally harder to hit than troops in the open. Reality is not quite so simple, especially not in 1914. At Mons and Le Cateau, British infantry usually dug their shell scrapes in front of the built-up areas, not actually in the villages themselves. As contemporary manuals stressed, early 20th-century artillery could hit buildings from far beyond the range of rifles, with catastrophic consequences for the defenders, unless the buildings had been thoroughly prepared for defence. Unless the defenders had 24 hours to clear out combustible material and entrench themselves in the basement, occupying a building simply offered the enemy an easily identified target. By contrast, shallow trenches in the open were harder to spot and more difficult for the gunners to range on. Fire from such positions a few hundred yards in front of a village was usually mistaken for fire from the buildings, leading the enemy to shell the village and leave the infantry relatively unscathed.\n\nThe armies of the Mons campaign had different tactical doctrines, which should be recognised in any tactical level wargame. German battalions usually led with one company in open order, one in support and the other two following in shoulder-to-shoulder lines several hundred yards behind. Some soon learned that deployment in greater depth was required to avoid the beaten zone of the defenders' rifles. The British followed a similar approach. Even on the defensive, the British were supposed to be in three lines: a firing line with about one yard per man was bolstered by supports in the rear who reinforced the line as casualties mounted. The third wave was not supposed to reinforce the line, but was intended for counter-attacks.\n\nThe French notoriously neglected open order tactics and their rifle fire was notably less accurate. Their cavalry had little enthusiasm for dismounted action and short-range carbines gave them little incentive to try. (The lack of bayonets also made them helpless in close combat on foot.) However, their fabled 75mm guns lived up to pre-war expectations. British observers noted that the French tended to give up ground easily, but as often as not recapture it by counter-attack, whereas the British would doggedly hold the same position: which method was less costly was impossible to determine.\n\nTHE 4TH GUARDS BRIGADE AT VILLERS-COTTER\u00caTS 1 SEPTEMBER 1914\n\n**At Villers-Cotter\u00eats, about 15 miles east of Nery, the rearguard of the British 2nd Division, 4th (Guards) Brigade, came into brutal contact with advance troops of III Corps and 2nd and 9th Cavalry Divisions. The 4th (Guards) Brigade was on the northern edge of a forest crisscrossed by wide tracks which provided natural fields of fire. A hard and confused battle ensued as the Guards struggled free.**\n\nSome British accounts of the Mons campaign suggest the Germans had learnt nothing from the war of 1870 and describe waves of German infantry attacking in close order as if magazine-loading rifles had never been invented and the Boer War had never happened. Yet on other parts of the same battlefield, German infantry might come on in thin skirmish lines, developing an effective attack with excellent support from their artillery. This was a consequence of the extraordinary degree of autonomy allowed to pre-war German corps commanders. They reported directly to the Kaiser, the famed General Staff having operational control in war, but not the power to dictate training standards or tactical doctrine. Like most other armies, the pre-war German Army had been sharply divided over the tactical lessons of both the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War. Scattering infantrymen over wide frontages might reduce losses in the short term, but (some argued) it made command and control impossible, led to the whole unit becoming paralysed in the face of the enemy and eventually to greater casualties in the long term. The opposing view, based on studies of the Russo-Japanese war accepted that close formations would suffer heavier losses, but, still under control of their officers, they could continue to manoeuvre and deliver fire. Only a close formation had the group spirit required to close with the bayonet \u2013 and it was the threat of cold steel, not long-range rifle fire that would finally eject a defender from his position. Since the pre-war training of the troops would not be under the control of the player, you can dice for their formation when German troops arrive on the battlefield or even when they deliver an attack. Close formations should be more likely to keep moving, but they are better targets and under effective fire they will break up.\n\nGerman accounts of the Mons campaign testify to the effectiveness of British rifle fire, but both sides soon recognised that this was going to be an artillery war. Gunners recognised three types of firing position in 1914: open, semi-covered and covered. The former is self-explanatory. In a semi-covered position, the gun would be far enough behind a crestline for the gun itself (but not the muzzle-flash) to be concealed from the enemy. In a fully covered position both the gun and the flash were hidden. Covered positions were much easier for howitzer batteries than the flat trajectory field guns which could only fire from such defiladed positions at the cost of a long stretch of dead ground in front of the gun. Unless this space was covered by infantry, the enemy could work his way under the line of fire.\n\nHorse-teams were horrifically vulnerable targets. Mounted reconnaissance was difficult enough in the face of machine guns and magazine-loading rifles, but it was the improved long range accuracy of quick-fire artillery that really frustrated the cavalry. Time and again, German cavalry regiments operating dismounted against a British rearguard saw their lead horses dispersed by British artillery fire. The German cavalry were reluctant to continue advancing when this happened, but in the gently rolling ground of the French\/Belgian border, it was not always possible to find cover for the horses.\n\n###### **Mons-Le Cateau in an afternoon**\n\nBy sacrificing the finer details of the tactical battle, Mons or Le Cateau can be re-fought in an afternoon's game session. As usual, some thought must be given to stopping the Germans exploiting the fact that, unlike the historical German commanders, they know what they are facing. Mons and Le Cateau were hardly the first instances of a numerically superior force failing to crush a smaller army because they overestimated the enemy's strength. Antietam springs to mind. Boardgamers can find some readily tailored solutions in previous game designs like Peter Perla's area movement game of Antietam. Here, the overwhelmingly superior Union army uncoils so slowly that a nimble Confederate defence can fend them off until nightfall \u2013 usually. But if the turns last longer, the Federals sometimes manage to concentrate their striking power and Lee is driven off the map and into the Potomac.\n\n**The fighting in France and Flanders brought home the reality of war to a British public which previously had considered battles to be affairs which took place in far-off lands against primitive natives. Even the Boer War had not changed that attitude a great deal. This altered when the wounded from Mons, Le Cateau and the Retreat were brought back to England and crowds gathered to stare as the casualties were ferried from the railway stations to hospital. It was a sight that was to become commonplace in the four years that followed. (Private Collection)**\n\nFor Mons or Le Cateau the use of hidden movement is essential. Have game turns of uncertain duration: on average it is not possible for the Germans to move anything like their full strength, but the possibility is there for a succession of long turns which could spell doom for the 'contemptible little army'.\n\n###### **Multi-player games**\n\nThe utter confusion of August 1914 is perhaps best simulated by a multiplayer game. Not just the chaos prevailing at headquarters where exhausted officers puzzled over reports that were necessarily out of date by the time they arrived, but the added friction between very different nations (the British and the French) and abrasive personalities (Sir John French, Kitchener, Smith-Dorrien etc.).\n\nUnlike modern staffs, there was no duplication in a 1914 headquarters. It was not possible to have part of an HQ on the move while the remainder ran the battle. Generals and their staffs found themselves riding to and fro all day, then writing orders all night. Having only an hour or two to sleep in every 24 soon told on the toughest constitutions. Lack of sleep certainly helped poison relations between the suspiciously anglophobic Lanzerac and Sir John French, and it did nothing for the latter when Grierson was replaced by his old enemy, Smith-Dorrien. Sir Horace himself was notorious for his vile temper and his rages were a legend in the Edwardian army. This potent brew of personalities cries out for a matrix game system or other species of role-play. The objective here is not to recreate that fatuous burlesque, _O What a Lovely War!_ , but to bring out the very real problems of coalition warfare. The BEF could be forgiven for thinking that French policy was to defend the Third Republic down to the last Englishman. Lanzerac was not the only Frenchman to dwell on the fact that his nation was providing 90 per cent of Allied manpower on the Western Front.\n\n## THE BATTLEFIELD TODAY\n\nThe single day encounters of Mons and Le Cateau left no mark on the landscape. Behind the German lines during 1914-1918, they survived relatively unscathed, although new housing, a motorway and other contemporary building have sliced across and along the lines of the scenes of the Old Contemptibles' actions. It is still possible, even today, to see the area much as the original members of the BEF saw it.\n\nMons itself is a bustling town, but the Grande Place, with its imposing town hall, is not greatly changed; even allowing for modern traffic, there are areas which are much the same as they were in 1914. The Mus\u00e9e du Centenaire, in the Jardin du Mayer, houses the World War One and Two collections and is just off the Grande Place. There are plans to rehouse the collection in due course.\n\nThe Paris motorway now runs alongside the canal but the towpath is accessible and buildings still remain which served as aid posts or battalion headquarters on that desperate August day. It needs little imagination to envisage how things were for you can stand where the British gunners sweated and swore, and look across at the tree line from where German soldiers dressed in field-grey advanced towards the dry-mouthed British infantry.\n\nMuch of the Le Cateau battlefield remains as it was when the BEF fought there. The ditches along the Roman road which became cover for the rifles of the infantry as they halted the German attacks remain much as they were. Beetroot still grows in the silent fields at Audencourt over which the German soldiers advanced so bravely in the summer sun in 1914.\n\nThe area can be toured by car, but the enthusiast might prefer to use a bicycle which makes a number of the remoter locations more easily accessible. It is especially useful for covering the full length of the canal at Mons. Both the Mons battlefield, which extends along a 25-mile line, and the shorter Le Cateau line repay study. The local tourist offices can give information about hiring bicycles locally.\n\nRose Coombs' invaluable guide to the battlefields, _Before Endeavours Fade_ , gives detailed itineraries and should be an essential part of any visitor's baggage. Accommodation across a wide price range can be found; again, the local tourist offices give an excellent service, but it should be remembered that many places are now important commercial centres and the town hotels are geared to business customers, not battlefield visitors, and their prices reflect this. There are, though, many smaller places to stay in the villages, as well as several camping areas.\n\nA number of sites are on farm land or private property. It is an accepted courtesy to seek permission before tramping over them and it cannot be too highly recommended that even a few words of execrable French, Dutch or Flemish, are invaluable in obtaining the goodwill of the landowner.\n\n### Related Titles - Campaign Series\n\n**epub ISBN** | **PDF ISBN** | **No.** | **TITLE** \n---|---|---|--- \n9781780965291 | 9781846036064 | 25 | Leipzig 1813 \n9781780965307 | 9781846035425 | 87 | L\u00fctzen & Bautzen 1813 \n9781849087209 | 9781846035470 | 92 | St Nazaire 1942 \n9781782001461 | 9781846035555 | 100 | D-Day 1944 (1) \n9781782001478 | 9781846035593 | 104 | D-Day 1944 (2) \n9781849087216 | 9781846035609 | 105 | D-Day 1944 (3) \n9781849087223 | 9781846035678 | 112 | D-Day 1944 (4) \n9781849089432 | 9781849086042 | 144 | Wake Island \n9781782000099 | 9781846037993 | 170 | Osaka 1615 \n9781849087230 | 9781846038266 | 178 | The Rhine Crossing \n9781849087247 | 9781846038433 | 196 | Gazala 1942 \n9781780969930 | 9781849081061 | 214 | The Coral Sea 1942 \n9781780969947 | 9781849082952 | 226 | Midway 1942 \n9781849088206 | 9781849083867 | 236 | Operation Pointblank 1944 \n9781849088213 | 9781849083201 | 237 | The Fourth Crusade 1202\u201304 \n9781849088800 | 9781849083928 | 238 | St Mihiel 1918 \n9781780960302 | 9781849085557 | 239 | Plataea 479BC \n9781849088930 | 9781849086776 | 240 | Wabash 1791 \n9781780960432 | 9781849085922 | 242 | Metz 1944 \n9781780963921 | 9781849086103 | 243 | The Philippines 1941-42 \n9781780964164 | 9781849086080 | 244 | The Falklands 1982 \n9781780964423 | 9781849085533 | 245 | Demyansk 1942\u201343\n\nFirst published in Great Britain in 1997 by Osprey Publishing,\n\nMidland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 0PH, UK\n\n44-02 23rd St, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA\n\nEmail: info@ospreypublishing.com\n\n\u00a9 1997 Osprey Publishing Ltd.\n\nAll rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers.\n\nFirst published 1997\n\n8th impression 2008\n\nA CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library\n\nPrint ISBN: 978 1 85532 551 7\n\nPDF e-book ISBN: 978 1 84603 630 9\n\nePub e-book ISBN: 978 1 78200 444 8\n\nMilitary Editor: Sharon van der Merwe\n\nDesign by The Black Spot\n\nCartography by Micromap\n\nColour Birds Eye Views by Peter Harper\n\nWargaming Mons by Ian Drury\n\nBattlescene Artwork by Peter Dovey\n\nFilm set in Singapore by Pica Ltd.\n\n**Further Reading**\n\nMany books have been written by participants and later historians about the events of August 1914. Unfortunately, a great many of them are now out of print, although copies can be obtained from specialist dealers. Many of the British accounts, especially those written in the inter-war years, not only dismiss all French and Belgian participation in the war, but grossly overstate the importance of Mons and Le Cateau. One writer goes so far as to call Mons 'the battle that saved the world', a panegyric that one suspects the old BEF would have found embarassing. The following are a tiny selection of useful titles in English and which are obtainable without too much difficulty via specialist dealers or the library service.\n\n**Ascoli, David,** **_The Mons Star_** **(Harrap, 1981).** A worthwhile and well-researched account, often drawing on personal reminiscences of the BEF in 1914. Interestingly, Ascoli is condemnatory of the French Commanders, a prejudice which reflects the feeling of the BEF at the time.\n\n**Bloem, Walter,** **_The Advance from Mons_** **(Peter Davis, 1930).** Most of the German acconts of the early days of the war are palpably inaccurate and the official records are sometimes positively misleading. This memoir, written by an officer of the Brandenburg Grenadiers and widely quote by many English writers because of the tributes it pays to the BEF, is nonetheless one of the few that gives a realistic idea of what it was like to come under the 'mad minute' rifle fire of the British professional soldier.\n\n**Coombs, Rose,** **_Before Endeavours Fade_** **(Plaistow Press, 1994).** The latest edition of Rose Coombs' guide to the First World War battlefields should always be to hand. Originally published in 1976, the guide has been extensively revised.\n\n**Edmonds, Brigadier J.E.,** **_Official History, France & Belgium, 1914_** **\u2013 Volume 1 (Macmillan, 1926).** An invaluable, indeed indispensable, tool for the student. Edmonds' work in compiling the Official History can rarely be faulted, although in his non-official capacity, he had a great talent for creating mischief.\n\n**French, Field Marshal Viscout, 1914.** French's own account of the events of 1914 reveals his distrust, bitterness and paranoia and, like the memoirs of Lloyd George, is a source more to its author's character than anything else.\n\n**Simpson, Keith,** **_The Old Contemptibles_ ,** **(George Allen & Unwin, 1981).** A photographic history of the BEF from August to December 1914. This is a slim volume with a necessarily truncated text and its real interest lies in the illustrations.\n\n**Spears, Sir Edward.** **_Liaison_** **1914 (Heinemann, 1930).** Spears had an uncanny habit (too uncanny, according to some observers) of being in the right place at the right time, and so witnesed some of the momentous happenings on the BEF front which he describes vividly and with brilliant detail. His book is an invaluable source work, although his personal prejudices sometimes shade his narrative.\n\n**Terraine, John,** **_Mons, 1914_** **(Batsford, 1960).** One of the best accounts. Well researched and eminently readable.\n\n**Tuchman, Barbara,** **_The Guns of August_** **(Constable, 1962).** A comprehensive work dealing with the events leading up to the outbreak of war and the battles of 1914, both in the East and West. The authos is not unnaturally fascinated by the personality clashes and politics of the period, sometimes at the expense of military events, and occasionally puts too much reliance on some dubious sources.\n\n**Dedication**\n\nDedicated to John Terraine, like Thucydides, an historian.\n\n**Acknowledgements**\n\nThe list of people who helped this title to materialise is legion; but special mention must be made of Jules Brihay and his staff of the Department of Tourism and Culture at Mons, from whom many of the photographs in this book were obtained, as well as the Imperial War Museum, whose staff once more lived up to their legendary reputation for outstanding helpfulness and courtesy. Finally, this title would have been completed in half the time without the enthusiastic assistance of Beyaz Bardem, mother of beautiful kittens, and an expert at sitting on keyboards.\n\n**Editorial note**\n\nThe editor would like to thank Mike Chappell and Martin Pegler for their invaluable contribution to this book.\n\n\u00a9 _Osprey Publishing. Access to this book is not digitally restricted. In return, we ask you that you use it for personal, non-commercial purposes only. Please don't upload this ebook to a peer-to-peer site, email it to everyone you know, or resell it. Osprey Publishing reserves all rights to its digital content and no part of these products may be copied, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except as permitted here), without the written permission of the publisher. Please support our continuing book publishing programme by using this e-book responsibly._\n\n_**Every effort has been made by the Publisher to secure permissions to use the images in this publication. If there has been any oversight we would be happy to rectify the situation and written submission should be made to Osprey Publishing.**_\n\n**Key to military series symbols**\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\nThe Star, the Cross, and the Crescent\nAfter the Empire: \nThe Francophone World and \nPostcolonial France\n\n**Series Editor**\n\nVal\u00e9rie Orlando, University of Maryland\n\n**Advisory Board**\n\nRobert Bernasconi, Memphis University; Alec Hargreaves, Florida State University; Chima Korieh, Rowan University; Mildred Mortimer, University of Colorado, Boulder; Obioma Nnaemeka, Indiana University; Kamal Salhi, University of Leeds; Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting, Vanderbilt University; Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Tulane University\n\n_Seewww.lexingtonbooks.com\/series for the series description and \na complete list of published titles_.\n\n**Recent and Forthcoming Titles**\n\n_Collective Memory: France and the Algerian War (1954\u20131962)_ , by Jo McCormack\n\n_The Other Hybrid Archipelago: Introduction to the Literatures and Cultures of the Francophone Indian Ocean_ , by Peter Hawkins\n\n_Rethinking Marriage in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures_ , by C\u00e9cile Accilien\n\n_Two Novellas by YAE:_ A Moroccan in New York _and_ Sea Drinkers, by Youssouf Amine Elalamy, translated by John Liechty\n\n_Frank\u00e9tienne and Rewriting: A Work in Progress_ , by Rachel Douglas\n\n_Charles Testut's_ Le Vieux Salomon _: Race, Religion, Socialism, and Freemasonry_ , Sheri Lyn Abel\n\n_What Moroccan Cinema?: A Historical and Critical Study 1956\u20132006_ , by Sandra Carter\n\n_Voices of Exile in Contemporary Canadian Francophone Literature_ , by F. Elizabeth Dahab\n\n_Re-hybridizing Transnational Domesticity and Femininity: Women's Contemporary Filmmaking and Lifewriting of France, Algeria, and Tunisia_ , by Stacey Weber-Feve\n\n_The Star, the Cross, and the Crescent: Religions and Conflicts in Francophone Literature from the Arab World_ , by Carine Bourget\n\n# The Star, the Cross, and \nthe Crescent\n\n_Religions and Conflicts in Francophone \nLiterature from the Arab World_\n\nCarine Bourget\n\nPublished by Lexington Books \nA division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. \nA wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. \n4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 \n\n\nEstover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2010 by Lexington Books\n\n_All rights reserved_. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.\n\nBritish Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available\n\n**Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data**\n\nBourget, Carine.\n\nThe star, the cross, and the crescent : religions and conflicts in Francophone literature from the Arab world \/ Carine Bourget. \np. cm. \u2014 (After the empire: the Francophone world and)\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 978-0-7391-2657-8 (cloth : alk. paper)\n\n1. North African literature (French)\u201420th century\u2014History and criticism. 2. French literature\u2014Arab authors\u2014History and criticism. 3. French literature\u2014Arab countries\u2014History and criticism. 4. French literature\u201420th century\u2014history and criticism. 5. Islam in literature. 6. Social conflict in literature. 7. Politics in literature. 8. War in literature. I. Title.\n\nPQ3980.5.B68 2010\n\n840.9'892761\u2014dc22\n\n2009048357\n\n The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences\u2014Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI\/NISO Z39.48-1992.\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\nTo my husband and children\n\n## Contents\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nIntroduction: Religion, Politics, and Literature from the Francophone Arab World\n\n1. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Amin Maalouf's _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ and _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ , Myriam Antaki's _Les versets du pardon_\n\n2. The Arab-Israeli Conflict Beyond the Middle East: Albert Memmi, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Farid Boudjellal, and Karin Albou\n\n3. The Lebanese Civil War: Andr\u00e9e Ch\u00e9did's _La maison sans racines_ and Evelyne Accad's _L'excis\u00e9e_\n\n4. The Algerian Civil War: Rachid Boudjedra's _Le FIS de la haine_ , Rachid Mimouni's _De la barbarie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de l'int\u00e9grisme en particulier_ , and _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_\n\n5. Islam and the French Republic: The Affair of the Muslim Headscarf in works by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Amin Maalouf, Albert Memmi, Le\u00efla Sebbar, and Yamina Benguigui\n\n6. Portrait of a Terrorist: Slimane Bena\u00efssa and Salim Bachi's 9\/11 Novels\n\nConclusion: The Politics of Translation: Francophone Literature from the Arab World in the U.S.\n\nBibliography\n\nIndex\n\nAbout the Author\n\n## Acknowledgments\n\nI would like to thank the following colleagues and friends for their careful reading and insightful feedback on various parts of this manuscript: Jonathan Beck, Julia Clancy-Smith, Anne Donadey, Leila Hudson, Marie-Pierre Le Hir, Maha Nassar, Val\u00e9rie Orlando, and Laurence Porter. Any errors and shortcomings are of course mine.\n\nI am grateful to my colleagues from the Department of French & Italian, the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona for providing a stimulating and supportive work environment. I want to single out Marie-Pierre Le Hir for her valuable guidance and encouragement throughout the years. I would also like to acknowledge Ir\u00e8ne D' Almeida and Lise Leibacher for their thoughtful mentoring.\n\nAlthough this book did not originate at Michigan State University, I wish to express my deep appreciation to Laurence Porter for introducing me to Francophone Literature during my graduate studies there. His rigorous scholarship and generous mentoring will remain models for me to emulate throughout my career. Many thanks go to Ken Harrow for introducing me to African Literature during his lively and challenging seminars.\n\nA very special note of gratitude is owed to my husband, not only for reading and commenting on most of this manuscript. This book simply could not have been written without his constant support, confidence, and encouragement. May my oldest children read this book one day and hopefully conclude that the time spent away from them was put to good use.\n\nAll efforts have been made to obtain copyright permissions. I thank the publishers for permission to reprint from the works listed below: Citations from _Ports of Call_ by Amin Maalouf, translated by Alberto Manguel, published by Harvill Press are reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. Citations from _Les versets du pardon_ by Myriam Antaki, \u00a9 1999 by Actes Sud, are reprinted by permission of Editions Actes Sud. Citations from _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ by Amin Maalouf, \u00a9 1983 by Latt\u00e8s, are reprinted by permission of Editions Latt\u00e8s. Citations from _JuifsArabes_ by Farid Boudjellal, \u00a9 2006 by Futuropolis, are reprinted by permission of Editions Futuropolis. Citations from _Dreams of Trespass_ by Fatima Mernissi, \u00a9 1994 by Perseus Books, are reprinted by permission of Perseus Books. Citations from _Pillar of Salt_ by Albert Memmi, translated by Edouard Roditi, \u00a9 1955 by Criterion Books, Inc., are reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. Citations from _Juifs et Arabes, Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman et de quelques autres_ , and _La statue de sel_ by Albert Memmi, \u00a9 by Editions Gallimard, are reprinted by permission of Editions Gallimard. Citations from _Tuez-les tous_ by Salim Bachi, \u00a9 by Editions Gallimard, are reprinted by permission of Editions Gallimard. Citations from _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ edited by Le\u00efla Sebbar, \u00a9 by Editions Gallimard, are reprinted by permission of Editions Gallimard. Citations from _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ by Amin Maalouf, \u00a9 1996 by Grasset & Fasquelle, are reprinted by permission of Editions Bernard Grasset. Citations from _Les identit\u00e9s meurtri\u00e8res_ by Amin Maalouf, \u00a9 1998 by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, are reprinted by permission of Editions Bernard Grasset. Excerpts from _The Last Night of a Damned Soul_ by Slimane Benaissa, \u00a9 2003 by Editions Plon, translation \u00a9 2004 by Janice and Daniel Gross, used by permission of Grove\/Atlantic, Inc.\n\nFor the book cover, I thank R\u00e9mi Ochlik\/IP3 PRESS for permission to reprint the photograph of the veiled girl (mentioned in chapter five), and editions Futuropolis for permission to reproduce two drawings from Farid Boudjellal's _JuifsArabes_.\n\n## Introduction\n\n## Religion, Politics, and Literature from the Francophone Arab World\n\nThe resurgence of religion in various parts of the world (including the West) and across religious traditions represents a challenge to the Western construction of modernity. It disputes the modernization theory that economic progress and modernization entail secularism. Social scientists have been tackling this for some time now, for example in studies that look at the role of religion in International Relations (Thomas, Hatzopoulos and Petito) and conflict resolution (Gopin).\n\nAlthough the resurgence of religion spans different cultures, religions, and geographical areas, much focus has been put on Islam. Already back in the 1980s, Said noted the double standard that was being applied by some scholars who consider that Islam is unique in being a political religion, as if Christianity and Judaism were immune to politics. Said went on to note that \"Israel is perhaps the most perfect coincidence of religion and politics in the contemporary world,\" a fact rarely noted and taken to question in the Western media, which routinely tout Israel as the only democratic state in the Middle East. Said added that then-president Ronald Reagan \"time and again connect[s] religion and politics\" (\"The Essential Terrorist\" 157). This last statement also applies to former American president George W. Bush. In addition, \"the development of a powerful and rejectionist Zionist lobby among evangelical groups in the U.S., [. . .] has accented yet again the contradiction inherent in an allegedly secular U.S. support for a nation-state based in large part on Biblical promise\" (Qureshi and Sells 8).\n\nThere is a debate between scholars who present contemporary Islamic fundamentalism as an answer to and a consequence of modernization in the twentieth century, and those who view it as a variant of traditional social protests that have commonly used religion as a vehicle for political demands (Volpi 26). Olivier Roy points out the inadequacy of the culturalist approach that consists in simply resorting to Islam as an explanation for everything that goes on in the Muslim world. According to him, \"we should take Islamisation as a contemporary phenomenon that expresses the globalization and westernization of the Muslim world\" (15). Likewise, comparative political theorist Roxanne Euben insists on the failure of both models to render the complexity of Islamic fundamentalism, which she sees as a \"combination of the failure of ideological alternatives, the unavailability of competing political channels, and the authenticity that accrues to religious, and specifically Islamic, identifications in the Middle East\" (48). The fall of pan-Arabism following the 1967 Arab defeat and the failure of Western-oriented policies to improve the lot of the people made Islamist movements the only viable and credible source of opposition for corrupt and authoritarian Western-supported regimes. This is a key reason why such movements have been gaining popularity in various countries.\n\nSalman Sayyid remarks that \"the political turn of Islam cannot be understood outside the very complex ways in which it relates to the project of Western hegemony\" (xxii). Accordingly, this religious revivalism can be traced back to colonialism and neocolonialism, as evidenced by Western-backed authoritarian regimes (Esposito 21). As John Esposito points out, \"When governments, faced with a viable opposition, use the charge of religious extremism to justify curtailment of political liberalization and the use of repression, the result\u2014as we are witnessing in Algeria\u2014is the radicalization of moderate religious voices, the creation of new, violent revolutionary groups, the polarization of society, and the ravages of civil war\" (21). In other words, repression is only backfiring as it pushes moderate voices into extremism.\n\nIn addition, Western leaders privilege regimes who present themselves in terms the West is accustomed to as the agents of stability and modernity; however, such regimes \"serve to arouse Islamist fervour both by their continuing repressive policies at home and by directing such fervour towards U.S.\/West when domestic pressures become acute\" (Entelis 213). Scholars also emphasize the cleavage that has been growing between the ruling elite and the people. According to John Entelis,\n\nIslamist politics is first and foremost about politics\u2014who gets what, when and how\u2014and only secondarily about Islam. In the Islamic world, politics is controlled by the unelected few ruling over the alienated, disenfranchised many. This condition of oppression is reinforced objectively and perceptually by the alliances such regimes have made with outside powers, especially the United States, with the latter then being viewed by the masses as an additional instrument in the oppressive mechanism put in place by the _mukhabarat_ state to keep civil society in check. (212)\n\nThe popularity of Islamic movements and the violent tactics some of them have adopted stem from the political illegitimacy of Arab states.\n\nRobert Fernea points out the West's hypocrisy when it denounces authoritarian regimes that it supports: \"it is our responsibility to understand what is happening rather than negatively labeling as 'Islamic fundamentalism' this new discourse, and in opposition blindly supporting sectarian governments that use familiar terms and make comfortable promises to Western governments\" (x). Fatima Mernissi persuasively argues that Western democracies have promoted and profited from Islamic and particularly Saudi fundamentalism, with petrodollars funding authoritarian regimes whose massive arms purchases benefit Western companies. Indeed, \"the symbiotic relationship between Western liberal democracies and the palace fundamentalisms of the Gulf states (along with the popular street fundamentalisms they fund outside their borders) puts into question the supposition of a rational, democratic, liberal West facing an irrational and fundamentalist East\" (Qureshi and Sells 17).\n\nEsposito reminds us that while the elite minority is secular, \"a majority in non-western societies continues to live or to be influenced by religiously informed cultures\" (20). Faced with the complete failure of the modern state to improve the living conditions that are worsening for the majority while the elite is getting wealthier, \"Religious revivalisms (or fundamentalisms) often represent the voices of those who, amidst the failures of their societies, claim both to ameliorate the problems and to offer a more authentic, religiously-based society\" (Esposito 21). One reason why Islamic movements have gained popularity in various countries is that they have provided basic services such as health clinics and schools, where the state had failed to meet its obligation (Esposito 21), a fact they rarely receive credit for in the Western media.\n\n9\/11 has given new impetus to the theory of the clash of civilizations, although that theory has been debunked by several studies. As Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells point out, the assertion that there is a clash of civilization \"has become an ideological agent that may help generate the conflict that it posits\" (3). The binary opposition between the West and the rest asserted by the theory of the clash of civilizations does not hold. As Euben points out, the contrast often made between the West as a secular humanist and the Islamic East \"does not easily map onto, for example, the sociological religiosity of American culture, the growth of religious revivalism in American politics,\" nor does it take into account the influence of Western thought on Islamic thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb, whose writings are said to inspire fundamentalists of various calibers (166). Philosopher Jacques Derrida sees the opposition not between the West and the East, but between the U.S. and a Europe that he sees as \"the only secular actor on the world stage\" (Borradori 170). Similarly, Charles Kaplan states that the \"coming clash of civilizations will be not between the West and the rest but within a West divided against itself\" (qtd. in Majid, _Freedom_ 198). One could add and within an East divided against itself. Commenting on recent conflicts such as the genocide in Rwanda and the first Gulf War, Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger note that, \"What these conflicts, together with many others, have in common is the fierce competition between domestic elites who are ready to do almost anything to keep or get political power\" (112).\n\nInternational relations theorists have proposed a third alternative to the Primordialists (proponents of the clash of civilizations, who see the source of conflict as rooted in cultural differences), and Instrumentalists (who see the source of conflict as based on socioeconomic grievances). The moderate constructivists, like the Instrumentalists, see the source of conflict grounded in socio-economic and political disparities, but see religion playing a role in the manner the conflict is handled. They \"propose to view religion as an intervening variable, i.e., a causal factor intervening between a given conflict and the choice of conflict behavior\" (Hasenclever and Rittberger 115).\n\nWhile the resurgence of religion has been studied extensively in the social sciences, 9\/11 acted as a watershed event that prompted scholars in the humanities to give religion more attention (although some writers and scholars were already engaged with the issue). Since the last decades of the twentieth century, Francophone writers from the Arab world have been grappling anew with Islam's resurgence, as it became increasingly associated with sensational headlines in a variety of contexts.1 In the 1990s, prompted by contemporary socio-political events, canonical Maghrebian writers such as Driss Chra\u00efbi and Assia Djebar wrote fictional historical accounts of Islam's beginnings.2 As noted by Edward Said in _Covering Islam_ , \"it is not difficult to imagine that a Muslim might be made uncomfortable by the relentless insistence\u2014even if it is put in terms of a debate\u2014that her or his faith, culture, and people are seen as a source of threat, and that she or he has been deterministically associated with terrorism, violence, and 'fundamentalism' \" (xxi). A new introduction to the 1997 revised edition ascertains that nothing has really changed in the more than twenty-five years that have passed since the book first came out in 1981. Given the amalgam that is commonplace between Muslims and Arabs in Western popular culture,3 one can extend Said's statement about Muslims to Arabs regardless of their faith: in other words, Arabs might be uncomfortable that their ethnicity is seen as a source of threat.\n\nWith Islam (and the Arab world often conflated with it) taking center stage as the post-Cold War enemy, and the much controversial thesis of the clash of civilizations regaining notoriety after 9\/11, how have writers from the Arab world represented various conflicts, which have been framed in religious (Islam\/Christianity), civilizational (Islam\/Christendom), and imperialist (East\/West) terms? What are the paths mapped by literary texts out of the political turmoil that sparks new national constructions and allegiances?\n\nFrancophone writers from the Arab world are often cast in an uneasy position of intermediaries between their culture and country of origin on one side, and their mostly French readership on the other, as many of these writers reside in France and publish their work there. These writers, who hail from parts of the former French empire, often find themselves in a delicate situation between the colonial legacy of their language of literary expression and the conflation in the media and (popular) culture between the Arab and Muslim world and fundamentalism and terrorism. Yet, given that they occupy a liminal space between two worlds that are often posited in antagonistic terms, they seem to be in an ideal position to foster cross-cultural understanding, and to map the future coexistence of diverse groups in their communities.\n\nHowever, it is not certain that they are always successful in providing insights into the complexity of the resurgence of religion, and particularly when Islam is involved. Postcolonial theory has been noted as deficient when it comes to specific issues linked to the Arab-Muslim world (Majid, _Unveiling_ 19-21; see also Hassan in chapter one). In French and Francophone Studies, the term Islamic fundamentalism is, with rare exceptions, used indiscriminately as an unquestioned blanket term to refer to all aspects of the resurgence of religion. Anouar Majid already noted a decade ago in a brief article that, \"Their [intellectuals and writers in the Islamic world today] uncomplicated, one-dimensional reading of the Islamic resurgence, makes them, unwittingly or not, accomplices of the West and the ruling elites in almost all Arab and Islamic countries\" (\"Islam\" 87). Although he does not focus on Francophone literature, several of the examples he gives of writers whom he denounces for giving monolithic representations of Islam are Francophone (Ben Jelloun, Accad, Mimouni), and are closely examined in this study.\n\nFocusing on the intersection of Islam, politics, history, and Francophone literature, this book examines how French and Francophone writers from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) and the Near East (Lebanon, Syria) grapple with the intertwining of religion and politics in various conflicting contexts. To this end, this study analyzes various means of cultural production, including essays, novels, films, and comic books by Francophone Arab writers and filmmakers whose Christian (Evelyne Accad, Myriam Antaki, Andr\u00e9e Ch\u00e9did, Amin Maalouf), Jewish (Karin Albou, Albert Bensoussan, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Albert Memmi), Muslim (Salim Bachi, Slimane Bena\u00efssa, Yamina Benguigui, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Rachid Boudjedra, Farid Boudjellal, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Rachid Mimouni), and secular (Le\u00efla Sebbar) backgrounds are emblematic of the diversity of the Francophone Arab world. It examines how these writers (dis)entangle religious, political, economic, and cultural factors, and how they articulate the past, present, and future of religious minorities in the Arab world, against the backdrop of the current international political context of Islamic fundamentalism and the persistence of Western prejudices against Islam. At a time when Islamic fundamentalism is making regular headlines, the book focuses on texts that deal with disputes commonly framed in religious terms (with Islam as the common denominator for all) in order to describe how the Francophone Arab world has responded to the discourse that pits Islam against the West.\n\nWhile the cultural production of countries constituting the Francophone world is expressed in many languages, there is a disproportionate attention given to the one in French. By virtue of their publications' location and through translation of their work, these writers shape the French (and other) public's (mis)understanding of various conflicts allegedly stemming from Islamic resurgence. Their influence extends beyond hexagonal borders through translation of their work, and thanks to the rise of Francophone Studies, in the U.S. and the U.K. in particular. This book builds on Richard Serrano's assertion that the Francophone Studies model skews our understanding of those regions (6-7), a fact already noted by social scientists such as Fran\u00e7ois Burgat who points out that \"a French-speaking Maghreb . . . has masked the emergence of an impertinent new Maghreb, which today wants to use a new language\" (5). Many writers who have been trained in the French secular tradition fail to understand and give insights into what has been broadly labeled as the Islamic Revival that has been taking place in the Muslim world in the past decades. As we will see in the case of the Algerian and Lebanese civil wars, Francophone writers are not always able to render the complexity of some events. In cases involving the complexity of the resurgence of religion, there is a remarkable downplay of the role and impact of European colonialism in shaping current events in parts of the Arab world, and this under the pen of writers who had vigorously denounced colonialism in the past. Following the failure of secular ideologies such as pan-Arabism and Marxism, these writers are for the most part unable to see the resurgence of Islam divorced from political claims. In other words, when Islamic rhetoric is linked to political issues, they point out the political events and their effects, but they fall into the trap of thinking that Islam can only be a means to achieving certain political goals. They fail to portray the fact that for many, Islam is not just a cultural background but also offers spiritual guidance. This shortcoming could be due to some degree of anxiety about maintaining their status as privileged interpreters.\n\nThe book is organized thematically around a series of conflicts in the Arab world (or linked to its diaspora) that have made headlines during the second half of the twentieth century. Some conflicts are construed as internal, such as the Lebanese civil war (a Christian\/Muslim Arab conflict) and the Algerian civil war (Islamic fundamentalism against secular democracy); others as external: the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Islam's advance in the West through immigration (the headscarf affair in France).\n\nChapter 1, the Arab-Israeli conflict, examines works that turned to the past as a way to take attention away from the discourse on terrorism and back to the root causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The first part of the chapter examines Maalouf's _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ [ _The Crusades through Arab Eyes_ ], a book that challenges the clash of civilization discourses (now and then) that pit a Christian West against a Muslim East, and that also provides a commentary on contemporary politics in the Middle East. The second part analyzes representations of the conflict through a family story and contrasts the use of genealogies as conflict resolution in two novels: Maalouf's _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ [ _Ports of Call_ ] and Antaki's _Les versets du pardon_ [ _Verses of Forgiveness_ ]. In Maalouf's book, the union between Jewish and Arab characters functions simply as a sign of hope for future conflict resolution. Antaki's recourse to the genealogical paradigm goes beyond that; it challenges stereotypes and points towards a first step to conflict resolution by revisiting the past to move towards a future beyond the ideology of separation.\n\nChapter 2 focuses on the geographic displacement of the Arab-Israeli conflict by analyzing the representation of its impact on Maghrebian countries and contemporary France. It first compares two Arab Jewish writers' take on the identity of the Arab Jew in essays and articles, notably Albert Memmi's _Juifs et Arabes_ [ _Jews and Arabs_ ] and _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman et de quelques autres_ [ _Decolonization and the Decolonized_ ] as well as various pieces published by Edmond Amran El Maleh. The chapter also addresses the correlation between these writers' positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict, noting the relative prominence of each writer (Memmi's renown and El Maleh's obscurity). The second part of the chapter contrasts the representation of the relations between Arabs and Jews in France in Farid Boudjellal's _JuifsArabes_ [JewsArabs], a comic book, and Karin Albou's film _La petite J\u00e9rusalem_ [ _Little Jerusalem_ ]. It aims to demonstrate that, contrary to Albou's film, Boudjellal's comic book participates in an endeavor to go beyond the ideology of partition and separation that has dominated approaches to the Arab-Israeli conflict.\n\nChapter 3, on the Lebanese civil war, examines how Francophone Lebanese writers have depicted the conflict, and more specifically how they have dealt with the religious dimension of a civil war that was summarily depicted in the West as a Muslim\/Christian rift. It argues that two novels, Ch\u00e9did's _La maison sans racines_ [ _The Return to Beirut_ ] and Accad's _L'excis\u00e9e_ [ _The Excised_ ], reinforce the reductive view of the Lebanese civil war as a religious conflict. A close analysis of the Biblical and Qur'anic intertexts demonstrates that Accad's inscription of verses from the Qur'an provides a stereotyped view of Islam while the Biblical quotations implicitly reaffirm Christian values of sacrifice and redemption.\n\nChapter 4, on the Algerian civil war, starts by analyzing the representation of the rise of the FIS and the civil war in Mimouni's _De la barbarie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de l'int\u00e9grisme en particulier_ [On barbarity in general and on fundamentalism in particular] and Boudjedra's _Le FIS de la haine_ [the Islamic Salvation Front of hate]. It demonstrates that both essays do more to feed the flames of fear than to further our understanding of the events under scrutiny. The second part of the chapter analyzes how the civil war intrudes in _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ [ _An Algerian Childhood_ ], a collection of short autobiographical narratives edited by Sebbar that features pieces by writers from diverse backgrounds who spent their childhood in colonial Algeria. It shows that the effects of colonialism are mostly erased or downplayed, while the violence that surfaces is mostly associated with the Algerian nationalist movement during the war for independence and with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It also draws out the implications of this shift of perpetrators of violence given the context of publication of the volume.\n\nChapter 5 examines how Francophone Arab writers have responded to the French Muslim headscarf affair and the discourse surrounding Islam's (in)compatibility with the secular Republic in non-fiction works. It demonstrates that prominent writers such as Ben Jelloun, Maalouf, Meddeb, and Memmi, have not adequately situated the debate in light of French (post)colonial history and have failed to provide a balanced view about the so-called Islamist challenge to the secular French Republic. This chapter then contrasts the more complex representations by Sebbar and Benguigui, and draws out the implications from the absence of pictures of veiled girls in works that include text and images.\n\nChapter 6 looks at the representation of 9\/11 in Francophone novels from the Arab world and compares the function of extensive quotations from the Qur'an in Bena\u00efssa's _La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_ [ _The Last Night of a DamnedSoul_] and Bachi's _Tuez-les tous_ [kill them all]. These two 9\/11 novels imagine the itinerary of a 9\/11 hijacker leading up to the attacks. I argue that the Islamic intertext of Bena\u00efssa's novel gives fodder to proponents of the clash of civilization discourse, while Bachi's multicultural intertext accounts for the complexity of factors behind the 9\/11 attacks.\n\nThe conclusion of the book underscores the impact of 9\/11 on the English translation and packaging of some of the texts treated in this study. Reflecting on the spike of American interest in the literary production of the Arab and Muslim world, the book offers a critical evaluation of this trend's impact and implications in general, and for Francophone Studies in particular.\n\nThis study provides a critical examination of representations of the role of religions in conflicts from the perspective of the Arab Francophone world at a time when, in the wake of 9\/11 and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, it is most needed. Drawing on a variety of methodologies, such as cultural studies, international relations theory and conflict resolution, the study also brings heightened awareness to the impact of literature on our understanding of contemporary issues as well as on the modalities according to which a literary work can serve as a cultural mediator. Finally, the focus on the topic of religions and conflicts in Francophone literature by Arab writers is particularly useful for examining how the Francophone studies model frames current issues and for evaluating its effectiveness in giving a complete picture of religious issues involving Islam.\n\n### Notes\n\n1. For a summary, see the new introduction to Said's revised edition of _Covering Islam_ , especially pages xii-xiv, which offer an abbreviated list of events between 1983 and 1996.\n\n2. See Chra\u00efbi's _L'homme du livre_ and Djebar's _Loin de M\u00e9dine_ , and my _Coran et tradition islamique dans la litt\u00e9rature maghr\u00e9bine_ for an analysis of these texts.\n\n3. The terms Arabs and Muslims are sometimes used interchangeably, although Arabs (among whom there are Christian and Jewish minorities) comprise only about twenty percent of the Muslim population nowadays, and despite the diversity of Muslim countries (which extend from Morocco to Indonesia).\n\n## Chapter 1\n\n## The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Amin Maalouf's _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ and _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ , Myriam Antaki's _Les versets du pardon_\n\nThe Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains one of the most intractable clashes of the twentieth century, and unfortunately shows no sign of being resolved any time soon. In the Spring of 2008, the state of Israel celebrated its sixtieth birthday, a day commemorated by one side as \"Independence day\" and mourned by the other as the \"Nakba\" (catastrophy). This chapter examines books that are focused on the past in order to take attention away from the discourse on terrorism and back to representations of the root causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the different contexts that shape these representations.\n\nIn a collection of articles published in the 1980s, Said and other scholars analyzed various processes by which Palestinians, victims of a mass dispossession in 1948, are turned into essentialized aggressors. Summarizing an article written by the Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk in 1986, Said noted that \"as Palestinian nationalism acquired regional and international credibility in the mid-1970s, Israeli officials consciously adopted the policy of characterizing it as 'terrorism.' [. . .] the word 'terrorism' was a political weapon designed to protect the strong (and eliminate from memory exploits of 'former' terrorists like Begin and Shamir who now run Israel) as well as to legitimize official military action against innocents\" (\"Introduction\" 13). In the same book, Noam Chomsky detailed how U.S. and Israeli officials, along with mainstream media, routinely labeled any acts of resistance as terrorism, thereby justifying retaliation, in the context of the 1980s' Israeli invasion of Lebanon and U.S. involvement in Nicaragua, all the while occulting their own terrorism abroad. As early as the 1980s, Said pointed out that terrorism had \"displaced Communism as public enemy number one\" in American public discourse (\"The Essential\" 149). The prevalence of the term serves to put aside historical evidence (\"The Essential\" 149).\n\nCommenting on a 2002 piece by Said, Stephen Morton notes that there is \"a historical relationship between imperialism and the discourse of terrorism\" (36). Morton recalls that the figure of the contemporary terrorist is often summoned as the reason for the American and British invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well the backing of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Lebanon (36). He goes on to state that \"Such a causal logic conceals the fact that the threat of terrorism is an instance of metalepsis: an effect of colonial discourse that is presented as a cause\" (36). In other words, terrorism is supplanting Orientalism as a justification for imperialism: \"If orientalism provides the sovereign power of the colonial state with a discourse of otherness to justify the suspension of the rule of civil law in times of crisis, [. . .] the contemporary discourse of terrorism would seem to serve a similar function\" (Morton 36).\n\nThe rise of Postcolonial Studies has brought to the fore the plight of most indigenous people who fell under the yoke of European imperialism. However, it has, as Salah Hassan has underscored, neglected the issue of Palestine. As Hassan points out, \"Postcolonial disengagement from Palestine is especially striking when one considers the role of Edward Said in shaping the field\" (33), given that Said's _Orientalism_ is considered a founding text of the field. In addition to his work on literary theory and comparative literature, Said has dedicated several books to the issue of Palestine.1 A recent issue of _PMLA_ (October 2006) tangentially started to redress that neglect, when it published the proceedings of a conference entitled \"The Humanities in Human Rights: Critique, Language, Politics,\" held in October 2005. Two contributors (Omar Barghouti and Alisa Solomon) analyzed the dehumanization of Palestinians in Israel and in U.S. media. In the following year, Gaurav Desai mentions the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as one example of the politics of indigeneity for which postcolonial studies \"will have to articulate new ways of thinking\" (642). Despite these brief mentions, unease remains over the issue of the Palestinian question and whether Israel can be seen as a colonial power.2\n\nPostcolonial Studies triggered the growth of Francophone Studies, which is also characterized, incidentally, by a lack of interest in the Near East. Despite the expansion of the areas under the purview of the field of Francophone Studies, the Francophone production of the Levant has somewhat been neglected, in part because of the paucity of writers of French expression from that region compared to that of the Maghreb. This chapter hopes to fill a gap in both fields by focusing on a topic (Palestine) and writers (Maalouf, Antaki) that have been left at the margins. The first part examines Maalouf's _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ , a book that challenges the clash of civilization discourses (now and then) that pit a Christian West against a Muslim East. The rewriting of history in this book is grounded in and comments on events taking place in the Middle East contemporary to the time of its writing. The second part analyzes representations of the conflict through the use of a genealogical paradigm in two novels. In Maalouf's _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ , the union between a Jew and an Arab functions as a sign of hope for future conflict resolution. Antaki's _Les versets du pardon_ goes beyond that; it challenges stereotypes and points towards a first step to conflict resolution by revisiting the past to move forwards into a future beyond the ideology of separation. I unpack the genealogy that portrays the Arab-Israeli issue to show the various allegorical levels that combine to entangle history, religion, politics, and terrorism. I demonstrate how Antaki's work stands out as she invokes a means to conflict resolution grounded in scriptures.\n\n### Origins: Rewriting History in Amin Maalouf's _Les croisades vues par les Arabes3_\n\nMaalouf, a Lebanese writer who won the prestigious Goncourt prize in 1993 for his novel _Le rocher de Tanios_ , has received little attention from scholars of Francophone literature in the United States. As a Christian Arab exiled in France since 1976, Maalouf occupies a pivot point between his country of exile and his region of origin. While examining his identity in the essay _Identit\u00e9s meurtri\u00e8res_ , Maalouf underlines the paradox of being a Christian with Arabic, the sacred language of Islam, as his native tongue (23-24). These \"appartenances multiples\" 'multiple belongings' ( _Identit\u00e9s_ 40) that characterize \"frontaliers\" 'border people' ( _Identit\u00e9s_ 46) afford him a singular vantage point from which to take a fresh look at the historical period of the Crusades from 1096 to 1291.4\n\nThe title of _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ problematizes the notion of objective historiography, and makes explicit Maalouf's intent: to adopt the perspective of those who suffered from the Crusades,5 which in Western eyes are still seen as a great epic. Indeed, the term \"crusade\" in today's English is used, as is _croisade_ in French, to refer not only to the historical military expeditions to the Near East, but also to denote any well-intentioned though possibly overzealous campaign for a worthy cause, and as such often carries a positive connotation. Maalouf's objective in his book is not simply to set the historical record straight: his rewriting of history is also intended as a commentary on contemporary politics. In this section, I explore how narrative strategies shape Maalouf's counter-history; why considerations of the problems inherent to the (re)writing of history are relegated to the background; and what motivates the rewriting of history in _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ , given that the historiographical act takes place within a specific context and can thus be politicized.\n\nAs Linda Hutcheon puts it, there is a distinction to be made between events of the past and the historical facts drawn from them: \"Facts are events to which we have given meaning. Different historical perspectives therefore derive different facts from the same events\" ( _Politics_ 57). Because Maalouf writes in French, one can assume that his target audience is a Western reader to whom he wants to show a different version of the facts conventionally derived from the events that took place in the Middle East during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.\n\nAgain, the title of Maalouf's book places it in opposition to others written on the same topic.6 Texts published by medievalists prior to the 1980s were mostly titled \"The Crusades\" or \"History of the Crusades,\"7 and purported to present a global, objective picture of these historical events. In contrast, Maalouf specifies in his title that he will examine the period from a restricted point of view. Maalouf's title thus challenges the supposed unicity of history that previous historical works on the Crusades seemed to take for granted. And while some European historians by mid-twentieth century had come to a more critical appraisal of the Crusades, there remained a gap between scholarly and popular views (Constable 2). Maalouf does not explicitly situate himself vis-\u00e0-vis his subject, hiding, instead, behind the first person plural \"we\" of academic narrative. However, his purpose is made clear in the Foreword, and while Maalouf did not have at the time of publication of _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ the renown that he now enjoys, his name as author is easily identified as Arabic.8 The prologue and epilogue both emphasize his intent to set forth a little-known perspective and the influence it has had on interpreting contemporary events.\n\nMichel de Certeau and Hayden White, among others, have emphasized how the telling of the past is linked to contemporary ideological, political, or cultural factors (Hutcheon, _Poetics_ 120-22). In his ground-breaking text _The Writing of History_ , de Certeau argues that any return to history reflects preoccupations contemporary to its writing:\n\nOn ne saurait supposer non plus, comme elle [l'historiographie] tend parfois \u00e0 le faire croire, qu'un \"commencement\", plus haut dans le temps, expliquerait le pr\u00e9sent: chaque historien situe d'ailleurs la coupure inaugurante l\u00e0 o\u00f9 s'arr\u00eate son investigation. . . . En fait, il part de d\u00e9terminations pr\u00e9sentes. L'actualit\u00e9 est son commencement r\u00e9el. (18) \nNor could anyone believe, as much as historiography might tend to have us believe, that a \"beginning\" situated in a former time might explain the present: each historian situates elsewhere the inaugural rupture, at the point where his or her investigations stop. . . . In fact, historians begin from present determinations. Current events are their real beginning. (Conley 11)\n\nAccording to de Certeau, the outcome or end of the story (the present) determines how the beginning (the past) of the story will be told (and which beginning as well). In Maalouf's text, there is no one-way movement between past and present: they are interconnected. The chronological move from past to present is made clear by the geographical changes illustrated by the two maps that frame the narrative: the first one appears right after the cover (and before the title page) and shows the Middle East with the boundaries of the Frankish states circa 1128; the second one, at the very end of the book, shows the borders of the Middle East after 1948. However, in the foreword Maalouf states that he chose the period of the Crusades because \"ces deux si\u00e8cles mouvement\u00e9s . . . ont fa\u00e7onn\u00e9 l'Occident et le monde arabe, et . . . d\u00e9terminent aujourd'hui encore leurs rapports\" 'those two centuries of turmoil . . . shaped the West and the Arab world alike, and . . . affect relations between them even today' (9, Rothschild, Foreword). Thus, the author starts from contemporary relations between the Arabs and the West as a contextual background for his research on the history of the Crusades, while in the epilogue he refers to the past he narrated as the root of contemporary tensions. The present context triggers a quest for the origin of a contemporary problem on which the past will shed light. The beginning and the end are inextricably interwoven, since the past will explain the present, which itself determines how and which part of the past is told.\n\nLike its author, _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ is a hybrid: neither a scholarly historical book, nor a novel, nor a historical novel, although it has elements of all three. While reviewers called it a historical essay (as Maalouf did himself during an interview; see Sassine 25), the author in the foreword presents it as the \"roman vrai\" 'true novel' of the Crusades between quotation marks. This may be an allusion to the Goncourt brothers' preface to _Germinie Lacerteux_ (1865), in which they state: \"le public aime les romans faux: ce roman est un roman vrai\" 'the public loves fictitious novels! This is a true novel' (5, Chestershire 5). What Maalouf's text has in common with the first naturalist novel, which featured a woman from the working class as the main character, is that both works are based on real events and purport to tell stories from a class or ethnic background previously denied the spotlight. These scare quotes also underline the oxymoron created by juxtaposing the terms novel and true, simultaneously revealing and effacing the distinction between them, and reminding us of de Certeau's definition of historiography, that \"l'historiographie (c'est-\u00e0-dire \"histoire\" et \"\u00e9criture\") porte inscrit dans son nom propre le paradoxe\u2014et quasi l'oxymoron\u2014de la mise en relation de deux termes antinomiques: le r\u00e9el et le discours\" ( _L'\u00e9criture_ 5) 'Historiography (that is, \"history\" and \"writing\") bears within its own name the paradox\u2014almost an oxymoron\u2014of a relation established between two antinomic terms, between the real and discourse' (Conley xxvii). In addition to stressing the fact that historiography is itself grounded in history, scholars following in the wake of Hayden White have emphasized the commonality of features shared by historical discourse and literature. Every historical narrative is a linguistic construct that uses rhetorical devices to create a discourse of explanation and persuasion out of events or data. Narrative techniques and rhetorical figures shape the historical account and require analysis.\n\nMaalouf's stated desire to write the \"true novel\" of the Crusades shows that this work is not a new history book and acknowledges the apparent contradiction between the title (the Crusades according to one perspective), and the statement that this is an accurate account. His book is about how the Arabs who lived through the Crusades narrated and transmitted that experience to future generations, since the Arab historians quoted by Maalouf are contemporary to some of the events they relate. In a preamble to the section \"Notes and Sources,\" Maalouf offers the only commentary on his approach: \"Il va de soi que leur consultation [des r\u00e9cits historiques] nous \u00e9tait indispensable pour rassembler les t\u00e9moignages arabes, n\u00e9cessairement fragmentaires, en un r\u00e9cit continu couvrant les deux si\u00e8cles d'invasions franques\" 'It was obviously essential to consult them [historical narratives] in weaving the Arab testimony, which is inevitably fragmentary, into a continuous account covering the two centuries of the Frankish invasions' (285, Rothschild 268). The two classic (European) works that he cites are Grousset's and Runciman's. Clearly, Maalouf relies on Western historians to piece together the Arab testimonies scattered among annals and chronicles. As Franz Rosenthal explains, Arab historians wrote annalistic historiography, which simply records bare facts under a succession of individual years, with the exception of Usamah Ibn Munqidh, who wrote a memoir of his personal experiences. However, the Western scholars Maalouf cites also relied on the Arab chroniclers.9\n\nLikewise, Maalouf draws from all sources available to him, medieval Arab as well as contemporary Western historians. This underscores the fact that the same sources can yield different historical accounts, and that records are often insufficient or contradictory. As Chaim Perelman puts it, \"We can know the past only from the traces of it that remain\" (qtd. in Gossman 293). The overtly controlling narrator in Maalouf's text acknowledges the limitations of his project on several occasions. For example, there are two versions of the events that will push Saladin to lift the siege at Massiaf, a fortress in Syria. Maalouf adds before narrating the second version: \"Mais ce qui se passe en ce mois d'ao\u00fbt 1176 au pays des Assassins demeurera sans doute \u00e0 jamais un myst\u00e8re\" 'Exactly what happened in the land of the Assassins that August of 1176 will probably always remain a mystery' (199, Rothschild 182). Although most of the story proceeds in the narrative present or \"historical present,\" as it is often referred to in French and English, which gives the impression of immediacy and objectivity because narration seems to occur simultaneously with the events and thus precludes any interference from temporal distance, it alternates with passages that either anticipate or allude to future events or to the future consequences of what was just narrated. For example, the last chapter of the third part ends with these words: \"L'\u00e9pop\u00e9e du puissant Etat fond\u00e9 par Zinki semble achev\u00e9e. En r\u00e9alit\u00e9, elle vient tout juste de commencer\" 'The epic of the powerful state founded by Zangi seems over. In fact, it has only just begun' (155). This is an example of what G\u00e9rard Genette calls \"repetitive prolepsis\" which plays a role of announcement and creates a short-term expectation in the mind of the reader, which is fulfilled in the chapter that follows it ( _Figures III_ ). Maalouf ends the second part by quoting an Arab historian who uses the same device:\n\nEn \u00e9voquant, un si\u00e8cle plus tard, cette p\u00e9riode critique de l'histoire arabe, Ibn al-Athir \u00e9crira \u00e0 juste titre:\n\nAvec la mort de Toghtekin disparaissait le dernier homme capable de faire face aux Franj. Ceux-ci semblaient alors en mesure d'occuper la Syrie tout enti\u00e8re. Mais Dieu, dans son infinie bont\u00e9, eut piti\u00e9 des musulmans. (122)\n\nDiscussing this critical period of Arab history a century later, Ibn al-Athir would write with good reason:\n\nWith the death of Tughtigin, the last man capable of confronting the Franj was gone. The latter then seemed in a position to occupy all of Syria. But God in his infinite kindness took pity on the Muslims. (Rothschild 105)\n\nThis prolepsis within a prolepsis underlines the fact that Maalouf's narrative strategy inscribes itself in the tradition of Muslim historiography. In _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ , most chapters end with some sort of foretelling of events that maintains the reader's interest; Maalouf presents us with a retrospective view of the past and interprets each event accordingly. These prolepses remind us that the rewriting of history is grounded in the here and now of the historian, and that this applies to the medieval sources as well, which are already interpreted accounts of the events they relate. As Christopher Tyerman notes, \"most medieval written primary sources were exercises in interpreting reality, not describing it\" (99).\n\nThe anecdote about the crusaders' cannibalism strikingly illustrates how context affects historiography. De Certeau has argued that any writing of History takes place in History: \"Il y a l'historicit\u00e9 de l'histoire. Elle implique le mouvement qui lie une pratique interpr\u00e9tative \u00e0 une praxis sociale\" 'There exists a historicity of history, implying the movement which links an interpretive practice to a social praxis' ( _L'\u00e9criture_ 29, Conley 21). The cannibalism that occurred at Maara is narrated in several Frankish chronicles of the time, where the army's chiefs ascribed it to hunger, as well as in European history books of the nineteenth century. However, the incident is usually occulted in the twentieth century.10 In the \"Notes and Sources,\" Maalouf alludes to the civilizing mission project to explain this phenomenon (287), but does not dwell on the issue. By relegating his comment to a note outside the main body of the text, Maalouf avoids the pitfall pointed out by Arif Dirlik in an essay about Eurocentrism and History: \"Critics of Eurocentrism inspired by cultural studies spend more time on what Euro-American writers and theorists have had to say about the rest of the world than they do speaking of the societies at hand, which further displaces the latter from the historian's attention\" (250).\n\nThat Maalouf subverts the pattern of dichotomization he himself established in the title by choosing to quote Frankish over Arab sources to tell this episode does pose a problem, however, for contrary to what the book sets out to do, it is the Franks we hear. Maalouf quotes the chronicler Raoul de Caen: \" _A Maara, les n\u00f4tres faisaient bouillir des pa\u00efens adultes dans les marmites, ils fixaient les enfants sur des broches et les d\u00e9voraient grill\u00e9s\" 'In Ma'arra our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled'_ (55, Rothschild 39).11 Maalouf also quotes another Frankish chronicler, Albert d'Aix, as well as an excerpt from an official letter sent by the chiefs of the army to the Pope (39-40). This is not a case in which the only remnants of the past are to be found in the Franks' chronicles (either because of extermination or destruction of documents). Although historians point out that only a few Arab accounts of the first Crusades have been preserved, one can find a brief mention of the Franks' cannibalism in an Arab source (Kemal-eddine) translated by Michaud in his _Biblioth\u00e8que des croisades_ : \"les Francs, en proie \u00e0 la disette, \u00e9taient r\u00e9duits \u00e0 se nourrir de cadavres et des animaux qu'ils pouvaient se procurer\" 'The Franks, racked by dearth, were reduced to feeding themselves from cadavers and animals they could get' (vol. 4: 7). Maalouf knew this source, since Kemal-eddine's text is listed in the \"Notes and Sources.\" One can see two possibilities to explain Maalouf's choice: the quotations attributed to the Frankish chronicles contain more gruesome details, which accentuate the barbarism of the perpetrators, thus contributing to Maalouf's reversal of civilized and barbarian. Second, reliance on the Franks' own writings obviates disbelief by the French reader, as if acknowledgment by the very people who committed it should attest to the veracity of such a horrendous act.\n\nIt is evident from his statement about the cannibalism episode that Maalouf, whose passion for history permeates most of his novels, is well aware of the issues involved in any writing of history, in particular the subjectivity of the historian, who weaves various sources into a coherent narrative, and the literariness of historiography. However, he uses none of the metafictional devices that disorient the reader at the level of the narrative, and which are often found in postcolonial and postmodern writings to dramatize the issue of how one can know and write the past. Maalouf does use narrative strategies that underscore the literariness of the process of writing history, but his text is not paralyzed by constant self-reflexivity, nor does it pretend to have the scientific objectivity of positivist historiography by presenting itself as a novel. Maalouf has a story to tell, and it takes priority over epistemological questions about historical discourse.\n\nIn order to tell the victims' point of view in French, the language of the crusaders' descendants, various lexical changes are required. Maalouf borrows the word _Franj_ , an Arabic word still used nowadays in dialectal Arabic to designate the French, and Westerners by extension. The introduction of this Arabic word into the French language creates a feeling of strangeness for the Western reader concerning his\/her own identity, thus forcing him to see himself (or herself) with the Other's eyes.12 In commenting on the Arab chronicler Ibn al-Athir by summing up a lengthy quotation with \"Ils sont fous, ces Franj, semble dire l'historien de Mossoul\" 'These Franj are crazy, the Mosul historian seems to be saying' (89, Rothschild 73), Maalouf alludes to the popular _Ast\u00e9rix_ series, where the phrase \"these Romans are crazy\" is frequently put in the mouths of resisting Gauls (who have been construed as the ancestors of the French), referring to the Roman assailants. In addition to grounding Maalouf's analyses in twentieth-century popular culture, this appropriation ironically underlines the position of the Franks as invaders.\n\nPerhaps more radically, Maalouf repeatedly presents the point of view of the victims excluded from official French history by reversing the referents of the dichotomy \"civilized\/uncivilized.\" In a chapter entitled \"Un \u00e9mir chez les barbares\" 'An Emir among Barbarians' (Rothschild), Maalouf turns generally accepted ideas upside down by calling the crusaders non-civilized beings compared to the Arabs. He does justice to the advance of the Arab civilization over the Frankish one in areas ranging from hygiene to law, and quotes at length the Damascene chronicler Usamah Ibn Munqidh, who is shocked by the Franks' backwardness. Maalouf quotes a long exerpt from Ibn Munqidh in which two Frankish doctors are shown to be more effective at killing their patients than curing them (147-48), but makes no mention of two other cases of successful Frankish treatment that Ibn Munqidh reports right after the passage quoted by Maalouf (Ibn Munqidh 162-63). While both sides recognized the superior medical skills of Arab physicians (Hallam 86), Maalouf's selection presents a more uniform view of the Franks than the source he draws from. Derrida argued that a phase of reversal is necessary to deconstruct an imposed hierarchy:\n\nI strongly insist on the necessity of the phase of reversal, which people have perhaps too swiftly attempted to discredit. . . . To neglect this phase of reversal is to forget that the structure of the opposition is one of conflict and subordination and thus to pass too swiftly, without gaining any purchase against the former opposition, to a _neutralization_ which _in practice_ leaves things in their former state. (qtd. in Culler 165)\n\nAs Derrida makes clear, it is a necessary step to show the Franks as barbarians to deconstruct the Western image of the Crusades as a heroic, glamorous time before these two centuries can be evaluated in a balanced manner. Thus the sensitivity and humanity of some Muslim leaders are emphasized in contrast to the crusaders' savagery. Maalouf relates how in similar situations the Arab leaders were magnanimous while the crusaders were cruel. For instance, he contrasts the brutality of Renaud de Ch\u00e2tillon, who tortures the patriarch of Antioch and mutilates the Greek priests of Cyprus (156), to the humanitarian response of Saladin, who, moved to pity by the cries of a Frankish woman whose daughter was kidnapped, orders that the latter be found and restored to her mother. On another occasion, Saladin's generosity and magnanimity when he liberates the Frankish poor without asking for a ransom, and frees King Guy in exchange for a promise (on which the latter will renege) contrasts with the lies of the Franks, who resort to false religious propaganda to obtain reinforcements, and to Richard the Lion Hearted's cruelty when he massacres prisoners while in a similar situation Saladin had had Franks released (210-11). Other exactions by the Franks include the pillage of Constantinople, during which they killed priests and monks and looted churches, and the sack of Jerusalem's holy places in 1099, during which the Eastern Christians were evicted, the Jews burned in the synagogue, and the Muslims massacred. To this day, Arabs contrast the brutal taking of Jerusalem by the Franks in 1099 to the peaceful seizure of Jerusalem by Omar Ibn al-Khattab in 638 (51). However, Maalouf does not portray only magnanimous Muslim leaders facing cruel crusaders. Although Frederic II is considered an exception, Maalouf lingers on this emperor, king of Germany and Sicily, who spoke Arabic, admired Muslim civilization, respected the Islamic religion, despised the barbarous West, and who carried on an intellectual correspondence with the Emir of Cairo (226-30). The figure of Frederic II implicitly provides a model for positive East-West interaction.\n\n_Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ ends with a word whose import is immense in Arab culture: \"l'on ne peut douter que la cassure entre ces deux mondes date des croisades, ressenties par les Arabes, aujourd'hui encore, comme un viol\" 'there can be no doubt that the schism between these two worlds dates from the Crusades, deeply felt by the Arabs, even today, as an act of rape' (283, Rothschild 266). Rape has become a commonplace metaphor for conquest and colonization, and by using this trope Maalouf echoes the current trend in medieval historiography of viewing the Crusades as the first wave of European imperialism in the Middle East.13 However, one can see another reason, grounded in Arab culture, for this choice of metaphor. Although in the Middle Ages women on both sides were considered the property of their male guardians, and sexual violence against them was an attack on men's honor, in the twentieth-century Western world rape has become a woman's issue since, as Kathryn Gravdal suggests, women are no longer the property of men (144). This, however, is not the case in parts of the Middle East, where crimes of honor continue to shed women's blood to wash away the shame brought about by their allegedly (un)willing illicit sexual conduct. Rape, a crime legally punishable by death of the perpetrator in some Arab countries, dishonors the victim's whole family. But despite the similarity in the way rape was perceived in the Middle Ages by both parties, the Franks' behavior seemed more liberal towards their womenfolk compared to the Arabs, who were baffled by the fact that Frankish men let their wives interact with men, sometimes rather intimately. Maalouf quotes Ibn Munqidh's indignation upon observing that a Frank will let his wife converse alone with another man (148). Another incident narrated by Ibn Munqidh to corroborate his point (but not included by Maalouf) tells how a Frank had his wife's pubic hair shaved by a man (165-66). These incidents show that a similar concept of honor does not translate into comparable behavior for both parties. While the French no longer tie a man's honor to the sexual behavior of his female relatives, this principle exists to this day in parts of the Middle East, and may explain the choice of the comparison between the Crusades and rape to describe the psychological impact of the invasions on Arabs.\n\nRape is mentioned several times in the narrative, usually as the price that women have to pay for belonging to the defeated (11, 29, 173). Once, it is alluded to in a letter by the caliph al-Adid to Noureddin asking for help: \"Pour \u00e9mouvoir le fils de Zinki, le souverain fatimide a joint \u00e0 sa missive des m\u00e8ches de cheveux: _Ce sont_ , lui explique-t-il, _les cheveux de mes femmes. Elles te supplient de venir les soustraire aux outrages des Franj_ \" 'In an effort to move the son of Zangi, the Fatimid sovereign enclosed some locks of hair with his missive. _These_ , he explained, _are locks of hair from my wives. They beseech you to come and rescue them from the outrages of the Franj_ ' (185, Rothschild 169). Women's voices are reduced to body parts, which are given voice by their husband who uses them as tokens to appeal for help. The word \"outrage,\" which in a general context means a grave insult, takes on the meaning of rape in French when applied to women. It emphasizes the fact that rape is a crime that affects women specifically, and suggests that the Crusades were no exception to the fact that \"In war time, rape has always been more than a rhetorical figure\" (Higgins, _New Novel_ 108). The metaphor of rape relegates women to a silent, victim role, whose sufferings are significant only for the consequences they entail for their husbands' honor. And while the actual crime affects women first and foremost, the specific distresses that women endured are left out of the narrative.\n\nRape can be linked to the process of story telling. Lynn Higgins points out that \"in fiction and life, rape is a special kind of crime in relation to narrative . . . Murder is not a crime whose noncommission can be narrated. Rape, on the other hand, can be discursively transformed into another kind of story. This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when rape is rewritten retrospectively into 'persuasion,' 'seduction,' or even 'romance' \" (\"Screen\/Memory\" 307).14 In a fascinating study, Kathryn Gravdal has shown \"the cultural habit of conceptualizing male violence against women as a positive expression of love\" in French medieval texts (20). Rape is also a common trope in Orientalist discourse. Said points out that \"the relation between the Middle East and the West is really defined as sexual. . . . The Middle East is resistant, as any virgin would be, but the male scholar wins the prize\" ( _Orientalism_ 309). With a similar comparison that underlines unequal power distribution, Maalouf stresses the discursive violence of narratives that have portrayed the Crusades as an epic with heroic characters carrying out a noble goal, and the influence they have had in shaping the popular Western imagination about that era. The violence has been two-fold: on a literal level, as in any war, and on the discursive level. In a case of rape, if \"the question is not _who committed_ the crime, but _whether a crime occurred at all_ \" (Higgins, \"Screen\/Memory\" 307), the issue at stake in Maalouf's work is how the Crusades have been written into history and passed on as a glorious era despite the ideological prejudices that engineered them and the crimes committed.15\n\nThe rape trope used by Maalouf only emphasizes the absence of Arab women's perspective on the Crusades, for _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ is a tale told by men about men. Only two women are briefly mentioned by name in Maalouf's narrative; both seized power and belonged to the elite. The first is Alix, daughter of the King of Jerusalem, who betrayed her father after her husband's death by trying to forge an alliance with Zangi (ruler of Aleppo and Mosul) in order to stay in power in Antioch. The other is Chajarat-ad-dorr, whom Maalouf portrays as a passive pawn in the hands of the Mamelouks, but who nevertheless stands out in the history of Islam as the first woman to be a ruling queen ( _Croisades_ 240-41). In _Sultanes oubli\u00e9es_ , Fatima Mernissi gives us a completely different account of Chajarat-ad-dorr's reign, in which the latter appears as a clever decision-maker, well aware of the limitations imposed on her by her gender, yet determined to circumvent them (145-62).16\n\nOne could argue that Maalouf, by refraining from describing rapes and other crimes at length, does not indulge in the narrative acts of which Aram Veeser accuses New Historicists, whose historical accounts that detail atrocities are said to have obscene or pornographic intentions, and teach only obedience and despair (qtd. in Rosello, \"Mich\u00e8le\" 5). However, Maalouf also passed over the few Arab women whose participation and resistance during the Crusades have left traces in records. Although he can be credited with having brought to light the Arab male viewpoint on this period, he shows no particular concern about the women's.17 While the absence of women's perspectives can be attributed to the lack of written testimony by them, some women's heroic deeds stood out enough to figure in Ibn Munqidh's memoirs, whom Maalouf quotes extensively on other issues. In his memoirs, Ibn Munqidh describes a couple of Muslim women warriors, another who kills her husband who had betrayed the Muslims to the Franks, and another who captured three Franks (153-59); he also gives an account of a woman who drowned after trying to escape from the Franks who took her captive (179). Maalouf ends up repeating in part what his own book is supposed to undo: by omitting what Arab women did and thought during the Crusades, he silences them out of History. The use of rape as a metaphor for the Crusades as they impacted men subsumes women's issues under the mantle of colonization.\n\nIf we accept the view that a religious motivation was the engine of the Crusades (to take the Holy Land back from the \"infidels\"), one may wonder why Maalouf did not entitle his book \"The Crusades as seen by the Muslims.\" Maalouf, himself a descendant of the Arab Christians who were doubly discriminated against during the Crusades, does not fit in the Manichean view of a Christian West against a Muslim Orient. The fact that ethnicity is foregrounded in the title challenges the view of the Crusades as a confrontation between two religions. On the one hand, Maalouf includes the Christians of the Orient on the side of the oppressed, since they were in fact twice victimized on several occasions. The double discrimination against Arab Christians is evident in the battle of Antioch: expelled by the Muslim Arabs for fear that they would betray them to the Western Christians, they were not welcomed with open arms by the crusaders, who treated them as inferior subjects and at best suspected them of sympathizing with their Muslim compatriots (as occurred when the Oriental Christians sided with Saladin during the seizure of Jerusalem in 1187). Arab Christians in other instances, such as the Copts during the seizure of the town of Bilbeis, were massacred along with the Muslims ( _Croisades_ 168). However, Maalouf remains silent about instances in which Oriental Christians welcomed or helped the crusaders (see for instance Grousset, _Histoire_ 117, 151, 156).\n\nMaalouf depicts a multi-ethnic society and highlights the dynamics of power that refute the vision of one homogeneous civilization fighting another. He describes alliances between Arabs and Franks, between Byzantines disappointed by the Franks and Arab emirs: emirs made deals with Franks against other emirs. Even the Frankish princess Alix, who never knew Europe and felt \"Oriental,\" rebelled against her father by trying to forge an alliance with Zinki in 1130 (131). The description of the alliances that are forged and broken during these two centuries shows the complexity of the political situation of the Arab world at the time, divided into numerous small kingdoms at war with each other.18 This instability reveals personal interests of the leaders that could prevail over religious or ethnic affiliations. The first Arab historians of the Crusades reported the series of wars with the Franks as one among other events happening at the time; they used the ethnic term \"Franks\" to designate the invaders, thus casting the invasions neither in a religious, nor civilizational light. Indeed the term \"crusader\" will not appear until the mid-nineteenth century (Sivan 10). Tyerman shows that up to the end of the twelfth century there is no clear distinction between pilgrims and crusaders (20-21), nor a universally accepted term to describe crusading activity, and this was the case until modern times (49-55).\n\nAlthough what came to be labeled Crusades was recorded as Frankish wars and invasions under the Arab chroniclers' quill, the latter clearly did frame the conflict as religious by identifying themselves as Muslims and calling on God. The epigraphs that introduce each of the six parts that compose the book, all quotes from Arab chroniclers or leaders fighting the Crusades, can be seen as an implicit comment on historiography. Maalouf's use of citations contrasts with Runciman's, one of his European sources, who starts all chapters of his three-volume _History of the Crusades_ with quotes from the Bible chosen to establish a link between Biblical events taken out of context and medieval times.19\n\nIn Maalouf's text, each epigraph summarizes the content of the part. For instance, the quote from Saladin, which contrasts the fierceness of the Franks with the passivity of the Muslims, frames the part that deals with the invasion (part I). These quotes fulfill most of the four functions attributed to epigraphs by Genette: commentary and justification of the title, commentary on the text itself (whose meaning it emphasizes), support of one's text thanks to the presence of a famous author's name, and a sign of culture and filiation, linking one's text to a specific intellectual and cultural tradition ( _Paratexts_ 156-60). These quotes are also striking in that the authors cited are well grounded in their religion, some calling upon God for the safety of their community; they see themselves as Muslims belonging to a homogeneous community of believers and not as Arabs. However, they contrast with the content of the various sections of the book in the sense that they create the false impression of a united, homogeneous Muslim world. Thus, while the quotes do inscribe Maalouf's narrative in the Arab cultural tradition and give it legitimacy, they highlight the discrepancy between the ideology they perpetuate (a united Muslim community threatened by Christians) and the actual facts (divided Arab leaders who fail to join forces against a common threat).\n\nIn _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ , Maalouf demonstrates that civilizations are neither monolithic nor immutable by reminding his readers that Muslim culture was tolerant towards others well before the Western world was. Maalouf's text illustrates how civilizations have been in contact and have borrowed from each other well before the era of globalization, by emphasizing the Arabs' numerous (and often ignored) contributions to Western civilization.20 He dispels the simplistic view of the Crusades as a battle between Christendom and Islam, just as nowadays many intellectuals are attempting to refute the Manichean thesis of the clash of civilizations. In fact, one can read _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ as a book proleptically countering Samuel Huntington's influential _Clash of Civilizations_. Criticized by Said for having \"journalism and popular demagoguery rather than scholarship or theory [as] his main sources\" (\"Clash\" 571), Huntington's essay, which first appeared in _Foreign Affairs_ in 1993, and subsequent book, claim that non-Western civilizations (Islamic and Confucianist in the lead) are the potential enemies of the post-Cold War era, when conflicts no longer divide along ideological lines, but are determined by culture. Huntington's theory enjoyed a renewal of interest as the Western media grappled to comment on the September 11, 2001 attacks (Cr\u00e9pon 8-9). Said forcefully debunks Huntington's notion that civilizations are monolithic and homogeneous, and points out how Huntington's view of a rigid separation among civilizations does not stand up (\"Clash\" 587, see also Cr\u00e9pon 3-61). Whereas Huntington's not so hidden agenda, according to Said, is to maintain American dominance over the world, or, according to Marc Cr\u00e9pon, to trigger a fear of Islam and China in the American reader (65-66), Maalouf's work intends to make one side understand the other better, and to promote a dialogue between cultures.\n\nWhile most of _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ is devoted to showing how the Arabs experienced these events, the temporal indeterminacy of the title leaves room for the perspective to broaden in the epilogue, which sets out to expose the Crusades through end-of-twentieth-century Arab eyes. Hutcheon points out that the forewords and afterwords that frame nonfictional novels underscore the \"particular perspective that _transforms\" (Politics_ 82). The epilogue does not anchor the text in the narrow context of France (where Maalouf has been living) with its immigrant population and the frustrations that were to be expressed by the Arab minority in the 1983 \"marche des Beurs,\" but in the larger international context of Middle Eastern politics.\n\nMaalouf directs attention to the parallels that are commonly drawn in the Arab world between events of the twentieth century and the Crusades. This relationship between the barbarous Middle Ages and our so-called civilized present is commonplace in the Levant, in whose view events past and present resemble each other: thus Anwar Sadat is viewed as a traitor in the direct line of al-Kamel (who gave Jerusalem to Frederic II), and Israel as a new crusader state (265). Therefore, Maalouf's implicit goal is not only to remind the reader of what happened from the Arabs' point of view, but also why it is crucial to remember that distant past now: to emphasize that current events can be situated in a historical continuum of European involvement in the Middle East.\n\nThe historiography of the Crusades continues to be influenced by the context in which it takes place. Crusading ideology continued in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Constable 6). The Crusades were then discredited in the eighteenth century for their fanaticism (Tyerman 111), but with the renewal of interest in the Middle Ages that ensued in the nineteenth century, came the beginning of scholarly research about them (Siberry, \"Images\" 372). Contemporary historians have linked this scholarship to the colonization taking place at the time. For instance, Michaud's interest in the Crusades in the nineteenth century seems in part to have been stimulated by his study of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt (Siberry, _New Crusaders_ 8). As Elizabeth Siberry shows, historians, artists, and aristocrats established a continuity between the French colonization of Algeria, which began in 1830, and the medieval expeditions: \"It was no coincidence that at the time of the Algerian campaign, Louis Philippe was commissioning paintings of the medieval crusades and crusaders for the _Salles des croisades_ at Versailles\" ( _New Crusaders_ 82, see also Tyerman 117). When war broke out between the Druze and Maronites in Lebanon in 1860, Napoleon III called for a crusade to help the Christians (Siberry, _New Crusaders_ 83). The use of crusade terminology continued in the twentieth century, and was used during WWI when the Palestine campaign with the capture of Jerusalem in December 1917 by Allenby was described as a crusade (Siberry, _New Crusaders_ 87). Contemporary historians acknowledge that interest in the Crusades nowadays is still influenced by political and ideological interests (Constable 2; Siberry, _New Crusaders_ x; Armstrong 386), and Karen Armstrong even makes the case for the Crusades as a direct cause of today's conflict in the Middle East (xiii). Indeed, this renewed interest dates from the early 1950s and coincides with the creation of the state of Israel (Riley-Smith 5); there is even a debate among historians over whether or not in hindsight the crusader states should be regarded as colonies (Constable 20), or, as some Israeli scholars see it, as the \"first European colonial society\" (Tyerman 123). Emmanuel Sivan notes that all Arab scholars see a parallelism between the Crusades and current events, whether it is framed as a religious contest between Islam and Christianity, a civilization conflict of East and West, or as a first phase of Western imperialism in the Arab world (11-19).\n\nCurrent events lead Maalouf to make choices open to question regarding the historical events he chooses to discuss. For instance, he does not mention the crusades that were waged as the _Reconquista_ of Spain, with the fall of Cordoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248.21 Whereas Maalouf chose the period of the Europeans' incursions in the Levant, with the sack of Jerusalem as a culminating point, Bernard Lewis (a prominent Orientalist historian) sees the last years of the seventeenth century (marked by the second siege of Vienna) as the determining moments of the relations between the Muslim world and Europe (304). Each side sees the time when it was threatened or invaded by the other as the determining point in future relations, forgetting when it was itself the attacker, and thereby putting the blame on the other by privileging certain events over others. However, to give a full account of the relationship between the Europeans and the Arabs, one should go back to the initial point of conflict (the conquest of Spain in the eighth century and the Arabs' advance up to the French town of Poitiers), and include all subsequent confrontations.\n\nIn this essay, Maalouf does not treat at length historical figures who embody the crossing of civilizations that will become central to his work.22 The fact that _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ , his first published book, does not dwell on the implication of mixed unions during the Crusades, and the fact that \"transculturation [was] common in medieval Mediterranean cultures\" (Kinoshita 114)\u2014a lot of which happened through concubine slaves\u2014is striking in the light of his subsequent fiction, pervaded by a concern with the meeting of cultures in history, minorities, and border people. Even more puzzling is the fact that the non-Arab background of some key \"Arab\" leaders and heroes of the fight against the crusaders is presented in the epilogue as one of the factors in the decline of the Arab world, as a sign that the latter had lost control over its destiny.\n\nAlthough in the end the crusaders were chased from the Levant, Maalouf does not present the Arabs as victors. Moreover, one can wonder, along with Mireille Rosello, about the purpose of writing the victims' history. As she points out, \"if the triumphalism of official history always at least partially serves the interests of the 'oppressors,' it does not necessarily follow that (historical) justice will be served by replacing the victor's story with that of the victim\" (\"Mich\u00e8le\" 5-6). In the epilogue, he draws up a brief assessment in which the Arabs are seen as victims, since the Crusades are the starting point for the rise of Western Europe while Arab civilization, which was the most advanced at the time, begins its decline.\n\nMaalouf brilliantly unsettled past constructions of the Crusades that informed popular perceptions of them in France without falling into the trap of simply inverting victims and villains, but his sketchy explanation of the popular view of the heritage of the Crusades in the Arab world presented in the epilogue does not do justice to the complexity of the events and politics of the twentieth century alone (admittedly, this would require another book).23 Moreover, given that Maalouf states that the Arab world is still a prisoner of the same shackles that caused its fall (lack of democratic institutions, problems of succession), one can see it as subject to a fatality, and create a defeatist feeling, even though one of the factors mentioned is debatable.24\n\nAlthough the history of the Crusades serves as an allegory of the present, with Arab leaders still unable to unite against a new invasion, the danger of this epilogue is that it comforts the Western reader in his\/her position of superiority. As Sharon Kinoshita points out, \"the Middle Ages have long served as a repository of the abject and the exotic against which modernity is constructed\" (111). So while French readers will no doubt acknowledge the barbarism of their ancestors, the superiority of contemporary Western civilization will nevertheless be confirmed, as if the torch of progress had been passed from the Arabs' hands to the crusaders', as Maalouf himself insinuates (264). Although the view of history repeating itself is pessimistic, the idea that the crusaders will be expelled could provide an optimistic note. However, Maalouf quickly downplays the 1291 Arab victory over the Franks, thereby cutting short the hope that there might be another victory in sight (279).\n\nGiven the brevity of the five-page epilogue, some of its oversimplifications seem inevitable, but some are particularly regrettable. Maalouf uses an image whose swift generalization about the Muslim world could use some nuances: \"Assailli de toutes parts, le monde musulman se recroqueville sur lui-m\u00eame. Il est devenu frileux\" 'Assaulted from all quarters, the Muslim world turned in on itself. It became over-sensitive' (282, Rothschild 264). The sensitivity-to-cold-weather metaphor reduces political and imperial moves to a natural climatological phenomenon, against which Muslims could only adopt a defensive attitude. The detailed accounts in the book that took great care to underscore the divergences and the power plays among various Muslim leaders during the times of the Crusades contrast sharply with the broad generalizations presented in the epilogue, which sweep away the complexity that characterizes the Muslim world of the end of the twentieth century.\n\nMaalouf puts all the blame on the Muslim world by citing examples of the two extreme tendencies of forced Westernizations (such as Turkey) alternating with fundamentalism (Iran), but fails to mention how Western powers have been direct or indirect contributors to these developments. He seems to hesitate between two positions. On the one hand, by stating that \"le monde arabe ne peut se r\u00e9soudre \u00e0 consid\u00e9rer les croisades comme un simple \u00e9pisode d'un pass\u00e9 r\u00e9volu\" 'the Arab world cannot bring itself to consider the Crusades a mere episode in the bygone past' (283, Rothschild 265), Maalouf seems to criticize the Arab world by casting it as hopelessly unable to move forward. On the other hand, one of Maalouf's rhetorical questions poignantly underscores the parallels between then and now: \"Comment distinguer le pass\u00e9 du pr\u00e9sent quand il s'agit de la lutte entre Damas et J\u00e9rusalem pour le contr\u00f4le du Golan ou de la Bekaa?\" 'How can one distinguish the past from the present in the struggle between Damascus and Jerusalem for control of the Golan or the Bekaa?' (283). The creation of the state of Israel has had a tremendous impact on Lebanon's already precarious internal affairs, because of the influx of Palestinian refugees and the PLO moving its headquarters to Beirut in 1970. The civil war that was still raging at the time Maalouf embarked on his project, as well as Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Maalouf's native country, the year prior to the publication of _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ , constitute the backdrop to his revision of the Crusades.\n\nWhile this grounding of the author's writing corresponds to what de Certeau has termed the \"repoliticization' [which] will consist in 'historicizing' historiography\" (\"History\" 215), the epilogue undermines the project of the book by failing to insist on the continuity of Western imperial moves in the Middle East. Maalouf perpetuates uncalled-for stereotypes: after quoting the Turkish man who tried to assassinate the Pope in 1981 because the latter was \"commandant supr\u00eame des crois\u00e9s\" 'supreme commander of the Crusades' (283, Rothschild 265), he comments: \"il est clair que l'Orient arabe voit toujours en l'Occident un ennemi naturel\" 'it seems clear that the Arab East still sees the West as a natural enemy' (283, Rothschild 265-66). The adjective \"natural\" disregards the very real political events that have fostered resentment in the Middle East and essentializes the difference between East and West. This last sentence silences the plurality of voices and aspirations that exist in the Arab world, privileging anti-Western movements whose discourse is similar, as Cr\u00e9pon demonstrates, to Huntington's theory of the irreducibility of conflicts between different civilizations (54).\n\nWhile the first siege of Vienna by the Ottoman armies (a Muslim empire, though led by the Turks) in 1529 is mentioned as a sign (albeit deceitful) of the victory of the Muslims, there is no mention of the nineteenth-century colonization of the Maghreb, nor of the French mandates in Lebanon and Syria at the beginning of the twentieth century (and the British one over Palestine), as if there had been no continuity in the Western imperialist moves in the region. Indeed, the borders of the contemporary map that closes the book, drawn by imperial powers, are indelible traces of a colonial past. This very continuity is briefly alluded to in the phrase \"Dans un monde musulman perp\u00e9tuellement agress\u00e9\" 'In a Muslim world under constant attack' (283, Rothschild 265), and is singled out as a probable reason why the Crusades are \"deeply felt by the Arabs, _even today_ , as an act of rape\" (Rothschild 266, emphasis mine). The historical distance allows Maalouf to see the Crusades as the beginning of a long series of incursions of the West into the Middle East. But the consistent emphasis on the Arab world's shortcomings and euphemism to downplay the modern history of colonization of the Arab world and twentieth century conflicts undermine legitimate political grievances. This silencing of the modern colonial enterprise in the Middle East is also evident in his novel _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ , which I discuss in the second part of this chapter. I surmise that this may in part be explained by Maalouf's uneasiness regarding the rise of Islamic militancy in the region following the 1967 defeat of the Arab armies.\n\n### Genealogies as Conflict Resolution: Maalouf's _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ and Myriam Antaki's _Les versets du pardon_\n\n#### Maalouf's _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_\n\nA nameless narrator (who, like Maalouf, was a Lebanese journalist) tells the story of Ossyane, a man he met by chance in Paris in 1976. Ossyane's Turkish father and Armenian mother wed at the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when relations between the two groups were antagonistic and would later lead to the Armenian genocide. After the Adana massacre in 1909, the family moved to Lebanon, where Ossyane grew up. While studying in France during WWII, Ossyane joined the French resistance and met Clara, an Austrian Jew. After the war, Ossyane returned to Lebanon. He sees Clara again, who is accompanying her uncle, the sole Holocaust survivor of her family, who decided to immigrate to Palestine. Ossyane and Clara get married while tensions are already ripe between Arabs and Jews. Right after Ossyane leaves Clara pregnant in Haifa to see his dying father in Beirut, the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948 takes place, putting an impassable border between them. Following his father's death and a sunstroke, Ossyane loses his mind and is committed to an asylum by his brother where he spends more than twenty years. When the war breaks out in Lebanon in 1975, Ossyane escapes and invites Clara to meet him in Paris. The narrator observes their meeting from afar, staying long enough to see that Clara did come, but leaves before seeing whether Clara and Ossyane will take separate ways or leave together.\n\n_Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ starts by emphasizing the role of genealogy and history of the main character's destiny. When asked to start by his birth, Ossyane answers with a rhetorical question: \"Etes-vous certain que la vie d'un homme commence \u00e0 la naissance?\" 'Are you certain that a man's life begins with his birth?' (23, Manguel 15). He then proceeds with the narration of events that took place half a century before he was born (about how his grandmother became mad) and that will have a determining effect on his life. However, contrary to Maalouf's essay on the Crusades, which looks intricately at the various motivations of rulers and their positions, this novel does not dwell on the processes of history. Although the characters live through some of the most traumatic events of the twentieth century, events that have an undeniable impact on the course of their lives, there is not much historical information in this book (contrary to some of his other novels such as _L\u00e9on l'Africain_ ). The following passage describes the Ottoman Empire at the eve of World War I: \"\u00e0 Adana, comme dans toute l'Anatolie, d\u00e9butaient les massacres. La terre du Levant vivait ses moments les plus vils. Notre Empire agonisait dans la honte; au milieu de ses ruines poussait une foule de pays avortons; chacun priait son dieu de faire taire les pri\u00e8res des autres\" 'in Adana, as in the whole of Anatolia, the massacres began. Our land lived then through its most evil hour. Our empire was dying in an agony of shame; among its ruins grew a host of aborted countries, each one praying to its own god to silence the prayers of its neighbors' (45, Manguel 32). The definite article \"les\" for the massacres refer to common knowledge (here, the Armenian genocide). The use of the verb \"pousser\" 'grow' for the countries that are being carved by Western powers naturalizes historical processes. The reference to religion in the conflict stands in contrast with the main characters. Religion is relegated to the background in the narrative. Its significance is in signaling ethnicity rather than religious belonging per se, as when Ossyane defines himself as Muslim on paper (217). Although the characters do occasionally mention providence and destiny (137, 212), Ossyane and his father care very little for religion.\n\nHistory is personified and presented as a force over which people have no control: \"nous n'avons rien choisi, c'est l'Histoire qui a choisi pour nous\" 'We didn't choose, History had made the choice for us' (57, Manguel 42). In another passage, the creation of the state of Israel is presented as inevitable as a natural disaster by being described as a tornado (and a cyclone later on): \"Une tornade allait s'abattre sur le Levant, et nous voulions faire barrage de nos mains nues! C'\u00e9tait exactement cela. Le monde entier \u00e9tait r\u00e9sign\u00e9 \u00e0 voir Arabes et Juifs s'entre-tuer pendant des d\u00e9cennies, des si\u00e8cles peut-\u00eatre, tout le monde s'\u00e9tait fait une raison, les Anglais et les Sovi\u00e9tiques, les Am\u00e9ricains et les Turcs\" 'A tornado was about to ravage my part of the world, and we wanted to stop it with our bare hands. That is exactly how it was. The entire world had resigned itself to seeing Arabs and Jews kill one another for the next tens, maybe hundreds of years; everyone had got used to it, the English and the Soviets, the Americans and the Turks' (160, Manguel 122). Western nations (including Great Britain) are described as \"resigned\" when they were actually considerably implicated in the politics of Palestine. The same holds regarding the end of the British mandate: \"le mandat britannique sur la Palestine avait pris fin\" 'the British mandate in Palestine had come to an end' (177, Manguel 136), with the passive voice of the sentence silencing the fact that Great Britain decided to end its mandate because it could not cope with a situation that its contradictory agreements had created.\n\nAnother passage brings attention to the role Europe played in shaping the relations between Arabs and Jews: \"au lendemain m\u00eame de la d\u00e9faite du nazisme, deux peuples d\u00e9test\u00e9s par Hitler se dressent l'un contre l'autre\" 'soon after the fall of the Nazis, two groups detested by Hitler should take up arms against one another' (134, Manguel 102-3). Commenting the paragraph in which this sentence appears, Gil Hochberg points out that the reference to Hitler \"emphasizes the _racial_ affiliation between Jews and Arabs as (detested) Semites\" and notes that \"Europe, as the 'third party,' appears then as the 'real' enemy of both Jews and Arabs, who are too quick to forget their shared destiny by becoming enemies of each other\" (120). However, I would stress that by referring only to Nazism and Hitler, and forgetting about the long history of European colonialism in the Middle East, this sentence presents the role played by Europe as an aberration of history.25\n\nThe title of the book emphasizes that the place in which the story unfolds is as much a part of the story as the characters. As indicated on the back cover, the title refers to the cities that were meeting points between cultures and civilizations in the Mediterranean Levant. There is a mention by Ossyane as to whether longing for these multicultural societies is to be seen as nostalgic or futuristic (49). The mixing of peoples, a constant theme in Maalouf's work, serves as a stark opposition to the nationalist stances of various movements that promote so-called authentic and pure identities, such as pan-Arabism, Zionism, and Phoenicianism. Indeed, the history of Lebanon, succinctly summarized when the narrator recalls the material in his history book, underscores the multitude of layers that various civilizations have brought: \"l'Antiquit\u00e9 glorieuse, des cit\u00e9s ph\u00e9niciennes aux conqu\u00eates d'Alexandre; puis les Romains, les Byzantins, les Arabes, les crois\u00e9s, les Mamelouks; ensuite les quatre si\u00e8cles de domination ottomane; enfin les deux guerres mondiales, le mandat fran\u00e7ais, l'ind\u00e9pendance\" 'the glories of Antiquity, from the Phoenician cities to the conquests of Alexander; then the Romans, Byzantium, the Arabs, the Crusades, the Mameluk rule; later the four centuries of Ottoman domination; finally the two Worlds Wars, the French mandate, independance' (10, Manguel 4). Occupation is seen as an inevitable part of history: \"Je viens d'une r\u00e9gion du monde o\u00f9 il n'y a eu, tout au long de l'histoire, que des occupations successives, et mes propres anc\u00eatres ont occup\u00e9 pendant des si\u00e8cles une bonne moiti\u00e9 du bassin m\u00e9diterran\u00e9en\" 'I come from a part of the world where, throughout history, there has been one occupation after another, and my own ancestors occupied for centuries a good half of the Mediterranean' (79, Manguel 60).\n\nInter-ethnic marriages are recurrent in the novel, and more specifically unions between groups that are on the brink of fighting each other at particular times in history. These unions function as a common trope that symbolizes hope for possible reconciliation. Ossyane's father grew up in a cosmopolitan environment, embodied by his own genealogy: his maternal grandmother was the daughter of a fallen Turkish monarch, his grandfather's family was of Persian origin. He was educated by tutors of diverse backgrounds. The Adana massacre (which foreshadows the Armenian genocide) prompts Noubar, an Armenian, to give his daughter's hand to Ossyane's father, his best friend. Thus, the massacre is the trigger for the cement of the union between both groups. Like his father, Ossyane marries a woman who belongs to an antagonist group. Although their love story takes place against the backdrop of the violence triggered by the proposition of the partition of Palestine, Clara and Ossyane's wedding is symbolic of a possible reconciliation between Arabs and Jews (163). More than just the marriage is the attitude of both characters that is lauded when they talk about the conflict: \"chacun se mettait spontan\u00e9ment \u00e0 la place de l'autre\" 'we put ourselves, each of us, in the other's place' (169, Manguel 130). So is Clara's assessment of the conflict as a misunderstanding between the victims of the Holocaust and those who are paying the price for Europe's crime (134). This possible coexistence is also forecast with the emphasis on the cordial meeting between Ossyane's brother-in-law, Mahmoud, a Palestinian who had to leave Haifa because of the tensions, and Clara's uncle, Stefan, a European Jew and the only member of her family who survived the concentration camp. Stephan has recently arrived in Haifa, the very city which Mahmoud already predicts he will never see again (152). Nadia, Clara and Ossyane's daughter, becomes the synthesis of the different communities: she is Muslim on her father's side, Jewish on her mother's, and she claims both identities (217). However, Nadia leaves the Middle East to go and settle with her husband in Brazil, thus signifying that there is no place for people who claim multiple belongings (as Maalouf will term them in a subsequent book) in the Middle East (at least not yet).\n\nThe narrator mentions in passing that the notes he took while Ossyane was telling him his story were left in a folder for twenty years, but there is no other indication about what prompted the narrator to write Ossyane's story after such a long time. Since his encounter with Ossyane took place in 1976, the narrator is writing the story in 1996. I surmise that the euphoria that followed the Oslo Accords in 1993 played a role in bringing back to memory the story of an Arab and a Jew, and most importantly in enabling the possibility of this couple finally having a future together. However, the fact that the narrator refuses to stay to see if the couple will remain together shows a level of skepticism.\n\n#### Myriam Antaki's _Les versets du pardon_\n\nAntaki, a Syrian writer from a Christian background who lives in Aleppo, published _Les versets du pardon_ , her third novel, in Paris in 1999. Set against the backdrop of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the main character, Ahmed, is a Palestinian Muslim orphan. He is a self-proclaimed terrorist whose mother (Marie) and father (David) turn out to be Christian and Jewish, respectively. For the most part, the story is narrated in the second-person singular by Ahmed from prison, addressing in turn his father and mother. We learn that David, a French Jew whose parents were victims of the Holocaust, immigrated illegally to Palestine, had a relationship with Marie (a Christian Palestinian), joined the Irgoun (a Zionist terrorist organization), and helped in the making of the Israeli state by participating in events such as the King David hotel bombing. Marie, who becomes a refugee in Lebanon following the creation of Israel, gives birth to a boy (unbeknownst to his father). The newborn is abandoned in front of a mosque in a Palestinian refugee camp, where he is raised as a Muslim by a sheikh. This boy, Ahmed, eventually escapes the orphanage, and joins a combat training camp. His mother finds him and gives him his father's journal as well as a letter that she wrote to David, but never sent. The whole narrative is framed as a lyrical letter from Ahmed to his parents, written in prison where he has been tortured after he committed a bombing in Israel. The storyline is reconstructed by the son based on his parents' writings, from his prison cell where he is dying, and where he finally discovers his parents' identity.\n\nWith the obvious onomastics of the three main characters representing the three monotheist faiths that lay claim to the Holy Land, Ahmed's family tree looks simple, yet needs to be unpacked. What seems at first a straightforward allegory features several layers, and represents the complexity and intertwining of history, religion, politics, and terrorism in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the first part of this section, I analyze the genealogy that portrays the Arab-Israeli issue to show the various allegorical levels that combine to entangle history, religion, politics and terrorism. In the second part, I examine how _Les versets du pardon_ challenges stereotypes and points towards a first step to conflict resolution. Hassan has persuasively argued that \"Just as the Peace Process is founded on the legacy of partition, postcolonial studies has reproduced the First World\/Third World cultural opposition. To break with this cartography of difference and inaugurate a new international politics, it will be necessary to find a critical language that can speak of the past without reiterating it\" (42). I examine how Antaki's genealogy revisits the past to move towards a future beyond the ideology of separation that dominates the peace process.\n\nIn postcolonial studies, the parent-child relationship is a common metaphor for the rapport between colonized and colonizer. As John Thieme points out, \"problematic parentage becomes a major trope in postcolonial con-texts, where the genealogical bloodlines of transmission are frequently delegitimized by multiple ancestral legacies, usually but not always initiated by imperialism\" (8). Thieme also notes that orphans and bastards, as a result of these problematic parentages, are plentiful in postcolonial texts.26 In _Les versets du pardon_ , Ahmed is considered as an orphan; he is also an illegitimate child whose parents belong to communities with antagonist claims on the brink of fighting each other. His family tree can be read as an allegory of a sketchy history of Palestine. Ahmed's father, David, a French Jew, is the European colonizer who intrudes in the native Palestinian Christian and Muslim family tree. When David arrives in Palestine, the religious sounds that dot the landscape belong to the Christian and Muslim traditions: \"Les muezzins chantent aux lueurs roses de l'aube. Les clochers des \u00e9glises, des couvents, carillonnent la naissance du jour\" 'the muezzins chant in the pink light of dawn. Bells of churches and convents ring in the new day' (83, de Jager 68). Since David enters Palestine in the early 1940s, by which time the Jewish population had risen to 30 percent of the population (Smith 151), one could expect to find signs of their sizable presence. By choosing to detail the sounds, Antaki can erase the presence of native Jews in Palestine without seeming to deliberately do so, since there is no sound originating in a religious building that is meant to be heard from outside in the Jewish tradition. David is representative of the fact that, by the end of WWII, the majority of the Jewish population in Palestine had immigrated there (Smith 151). The note on religious sounds emphasizes that the majority of the native population in Palestine was Christian and Muslim.\n\nPostcolonial studies have taken on various conceptual models to render the complexity of relationships engendered by colonialism. One is the difference between filiation (a given) and affiliation (a choice). These terms were brought to critical attention by Said, who draws a distinction between filiation (associated with biological descent) and affiliations (defined as cultural and social bonds) in his introduction to _The World, the Text, and the Critic_ (16-25). Contrary to what is commonly retained from Said's discussion, that is, that these are mutually exclusive terms,27 Said does recognize \"the verbal echo we hear between the words 'filiation' and 'affiliation' \" ( _The World_ 23). Said recommends that critics not be complicit with this pattern (the transfer of legitimacy from filiation to affiliation) but on the contrary \"recognize the difference between instinctual filiation and social affiliation, and to show how affiliation sometimes reproduces filiation, sometimes makes its own forms\" ( _The World_ 24).\n\nAlthough Said was discussing literary relationship when he made his distinction between filiation and affiliation, and the impact literature has on society and the role texts play in the socio-political context that produces them, it has found relevance in postcolonial studies. As noted by Ashcroft et al., \"the concept of affiliation is useful for describing the ways in which colonized societies replace filiative connections to indigenous cultural traditions with affiliations to the social, political and cultural institutions of empire\" (106). At the very beginning in _Les versets du pardon_ , Ahmed states that he was \"une cire molle qu'il fallait durcir\" 'soft wax that had to harden' (11, de Jager 3). This metaphor highlights that one's identity is not innate, but made, thus giving precedence to affiliation over filiation. Filiative terms abound in the novel, however, they are used to express affiliations, and more specifically, religious and territorial affiliations. Both Ahmed's territorial and religious affiliations (to the land of Palestine and to Islam) are expressed in filiative terms. Ahmed claims to be \"fils du Coran\" 'son of the Koran' (20, de Jager 11), thereby denying his filial Christian and Jewish heritage for affiliative identification with the sheikh who found him abandoned at the mosque's doorstep (15) and Islam. The sheikh also functions as a surrogate father, since Ahmed owes his life and identity to the sheikh who gave him a Muslim name (194). His Muslim affiliation is stronger than his Jewish filiation; indeed Ahmed denies his biological father upon discovering that he is a Jew when he exclaims in an apostrophe to his father: \"ce bonheur de te d\u00e9couvrir et soudain te perdre\" 'the joy of finding you and then suddenly losing you' (32, de Jager 21). Antaki inverses the pattern noted by Ashcroft et al. of replacing the filiative relationship to indigenous culture with affiliation to the empire: in her novel, affiliation to the native Muslim Palestinians takes precedence over his paternal connection to a European Jewish settler. This is a context in which politics (or affiliation) makes you reject biological link (filiation). Ahmed's rejection of his father is emblematic of a refusal by some Arab countries to recognize the state of Israel.\n\nFiliative terms are also used to express an organic link between the Arab people and the land. Ahmed also identifies himself as a \"fils de Palestine\" 'Palestine's son' (15, de Jager 7). All we know about his years in the orphanage is that he was taught by the sheikh to \"venger sa terre, sa m\u00e8re\" 'avenge [his] land, [his] mother' (15, de Jager 7). The land has become a surrogate mother to the boy who is raised as an orphan. After the UN's vote to partition Palestine, the Palestinians' dispossession is expressed in filiative terms: \"La terre des Arabes se d\u00e9chire et hurle, comme une m\u00e8re qui perd son enfant\" 'The land of the Arabs is dismembered and howls like a mother losing her child' (149, de Jager 131). In addition to the mother\/child relationship, the text resorts to botanical images. The relationship between Abdel Qader al-Hussayni, the Palestinian resistance leader who was killed in 1948, and the land is expressed as follows: \"C'est Abdel Kader qui aime sa Palestine, elle est sa s\u00e8ve, sa m\u00e8re\" 'It is Abdel Kader, who loves his Palestine which is his lifeblood [sap], his mother' (168, de Jager 149). Here the juxtaposition puts the filiative and botanical images on equal footing to describe the relationship between the Palestinian people and the land.\n\nThe botanical image evokes another model that has gained popularity in postcolonial studies: Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari's rhizome (a root system that spreads across the ground and grows from several points) to counter the representation of thought and knowledge as a tree with a single tap root. As Deleuze and Guattari emphasize, the figure of the tree has dominated Western thought (27). Deleuze and Guattari state that \"Le rhizome est une antig\u00e9n\u00e9alogie\" (32) 'The rhizome is an antigenealogy.' The parallel with one of Said's terms is made explicit further on: \"L'arbre est filiation, mais le rhizome est alliance, uniquement d'alliance\" (36) 'The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance.' Essentially, Deleuze and Guattari's botanical metaphor parallels Said's use of two terms that come from the same etymological root: filiation is the tree coming from a single tap root, while the rhizome is a perfect metaphor for affiliation. Moreover, both terms belong to the same category: just as affiliation comes from the same root as filiation, a rhizome belongs to the same category as a root of a tree. According to Fran\u00e7ois Noudelmann, \"La r\u00e9f\u00e9rence \u00e0 la racine est n\u00e9cessairement r\u00e9gressive, elle ne peut qu'ent\u00e9riner des identit\u00e9s univoques, qu'elles prennent le nom de n\u00e9gritude, de francit\u00e9, d'europ\u00e9anit\u00e9\" ( _Pour en finir_ 145). However, Antaki's use of the genealogical paradigm does not call for a lost purity or essential identity, but on the contrary, serves to validate a pluralistic society in historical Palestine.\n\nIn addition to its historical dimension, Ahmed's genealogy is a religious allegory of the continuity of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. On the metaphorical level, this genealogy underscores the common ground and the connection among the three monotheist religions that lay claim to the Holy Land. This point is made several times during the course of the novel, through juxtaposition of phrases as in the following: \"une si vieille terre que les juifs disent promise, o\u00f9 le Christ est mort pour sauver les hommes, o\u00f9 l'Islam s'agenouille pour prier Allah\" 'such an ancient ground which the Jews call the promised land, where Christ died to save mankind, and where Islam kneels to pray to Allah' (70, de Jager 56). The importance of the city of Jerusalem for the three faiths is underlined through the mention of Prophets: \"Sous un m\u00eame ciel, toujours bleu, Salomon a voulu \u00e9lever un temple, J\u00e9sus s'agenouiller pour souffrir et mourir, Mahomet s'\u00e9lever au ciel\" 'Beneath this same, always blue sky, Solomon wanted to build a temple, Jesus knelt down to suffer and die, and Mohammed wanted to ascend to heaven' (124, de Jager 107). In both examples quoted above, the religions are mentioned in their chronological order of appearance, and the focus is on the land that is central to all three, and particularly Jerusalem, whose status is one of the most contested points. Intertextual references also emphasize the common ground between the three monotheist religions. A quote from Abdelkader's poetry acknowledges the fact that Islam believes in continuity between the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures (100). Ahmed refers to \"une terre o\u00f9 coulent le lait et le miel\" 'a land where milk and honey flow' (46, de Jager 34) for Palestine: this is a recurrent image in the Bible and in the narrative, where it designates the Holy Land. It also evokes the Qur'anic verse 47:15 that describes paradise as a place where rivers of honey and milk flow.\n\nIn addition, Marie's character is the link between David and Ahmed, and as emblematic of Christianity, an intermediary between Judaism and Islam. Marie is compared by Ahmed when addressing his father to \"une terre f\u00e9conde o\u00f9 croissent nos racines\" 'fertile ground in which our roots grow' (179, de Jager 159). Feminist research has shown how the allegory of woman as the land and\/or as the nation is highly problematic for female citizens. As Deniz Kandiyoti put it, \"women are the weakest link in national projects\" (387).The allegorical gendering of Islam and Judaism as male and Christianity as female is noteworthy. Marie's role can be seen as a passive Christlike figure, sacrificed by David's nationalist aspirations. The perpetrators of terrorism are Muslim and Jewish, and also male. In light of the framing of the conflict polarized along Jewish-Muslim lines, there is no regard for the place of Christian Palestinians. Thus, a parallel can be drawn between gender and religious issues: women's and minorities' rights take second place to decolonization and nationalist projects.\n\nAhmed's illegitimate status frames this religious allegory in the Judeo-Christian tradition (which does not recognize Islam, whereas Islam situates itself in the lineage of Judaism and Christianity). The fact that David will never know about Ahmed's existence can be emblematic of the following: Judaic theological teachings, Zionism's blindness to the fact that Palestine was not a land without a people after all, and Israel's refusal to officially acknowledge the repercussion that its creation had on the Palestinian people.\n\nTo the historical and religious levels of this allegory, one can add a political level: that literally and figuratively, Zionist terrorism breeds Palestinian terrorism. The incipit of the novel reads \"Je suis un terroriste, un r\u00eaveur\" 'I am a terrorist, a dreamer' (11, de Jager 3). The juxtaposition of the words terrorist and dreamer creates an oxymoron that emphasizes the gap between one's aspirations and a reality in which political frustrations and suffering foment terrorism. The novel constructs a chain reaction between the Holocaust, Zionist terrorism,28 and Palestinian terrorism. Cheik Al-Tahi, who teaches David about the past peaceful coexistence of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in the Holy Land, forecasts that the Palestinian people will be made to pay the price for the Holocaust. He tells David: \"Le monde a pers\u00e9cut\u00e9 les juifs, vous nous pers\u00e9cuterez\" 'the world has persecuted the Jews, and you [will] persecute us' (97, de Jager 81); \"Pour l'injustice de l'Occident envers vous, nous payerons de notre terre\" 'For the injustice of the West toward you we will pay with our land' (99, de Jager 83). Indeed, Marie's suffering at the hands of Zionism is described in a way that echoes David's suffering at the hands of Nazism, when both are exiled from their birthplace and suffer from thirst: David in the train (from which he escapes) en route to the concentration camp, and Marie on a refugee boat on her way to Lebanon (183).\n\nViolence is portrayed as the only means to draw attention to one's plight and to force recognition by the other. Ahmed says to his father: \"toi et moi nous avons beaucoup souffert avant de choisir. Nous avons aim\u00e9 la violence pour exister\" 'you and I have suffered a great deal before making our choice. We have loved violence so that we could exist' (116, de Jager 99). Violence is shown primarily as springing from thwarted nationalist aspirations and as a consequence of rootlessness and uprooting. Marie and David's relationship is described as \"un amour violent\" 'a vehement [violent] love' (11, de Jager 3), this oxymoron emphasizes how politics came to affect their relationship. During an exchange between Marie and David, Marie's dream about roots, in which she dreams of being a tree, predicts her upcoming exile following the creation of Israel:\n\n\u2014. . . les racines sont plus fortes que le temps.\n\n\u2014Mais Marie, l'homme fort pose des racines partout. (158)\n\n\u2014. . . the roots [of the country of your childhood] are stronger than time itself.\n\n\u2014But a strong man puts his roots down everywhere, Marie, (de Jager 139)\n\nThe use of the adjective \"fort\" 'strong' in this context is an understatement that both signals and softens the violence that will accompany the creation of the state of Israel. David's settling in Palestine following his exile caused by Nazism is done by violent means and causes Palestinian dispossession and exile, which in turn sets off violence against Israel. Children in the Palestinian refugee camp are \"sans racines\" 'rootless' (186, de Jager 166); exile and the rootlessness that ensues are seen as a cause of their recourse to violence. Ahmed explains that \"c'est dans la violence que je touche \u00e0 ma terre une seule fois\" 'it is in violence that just once I touch my land' (18, de Jager 9); as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, the only contact that is conceivable with the native land he longs for is one of violence, when he commits a bombing.\n\nDespite incompatible agendas, David and Ahmed are paradoxically united in their affiliation with political nationalist movement resorting to terrorism to achieve their nationalist aspirations (124). Their journeys bear uncanny resemblances: they both enter Palestine clandestinely, and resort to terrorism. Ahmed's intransigence in his determination to carry out attacks mirrors his father's, who was determined to expel all Palestinians from the land that was to become Israel. These parallel itineraries paradoxically strengthen the filiations that are rejected or unacknowledged. In making Ahmed's father an illegal immigrant to Palestine, as well as a Zionist terrorist, the novel puts to the fore the plight of Palestinian refugees (Ahmed is not allowed in Palestine) and their claims, while establishing a filiation between Zionist and Palestinian terrorism.\n\nReligious discourse is relegated to the background, but the religious dimension of the conflict is present. Statements such as \"la Jud\u00e9e, la Samarie, la Galil\u00e9e, une si vieille terre que les juifs disent promise\" 'Judea, Samaria, and Galilee\u2014such an ancient ground which the Jews call the Promised Land' (70, de Jager 56), and the banner that floats on David's boat stating that \"nothing can keep us from our Jewish homeland\" (73, in English in the original French text) indirectly recalls that the Zionist claim to Palestine is rooted in the Biblical scriptures. Ahmed's Christian lineage, contrary to his Jewish filiation, is not cause for sorrow when he discovers his parents' identity; this highlights that a political dispute over land is at the root of the conflict, not a religious antagonism, all the while pointing out the intertwining of politics and religions in the Arab-Israeli conflict, since some claims to the land are rooted in scriptures.\n\nThe potential for all three Abrahamic religions to incite violence or mercy is underscored: \"chaque geste de violence ou de mis\u00e9ricorde appartient \u00e0 un m\u00eame cri de Yahv\u00e9, Dieu ou Allah\" 'every gesture of violence or of compassion [mercy] belongs to a same cry of Yahweh, God, or Allah' (95, de Jager 79). Cheik al-Tahi symbolizes a tradition of tolerance in Islam. He teaches David about the incident when the prophet Mohammed instructed his followers to protect a church (166), and quotes from the Bible when God told the Prophet David not to build the temple of Jerusalem (109): \"Ne batis pas de maison \u00e0 mon Nom, car tu as \u00e9t\u00e9 un homme de guerre et tu as vers\u00e9 le sang\" 'Do not build a house in My Name, for you have been a man of war and you have spilled blood' (Chroniques 1, 28:3, de Jager 93). In both instances, religion wants to dissociate itself from violence. Nevertheless, the fact that religion can be manipulated to various ends is underlined by Ahmed who says that he learned violence from a sheikh (although not cast in religious terms since he is asked to \"venger [sa] terre\" 'avenge [his] land' (15, de Jager 7) while his father was taught tolerance by another (and yet became a terrorist). The narrative does not press the religious dimension further, since violence in this novel stems from nationalist demands.\n\nAfter the partition of Palestine has been voted on by the UN, \"les juifs, les chr\u00e9tiens et les musulmans ne peuvent plus se r\u00e9concilier que dans l'espace clos des cimeti\u00e8res\" 'Jews, Christians, and Muslims can only be reconciled together in the closed space of cemeteries' (152, de Jager 134), that is, once they are dead, or, as stressed in a passage in Athlit, a British clearance camp, under the colonial yoke. When David is caught and jailed with other Jewish illegal immigrants, Palestinian revolutionaries, Christian and Muslim clergy, Ahmed wonders about a picture that features several prisoners of the camp: \"P\u00e8re, es-tu avec eux dans cette photo parce qu'ils ont voulu fixer sur une image en noir et blanc les confessions de Yahv\u00e9, Dieu, et Allah?\" 'Father, are you with them in that picture because they wanted to freeze the faiths of Yahweh, God, and Allah in one single black and white image?' (90, de Jager 75). The British mandate on Palestine, when Great Britain is \"la ge\u00f4li\u00e8re de l'Orient\" 'the prison warden of the Orient' (77, de Jager 62), seems to be the only means of preserving all communities. However, David's relationship with sheikh Ahmed Al-Tahi, whom he meets in the British prison camp and who teaches him Hebrew and Arabic, is emblematic of potential coexistence through a fruitful relationship that is expressed in filial terms. In the course of several exchanges between the two characters, the sheikh keeps calling David \"mon fils\" 'my son' or \"mon enfant\" 'my child' (91, de Jager 109); David will call him \"mon cheik\" 'my sheik' and at one point \"mon cheik, mon p\u00e8re\" 'my sheik, my father' (99, de Jager 83).\n\nWhile the historical time frame of David and Marie's story can be easily determined, thanks to the mention of events such as the massacre of Deir Yassin, such is not the case for Ahmed's. The indeterminacy of Ahmed's historical time focuses the attention on the past as a way to map out a basis for mutual recognition. It stresses the first dispossession of the Palestinians of their land as well as the Holocaust, events that are conveniently forgotten or whose importance is routinely undermined for political purposes in Israel for the first, and in the Arab world for the second. It echoes Said's stance that \"the crucial issue for any discussion of Palestine has to be 1948, or rather what happened in 1948\" (\"Introduction\" 14). In a newspaper article that first appeared in 1997, Said urged both Palestinians and Israelis to engage in mutual recognition of one another's sufferings. According to Said, the Palestinians should not engage in minimizing the Jews' history of suffering, and specifically the Holocaust, especially given the impact of the latter on the creation of the state of Israel, and reciprocally, the Israelis need to acknowledge the dispossession that the creation of their state has entailed since 1948. Said states that\n\nJewish and Palestinian experiences are historically, indeed organically, connected: to break them asunder is to falsify what is authentic about each. We must think our histories together, however difficult that may be, in order for there to be a common future. And that future must include Arabs and Jews together, free of any exclusionary, denial-based schemes for shutting out one side by the other, either theoretically or politically. That is the real challenge. ( _The End_ 209)\n\nThe genealogy featured in Antaki's work, emblematic of some of the historical processes that define Palestine and Israel today, is a creative embodiment of the mutual recognition that Said urges.\n\nAntaki's use of the genealogical paradigm goes against the grain of attempts to conceptualize relations between communities outside of the family tree model. In _Pour en finir avec la g\u00e9n\u00e9alogie_ , Noudelmann points out the extent to which familial and genealogical paradigms govern, structure, and legitimize collective representations. Unlike other writers who endeavor to counter and\/or give alternatives to the genealogical model, Antaki uses it to construct a common heritage among the communities that lay claim to historical Palestine, thus stressing irreversible bonds between them. According to Noudelmann, \"l'affiliation r\u00e9trospective permet de souder une communaut\u00e9 en l'identifiant \u00e0 des anc\u00eatres communs\" 'retrospective affiliation enables a community to unite by identifying common ancestors' (\"Pour une pens\u00e9e\" 195). Antaki's novel features what seems at first a scandalous genealogy, a monstrous family tree where the men are both victims and villains, and enemies turn out to be related. The illegitimate family tree is not new in postcolonial literature; it symbolizes the irreversible hybridity that colonialism engendered. In the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Ahmed's genealogy is striking, because \"the Partition Plan reveals the success of Zionism in establishing its program of cultural differentiation as the dominant international approach to Palestine\" (Hassan 36). This ideology of separation is prevalent in the two-state solution that has the most currency to solve the conflict and posits the Arab Palestinians and the Jewish Israelis as peoples who must be kept separate. The recourse to this family tree somehow shows the irrevocability of the Jewish mark in Palestine, and the intertwining of filiation and affiliation in this text highlights that separation of the two people involved is unwarranted.\n\nAntaki's novel anticipates a new direction taken in the field of conflict resolution as mapped out by Marc Gopin. This new course comes from the growing recognition that \"there is a global resurgence of religion taking place throughout the world that is challenging our interpretation of the modern world.\" (Thomas 10). This resurgence challenges the modernization theory that assumes that modernization entails secularization (Thomas 2, Sayyid 4). Marc Gopin has emphasized that religions do play a role in perpetuating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, be it Islam with the religious nationalist parties, Judaism with the settlements of occupied territories, and Christianity with the American Zionist Christians for instance ( _Holy War_ 6). Gopin therefore argues that it is crucial to take the various religious values into account if one is to achieve a viable peace process ( _Holy War_ 6).\n\nSince forgiveness is important in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Gopin explores the possible recourse to forgiveness as a means to conflict resolution. He notes that forgiveness, along with patience with human failing and infinite compassion, are \"basic characteristics of God in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur'an\" (\"Forgiveness\" 89). Gopin argues that forgiveness should be accompanied with justice seeking and presented as a form of empowerment (which Judaism and Islam do) in order to be a successful step to conflict resolution.\n\nIn an interview, asked about how one goes beyond suffering, Antaki stated the following:\n\nEn travaillant sur la notion de pardon, ce que je fais tout en revendiquant ma la\u00efcit\u00e9 . . . faire le deuil des trag\u00e9dies est un processus lent, il faut des ann\u00e9es et des ann\u00e9es pour que l'oubli s'installe, que l'histoire s'enfouisse. Tandis que le pardon\u2014\u00e0 ne pas confondre avec le renoncement\u2014est une d\u00e9cision, une sorte d'acte volontaire qui permet d'agir sur le pr\u00e9sent pour envisager diversement l'avenir. (qtd. in Galesne, 159) \nBy working on the notion of forgiveness, which I do while claiming my secularism . . . letting go of tragedies is a slow process, it takes years and years to sink into oblivion, to bury history. Whereas forgiveness\u2014not to be confused with renouncement\u2014is a decision, a kind of voluntary act that enables one to act on the present so as to envisage the future in various ways.\n\nDespite the author's self-professed grounding in secularism, the title of her novel refers to forgiveness grounded in faith, since the word \"verset\" 'verse' refers to religious texts. At the beginning of the novel, Ahmed is motivated by hatred (18), yet after reading his parents' texts, his hatred is \"morte, \u00e9teinte\" 'dead, extinguished' (20, de Jager 10-11). Ahmed presents his narrative as follows: \"mes derni\u00e8res paroles, \u00e9crites pour vous [p\u00e8re et m\u00e8re], sont les versets du pardon\" 'written for you, my last words are verses of forgiveness' (21, de Jager 12). At the end, the parents are reunited in the son's addressing both of them as \"vous\" 'you' instead of separately; the narrative pieces together different stories to reconstruct the family tree and reconciles the antagonisms fostered by the creation of Israel. After closing his father's journal, Ahmed dedicates a couple of paragraphs successively granting his father forgiveness and asking for the latter's forgiveness (179-80). Once again, father and son meet through similar acts: Ahmed tells his father that \"notre derni\u00e8re pri\u00e8re est celle du pardon\" 'our last prayer is the prayer of forgiveness' (180, de Jager 160), since his father ended his journal by asking for Marie's forgiveness. Towards the end of the narrative, in an apostrophe that addresses both of his parents, Ahmed states: \"Je sais, \u00e0 present, que je contiens dans ma violence, mon salut, le Verbe de Yahv\u00e9, de Dieu et d'Allah\" 'I know now that in my violence I hold my salvation, the word of Yahweh, God, and Allah' (194, de Jager 173). Since Ahmed was born on Christmas Eve, he seems to prefigure the return of the Messiah, or function as the sacrificed son that will redeem humanity's sins.\n\nDuring the course of the narrative, Ahmed comes to face and accept his Jewish filiation. Eventually, he acknowledges to his father that \"aujourd'hui, ce pays est pour toi et moi\" 'today this land [country] is for you and for me' (107, de Jager 91). One could object that Marie (and by extension women and\/or Christians) are forgotten in that last sentence, but in the context of the novel, Marie's place in Palestine is never an issue for Ahmed. While Kandiyoti noted that \"Wherever women continue to serve as boundary markers between different national, ethnic and religious collectivities, their emergence as full-fledged citizens will be jeopardized\" (382), in _Les versets_ Marie's character actually serves to blur such boundaries. Moreover, the emphasis on Ahmed's filiation puts the three characters on equal footing in ideal circumstances. In a passage in which Ahmed envisions a time when their family story would have a happy ending, he imagines that his parents are together in Jaffa, and that when he is born \"vous me tiendrez dans vos bras. Nous vivrons ainsi, sur la terre des promesses, pour planter l'arbre de la paix, du pardon\" 'you two will hold me in your arms. That is how we shall live, on the land of promises, to plant the tree of peace and forgiveness' (194, de Jager 173). Peace and forgiveness are juxtaposed to emphasize that both terms in this context are linked to one another. Ahmed presents his family tree as a metaphor for future reconciliation: \"je suis n\u00e9 de votre amour interdit qui, pour moi, n'est pas une faute mais une lune d'esp\u00e9rance\" 'I was born of your forbidden love that, for me, is not a flaw but a moon of expectation [hope]' (20, de Jager 11). Indeed, the novel ends by first repeating the very first paragraph of the novel, but ends with Ahmed stating that \"je suis le fils de David et de Marie\" 'I . . . am the son of David and Mary' (197, de Jager 176). Thus the story has come full circle when Ahmed accepts his filiation.\n\nWhile certainly not a solution to the conflict, which will require efforts from both parties, Ahmed's acknowledgement is in line with what Said, who recognized that Palestinians' dispossession could not be righted by the expulsion of Israeli Jews ( _Humanism_ 143), wrote. Said grounds his vision of coexistence in secular terms, and points out the fact that both in history and in the present, \"Palestine is an irreducibly mixed place\" ( _The End_ 318). He advocates the establishment of a secular state in which citizens have the same rights regardless of their ethnicity ( _The End_ 320). Antaki's genealogy is an illustration of the potential that reading Israeli and Palestinian histories side by side, as Said recommends ( _The End_ 319), can yield. But while Said leaves religion out of the picture\u2014actually saying that neither Palestinian nor Israelis \"should be held hostage to religious extremists\" ( _The End_ 320), Antaki finds in religion a basis for the first step toward reconciliation.\n\n### Conclusion\n\nBy going back to the Crusades and the events of 1948, respectively, Maalouf's and Antaki's books serve to bring the attention to the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict; namely, a violent occupation that is seen by Arabs as a continuum of Western imperialism, a fact that is consistently obfuscated. Both _Les versets_ and _Les \u00e9chelles_ attempt to change the historical frame through which the conflict is viewed, by tracing it back to 1948, not just 1967 or 2000, as a way to highlight the first violence done to Palestinians.29 Each book is tainted by its context. A pessimistic tone is evident in _Les croisades_ , which was written during the Lebanese civil war and Israeli invasion of Lebanon, whereas a more optimistic tone reigns in _Les versets_ and _Les \u00e9chelles_ , both written in the wake of the Oslo Accords and before their demise with the breakdown of the Camp David talks in 2000 and the second Intifada. The Oslo Accords constituted a moment that was at the very least touted as a possible beginning of the end of the conflict (despite serious reservations by many, including Said, who from the beginning pointed out that the flaws of the Accords were bound to set them for failure). As Ilan Papp\u00e9 noted, there was a flagrant disconnect between the images of Oslo propagated by politicians and the reality on the ground, but the illusion of Oslo as a viable peace accord lasted until 1996 (245). This period of optimism influenced both novels, while at the same time the absence of happy endings expresses a reservation as to a conclusion of the conflict in sight. This reservation transpires somewhat in the choice of a couple in Maalouf's novel, which opens the possibility of separation, estrangement, and divorce, as indeed happens in the novel, although the separation at first is due to events over which the characters have no control. However, Antaki's family tree emphasizes that the destinies of Arabs and Jews in the Middle East are irreversibly intertwined. In _Les versets du pardon_ , like in the literary works analyzed by Hochberg in her recent study, \"the tie between 'Jew' and 'Arab' . . . challenges the separatist imagination and proves the disjointing of 'Jew' and 'Arab' to be at least partially impossible\" (17). One can legitimately wonder whether such a utopian vision can truly contribute to resolving the conflict whose harsh realities on the ground have recently taken grimmer turns. I would argue that Antaki's vision constitutes a necessary first step in the sense that it opens the possibility of imagining a future together that contrasts with the dominant separatist ideologies of European colonialism, Zionism, and Arab nationalism.\n\n### Notes\n\n1. For instance, _The Question of Palestine, After the Last Sky, The End of the Peace Process, Peace and Its Discontents, The Politics of Dispossession_.\n\n2. Historian Ilan Papp\u00e9 wrote about immigration to Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century that \"Although [the Zionists'] number was small, it was in hindsight a colonizing immigration. It was not a proper colonization, as Palestine was not occupied by a European power. But like colonialism elsewhere, it was a European movement, with people entering Palestine for the sake of European interests, not local ones\" (42). Ella Shohat wrote that \"A series of mutually reinforcing equations between modernity, science, technology, and the West has legitimized Zionism as an extension of the civilizing mission applied first to Palestine and then to Arab Jews\" (\"Rupture\" 64).\n\n3. This section has appeared as \"The Rewriting of History in Amin Maalouf's _The Crusades through Arab Eyes_ \" in _Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature_ 30.2 (Summer 2006): 263-287. It has been revised and augmented.\n\n4. Unreferenced translations are mine.\n\n5. In the decade that preceded the publication of _The Crusades through Arab Eyes_ , more than twenty percent of the historical novels published in France were set in the Middle Ages, with the Crusades as a privileged period (Pierre 34-35). While Marc Bertrand notes that one of the innovative aspects of recent historical novels is to pay attention to the minorities marginalized or persecuted for their differences, be it ethnic, religious, racial or cultural, none of the novels about the crusades that he mentions seems to present the Arabs' perspective. Examples of novels about the crusades mentioned by Marc Bertrand in his article are: _La joie des pauvres_ by Zo\u00e9 Oldenbourg (Gallimard, 1970), _La dislocation_ by Armand Farrachi (Stock, 1974), _La croisade des enfants_ by Bernard Thomas (Fayard, 1973), and _Le ma\u00eetre de Hongrie_ by Marcel Jullian (Table Ronde, 1975).\n\n6. The J'ai lu edition of this book bears the subtitle _La barbarie franque en Terre sainte_ 'Frankish Barbarism in the Holy Land' (Paris: J'ai lu, 1999). This subtitle does not appear in the original Latt\u00e8s edition of the book. This is probably a marketing ploy from the J'ai lu editions to use such a catchy subtitle (thus fulfilling what Genette calls the temptation function of a title in _Paratexts_ [93]), because it reverses the generally accepted idea of the crusades as heroic deeds.\n\n7. See Grousset, Runciman, and Oldenbourg.\n\n8. \"The I of historiography is supposed to be that of the writer whose name appears on the book cover\" (Carrard 87).\n\n9. In their bibliography, both Zo\u00e9 Oldenbourg and Steven Runciman divide their sources according to their origins: Oldenbourg categorizes them according to religious criteria (\"Oriental Historians\" [\"Historiens orientaux\"] and \"Christian Historians from the Orient\" [\"Historiens chr\u00e9tiens d'Orient\"]), while Runciman divides them according to linguistic criteria (\"Arabic and Persian sources\").\n\n10. Grousset's _Histoire des croisades_ passes over the case of the crusaders' cannibalism in silence, Runciman's _A History of the Crusades_ briefly alludes to it (vol. I: 261), and Oldenbourg's _Les croisades_ treats it as a mere rumor deliberately spread by the crusaders to spread terror (131).\n\n11. Maalouf does not give precise references to any of his quotations according to scholarly conventions, but lists his sources chapter by chapter in the \"Notes et Sources\" section at the end of the book. For his Frankish sources on cannibalism however, he does indicate several page numbers from Michaud's _L'histoire des croisades_ and _Bibliographie des croisades_ under chapter 3 in \"Notes et Sources,\" but I have been unable to consult these texts to verify where the citations attributed to Raoul de Caen and Albert d'Aix come from.\n\n12. At the time of the Crusades the word \"Franj\" seems to be a milder equivalent of the term \"sarrasin\" (Saracen), which was used during the Middle Ages to designate Muslims. _La chanson de Roland_ (The Song of Roland) is a representative example of the derogatory connotations conveyed by the word \"sarrasin\" (who represents the pagan enemy).\n\n13. \"The violation of an individual woman is the metaphor for man's forcing himself on whole nations\" (Robin Morgan, qtd. in Higgins 1996: 108).\n\n14. One could argue that murder can also be narrated into rather different kinds of story (such as premeditation, self-defense, accident, or suicide).\n\n15. In _Orientalism_ , Said quotes Chateaubriand: \"The Crusades were not only about the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre, but more about knowing which would win on the earth, a cult that was civilization's enemy, systematically favorable to ignorance [this was Islam, of course], to despotism, to slavery, or a cult that had caused to reawaken in modern people the genius of a sage antiquity, and had abolished base servitude?\" (172).\n\n16. That text was prompted by Benazir Bhutto's defeated opponent's indignation in 1988 that no Muslim state had ever been ruled by a woman. Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist, set out to unearth women who did govern during the history of the Muslim world.\n\n17. One could also specify that the viewpoints presented are those that were recorded by historians who were close to authorities, or to those in power, and who themselves belonged to the elite. These accounts are what shaped the current popular Arab view of the Crusades.\n\n18. The same applies to the crusaders, who were not all Franks.\n\n19. Runciman's negative appraisal of the Crusades was published as early as 1954, and his quotes ground his work in a Christian framework. The reason he declares the Fourth Crusade (\"against Christians\") the greatest crime against humanity (130) is that the Byzantine Empire had shielded Europe from Muslim advances. His conclusion that the Crusades are a \"long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost\" (III 480) is of course grounded in Christian theology.\n\n20. In _Les identit\u00e9s meurtri\u00e8res_ , he writes: \"ce contre quoi je me bats et me battrai toujours, c'est cette id\u00e9e selon laquelle il y aurait, d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9, une religion\u2014chr\u00e9tienne\u2014destin\u00e9e de tout temps \u00e0 v\u00e9hiculer modernisme, libert\u00e9, tol\u00e9rance et d\u00e9mocratie, et de l'autre une religion\u2014musulmane\u2014vou\u00e9e d\u00e8s l'origine au despotisme et \u00e0 l'obscurantisme\" 'what I am fighting against, and always will, is the idea that on the one hand there's a religion\u2014Christianity\u2014destined for ever to act as a vector for modernism, freedom, tolerance and democracy, and on the other hand another religion\u2014Islam\u2014doomed from the outset to despotism and obscurantism' (66, Bray 55). And he adds : \"L'islam avait \u00e9tabli un \u00ab protocole de tol\u00e9rance \u00bb \u00e0 une \u00e9poque o\u00f9 les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s chr\u00e9tiennes ne tol\u00e9raient rien\" 'Islam established a 'protocol of tolerance' at a time when Christian societies tolerated nothing' (67-68, Bray 57).\n\n21. Simon Lloyd mentions that Urban II urged the Catalan nobles to fulfill their crusade vows in Spain during the first crusade (39).\n\n22. See for instance _L\u00e9on l'Africain_ (1986), _Samarcande_ (1988), _Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_ (1996), _Le p\u00e9riple de Baldassare_ (2000).\n\n23. The Arabs and Muslims are not romanticized. Maalouf reports the killings committed by Turks (151) and massacres committed by Muslims when the Franks are expelled (273).\n\n24. Indeed, one can easily find fault with his sweeping statement that the Arabs were unable to create stable institutions and that the situation when civil war erupts with the death of a king is much the same nowadays. The recent examples of countries such as Morocco, Jordan, and Syria, speak to the contrary. Hassan II, Hussein, and Assad were long time kings and dictator, respectively, yet their deaths were followed by smooth successions (even in Jordan where there was a last-minute change in the constitution to replace King Hussein's brother, who held the title of crown-prince for 30 years, with one of Hussein's sons). While the preceding examples postdate the publication of Maalouf's text, I cannot think of a civil war that started as a succession dispute in the Arab world prior to 1980.\n\n25. Hochberg reaches the same conclusion: \"Focusing only on Germany and its allies in destruction, while completely ignoring the colonial history of the Middle East, _Ports of Call_ ultimately locates the 1948 war and the Zionist occupation of Palestine, completely outside the context of the region's own history of continual colonial occupation and the struggles against it\" (123).\n\n26. For a discussion of the Francophone writer as a bastard and an orphan, see Marx-Scouras' article.\n\n27. See Shumway (91) and Watt (116).\n\n28. Chomsky states that \"the record of Israeli terrorism goes back to the origins of the state\" (134).\n\n29. Alisa Solomon describes the frame coverage of the failure of the Camp David peace talks, which consisted in saying that Israel had made a generous offer that was rejected by the Palestinians, occulting the continued and accelerated developments of new settlements in the West Bank, among other things. She argues that \"Through this frame, which erases the occupation, the humanity of Palestinians is thrown into question. They appear as incorrigible, unaccountably violent, preternatural Jew haters. The Palestinian escalation of suicide bombings of civilian targets inside Israel during this period is, then, seen through this frame not as a desperate weapon of resistance, morally reprehensible as it may be, but as motiveless malignancy, proof of innate Palestinian barbarism\" (1589). She later adds: \"Whereas stories from the first intifada set events against the background of an occupation that began in 1967, today the context line in a broadcast segment . . . marks 2000 as the beginning of relevant time\" (1589).\n\n## Chapter 2\n\n## The Arab-Israeli Conflict beyond the Middle East: Albert Memmi, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Farid Boudjellal, and Karin Albou\n\nThe consequences of the Arab-Israeli conflict extend to communities beyond the Middle East, to countries such as Morocco, which used to have a considerable Jewish minority, and France. The conflict has had dire repercussions on the Jewish communities that were part of the Arab world. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, these communities have pretty much disappeared. Morocco's Jewish population, for instance, was estimated at 300,000 in 1947 (L\u00e9vy 9); it has dwindled and now numbers below 3,000; Tunisia's Jewish population, estimated at 95,000 in 1946 (Sebag 259) went down to less than 3,000 today. Though Morocco's Jewish community remains the most important of the Arab world (L\u00e9vy 49), events such as the 2003 Casablanca terrorist attacks (some of which targeted Jewish places), threaten it further.\n\nTwo seemingly distant events, be they in temporal or in spatial terms, are colluding and having repercussions in contemporary France: the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the French colonization of North Africa, and particularly Algeria. Although the French colonial presence in Africa ended over forty years ago, its aftermath is still felt today. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, France happens to be home to both the largest Muslim and Jewish communities in Western Europe, in great part due to immigration from former colonies. In recent years, various crimes have brought to the forefront with renewed urgency the question of interfaith relations between Muslims and Jews in France. These include the fabricated aggression with an anti-Semite motive blamed on Maghrebians and Blacks by Marie-L\u00e9onie Leblanc on July 9, 2004, and the February 2006 horrendous kidnapping, torture, and murder of Ilan Halimi, targeted because of his Jewish background, by a mixed-race gang headed by a nominal Muslim. These recent events follow a notable increase in anti-Semite (in a broad sense) incidents in the 1990s and 2000s. Some of these crimes can be attributed to the rise of the far right and neo-Nazis, such as the desecration of Jewish (in Carpentras in 1990 for instance) and Muslim tombs (the Muslim section of a military cemetery in 2007), and some to French people of Arab\/Muslim heritage.\n\nThis chapter focuses on the geographic displacement of the Arab-Israeli conflict by analyzing the representation of its impact on the social and cultural fabric of Maghrebian countries and contemporary France. It first analyzes two Arab Jewish writers' take on the Arab Jew in essays and articles, notably Memmi's _Juifs et Arabes_ [ _Jews and Arabs_ ] and _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman et de quelques autres_ [ _Decolonization and the Decolonized_ ], and various pieces published by El Maleh. Through such analysis, this chapter builds on Hochberg's comparative analysis of creative works, namely Memmi's _La statue de sel_ [ _The Pillar of Salt_ ] and El Maleh's _Mille ans, un jour_ [one thousand years, one day].1 These two Francophone Jewish Maghrebian writers have opposite views on the issue of Arab-Jewish relations and the identity of Arab Jews, despite similarities in their itinerary. El Maleh was born in Morocco in 1917, Memmi in Tunisia in 1920. Both writers received a French education, studied philosophy, supported the independence movements of their respective countries, but settled in France (Memmi right after Tunisia's independence in 1956, El Maleh in 1965 at the beginning of Hassan II's repressive regime). Contrary to Memmi, El Maleh went back to his native country in 1999 and still resides there. I examine how their positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict correlate with the relative prominence of each writer (Memmi's renown and El Maleh's obscurity) considering the current political climate.\n\nThe second part of this chapter contrasts the representation of the relations between Arabs and Jews in France in Boudjellal's _JuifsArabes_ [JewsArabs] and Albou's _La petite J\u00e9rusalem_ [ _Little Jerusalem_ ]. I demonstrate that, contrary to Albou's film, Boudjellal's comic book participates in an endeavor to go beyond the ideology of partition and separation that has dominated approaches to the Arab-Israeli conflict.\n\n### Arab Jews from the Maghreb\n\n#### Albert Memmi\n\nMemmi published _Juifs et Arabes_ in 1974. The book is a collection of essays written for different occasions, all having to do with Arabs and Jews in the Middle East and North Africa. The term \"Juif-Arabe\" appears in the title of one chapter (\"Qu'est-ce qu'un Juif-Arabe?\" 'What is an Arab Jew?'), originally written for a journal that had asked Memmi to write about relations between Jews and Arabs in Arab countries (Memmi, _Juifs_ 59, note 1). This term (in the plural form \"Juifs-Arabes\" 'Jews-Arabs') had just been uttered by Qadhafi during a visit to Paris, in a rhetorical question recalling the common cultural heritage shared by Arabs and Sephardic Jews (Memmi, _Juifs_ 49). In the course of this essay, Memmi privileges the term \"Juifs arabes\" 'Arab Jews,' and \"Juifs des pays arabes\" 'Jews from Arab countries' because according to him, the notion of \"Juifs-Arabes\" is a myth, a condition to which Arab Jews aspired but that was denied to them by Arab Muslims (Memmi, _Juifs_ 50).2\n\nIn his book, Memmi defines himself as a strong supporter of both Zionism and Palestinians, and sees no contradiction in his stand: \"je r\u00e9clame la justice pour les miens sans injustice pour les autres\" 'I want justice for my people without injustice for the others' ( _Juifs_ 13, Levieux 13), but he does not dwell on the fact that the creation of Israel did come at the expense of Palestinians. Memmi justifies his support for the two-state solution because over the years, \"il s'est produit un \u00e9change de fait des populations: une partie des Palestiniens a gagn\u00e9 les nations arabes, une partie des Juifs de ces nations a gagn\u00e9 Isra\u00ebl\" 'a de facto exchange of populations has come about. Part of the Palestinians have gone to the Arab nations, and part of the Jews from those nations have gone to Israel' ( _Juifs_ 14, Levieux 14). Ella Shohat has called references to \"population exchange\" \"propagandistic\" and underlined the fact that \"it elides the simple fact that neither Arab Jews nor Palestinians were ever consulted\" (\"Rupture\" 58).3 Shohat has eloquently demonstrated that \"Ironically, the Zionist view that Arabness and Jewishness were mutually exclusive gradually came to be shared by Arab nationalist discourse, placing Arab Jews on the horns of a terrible dilemma\" (\"Rupture\" 58). Although Memmi sees Israel as a country for Jews, he does recognize that there are non-Jewish minorities in that state, and Jewish minorities all over the world. But Memmi fails to examine the implication of his statement. He overlooks the fact that he is accepting the ethnic category of Jews unquestioningly despite the fact that this was elaborated by anti-Semites, and the fact that the state of Israel is founded on religious and exclusionary grounds. Memmi advocates the two-state solution with each state having a minority that should enjoy equal rights to the majority ( _Juifs_ 166). He thus indirectly admits that Arabs and Jews are indeed inseparable.\n\nMemmi's main argument is that \"ce n'est pas le sionisme qui a \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 l'origine de l'antis\u00e9mitisme arabe, mais l'inverse, tout comme en Europe\" 'it is not Zionism that has caused Arab anti-Semitism, but the other way around, just as in Europe' ( _Juifs_ 12, Levieux 12). Here, Memmi dehistoricizes anti-Semitism and the various ways it has been articulated throughout history in different contexts.4 His statement also passes over the variance of the effects of anti-Semitism in different cultures and time periods. Paul Grosser and Edwin Halperin's catalogue of anti-Semitism includes an \"Islamic\" catalogue, but focuses on the West. They explain that in Islam, \"There was a condition of religious toleration not present under Christianity. Overt violence and anti-Semitic persecution, while not absent, were episodic and unsystematic. There were periods and places of genuinely cordial Islamic\/Arab-Jewish interaction\" (7).\n\nThere is no rendering in Memmi's work of the complexity of factors that pushed the Jewish Maghrebian communities to leave North Africa.5 One common element, however, which Memmi silences, is the fact that the creation of the state of Israel on Arab land is a prominent factor. The conflict between Arab countries and the state of Israel trickles down to internal tensions where the Jewish Maghrebian communities are considered or fear they will be considered guilty by association. Zafrani underlines that the political and psychological dimensions of Moroccans' emigration to Israel after independence, despite their equal citizen status, are intertwined and due in part to the Palestinian problem created by the creation of Israel and the Arab States' solidarity with Palestinians (295).\n\nMemmi downplays the seven-century-long Andalusian period known for the peaceful coexistence of the three monotheist religions under Moorish rule. He dismisses it as an anomaly: \"Jamais, je dis bien jamais\u2014\u00e0 part peut-\u00eatre deux ou trois \u00e9poques tr\u00e8s circonstancielles, comme la p\u00e9riode andalouse et encore\u2014les Juifs n'ont v\u00e9cu en pays arabes autrement que comme des gens diminu\u00e9s\" 'Never, I repeat, never\u2014except perhaps for two or three eras with very clear boundaries in time, such as the Andalusian period, and even then\u2014have the Jews lived in the Arab countries otherwise than as diminished people in an exposed position' ( _Juifs_ 51, Levieux 21-22).6 He thus participates in what Shohat has thus explained: \"[Zionist discourse's] historiography concerning Jews within Islam consists of a morbidly selective 'tracing the dots' from pogrom to pogrom,\" and while she refrains from idealizing the situation of Jews in the Muslim world, she argues that \"Zionist discourse has, in a sense, hijacked Jews from their Judeo-Islamic political geography and subordinated them into the European Jewish chronicle of shtetl and pogrom\" (\"Rupture\" 59).\n\nMemmi's rendering of the conditions of Jews in Islam and in Christendom is partial. He credits colonization for the betterment of the Jewish condition. Even when he points out the failure of French authorities to protect the Jewish community, he mitigates their responsibility by recalling Arab hostilities: \"J'ai racont\u00e9 dans _La statue de sel_ comment nous avons \u00e9t\u00e9 froidement abandonn\u00e9s aux Allemands par les autorit\u00e9s fran\u00e7aises. Mais il me faut ajouter que nous baignions \u00e9galement dans une population arabe hostile. . . . C'est la raison pour laquelle tr\u00e8s peu d'entre nous purent passer les lignes pour rejoindre les Alli\u00e9s\" 'In my novel, _The Pillar of Salt_ , I have told how the French authorities coldly abandoned us to the Germans. But I must add that we also lived amidst a hostile Arab population. . . . That is why very few of us were able to get through the lines to join the Allies' ( _Juifs_ 53, Levieux 23). Memmi strikingly deflects the responsibility of the Vichy regime by stressing the hostile Arab community (something which, incidentally, in the context of WWII is not depicted in _La statue de sel_ ). This state of affairs, however, is not reflected in Paul Sebag's study. Sebag details the discriminatory measures implemented in Tunisia during World War II (222), but stresses that \"malgr\u00e9 les efforts de la propagande allemande, l'id\u00e9ologie antis\u00e9mite ne r\u00e9ussit pas \u00e0 mordre sur les autres \u00e9l\u00e9ments de la population\" 'despite the German propaganda efforts, anti-Semitism did not catch on with the other elements of the population' (244). In Morocco, Mohammed V protected Moroccan Jews by refusing to cooperate with the Protectorate authorities under Vichy (Zafrani 293), and in Algeria, it is noted that the Muslim population, contrary to the European one, did not commit any hostile act against Jews during the WWII period (Stora, \"L'impossible\" 295, 303). However, the Vichy period stimulated a growing segment of pro-Zionism in the Maghreb (Laskier 85).\n\nGiven that Memmi in his essay sees Zionism as the only solution to the Jewish problem, it is surprising that the narrator of his semi-autobiographical _Pillar of Salt_ chooses Argentina as his destination, since in real life, Memmi chose neither Argentina nor Israel, but France as his new home. Because Argentina was one of the proposed sites for the establishment of the Jewish state by early Zionist leaders, this might have been a way for Memmi to reconcile some of the contradictions inherent in his support: in addition to Hochberg's analysis that Argentina not only avoid the whole polarization between Arabs and Jews that ensued from the creation of the state of Israel (23), I would add that it also eschews the religious character of Zionism's claim to the Holy Land for what Memmi supports as a purely nationalist project. Memmi's efforts (not always successful) to distance himself from religion are evident both in his essays and in his creative writing.7\n\nHochberg argues that \"While Memmi recognizes the subversive political potential embedded in the figure of the Arab Jew, he explicitly wishes to disarm it, stating that the promotion of an Arab Jewish identity presents a serious threat to the creation of a new national Jewish collective\" (34-35). Indeed, Hochberg points out \"Europe's role in constructing both the Jew and the Arab as its others, and its role in polarizing these two identities, making them Other to each other\" (35), and that Memmi failed to address the role that European colonialism has played in \"creating and sustaining the animosity between Muslims\/Arabs and Jews and in making the Arab Jew an 'impossible figure' \" (21).\n\nThe few pages Memmi devotes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his recent _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman_ , conceived as an update to his groundbreaking _Portrait du colonis\u00e9_ , testify to the same phenomenon that Hochberg had noted: the complete lack of consideration of Europe's role in shaping the relationships between Arabs and Jews. Although Memmi recognizes the transnational dimension of the conflict, which resonates throughout the Arab world and indeed throughout the world (or at least where there are diasporic communities),8 he refuses to see Israel as \"une fondation coloniale\" 'a colonial settlement' because of the absence of a \"m\u00e9tropole\" behind it to back it up ( _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9_ 41, Bononno 25).9 This statement fails to take into account the very prominent role played by the pro-Israeli lobbies in the U.S. (see Mearsheimer and Walt), and the fact that Israel has ranked at the top of U.S. foreign aid recipients. Israel might not have a \"m\u00e9tropole\" in the same manner that Paris ruled Algeria and London ruled India, but it does find itself in a neocolonial situation where ties and structures on a worldwide scale have supplanted colonial power structures, albeit in a much less obvious manner. While in 1974 Memmi acknowledged \"l'apport de la Diaspora en tant que telle dans la consolidation d'Isra\u00ebl\" 'the part that the Diaspora as such played in the consolidation of Israel' ( _Juifs_ 194, Levieux 195), there is no word in the 2004 essay on its role.\n\nMemmi thereafter tries to downplay the importance of the conflict, first by engaging in dubious relativism, recalling that there have been more devastating conflicts. According to him, the conflict is in fact \"une lutte assez banale entre deux petites nations en g\u00e9sine, dont les deux affirmations nationales se sont trouv\u00e9es par malchance en contradiction territoriale\" 'a rather ordinary struggle between two small emerging nations, whose national claims unfortunately turned out to involve a territorial conflict' ( _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9_ 42, Bononno 26). The total oblivion regarding Europe's role in creating this \"unfortunate\" outcome is obvious. The role of Western powers is also completely occulted when Memmi laments the \"surestimation de l'affaire palestinienne\" 'overestimation of the Palestinian case' ( _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9_ 43),10 which he solely blames on the Arab-Muslim world. This silences the fact that the Middle East is a region that is of geopolitical interest to the West, and not the other way around (or at least, initially, not to the same degree). One could argue that Memmi's choice of living in France, in Europe, might (un)consciously lead him to completely efface the role of the Hexagon\/Europe in the genesis and perpetuation of the conflict.\n\nMemmi always champions Israel's cause as \"un fait national, qui correspond \u00e0 une condition difficile \u00e0 vivre et \u00e0 une aspiration collective\" 'a national fact, the response to an untenable condition and a collective desire' ( _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9_ 41, Bononno 25), yet this is obviously not an aspiration that he has chosen to act upon, as evident by his choice to live in France, not in Israel. Nor was it an inspiration for most of Algeria's Jews, whose departure from Algeria after independence had less to do with Zionism but everything with the French citizenship Algerian Jews had been granted by the colonial power in 1870. Memmi lumps all Jews together and does not acknowledge that there were differences between their conditions among and within countries.11 This is a fact that he had noted in his semi-autobiographical novel, where social class constitutes a major factor in the alienation of its main character. The narrator of _La statue de sel_ , who is from the poor working class, describes the French high school he is privileged to attend thanks to his good grades and a scholarship: \"J'eus des camarades fran\u00e7ais, tunisiens, italiens, russes, maltais, et juifs aussi, mais d'un milieu si diff\u00e9rent du mien qu'ils m'\u00e9taient des \u00e9trangers. Ces juifs riches . . . m'exasp\u00e9raient\" 'I had French, Tunisian, Italian, Russian, Maltese, even Jewish classmates\u2014but the latter were from a background so different from mine that they were as foreign to me as the others. They were rich Jews [these rich Jews . . . exasperated me]' (96, Roditi 104). This passage emphasizes that social class overrides whatever religious and ethnic traits he shares with the Tunisian Jewish middle class. Later on, the narrator states that upper-middle class Jews did not suffer as much from anti-Semitism as poor Jews during WWII (215), and the wedge between the middle class and ghetto Jews was still felt even in the strained conditions of the forced labor camp (242).\n\nMemmi's use of the word \"ghetto\" throughout the book to refer to the _Hara_ (Jewish quarter) assimilates a European reality to a North African one. As evident when he talks about the Jewish Tunisian bourgeoisie, the ghetto is one in which the poor are stuck, not the middle-class, and is therefore a ghetto according to social class criteria. Mohammed Kenbib emphasizes the inadequacy of the \"sch\u00e8mes g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement puis\u00e9s dans les r\u00e9alit\u00e9s des Stetl et Judenvierthel d'Europe centrale et orientale\" 'schemas usually drawn from the realities of Central and Eastern Europe's shtetls and Judenviertel' (2) to capture the Moroccan Jewish reality.12 One can probably extend this criticism to Tunisia. In Tunisia, each ethnic group had its quarter and the _Hara_ was a \"cloisonnement social volontaire\" 'voluntary social partitioning' (with other groups having their own quarters, Jadla 149), although the middle class left it well before colonization (Largu\u00e8che 172).\n\n#### Edmond Amran El Maleh\n\nWhereas Memmi makes broad generalizations about Jews in his texts, El Maleh, who defines himself as a \"juif oxymoron\" 'oxymoron Jew' (Redonnet 85), refuses to speak for all Jews and claims the right to a plurality of being Jewish.13 El Maleh's writings have tackled the issue of Arab Jews in the context of Morocco; as he stated, \"Je l'ai abord\u00e9 [l'exode des juifs du Maroc] d'un point de vue marocain\" 'I addressed [the Moroccan Jews' exodus] from a Moroccan point of view' (Redonnet 74). Indeed, he has dedicated most of his work to the Jewish Moroccan community and its disappearance.\n\nEl Maleh's views of the repercussions of Israel on Jewish communities in the Arab world differ sharply from Memmi's, whom he specifically accuses of misreading history by reading the history of Jews in Arab countries as a series of persecutions (Redonnet 120). El Maleh revolts against the fact that the state of Israel pretends to speak for all Jews, and qualifies the creation of Israel as a colonial project (\"Au seuil\" 20). One of the reasons why he speaks so strongly against Zionism is because of its policy of erasing not only the Palestinian people but also the existence of Moroccan Jews: \"On oublie que le sionisme qui conjointement \u00e0 sa politique de destruction du peuple palestinien s'est acharn\u00e9 \u00e0 effacer jusqu'au moindre signe la pr\u00e9sence mill\u00e9naire des juifs marocains\" 'we forget that Zionism along with its policy of destruction of the Palestininan people hounded to erase all traces of the millennial presence of Moroccan Jews' (Redonnet 119).\n\nMaleh's novel _Mille ans, un jour_ ties the fate of the Moroccan Jewish community to French colonization and events in the Middle East. Israeli soldiers are compared to \"nazis aux cheveux cr\u00e9pus, \u00e0 l'oeil noir\" 'nazis with frizzy hair and dark eyes' (121); exactions committed by Israeli settlers in Gaza recall the \"choses pareilles qui se passaient pendant le protectorat\" 'similar things that happened during the Protectorate' (122). Ronnie Scharfman contends that \"For Nessim [the main character, a Moroccan Jew], Beirut [with the massacres of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila] is the noisy, bloody version of the silent erasure and disappearance of his people\" (\"The Other's\" 139).\n\nSome of these comparisons can also be found in a strong piece triggered by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in which several parallelisms are drawn between this invasion and well-known atrocities committed by the Nazis in France during WWII: the destroyed Lebanese cities and the village of Oradour (\"Le visage\" 18), Palestinian women giving birth on the beach while their refugee camps are being destroyed recall women who gave birth in the Vel d'Hiv, whose roundup was just being commemorated (\"Le visage\" 18), summary execution of Lebanese are compared to the same done by Germans (\"Le visage\" 19). In that article, El Maleh was already underlining the use and abuses of language, whereby anyone daring to use the word genocide and making comparisons between atrocities committed by the Israelis with the Nazis will be anathema, while the Israeli government routinely uses such language to qualify the PLO and Palestinians (\"Le visage\" 20).\n\n### Arabs and Jews in Contemporary France\n\n#### From _Juif-Arabe_ to _JuifsArabes_ : Farid Boudjella's Comic Books14\n\nBoudjellal, a comic strip artist, has taken on the question of the relations between Arab Muslims and Jews in France. Born in Toulon in 1953 of Algerian parents, Boudjellal published his first strips in 1978 in a magazine and his first comic book in 1983 (Gaumer). Known for bringing the issue of Maghrebian immigration to the fore in comic books through the series _L'oud_ ,15 his work participated in the Beur culture surge of the 1980s. His comic books have focused on the plight of the lone Maghrebian immigrant worker (in _L'oud_ for instance), the problems faced by immigrant families (in _Gags \u00e0 l'harissa_ ), and the challenges faced by Beurs. According to Mark McKinney, Boudjellal is \"the most published French cartoonist of post-colonial minority origin\" (180), and his work has been labeled as \"une authentique (et talentueuse) BD 'beur' \" 'an authentic and talented comic strip by French of Maghrebian origin' in the _Dictionnaire mondial de la bande dessin\u00e9e_.\n\nIn addition to his work on the Maghrebian and Beur community in France, Boudjellal has published a series entitled _Juif-Arabe_. The original four parts were published individually in the early 1990s and were titled: _Juif-Arabe_ (1990), _Juif-Arabe: Int\u00e9gristes_ (1990), _Juif-Arabe: Conf\u00e9rence internationale_ (1991), _Juif-Arabe: Fran\u00e7ais_ (1991). These four comic books, which address the relations between the French Jewish and Arab-Muslim communities, were compiled and reissued in 1996 as _Juif-Arabe: L'int\u00e9grale. JuifsArabes_ is a revised and augmented edition of this compilation that appeared in 2006.16 This part focuses on the representation of the impact of events taking place in the Middle East on contemporary France as depicted in the latest version, _JuifsArabes_. It also examines the representation of past and future genealogy between both communities, a recurrent issue in the comic book, and how a visual allusion to the _Ast\u00e9rix_ BD series highlights the diversity of France at the turn of the twenty-first century and provides a model of coexistence for the French Jewish and Arab communities.\n\n_JuifsArabes_ features the characters of Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl, both owners of religious bookstores, their wives Isma\u00eblle and Isra\u00eblle, and their offspring. The eldest children, Mohamed, Isma\u00ebl's son, and Yza, Isra\u00ebl's daughter, turn out to be boyfriend and girlfriend. The obvious onomastics of the parents' names is reinforced by the caricatural drawings. The parents' clothing styles are meant to link them to specific communities: Orthodox Jew for Isra\u00ebl, always wearing a black suit and hat, and Maghrebian immigrant for Isma\u00ebl with his white djellaba and flip flops. Both fathers sport a black beard (square for Isra\u00ebl and rounded for Isma\u00ebl) and oversized feet (recalling Ast\u00e9rix and Ob\u00e9lix, more on that later). The stereotypical rendering of Isma\u00ebl's and Isra\u00ebl's appearance is inherent to the genre of the satirical comics: the characters need to be immediately and easily identifiable as Jewish and Arab, respectively, although they represent a fringe of their respective communities. Boudjellal's series is an example of how a stereotypical character can be \"a successful satire if it is negotiated as a comically exaggerated portrait\" (Rosello 15).\n\nAccording to Jacques Tramson, the fact that these books are classified in between newspaper drawings and comic books sets this series apart from the rest of Boudjellal's work (37). _JuifsArabes_ is characterized by short narratives, a focus on static characters, and a lack of elaborate background, which according to Pierre Masson are hallmarks of \"intellectual\" and satirical BD (77). The drawings are kept to a minimum; the backgrounds are mostly bare so as to focus all the reader's attention on the dialogues and the characters' gestures and facial expressions. Most of the pages are divided into two or three (single or double) strips of equal size; only a handful of gags take up more than one page. According to Thierry Groensteen, regularity of format confers a regular metric to the reading (61). This comic book falls under the category of ethnic humor, based on ethnic or religious or other kinds of differences, but the humor of the series is also derived from political disputes.\n\nBoudjellal draws on stereotypes that are supposed to highlight the specificities and particularities of the Arab and Jewish communities in France to better underline how similar they actually are. Despite their profound differences on political issues of the Middle East, Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl are very much alike. They constantly fight about the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet they react in the same way to the same events, be it news from the Middle East or the love relationship between their children. This approach fits Rosello's definition of direct intervention, defined as the \"conscious cultural reappropriation of ethnic stereotypes\" ( _Declining_ 18-19). For instance, after they discover that their children are in love, Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl embrace each other, crying in despair (35). When Yza and Mohamed announce that they want to get married, the fathers offer to pay for their children's honeymoon, but are shown buying one-way tickets to Algiers and Israel. The antidote to this interfaith\/interethnic marriage is envisioned as a \"return\" to nation states based on ethnic and religious affiliations.\n\nThe issue of genealogy (past, present, and future) between the Arab and the Jewish communities is a recurrent theme. Several references are made to the shared family tree between Arabs and Jews going back to Abraham as the founding father. The very first page, entitled \"Abraham p\u00e8re\" refers to this shared ancestral genealogy. It features several frames in which Israel enumerates commonalities between the two groups: \"vous rejetez le porc, nous aussi; vous \u00eates circoncis, nous aussi\" 'you disallow pork, so do we; you are circumcised, so are we,' etc. (5). The punch line is given by Isma\u00ebl who uses the same syntax to complete the list: \"vous \u00eates en Palestine, nous aussi!\" 'you are in Palestine, so are we!' This first set of strips sets the tone for the volume, since the last commonality is the point of contention. On another page, responding to a priest who wonders why they are always fighting despite being both children of Abraham, Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl answer in chorus with an idiomatic phrase that stresses their shared roots: \"nous lavons notre linge sale en famille!!\" 'we wash our dirty linen among the family' (meaning we do not wash our dirty linen in public) (20). In another instance, Isma\u00ebl claims this common genealogy by referring to his Semite identity as a counter to Isra\u00ebl's accusation that he is anti-Semite (7).\n\nIn addition to these family ties established by the Biblical tradition, the two communities' destinies seem to be interdependent because of twentieth-century politics. On a page composed of two single strips, the content of the balloons and the gestures become inverted. In the first strip, the dialogue features Isra\u00ebl recalling that the Jewish people had a dream and Isma\u00ebl that the Arabs had a country; the content of the speech balloons are then reversed and the tenses of the verbs changed from past to present with Isra\u00ebl stating that they now have a country while Isma\u00ebl retorts that the Arabs now have a dream (6). Later on, the stateless Palestinian is compared to \"un juif errant\" 'a wandering Jew' (60). The condition of the Wandering Jew becomes a simile to describe the Palestinians' condition of statelessness, thereby linking Zionism to the Palestinian dispossession. Boudjellal pokes fun at the deadlock in which both sides of the conflict are caught with Israeli repression and Palestinian terrorism, excused by each side as a \"mal n\u00e9cessaire\" 'necessary evil' (24), and the impossibility of progress towards a peace process because of the manner in which preconditions to negotiations are framed (39).\n\nEven though Isra\u00ebl and Isma\u00ebl are both owners of religious bookstores, their dispute over the conflict is always framed in territorial terms, never in religious ones (though the role played by religions is not erased). In fact, when religion and morals are at stake, they agree, as when they collaborate on an anti-abortion demonstration. The fathers are often at odds with French society when it comes to certain issues, as their religious commitment contrasts with French mainstream secular lifestyle. Even when their children suggest that they lend each other books to better understand one another, and they yet end up fighting once again (ending up throwing those books at each other), the issue of contention is not framed in theological terms, but in nationalistic ones. Isra\u00ebl tells Isma\u00ebl: \"Lisez ceux-l\u00e0 et vous prendrez la nationalit\u00e9 isra\u00e9lienne\" 'Read these and you will take the Israeli nationality' (151). When they are found throwing books at each other, they respectively shout \"un cadeau pour Tsahal\" 'a gift for Tsahal' and \"un autre pour le Hamas\" 'another one for Hamas' (152). Only when the representative of the Church comes into play does the conflict gain a full religious dimension, when the priest states that the existence of the state of Israel is necessary for Jesus' second coming (78). That politics and not religion is at stake is reinforced by the choice of the name Isra\u00ebl (and not Isaac as in the scriptures) for the Jewish character.\n\nThere is a clear generation gap between the fathers and the children. For one thing, the children do not understand the affiliation their fathers feel with Middle Eastern communities and question why the issue is so dear to them despite the geographical distance. When confronted about their quarrels regarding Israel and Palestine, both fathers answer in unison that Israel and Palestine represent their \"maison secondaire\" 'secondary home' (38). This corresponds to what Esther Benbassa refers to as a \"diasporic transnationalism,\" defined as \"a nationalism with no territorial claims, reconciling loyalty to the country of residence with strong support to external causes\" (190), to explain French Arabs and Jews' affiliations with Middle Eastern causes. According to her, \"today, while for a number of Arab-Moslems the support for the Palestinian cause alleviates the crumbling of their traditional identity, many Jews find in their attachment to Israel a means of counterbalancing a comparable fragility\" (191).\n\nHope seems to lie with the mixed couple formed by Yza and Mohamed. The children are not drawn in a way that marks them as different from French mainstream society. Unlike their fathers, they are not religious: indeed, Mohamed is a self-proclaimed atheist, while Yza has an argument with her father because she claims her Jewish identity as a cultural, not a religious one. When their children suggest the establishment of one secular democratic country for both Palestinians and Israelis in historical Palestine, Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl are both pictured as laughing until they cried at the idea (154).\n\nOne strip does highlight the potential difficulties of being in such a union because of the events in the Middle East (37). After Yza and Mohamed's relationship is discovered by their fathers, Isma\u00ebl's dismay is obvious when he asks his son about his girlfriend and his clothing. Isma\u00ebl's conception of identity is linked to the genealogical paradigm, as evidenced when he quotes a proverb to his son emphasizing the importance of one's roots: \"si tu coupes mes barreaux tu me lib\u00e8res si tu coupes mes racines tu me tues!\" 'if you cut my bars you free me if you cut my roots you kill me' (36). Mohamed's answer demonstrates a positive view of _m\u00e9tissage_ , when he replies to his father that his clothing and his girlfriend act as fertilizers (36).17\n\nYet this optimistic view is tempered in the very next page (the two pages face each other, as if to give two possible alternatives). Titled \"L'\u00e9toile, le croissant, la capote\" 'the star, the crescent, the condom,' this second page highlights the fact that relations between Muslims and Jews in France are inevitably colored by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Yza introduces Mohamed to a friend whose mother is Jewish and whose father is Muslim, Mohamed takes this opportunity to ask this friend how he lives his dual identity, as Mohamed is curious to know since his future children would be in the same situation. Upon hearing that, Yza's friend runs away screaming \"Me parlez pas d'Isra\u00ebl\" 'don't talk to me about Israel' although no one has mentioned the Middle East. Boudjellal underscores that the divisiveness surrounding the conflict is the main problem for the child of a mixed Jewish-Arab union.18 The punch line of the strip, when Mohamed goes to buy condoms, suggests that from the children's point of view, the Arab-Israeli conflict is preventing the two groups from renewing their Biblical genealogy.19\n\nOne of the most interesting changes in the various editions of the series is the title. Boudjellal's title has changed from _Juif-Arabe_ in the 1990s to _Juifs-Arabes_ in the 2006 edition. The title evokes Albert Memmi's _Juifs et Arabes_ , discussed in the previous section. Memmi, himself an Arab Jew, posits the two groups side by side and separate in the title of his essay. This \"erasure of the hyphen\" as Shohat pointed out, was crucial to Zionist thought, since the \"Arabness and the Orientalness of Jews posed a challenge to any simplistic definition of Jewish national identity, questioning the very axiom and boundaries of the Euro-Israeli national project\" (\"Rupture\" 62).\n\nAlthough the Sephardic community has a long history of coexistence with Muslims and Christians in the Maghreb and other Arab countries, this shared history barely surfaces in this comic book. The term \"juif-arabe\" that gives its title to the series appears only twice in the comics proper. The first time is when Isra\u00ebl tells Isma\u00ebl that his nephew was denied access to a night club. Upon hearing this information, Isma\u00ebl asks in disbelief whether his nephew is Jewish, to which Isra\u00ebl replies that his nephew is \"juif-arabe\" (55). This is the only statement in the album that hints to a connection between Isra\u00ebl, who is an Ashkenazi, with the Sephardic community, and the only use of the term \"Juif-Arabe\" that alludes to the existence of Jews of Arab culture, or Sephardim, Jews of Islam, African Jews, and so forth, among some of the names listed by Ella Shohat.20 Such a connection is done in the context of highlighting discrimination on the basis of facial and physical features. The second time the term \"juif-arabe\" appears is when Mohamed refers to his relationship with Yza as \"une union juif-arabe\" (148). The \"Juif-Arabe\" at stake in this book is the relationship between both communities in France, and the new possibility of the \"Juif-Arabe\" that Mohamed and Yza's children would be.\n\nAnother page alludes to the two main Judaic families. Isra\u00ebl is telling a joke to Isma\u00ebl, to whom he asks: \"Savez-vous ce qu'est un Ashk\u00e9naze aujourd'hui?\" 'Do you know what is an Ashkenazi today?' He carries on, answering his question while laughing: \"Un S\u00e9farade qui a r\u00e9ussi\" 'a successful Sephardi' (79). This alludes to what Solange Gu\u00e9noun has called \"un colonialisme int\u00e9rieur\" 'internal colonialism' (225), characterized by a binary opposition between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic branches of Judaism. The devalorization of the Sephardic heritage by Ashkenazim has been described as the colonization of one Judaic branch by another, linked to the European colonial project, whereby European Jews imposed their norms and culture on \"Oriental\" Jews, a phenomenon that occurred in France,21 colonial Algeria,22 and Israel.23 The title of that page, \"C'est encore un Arabe,\" emphasizes the disappearance of the Arab Jew's identity in a world whose politics (with Zionism and Arab nationalism playing a crucial role in that process) frame Arabs and Jews as entities that must be kept separate.\n\nIn contrast to Memmi's title, the replacement of the conjunction \"et\" by a hyphen (significantly \"trait d'union\" in French) seems to demonstrate a will to bring both communities closer. The role of the hyphen is to bring together words so that they form a unit. Boudjellal's early title thus creates a link between the words it joins, the categories of \"Arab\" and \"Jew.\" This closeness is further achieved, at least on paper, through the collapsing of both substantives, which posits an organic connection between both communities from the very start. The elimination of the hyphen underscores the fact that Arabs and Jews cannot be thought of without the other, a literal rendering of what Hochberg meant when she wrote that \" 'Jew' and 'Arab,' rather than representing two independent identities, are in fact inevitably attached\" (2). The change from singular to plural may signal a will to break from abstract categories to put the focus on the mass of actual individuals they refer to.\n\nIn the final section, both families happen to be vacationing at the same place and time. This forces them to make some concessions. Phrases such as \"n\u00e9gociations orageuses\" 'stormy negotiations' and \"partager le territoire\" 'splitting the territory' (157) are clear allusions to the ideology of separation inherited from the partition of historical Palestine, still prevalent in the two-state solution approach that dominates attempts to solve the conflict. Boudjellal plays here on the two possible meanings of the verb \"partager,\" which can mean either \"to share\" or \"to split.\" \"Partager le territoire\" indeed they do, but not in the sense of splitting. Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl end up vacationing together, and are shown as actually sharing the territory (or rather, in the circumstances, the beach). On the beach they are both offended and thus united by their dislike of liberal French manners, specifically topless women, and they are forced to dance on a tune they both judge obscene. This unity against some French habits24 does not prevent them from fighting over the issue of Israel and Palestine. After a respite during the vacations, once again they start arguing over the Middle East, and therefore decide to take different routes on the way back. But news on the radio about recrudescent clashes between Israel and Palestinians awakens once again their transnational solidarities, and they find themselves on the highway en route to the Near East. The last words come from Yza and Mohamed, who are of course happy to see each other sooner than expected. The last words: \"Finalement, on fait la route ensemble!\" 'in the end, we travel together!' (165), stress that the French Muslim and Jewish communities can find a modus vivendi.\n\nSome of the thorny issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict come up here and there throughout the strip, such as the Occupied Territories (8, 12), the Intifada (16, 19, 25), the PLO's recognition of the state of Israel (23), Israel as a colony (29), the right of return for Palestinian refugees (27), and the political deadlock between Palestinians and Israelis (39). Despite these references to Middle Eastern events and their influence on the characters, the book is grounded in the French context, thanks to cultural references specific to France, such as the issue of naming the population of Maghrebian origin (47), immigration (15, 49), racism against Arabs (47, 51), anti-Semitism by various segments of the French population (both Arabs and \"Fran\u00e7ais de souche\"), the debates on affirmative action (14, 51), a joke about Arab grocers open late at night (56) and about the difficulty to get permits to build mosques (119), and an allusion to Serge Gainsbourg's hit single \"Sea, sex and sun,\" which becomes \"sea, sex and je\u00fbne (pour les ramadans d'\u00e9t\u00e9)\" 'sea, sex and fast (for summertime ramadans)' (155).\n\nThe last drawing of the book features Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl dressed as Ast\u00e9rix and Ob\u00e9lix, respectively, the heroes of the renowned series by Ren\u00e9 Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Isra\u00ebl, who is stout, wears Ob\u00e9lix's striped trademark pants and carries a menhir, while Isma\u00ebl, who is shorter and thin, wears Ast\u00e9rix's belt, winged helmet, and sword to the side. There is a genealogy at play here, but of a different kind: with the _bande dessin\u00e9e_ or BD, a genre that benefits from cultural esteem, as evidenced by state support and well-established critical traditions in France and Belgium (McQuillan 7). Indeed, in France BDs are often referred to as the ninth art, \"a phrase rarely uttered in the USA or the UK\" (Screech 1), and that elevates comics as an art on par with cinema and photography. Boudjellal thereby situates his series in a well-established tradition of slapstick humor.25 _Ast\u00e9rix_ characters have made their marks not only on comic strips and French popular culture, they have also become reference points \"for politicians, journalists and intellectuals,\" and there is for the French a \"strong identification process with our puny but clever comic strip hero\" (Steel 216). By casting Isma\u00ebl and Isra\u00ebl as avatars of Ast\u00e9rix and Ob\u00e9lix, Boudjellal seems to agree with Screech who states in the context of the _Ast\u00e9rix_ series' international success that Ast\u00e9rix is \"a hero with whom almost everybody can identify, wherever they come from\" (75).\n\nThis last image constitutes a counterpoint to the beginning of the book. The first drawing shows Isra\u00ebl and Isma\u00ebl separated by a wall that interferes with dialogue, no doubt an allusion to the wall being built by the state of Israel around the Occupied Territories. However, Isra\u00ebl and Isma\u00ebl are often drawn sitting down having a conversation. Indeed, they both agree that were it not for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they would be good friends (149). In the last drawing, Isra\u00ebl and Isma\u00ebl have retained their black beards (as opposed to the Gaulish characters' mustaches), they have hairy arms, Isra\u00ebl has kept his black hat and Isma\u00ebl his glasses, thus becoming potential new inhabitants that could blend in the famous Gaulish village while retaining some of their distinguishing features. They are shown as laughing and walking together, as if to symbolize a possible friendship such as the one that unites Ast\u00e9rix and Ob\u00e9lix, in the context of France, and the assonance between their names reinforces their portrayal as a tandem.\n\nAlthough in Francophone studies the now infamous phrase \"nos anc\u00eatres les Gaulois\" 'our ancestors the Gauls' is often used ironically to refer to the Eurocentric curriculum taught to children in the French colonies, I interpret Boudjellal's reappropriation of the Gaulish genealogy of the French as a means to highlight the diversity of France at the turn of the twenty-first century as well as a model of coexistence for the French Jewish and Arab communities. J.W.T. Mitchell argues that \"images are active players in the game of establishing and changing values. They are capable of introducing new values into the world and thus threatening old ones\" (105). While the Biblical references do point to a shared genealogy in a long gone past, the contemporary popular culture symbolized by the quintessentially French _Ast\u00e9rix_ series is grounded in the present. Mitchell reminds us in his latest book that \"The nation, as political theorist Benedict Anderson has argued, is an 'imagined community,' a cultural construction made up of images and discourses\" (273). If so, then visual representations are as important as verbal ones to build the nation. Boudjellal's image is a visual integration of Muslims and Jews in the French Republic that participates in the construction of France as a country with a diverse population.\n\nBoudjellal's series is remarkable in its choice of comic genre and humor that rely on stereotypes to treat a highly charged and divisive topic, given the current climate that Solange Gu\u00e9noun has qualified as \"catastrophisme ambiant concernant l'\u00e9tat des relations jud\u00e9o-musulmanes en France\" 'surrounding catas-trophism regarding the state of Jewish-Muslim relations in France' (218), and the devastation caused by many of the events that are alluded to in the strip (the Holocaust, suicide bombings, repression of the Palestinians). Humor that traces its roots to a well-established tradition, recognized and respected by all segments of the population, might indeed be the best means to envision a near future where the Jewish and Arab branches of the Semitic family might cross again, in peace, as full-fledged members of the French Republic.\n\n#### Karin Albou's _La petite J\u00e9rusalem_\n\nBoudjellal's optimistic vision contrasts sharply with Karin Albou's first full-length feature film, _La petite J\u00e9rusalem_ (2004). Albou is a rising Jewish French director26 with ties to Algeria through her paternal family. Her film focuses on a community that is rarely portrayed on the screen: the Orthodox Jewish community27 of Sarcelles, a Parisian suburb. Fifteen per cent of Sarcelles' 57000 inhabitants are Jewish; half of them are of Tunisian origin (Podselver 275). In an interview added to the English DVD, Albou stated that she wanted to shoot in that specific suburb because it is emblematic of Jewish immigration from North Africa in the 1960s.\n\nThe film is a subtle depiction of two Jewish sisters, originally from Tunisia, who struggle with sexual desire in different ways. The family, who lives on a tight budget in a small apartment in a low-income neighborhood, is composed of Mathilde, her mother, her husband Ariel, their children, and Mathilde's younger sister Laura. Laura studies philosophy at a university in Paris and longs for life in the city. Her adoption of Kantian principles is put to the test when she gets involved in a relationship with Djamel, an Algerian. Meanwhile, Mathilde's discovery of her husband's unfaithfulness leads her to question assumptions about her faith's stand on sexual matters. Albou paints a nuanced relationship between the two sisters who choose very different itineraries, and explores complex issues linked to intimacy and faith. However, her depiction of relationships between Arab-Muslims and Jews is very grim, as is the place she reserves for an observant Jewish family in France.\n\nAlthough the title of the film and the focus on the Jewish family foreground the Jewish quarter and inhabitants of Sarcelles, people in the street and the subway clearly show the multiethnic character of the neighborhood, with Africans sporting traditional boubous, and Muslim women wearing headscarves along with Jewish women with nets covering their hair. Although the Arab and Jewish communities live side by side in the film, they do not have much interaction. In contrast to daylight shots that focus on the high rise HLM buildings, the neighborhood's streets are mostly shot at night, creating a dominant feeling of isolation, despair, and drabness. The scenes during which Laura takes her daily evening walk following Kant's example, are too dark to distinguish much other than the word halal on a sign and a religious bookstore.\n\nThe French DVD cover specifies that the film takes place in \"un quartier de Sarcelles appel\u00e9 'La Petite J\u00e9rusalem' car de nombreux juifs s'y sont install\u00e9s\" 'a quarter of Sarcelles called 'little Jerusalem' because many Jews settled there.' This nickname and the explanation that is provided are significant in two ways. First, they highlight Jewish transnational affiliations to the Israeli state. But in doing so, it silences the long history of Jews in the Maghreb. Calling this area of Sarcelles 'la petite J\u00e9rusalem' can be seen as a misnomer. It is not the same as the nickname of Chinatown for part of Paris' XIIIth arrondissement for instance, because the Jews who live there did not come from Jerusalem, but from the Maghreb. Thus the explanation provided contributes to erasing the existence of Arab Jews.\n\nWhile the film does reflect that this \"little Jerusalem,\" like the Middle Eastern city, has Arab and Jewish populations living side by side, the title as it is explained in the packaging of the film occults the fact that Jerusalem has a highly contested status since both Palestinians and Israelis claim it as their capital. In some sense, the title and the film indirectly replicate the Arab-Israeli conflict over the Holy Land in France, this time in a French suburb where each group seems to fight for its place in it. The explanation given to the suburb's nickname on the DVD cover implies that only one ethnic group can claim it as its own. Albou's film's packaging thereby perpetuates the phenomenon experienced by the actual city, which sees its \"Arab character . . . continually being eroded, shriveling its links to the Levant,\" and this despite the fact that Jerusalem is \"a complete microcosm of Levantine and Arab Jewry\" (Alcalay 110). Moreover, connecting Jerusalem to the Jewish state occults the fact that \"during the 1,310-year period dating from the Arab conquest in 638 until 1948, there were only 129 years in which Jerusalem was _not_ under one form or another of Islamic sovereignty\" (Alcalay 113). This signals the effect that the creation of Israel has had on Jewish communities in the Arab world, which is to occult their link to Arab culture.\n\nReferences to some cultural traits refer to the family's Maghrebian origin: the mother and Mathilde occasionally speak Arabic, the mother talks about Tunisia and uses a hand of Fatima as a talisman to protect her daughter. When Laura writes a letter to Djamel, the mother warns her against doing so, and explains to her \"je les connais ces gens-l\u00e0\" 'I know those people.' The reference to the family's past in Tunisia is mostly associated with the traumatic event of a precipitated departure whose complex political context is not elaborated upon, but simply emphasizes that the Jews were expelled after the country's independence.\n\nDespite some common cultural elements, religion on both sides is an obstacle to Laura and Djamel's relationship: Laura writes to Djamel that her religious upbringing does not allow her to continue seeing him, but she later relents. Djamel's family expresses its profound displeasure upon learning that Laura is Jewish, and demands that Laura convert before Djamel can marry her (contrary to Muslim tenets that allow a Muslim man to marry Christian and Jewish women, and despite Djamel's objection that he does not care for religion). Djamel, an illegal refugee from the Algerian civil war, is at the mercy of his uncle because his illegal status prevents him from standing up to his relative. He ends up breaking up with Laura because he does not want to impose his religion on her.\n\nDetails contribute to creating a climate of insecurity: a policeman keeps watch outside the synagogue during a celebration, the loudspeaker on the subway refers to the Vigipirate plan, Ariel hides his kippah under a cap when coming home, etc. Two incidents emphasize the vulnerability of the Jewish community: the local synagogue falls prey to arson, and Ariel is attacked by thugs while playing soccer outside with children, all wearing a kippah. Nothing in the film identifies the perpetrators of these crimes. However, in the context of France at the dawn of the twenty-first century, these incidents will evoke the rise of anti-Semitism that has made headlines, and that has been attributed to the far right and youth of immigrant origins, the latter being a repercussion of the second Intifada. Given that, in the context of the film, the neighbors are Arabs, this anti-Semitism will be inferred as being caused by the Arab-Muslim population. In fact, I would argue that the failed love relationship between Laura and Djamel orients the viewer to blaming anti-Semitism solely on the Arab segment of the population.\n\nAriel's decision to move to Israel is never explained. One can interpret it as an escape from a hostile environment, or from the shame brought by Laura's suicide attempt. I surmise that the film and the context will orient the viewer towards the first interpretation. Ariel's announcement comes after Laura's attempt to commit suicide, and after a scene in which the _mikveh_ 's attendant advised Mathilde to move. Because her advice comes right after she asked about Laura, one could infer that Laura's well-being is dependent upon getting out of this neighborhood. Indeed, a recurring aerial shot of hazy Paris in which one can barely guess the Eiffel Tower and the Montparnasse Tower can be seen as a representation of Laura's unfulfilled desire to move to the city.\n\nWhile several scenes stress the diversity of the French population, the decision of the family to move to Israel seems to imply that there is no safe place in France for this religious community. Ironically, it is hinted that this move will not shelter them from Arab-Jewish tensions. When the children are shown building their imaginary home in Israel, one of them takes a helicopter toy to bomb and destroy it. This scene could also be read as emphasizing the hypocritical stance of Israeli officials who alarmingly stated that Jews were no longer safe in France and should move to Israel. Either way, this (unrealistic) threat of helicopters bombing Israel serves more to emphasize (Arab) hostility towards Jews wherever they are while occulting the specifics of the context in which they take place.\n\nAt the beginning of the movie, Laura is filmed as set aside from her community: in the scene by the river, a progressive high-angle shot emphasizes that she is standing alone at a short distance from the rest of the group. After the decision is made for the family to emigrate to Israel, Laura decides to stay in France. Her mother offers Laura her ring to give her the means to move to Paris. This forthcoming move to Paris can be seen as her integration into French society and sealing her disconnect from her tight-knit community which had already been hinted at from the beginning. The last scene shows her alone in the subway, with people passing behind her in a blur. Laura might be moving to the city, but she is even more alone than she was at the beginning of the film, since at least her community was just next to her. This film offers a pessimistic glimpse of Arab-Jewish relations in France as well as on the place of the Orthodox Jewish community in the Hexagon.\n\n### Conclusion\n\nThe now commonplace reference to the Judeo-Christian tradition overshadows the fact that, as Mohamed Talbi and others noted, there is more affinity between Judaism and Islam than between Judaism and Christianity, and this especially applies to the Maghreb not only at the level of religious tenets but also at the sociological level (47). Bernard Lewis reminds us that the term Judeo-Christian is still new (qtd. in Majid, _Unveiling_ note 27, 163), a fact that prompts Majid to wonder: \"If the Judeo prefix that precedes the adjective of Christian is an attempt to bury this history [of Western anti-Semitism] under the assumption of a common heritage, why would the Muslim become the Jew's Other, especially if Lewis himself states that 'Jewish and Muslim theology are far closer to each other than is either to Christianity?' \" ( _Unveiling_ 12). The term Judeo-Christian also helps silence the historical evidence that there was an inverse situation concerning Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim relations that showed that Jews fared better under Muslim rule: \"le tableau est donc exactement inverse: d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9, intol\u00e9rance avec quelques exceptions, de l'autre, tol\u00e9rance avec quelques exceptions\" 'the picture is thus exactly the opposite: on the one hand, intolerance with a few exceptions, on the other, tolerance with a few exceptions' (Rabi Josy Eisenberg, qtd. in Talbi 49).\n\nWhile the diaspora of Jews from the Arab world is brandished as a proof of Arab Muslims' anti-Semitism, less attention is being given to the fact that the migration of Jews is not solely occurring in the Arab-Muslim world, witness the post-WWII East European migration (Valensi 56). Graham Fuller notes that \"to emphasize commonality [between religions] implies a quest for coexistence and understanding, an overcoming of cultural differences, and above all attaching major value to the _very act of coexistence_ and tolerance as part of a religious outlook\" (205). Writers such as Memmi and film directors such as Albou minimize this shared cultural heritage, while El Maleh's and Boudjellal's works remind us of past models or prompt us to envision future ones of coexistence.\n\n### Notes\n\n1. See Hochberg 20-43. Her chapter focuses on the question of the \"status of the Arab Jew today in the context of Zionism: does this figure belong to a lost history and merely represent a current political impossibility, or does it (also) represent a futuristic antiessentialist and antinationalist cultural-political stance with direct implications for the present?\" (17-18).\n\n2. Memmi expresses his dislike of the phrase \"Juifs-Arabes\" used out of convenience to denote that \"natifs de ces pays dits arabes, originaires de ces contr\u00e9es bien avant l'arriv\u00e9e des Arabes, nous en partageons, d'une mani\u00e8re non n\u00e9gligeable, les langues, les coutumes et les cultures\" 'because we were born in these so-called Arab countries and had been living in those regions long before the arrival of the Arabs, we share their languages, their customs, and their cultures to an extent that is not negligible' ( _Juifs_ note 2, 59, Levieux 29).\n\n3. See Shohat's \"Rupture and Return\" about the complex factors, including the role of Zionist activists, in forcing the departure of Iraqi Jews (55-56).\n\n4. A search on anti-Semitism in the library catalogue will yield entries on anti-Judaism for the pre-modern period, and distinctions are made by countries (anti-Semitism in France, Germany, etc.) as well as entries on the new anti-Semitism.\n\n5. For Tunisia, see Sebag (273-297).\n\n6. L\u00e9vy on the other hand describes the history of Moroccan Jews as a \"tradition de cohabitation tol\u00e9rante dans le cadre de la l\u00e9gislation musulmane\" 'tradition of tolerant cohabitation within the framework of Muslim legislation' with some parentheses (38).\n\n7. See for instance how the titles of _Agar_ and _La statue de sel_ are clear Biblical allusions although the narrator of both semi-fictional novels repudiates his religious background.\n\n8. \"Car la partie ne se joue pas seulement entre Palestiniens et Isra\u00e9liens mais entre la quasi-totalit\u00e9 des pays arabo-musulmans et la majorit\u00e9 des juifs dans le monde\" 'For the conflict extends beyond the Palestinians and Israelis, involving nearly all the Arab-Muslim countries and the majority of the world's Jews' (Memmi, _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9_ 40, Bononno 24).\n\n9. There is a mistranslation here: \"Ne poss\u00e9dant pas de m\u00e9tropole derri\u00e8re lui [Israel], pour en venir \u00e0 bout il faudrait le d\u00e9truire\" (41) became \"However, to threaten the destruction of Israel would have catastrophic consequences\" (25). Here is a more faithful rendering: \"with no parent state behind it [Israel], one would have to destroy it to defeat it.\"\n\n10. My translation. This sentence is part of an entire paragraph that is missing from Bononno's translation.\n\n11. For the differences in status between the various Jewish communities in Tunisia (which at the time of independence included Jews of French, Italian, and Tunisian citizenship), see Sebag's study. These differences also account for the choice of destination once the decision to emigrate had been taken (see note 5).\n\n12. Social class is also a factor in the choice of destination when Arab Jews decided to leave the Maghreb. El Maleh states that most Moroccan Jews went to Israel, then to Canada, and the richest to France (Redonnet 80). This is corroborated by L\u00e9vy who states that middle and upper class Jews went to France and Canada (32). Zafrani explains that the Jewish Agency recruited not only poor urban masses but also people from the South and the mountains to emigrate to Israel because they were considered \"plus aptes que les citadins \u00e0 fonder des colonies agricoles\" 'better fitted than town-dwellers to establish agricultural colonies' (293). Sebag also notes that those who were most well-off and Westernized went to France, while the most traditional and poor segments of the population went to Israel (Sebag 301).\n\n13. \"Il y a des juifs. Cette entit\u00e9 de l'\u00eatre juif est ce contre quoi je m'insurge\" 'There are Jews. What I am rebelling against is this entity of the Jewish being' (qtd. in Redonnet 91).\n\n14. This section has appeared as \"From _Juif-Arabe_ to _JuifsArabes_ : Jews and Arabs in France in Boudjellal's Comic Books\" in _Expressions maghr\u00e9bines_ 7.2 (Winter 2008): 159-171. It has been revised.\n\n15. This series includes _L'oud, Le gourbi_ , and _Ramad\u00e2n_. For an analysis of Boudjellal's early work, see Douglas and Malti-Douglas (198-216).\n\n16. Some of the pages have been eliminated, such as the ones that featured two skinhead characters, shown as beating up Isra\u00ebl and Isma\u00ebl (who have thus found a common enemy), and painting racist insults on walls, emblematic of the rise of the far right and racism. Other pages have been modified: mentions of the Front National and Le Pen have been erased, one of them replaced by the more general term Fascism. References to the first Gulf War and Salman Rushdie have also been taken out. The original four albums and the first compilation were drawn in colors. These multicolor albums have been reduced to three colors in the last version published in 2006: black, white and brown. The choice of color (or rather lack of a color scheme) could be interpreted as a means to better highlight the conflicting situation (as Masson has said about comic strips in black and white). When I asked Boudjellal about the factors that motivated this change, he answered that the decision to change from four colors to three was made solely on aesthetic grounds, in order to give a more polished look to the album as well as a feel of \"un livre d'auteur.\"\n\n17. One could object that the use of the word \"engrais\" betrays a sexist blind spot in Mohamed's view of _m\u00e9tissage_ , which objectifies the woman and presents her as an instrument instead of a full partner.\n\n18. This is in line with Boudjellal's exploration of issues raised by mixed couples in _Jambon-Beur: Les couples mixtes_. Through the contrast between the children of Arab-French and Arab-Senegalese couples, Boudjellal emphasizes that history and politics bear on how one lives such a dual heritage (see McKinney 180-184).\n\n19. The same cannot be said about the mothers. Although the fact that the Jewish matrilineal and Muslim patrilineal transmission of religion would seem to satisfy both families, since both could claim the still hypothetical children of Yza and Mohamed as their own, it is a source of conflict and is the only time in the book when Isma\u00eblle and Isra\u00eblle fight with each other (86-87). Otherwise, the women have a lot in common (they both cover their hair for instance, with a headscarf for one and a wig for the other), they also band together about issues such as contraception and abortion, this time against their husbands who are joining forces on organizing a demonstration (95).\n\n20. Shohat points out that \"the very proliferation of terms suggests the difficulties of grappling with the complexities of this identity\" (\"Rupture\" 52).\n\n21. See articles by Gu\u00e9noun and Azria.\n\n22. Benjamin Stora has detailed how the 1870 Cr\u00e9mieux decree, which gave French citizenship to indigenous Jews, triggered the assimilation of the Jewish community with the European community in Algeria. He has interpreted this event as a colonization of Algerian Judaism by French Judaism (292).\n\n23. See Shohat's 1997 article.\n\n24. The similarities that are highlighted between the two men include the position of women in society, secularist permissiveness in general, and their relationship with a Catholic priest.\n\n25. Goscinny and Uderzo's goal with the series was to create a \" _French_ strip-cartoon Laurel and Hardy in order to entertain their readership\" (Steel 202).\n\n26. Her film was nominated for the C\u00e9sar's Best First Film award (as was its lead actress).\n\n27. Albou has stated in an interview accompanying the DVD that she finds the Orthodox version of Judaism suffocating.\n\n## Chapter 3\n\n## The Lebanese Civil War: Andr\u00e9e Ch\u00e9did's _La maison sans racines_ and Evelyne Accad's _L'excis\u00e9e_\n\nThe 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war was a bloody conflict that was spurred by internal factors and flamed by external ones, and whose complexity is impossible to render in a couple of paragraphs. The term \"civil war\" is actually a misnomer, as Lebanon's domestic affairs got entangled with the politics of the region and the conflict took an international dimension, fueled by Israel's invasions, Syrian troop deployment, and U.S. Marines intervention. As Latif Abul-Husn summed it up, \"the conflict revolved around three main themes: reform of the political system, the national identity of Lebanon, and Lebanon's sovereignty\" (2). According to him, the tension that emerged between Christians and Muslims was due to three factors: \"the rise to power of an organized Palestinian armed resistance in Lebanon that aligned itself with the Muslim bloc; a soaring Arab nationalist feeling in the wider region; and the rising expectations of the Shiites and their demands on the system for a greater share in the power structure\" (2).\n\nBeginning with the Arab conquest in the seventh century, Lebanon was part of various Islamic empires, with the exception of the period of the Crusades. Following massacres of Christian Maronites by Druze in Mount Lebanon in 1860, France intervened and Mount Lebanon was established as a privileged administrative region of the Ottoman Empire. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, France ceded to Maronites' demands and annexed parts of the Syrian provinces that fell under its mandate to the territory of Mount Lebanon to create present-day Lebanon. Such a separation was not acceptable from an Arab nationalist point of view (Salibi, _A House_ 28). According to Kamal Salibi, the establishment of Lebanon as a state under the French Mandate in 1920 was \"enthusiastically accepted by the Christians, and adamantly rejected by the Muslims\" ( _A House_ 2).\n\nWhen the French Mandate ended and Lebanon became independent in 1943, an agreement known as the National Pact was reached, primarily between Maronite and Sunni elites. According to this agreement, government positions were distributed proportionally amongst the recognized confessional groups based on the data provided by the 1932 census. The census showed a slight majority of Christians and served as the basis for allocating a Christian\/Muslim ratio of 6 to 5 for offices in Parliament, civil service, the army, and the judiciary.1 Maronites kept key positions, including the Presidency and the command of the army. Part of the agreement entailed that Muslims recognize Lebanese sovereignty and independence while Maronites affirm its Arab heritage and forego Western protection. Lebanese law required that every citizen's religious affiliation be clearly indicated on their identity cards.\n\nThe National Pact solidified the sectarian social structure and Maronite hegemony. It did not anticipate the uneven population growth that would in time create further disparity to be added to economic inequities between various groups. The struggle for a redistribution of power to mirror Lebanon's demographic changes and economic disparities were major factors in the 1975-1990 conflict. Maronites opposed demands for a new census for fear of losing power. Religious sectarianism was also exacerbated by an educational system that followed confessional lines, with the teaching of history becoming a highly politicized issue (Salibi, _A House_ 201-04). According to Salibi, Muslim and Christian Lebanese have fundamental differences about the historicity of their country, with Christians favoring Lebanese particularism while Muslims tend to situate it within a broader Arab-Muslim history. These opposite views of Lebanese history between Lebanism and Arabism underlie the ongoing political conflict (Salibi, _A House_ 3).\n\nIn addition to the problems due to Lebanon's confessional system, there were fundamental differences among Lebanese over issues involving the rest of the Arab world, most notably the Palestinian issue and the rise of Arab nationalism following Nasser's call for pan-Arab unity and the subsequent and brief merger of his country with Syria (1958-1961). After the creation of Israel in 1948 and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the influx of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon further complicated its internal situation. In general, Maronites were opposed to the presence of Palestinians, who in 1968 constituted 14 percent of Lebanon's population (Smith 315), as such presence compromised the fragile population equilibrium (since most Palestinians were Muslim). Thus, Palestinians were not allowed to integrate into Lebanese society and remained confined to refugee camps. Maronites also opposed Palestinian military operations against Israel from Lebanon, as it resulted in disproportionate Israeli retaliation, culminating with the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a watershed event. In contrast, Muslims and leftists were more sympathetic with the Palestinian cause.\n\nIt is crucial to emphasize that alliances kept changing as the Lebanese conflict evolved: \"At different stages of the conflict the antagonism was greatest between the Christian and Muslim divisions, while at other stages the dividing line was between left and right, and so on, depending on the ebb and flow of the issue in dispute\" (Abul-Husn 3). Thus, in the period from 1977 to 1982, \"the Syrians who entered ostensibly in defense of the Christians were now engaged in battle with them; the Christian forces were entwined in internal warfare with each other; and the Palestinians and Shiites who fought side by side in the early war years were now engaged in prolonged combat\" (Salem 124).2\n\nThis chapter examines how two Francophone Lebanese writers have depicted the conflict, and more specifically how they have dealt with the religious dimension of a civil war that was summarily elucidated as a Muslim\/Christian rift in the West. Charles Smith has noted that the complexity of allegiances that characterized the Lebanon political landscape could not be delineated according to religious lines; yet, \"the Maronite leadership continued to present the question as one of Muslim-Christian strife, all the better to depict the issue as a religious clash to the outside world, as they had done since 1958\" (356). I demonstrate that two books published by Lebanese writers, Ch\u00e9did's _La maison sans racines_ and Accad's _L'excis\u00e9e_ , can be seen as perpetuating such a reductive view of the Lebanese civil war as a religious conflict. In addition, a close analysis of the Biblical and Qur'anic intertext of Accad's novel shows that the inscription of verses from the Qur'an provides a stereotyped view of Islam while the Biblical references implicitly reaffirm Christian values of sacrifice and redemption.\n\n### Andr\u00e9e Ch\u00e9did's _La maison sans racines_\n\nCh\u00e9did's novel is characterized by a complex narrative structure that intertwines three different time frames, each being clearly indicated through the use of different numerals and font setting. It starts with a day in August 1975, when two young women, Muslim Ammal and Christian Myriam, who have been friends since childhood, are marching towards each other with the hope of sparking a march of reconciliation. That day's tragic ending is prefigured at the very beginning though its outcome will only be divulged at the end. The other time frame is July-August 1975, which is a flashback about the reasons why Kalya meets her granddaughter Sybil in Lebanon for the first time (Kalya lives in Paris and Sybil in the U.S.). This time frame eventually catches up with Ammal and Myriam's march. The third time frame is 1932, when Kalya recalls the vacation she spent in Lebanon with her own grandmother, Nouza, a situation that parallels hers and Sybil's.\n\nThere are very clear references to European historical events, including the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and facilitated the rise of fascism, specific references to Hitler and Mussolini (81), and the events of WWII (83). However, all allusions to Lebanese history and current events are deliberately vague. For instance, when the taxi is stopped for an identity check before entering the city, Kalya reflects that \"Apr\u00e8s les brefs \u00e9v\u00e9nements d'il y a quelques ann\u00e9es, elle pensait que tout \u00e9tait redevenu calme\" 'After the brief events of a few years ago, she thought that everything had settled down again' (19, Schwartz 19), but never hints at what those events consisted of. Further on, the mention of \"la flamb\u00e9e meurtri\u00e8re\" 'the fatal outburst' that took place fifteen years prior probably alludes to the mini-civil war of 1958, but that has to be inferred (38, Schwartz 43). During their ride from the airport, during which they pass by luxury hotels and villas, Sybil inquires about something that contrasts sharply with the rest of the landscape, and that is described as follows: \"au bas des falaises, s'embo\u00eetant les unes dans les autres, des cabanes en fer-blanc s'entassent, suivies d'un amoncellement de tentes brun\u00e2tres\" 'at the foot of the cliffs, lies a tight cluster of tin huts and a mass of brownish tents' (18, Schwartz 17). The driver at first does not answer and speeds up, but after Sybil insists, wondering whether people live there, he retorts: \"C'est provisoire\" 'It's temporary' (18, Schwartz 17). There is no mention of Palestinians in the novel, but this description and the driver's statement undoubtedly evoke their refugee camps.\n\nCh\u00e9did's novel tends to pass over historical events with few allusions to the issues that triggered them. For instance, in the following paragraph, which appears in the July-August 1975 time frame, one can easily recognize the events that sparked the beginning of the civil war:\n\nAmmal et Myriam venaient d'apprendre qu'en pleine ville des hommes arm\u00e9s avaient stopp\u00e9 un autocar, abattu une dizaine de passagers. Le m\u00eame jour, dans la proche campagne, d'autres avaient d\u00e9couvert les cadavres mutil\u00e9s de cinq jeunes gens jet\u00e9s au bas d'un talus. \nQui avait commenc\u00e9? Quel acte avait pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 l'autre? D\u00e9j\u00e0 les fils s'enchev\u00eatraient. (71) \nAmmal and Myriam had just learned that armed men had held up a bus in the middle of the city and murdered ten passengers. The same day, in the surrounding countryside, others had discovered at the foot of an embankment the mutilated corpses of five young people. \nWho had started it? Which act had come first? The threads were already becoming tangled. (Schwartz 83)\n\nAlthough there is some inaccuracy regarding the date, the first allusion is to the incident that occurred on April 13, 1975, when Christian Phalanges gunmen killed 27 Palestinian passengers on a bus, and that is commonly considered the event that marked the start of the war.3 The author purposefully avoids mentioning any of the various parties involved in the conflict, thereby refusing to blame any group, and stressing the fact that the cause and beginning of the conflict are difficult to pinpoint.\n\nThe recollection of events that happened in 1932 is triggered by what is happening in 1975, with the numerous parallelisms that brings the two time frames closer. This choice of year may be an indirect reference to the census of 1932, and the consequences it had on the political structure of Lebanon. Anne-Marie Miraglia has shown that the narrative technique of intertwining three different time periods, along with lexical and thematic resonances \"facilitent l'encha\u00eenement des s\u00e9quences tout en insistant sur la nature cyclique de l'Histoire et de l'existence humaine\" 'facilitate the chain of sequences while insisting on the cyclical nature of History and human life' (33). While the novel provides no allusion to the issues of the census and the National Pact, the choice of 1932 to echo 1975 points to one of the key issues in the civil war. And yet at the same time, the accent on the \"cyclical nature of history,\" as Miraglia phrased it, deemphasizes the historical processes or the reasons why history seems to be repeating itself.\n\nThrough a pair of siblings, Myriam and George, Ch\u00e9did emphasizes the fratricidal aspect of the conflict, and therefore an imagined unity of Lebanon: \"Les heurts travers\u00e9s par le pays, par les r\u00e9gions avoisinantes, secouaient les deux adolescents, redoublant leur opposition\" 'The clashes that occurred in the country, in neighboring regions, shook the two young people, intensifying their opposition to each other' (59, Schwartz 68). George joins an unnamed party, while his sister Myriam collaborates with Ammal to organize a peace walk. George's stance is intransigeant: \"L'espoir de nous r\u00e9unir tous n'est qu'une source de tensions. Regardez l'histoire! Des belles id\u00e9es ne suffisent pas, rassembler des gens diff\u00e9rents dans un m\u00eame endroit cr\u00e9e la haine\" 'The hope of uniting us all causes nothing but tension. Look at history! Fine ideas aren't enough, gathering different people in one place gives rise to hatred' (103, Schwartz 126). Nowhere in the novel is there an allusion to colonial history and how French influence and interference to privilege the Maronite community have contributed to shaping relationships between various groups. Elise Salem notes that when General Henri Gouraud proclaimed the creation of Greater Lebanon in 1920, his proclamation stressed the Phoenician, Greek, and Roman heritage of Lebanon and omitted any reference to its Arab and Islamic heritage (15). George's stance contrasts sharply with his sister's peace activism and the overall message of the book.\n\nThe emphasis on roots throughout the novel can be understood in terms of the Lebanese context and its struggles to define its national identity. Indeed, one of the epigraphs is taken from Khalil Gibran, the renowned American-Lebanese poet who became one of Lebanon's national icons when so few existed (Salem 33). As Michelle Hartman argues, the title of the novel can be read as meaning \"the family without roots\" by translating the word \"house\" into Arabic ( _bayt_ ) and exploring its various denotations. She then interprets it as referring to how characters from one family explore their roots by spending time in their \"native land\" (62). As Hartman noted, Ch\u00e9did problematizes the issue of pure identity through the plot, the main characters' background, and her use of epigraphs because \"De-emphasizing roots, heritage and 'true origins' is also important in the context of war-torn Lebanon. A fixation on heritage and lineage can have negative connotations in a country with such a diverse population, particularly one in which people were divided by a war which emphasized sectarianism\" (65-66). It might also be read as wishful thinking on Ch\u00e9did's part that Lebanon should become a \"country without roots,\" given the fact that sectarianism, and different views of Lebanese roots or history, were at the core of the conflict. Historian Salibi has titled his study of the various views of the Lebanese history _A House of Many Mansions_ , after a Biblical verse (John 14:2), where house here stands for country.\n\nYet, despite the avoidance of naming and pointing fingers throughout the novel, the conflict seems to be framed exclusively in religious terms. In an incident at the beginning of the novel, two cab drivers (one a Muslim, the other a Christian) have an argument. The narrator comments: \"M\u00eal\u00e9 au moindre \u00e9v\u00e9nement, \u00e0 toutes les col\u00e8res, \u00e0 toutes les r\u00e9conciliations, Dieu vient d'appara\u00eetre sur le devant de la sc\u00e8ne. Son nom se prononce \u00e0 tout bout de champ, soumis aux hommes, \u00e0 leurs violences, \u00e0 leurs amours\" 'Involved in the most trivial incident, in every quarrel, in every reconciliation, God has just appeared center stage. His name is bandied about at the beck and call of men, their loves and hates' (14, Schwartz 11). Later on, Odette tells Kalya that \"Ici, la religion prime tout, elle marque toute l'existence\" 'Here, religion dominates everything. It affects our whole lives' (46, Schwartz 52), an indirect allusion to the National Pact and its confessional system, which are never referred to explicitly. The only elaboration that is offered in the course of the narrative are theological disputes that date back centuries and refer to the schism between Sunnis and Shiites in Islam, and within the Christian church regarding the nature of Christ (49), emphasizing the murderous consequences of these debates. Kalya's uncle, Mitry, who tells her about this history, links it to the present by saying \"Jusqu'aujourd'hui, dans ce pays, il y a quatorze possibilit\u00e9s d'\u00eatre croyant, monoth\u00e9iste et fils d'Abraham!\" 'Even today, in this country, there are fourteen ways of being a believer, a monotheist and a son of Abraham!' (49, Schwartz 56). This is a reference to fourteen (actually seventeen) denominations that are recognized by Lebanon's political system. However, it skews the reality, because the contemporary disputes between groups are not due to theological differences, but to the issue of distribution of power and fair representation. By insisting on theological differences and eluding the confessional political system of twentieth-century Lebanon, the novel promotes a clash of religion interpretation of the Lebanese civil war, since the internal socio-economic as well as the external factors (the Palestinian refugees) are only indirectly surfacing in the course of the narrative.\n\nOn the one hand, the novel's portrayal of a well-off Christian family with little contact with any other group could be seen as showing how out of touch its members are with what constitutes Lebanon as a whole. Contrary to the rest of the characters, Myriam and Ammal are aware of the socio-economic problems that plague some of the population of Lebanon, though this poverty is not associated with specific groups (76).\n\n### Religious Intertexts, Female Genital Cutting, and the Lebanese Civil War in Evelyne Accad's _L'excis\u00e9e_\n\nFemale Genital Cutting (henceforth FGC, more widely known as FGM or Female Genital Mutilation)4 has received significant international attention following the 1979 United Nations Conference on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children. When Accad recalls the impact that learning about FGC had on her while she was a doctoral student, she explains that she was \"very shaken,\" \"sick for several weeks,\" and that \"the title of [her] first novel, _L'excis\u00e9e_ , was already determined\" following this experience (\"Writing\" 59). Accad had left her native Lebanon to study in the United States, where she eventually became a university professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; she has published scholarly literary studies as well as novels and poems. When reflecting on what prompted her to write, she remembers that learning about the \"cruel practice of sexual mutilations\" was a turning point (\"Writing\" 59).\n\nAccad's novel was conceived as an autobiographically inspired feminist stand against women's subjugation by oppressive practices and religions (\"Writing\" 59).5 However, Accad herself has stated that \"what one intended to say [is] not necessarily what the readers see\" (\"Writing\" 47).6 My reading does not contradict the feminist intention and interpretations that have dominated scholarship on that novel, but goes beyond; it also departs from it in that it is a critical analysis that examines closely how the religious intertexts favor one religion over the other, and the implications to be derived given the socio-political setting of the novel (whether it was intended by the author or not).\n\n_L'excis\u00e9e_ is a hybrid text that mixes genres (novel, poetry), profane discourse and Scriptures, as well as religious traditions through citations and allusions to the Bible and the Qur'an. The narrative is interspersed with poetry and unmarked verbatim excerpts from the Christian and Muslim holy books, which are occasionally set off typographically, and which have yet to be analyzed by critics.7 _L'excis\u00e9e_ tells the story of E., a Christian Lebanese young woman, unhappy with her life in Beirut in the aftermath of a bloody summer, and feeling oppressed by the patriarchal tradition brutally enforced by her father, a pastor. She meets P., a young Muslim Palestinian, and flees with him to a village in an unnamed country, in the hope of inventing a new future. Disillusion quickly sets in as her Muslim husband proves to be as engrained in patriarchal tradition as her Christian father. After she becomes pregnant, he neglects her, and it is implied that he might have taken another wife in the city. After witnessing the infibulation of young girls, she runs away, taking with her a child, Nour. Before committing suicide, E. entrusts the child to an Egyptian woman going to Switzerland. Nour (whose name means \"light\" in Arabic) is cast as the one who will return one day to her country and hopefully enlighten and liberate her sisters from FGC.\n\nWhile Accad's novel can undoubtedly mobilize sentiment against the practice (as all narratives featuring FGC do), it does so in a very problematic manner. In one of her scholarly publications, Accad justifies her reliance on literature to understand the causes of the Lebanese civil war by stating that \"[creative works] allow us to enter into the imaginary and unconscious world of the author. In expressing his or her own individual vision, an author also suggests links to the collective 'imaginary.' . . . literature . . . reflects and articulates the complexities of a situation\" ( _Sexuality_ 5). While _L'excis\u00e9e_ gives us a glimpse of the author's imaginary about the power relations between Muslims and Christians in Lebanon through the very bleak future she portrays for both communities, I argue that using the very real practice of FGC as a trope for patriarchal oppression of women and combining it with political and religious issues that are contextually unrelated reinforces harmful religious stereotypes that can only impede progress rather than promote efforts to eradicate such practice.\n\n_L'excis\u00e9e_ points the reader to an allegorical reading through the persistent avoidance of specifying a certain time (1958), a place (Egypt), and names (initials instead of names for the two main characters). The excised woman of the title is meant in a symbolic way, as is made clear by Accad in a recent article: \" _L'excis\u00e9e_ shows a woman, E., Elle (She in French), Eve (woman everywhere, myself to a certain extent), woman excised symbolically by fanatical religion in war-torn Lebanon, socially by the tyranny of man\" (\"Writing\" 59). The main character has not been physically excised, and the back cover of the book makes it clear that the title does not refer to the secondary character of the Egyptian woman, who has been excised, and whom E. meets twice by chance. The symbolism of the letter _p_ , which represents patriarchy, is made obvious when her father and the Christian Father are indicted (20), and this before the appearance of the character of P. As for P., the religious connotation that his first name carries is the first thing that comes to both E.'s (19) and later her father's mind (48) upon hearing it, and for his name to unmistakably identify him as a Muslim Palestinian, it would have to be Arabic. However, the letter _p_ does not exist in the Arabic alphabet.8 Therefore the character of P., who becomes emblematic of both patriarchy and an (illusory) Palestine, cannot be read literally. The fact that a Muslim character becomes the symbol of patriarchy in this allegorical reading is not without implications, and the fact that the focus of the novel will turn to Islam needs to be unpacked.\n\nWhile the novel deliberately avoids specifying the year in which the narrative takes place, it leaves markers that make it easy to identify. The novel starts at the end of what has been \"un \u00e9t\u00e9 de rage\" 'a summer of rage' (9), and the beginning of the narrative proceeds to enumerate various events that took place during that summer: the U.S. Marines' Sixth Fleet has been called in, and there is a new regime in Iraq (9-13)9. These events point to 1958, when a six-month civil war erupted over the issue of pan-Arab unity under the leadership of Nasser, president of the United Arab Republic of Egypt (1958-1961); 1958 is seen as a precursor to the civil war that would rage in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990.10 However, allusions to Israeli raids (\"Tyr est viol\u00e9 par l'homme venu du Sud\" 'Tyr is raped by the man who came from the south,' 36)11 have been understood to refer to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Given that the novel was published in 1982, it more likely refers to some of the numerous raids conducted by the Israeli army in (Southern) Lebanon prior to 1982 (starting with the strike on Beirut International Airport in 1968). In any case, such an unclear allusion contributes to blurring the setting's specific historical moment.12 This, like the refusal to name the country where E. and P. flee (to which I will return later), promotes the vision of Lebanon as a country stuck in religious strife. Although the beginning of the novel states that this is not a war of religion (12), but a war caused by social inequities that plagued Lebanon according to religious and ethnic lines, the refusal to ground the story in a specific year relegates specific historical processes and events to the background instead of foregrounding them. On the one hand, the failure of E. and P.'s marriage forecasts the civil war that fully broke out in 1975; on the other hand, the refusal to ground the story in a specific year implies that no peaceful coexistence is possible in Lebanon. Reflecting on her first novel in an article, Accad repeats some of the sentences that are printed on the book's back cover (\"Where can this woman go? Is love between a Moslem and a Christian possible?\" in \"Writing\" 59), which shows that the back cover statement (perhaps written by Accad herself) orients the reader in the direction intended by the author. Interestingly, in her study _Sexuality and War_ , Accad criticizes the Israeli government for using Lebanon and thinking \"it benefits from a war that, among other things, proves that peaceful cohabitation among different religions is an impossibility and a myth\" (34). Yet her novel, through her depiction of the failed marriage of a Christian and a Muslim, offers the same conclusion because it orients the reader to an allegorical reading that, despite historical markers, refuses to be firmly grounded in time.\n\nThus, the novel can be read as an allegory of Lebanese society, where E. is representative of the Lebanese who thought that the Palestinian cause could revolutionize the Arab world (E. sees P. as \"la Palestine de l'espoir\" 'the Palestine of hope' (29). In _Sexuality and War_ , Accad criticizes the novelist Etel Adnan and all Lebanese intellectuals who held similar convictions for their shortsightedness (73-5). In _L'excis\u00e9e_ , E. pays the price of her na\u00efvet\u00e9 through her failed marriage. While the novel explicitly shows the patriarchal structure across the religious divide by identifying her Muslim husband P. with her father, the uneven power relationship between the couple (where Christian E. is subjugated by Muslim P.) is a problematic allegory of Lebanese society prior to the civil war. For one of the factors that triggered the war was the \"disjuncture between representatives and the people they claimed to represent\" (Cooke, _War's_ 20), as the number of Muslims started to exceed the number of Christians. The proportional representation according to confessional criteria established in 1943 in the National Pact did not plan for an uneven population growth among the various religious groups (the Maronites were then the largest community, and political power was shared between Christians and Muslims on a six to five ratio in favor of Christians, who slightly outnumbered the Muslims, see Abul-Husn 77). Moreover, one can object to the reduction of Lebanon's numerous religious communities, which numbered seventeen in the 1932 census, into two seemingly homogenous Muslim and Christian groups.\n\nThe character of P. highlights the fact that one can be victim and oppressor at the same time. In the beginning of the novel, P. is emblematic of Palestine, and Palestine is associated with suffering women several times in the novel, be they excised women (33) or E. herself (47), for Palestine has been raped (55, no specific marker is given here). But P.'s status as a victim does not prevent him from becoming E.'s unexpected oppressor; and here again the allegorical reading supports the interpretation by some of the Palestinian problem as it affected Lebanon, where Palestinian refugees turned from victims into troublemakers. Since the first influx of Palestinian refugees in 1948, international affairs have come to bear on Lebanon's domestic politics, as the (mostly Muslim) Palestinian refugees disrupted Lebanon's delicate balance between the various sectarian factions trying to get their share of power. This situation was exacerbated when the PLO established its headquarters in Beirut after Black September in 1970.\n\nWhile P.'s intransigence regarding the religious diversity of the Arab world reflects a real threat, pitting an intolerant Muslim who refuses to consider Christianity as an Arab religion against a powerless Christian who embraces diversity (35, 140), it only reinforces the reductive dichotomy of the Lebanese civil war as a conflict between Christians and Muslims, which has pervaded the Western world's understanding of this history. In a passage where E. describes poverty in quarters that she discovers for the first time, these quarters happen to be in the Druze and Palestinian camps (57-58). While the novel does point out that the reasons for the war are more economic and class-based than religious (12), the allegory formed by the E. and P. couple relegates this fact to the background. Although the allegory of E. and P.'s couple illustrates Accad's thesis in _Sexuality and War_ that \"since the personal is the political, changes in relationships traditionally based on domination, oppression, and power games will inevitably rebound in other spheres of life\" (167), it does not do justice to the reality of Lebanese society by depicting the Muslim as the primary oppressor. Christians not only controlled the political arena, they dominated all sectors of the Lebanese economy.13 One could say that the text unconsciously reflects the fear of the Christian Lebanese, who, although in power, were feeling threatened by their new minority status in terms of numbers. Although I doubt that this was Accad's intention, _L'excis\u00e9e_ can nevertheless be seen as one example of what Shu-Mei Shih characterizes as\n\ndeliberate national allegorical narratives with an eye to the market . . . When the signified is predetermined, allegories are easier to write or create and to understand and consume. A predetermined signified is produced by a consensus between the audience in the West and the Third World writer or director. It is a contractual relation of mutual benefit and favor that works first to confirm the stereotyped knowledge of the audience and second to bring financial rewards to the makers of those cultural products. (21)\n\nDespite details in the novel that partially account for the complexity of the situation, _L'excis\u00e9e_ can be seen as an allegory tailored to fit the First World's stereotyped view of the Lebanese civil war. This pitting of an oppressive Muslim against a defenseless Christian reappears in the novel in a scene between women that revolves around FGC. While the novel explicitly indicts both the Christian and Muslim faiths for their oppression of women, I show how the religious intertext reinforces this pitting of Islam against Christianity. The inscription of verses from the Qur'an in Accad's text provides a stereotyped view of Islam while the Biblical citations implicitly reaffirm Christian values of sacrifice and redemption.\n\nAlthough the title of the novel refers to excision or clitoridectomy, which consists of removing some or all of the clitoris and labia minora (and which, according to Elizabeth Boyle, is the most common form of FGC in Africa, 26), the procedure that is described in the novel is infibulation,14 practiced mostly in the African Horn (Sudan, Somalia, part of Ethiopia), southern Egypt, and part of Mali.15 Infibulation is the form of FGC that is most often brandished by activists and the media since it is the most extreme and the most prone to immediate medical complications and long-term after-effects. As often in the literature about FGC, the lack of hygiene and the rudimentary nature of the instruments are emphasized in _L'excis\u00e9e_ (121). In emphasizing the issues of physical pain and unsanitary conditions that lead to infections and complications as their main arguments for eradicating the practice, critics of FGC fall vulnerable to the fact that performing the procedure under anesthesia in a medical setting eliminates most of these problems. The particular emphasis on physical pain did not anticipate what is becoming an increasingly widespread phenomenon: the medicalization of FGC (see Fran Hosken 5-9, and Gerry Mackie 277 for a discussion of the implications of this issue). The medically founded opposition to FGC that characterized most efforts against the practice until the 1990s has come to be seen as a mistake by many (Boyle 140), especially those who are fighting against FGC performed on children.16\n\nThe novel is deliberately vague about the country where E. flees with P., all the while giving hints that allow it to be identified as Egypt (The Egyptian woman who boards the boat in Alexandria is fleeing the country E. and P. will go to [82-83]). Through contrived avoidance, the country is never named. By referring to the place with the terms \"pays de sable\" 'country of sand' (78), and \"pays du d\u00e9sert\" 'desert country' (62), the novel conjures stereotypes of an African continent stuck in time, antithetical to progress and modernity. Moreover, the overbearing omnipresence of flies in the village suggests decay and poverty. While FGC has been practiced in Egypt for over 2000 years\u2014thus predating Islam\u2014and is practiced by Africans of all faiths, including the Christian Copts in Egypt (Hosken 15, 55), _L'excis\u00e9e_ does very little to give the reader a sense of the diversity of the practice or of its practitioners, preferring instead to conflate the most extreme practice of FGC with Islamic teachings.\n\nAccad's novel is critical of Christianity, but most of her criticism consists of quoting the Bible to highlight how Christians have strayed from its teachings. In a passage on page 45, which is not a word-for-word quotation, but rather a summary of Luke 6:27-29,17 the narrator highlights the hypocrisy of people in E.'s church, who are incapable of compassion and forgiveness. The author also parodies Genesis 1:27 by stating \"l'homme a r\u00e9tr\u00e9ci Dieu et L'a fait \u00e0 son image\" 'man shrank God and created Him in his image' (91). Another Biblical allusion to David and Goliath (Samuel 17:4-51) highlights the racism E. encounters in Switzerland when she is sent to a Biblical camp. There, she overhears Europeans making a parallel between David and Goliath and Israel and Arabs, and viewing Israel as a \"miracle de la r\u00e9surrection\" 'miracle of resurrection' (90).\n\nSome scriptural allusions emphasize how religions have become so entangled with culture that both the Christian and Muslim codes of honor in Lebanon are very similar: \"Oeil pour oeil, dent pour dent. Et quand il s'agit d'une femme: deux femmes pour un homme\" 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And when it concerns a woman: two women for a man' (17), which allude respectively to Exodus (21:24) and Qur'anic legalistic prescriptions according to gender for testimony and inheritance.18 Another allusion: \"femme-faible, homme-fort\/femme-terre, homme-charrue\" 'woman-weak, man-strong\/woman-earth, man-plough' (97) alludes to Peter 3:7, which posits women as weaker than men, and the Qur'anic verse 2:223 \"Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will\"19 comparing women to a field and men to a plough, thereby linking women to passivity and to submission to men. The strongest condemnation of Christianity occurs when the New Testament is linked to excision on a metaphorical level, when the author writes: \"Toutes les femmes acceptant le crucifix, l'\u00e9p\u00e9e qui les ch\u00e2tre\" 'all women accepting the crucifix, the sword that castrates them' (72).\n\nAccad's text is not as virulent in its criticism of Christianity as it is in its criticism of Islam. In one instance E. briefly associates both Christianity and Islam with excision: \"sang coulant dans la plaine, croix \u00e0 porter, croissant \u00e0 brandir\" 'blood flowing in the plain, cross to bear, crescent to brandish' (95), but the verbs' connotations are worth emphasizing: the image of the cross to be carried contrasts with the aggressive image of the crescent to be wielded, and pits a benign and suffering Christianity against an assertive and belligerent Islam. In another instance, Accad mixes up the two traditions and allows a biblical allusion to pass for a Qur'anic teaching. In a passage in which E. attempts to understand the custom of excision, a woman's gesture is described as follows: \"elle l\u00e8ve les bras au ciel vers Allah en ajoutant:\u2014toute notre vie, nous, femmes, n'est que souffrance. Dieu l'a prescrit\" 'she raises her arms to the sky towards Allah while adding:\u2014all our life, for us women, is only suffering. God prescribed it' (135). While Allah, the Arabic word for God, is used by Arab Christians as well as Muslims, in the novel it is only used by Muslim characters; in a French text it will immediately connote Islam. In attributing to Allah what is actually reminiscent of a quote from the Bible, in which women are punished with the pain of labor in childbirth,20 Accad displaces a core Christian tenet onto Islam, which, despite the fact that it places itself in the continuity of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, does not adhere to the teaching that Eve was responsible for the Fall of man, nor that labor pains are a punishment inflicted on her and her kind.\n\nThe first Qur'anic verse quoted in the novel is the verse 24:31 in which women are enjoined to lower their gaze and cover their bosoms; because it ends with an injunction to go back to Allah, it will be associated with the Qur'an by any reader ( _L'excis\u00e9e_ 14-15). That the author chose not to include the preceding verse, which enjoins men to \"lower their gaze and be modest\" (Qur'an 24:30), contributes to the stereotype that only women are subject to restrictions in Islam. That Qur'anic quote in the novel is preceded by a Biblical quote in which women are enjoined to be submissive to their husbands (Peter 3:l-7)21 and which summons husbands to be kind to their wives. In the Biblical citation, women's inferiority compared to men is somewhat alleviated by the injunction of kindness to wives, whereas the fact that the author has truncated the part of the Qur'anic quote that dictated similar restrictions imposed on men as for women reinforces the stereotype that women fare better under Christian dogmas than under Islamic ones.\n\nIn the narrative taking place in the Muslim village, Accad conjures up all manner of Western stereotypes about Islam. As with infibulation in regards to FGC, the village women's dress is one of the most extreme to be found in the Muslim world: they wear a mask over their face in addition to a veil covering their head and body (105). To crown it all, all households are polygyneous (113). In the scene describing infibulation, she associates the Muslim veil with FGC:\n\nLe couteau du sacrifice | The knife for sacrifice\n\n---|---\n\nLa lame tranchante qui tue, qui s\u00e9pare, qui arrache | The sharp blade that kills, that separates, that tears out\n\nLes boutons du d\u00e9sir | The buds of desire\n\nLes p\u00e9tales de joie | The petals of joy\n\nL'ouverture de l'extase | The opening of ecstasy\n\nFerm\u00e9, cousu, scell\u00e9 pour toujours | Closed, sewn, forever sealed\n\nComme un grand voile de fer | Like a large iron veil\n\nComme un masque de rouille | Like a mask of rust\n\nComme un rideau de plomb (121) | Like a lead curtain\n\nThe flower metaphor for the clitoris and labia contrasts with the metallic veil and mask that the infibulated genitalia have become; it is a battle in which nature has been destroyed by culture, and that culture is unmistakably identified as Islamic.\n\nThis intertwining of Islam with excision and oppressive practices is reinforced with quotations from the Qur'an.22 While the quotes are not identified as verses from the Muslim holy book, they are among the most well-known verses about women (such as the verse of the veil, 143). Other Qur'anic verses are quoted and fulfill part of a narrative function; they are associated with E.'s misfortunes and make it seem as if Islam preordained for all women the downturn in events that E. experiences. Part of the verse on polygamy is quoted twice in the novel (96, 116); the second time the passage implies that E.'s husband has taken another wife after she became pregnant. The quote of the last part of verse 65:4 (about the waiting period for divorced women before they may be turned out of their husband's house) forecasts that E.'s fate will probably be divorce after she delivers her child (116).\n\nAccad also selected parts of the first section of sura 56 (verses 4-6, 12-17, 22-24, 35-8), which deal with the rewards of paradise, and in particular the Houris, which have come to be understood in Islam as eternal virgins awaiting the righteous in Paradise. This truncated sura is inserted right after the description of the procession of women singing after the girls' excision (127). This insertion highlights one of the reasons given for infibulation, that is, guaranteeing the virginity of the future bride, but it gives the wrong impression that infibulation is sanctioned by the Qur'an (which it is not). The last quote from the Qur'an is inserted after the women have been described as reciting verses from it; the reader can infer that the verse quoted is what the women are reciting as they are about to throw in the river the genitalia of the girls who have just been excised (128-9). That verse is known as the pledge of allegiance given by women converting to Islam (60:12); inserting it in that section erroneously implies that the practice of infibulation is part of Muslim women's duties.\n\nIn another indented section that contains the Arabic word for God, the reader is misled to believe that infibulation is prescribed in the Qur'an by the presence of Arabic words:\n\nKhatin, Tahara, Khatin | Khatin, Tahara, Khatin\n\n---|---\n\nCoupez, mais ne coupez pas trop | Cut, but do not cut too much\n\nCoupez, coupez, coupez | Cut, cut, cut\n\nmais | but\n\npas | not\n\ntrop | too much\n\nPuis refermez et que Dieu soude bien | Then close and may God weld it\n\nle tout | all well\n\nPuis recoupez et resoudez et recoupez | Then recut and reweld and recut\n\nAllah leveut (135) | Allah wants it\n\n_Khatin_ (circumcision) and _Tahara_ (purification) are both Arabic words used to designate circumcision. This passage refers to infibulation, since it alludes to the fact that infibulated women need to undergo further cutting to have intercourse and to deliver children, after which they are commonly reinfibulated. There is no mention of excision in the Qur'an, and this paragraph is an allusion to a Hadith23 regarding FGC, which reports the Prophet recommending that a midwife exert restraint. This Hadith is not found in the collections compiled by the scholars Bukhari and Muslim that are considered authentic. It is found in Abu Dawud's collection (41:5251) and is classified as weak because its chain of transmission is broken. It states: \"Narrated Umm Atiyyah al-Ansariyyah: A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to her: Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.\"24 Both supporters and opponents of FGC in Muslim countries have used this Hadith to defend their cause: with some arguing that only a moderate cutting of the skin covering the clitoris, analogous to male circumcision, is allowed; and others arguing that the Prophet's daughters were not circumcised and that the Hadith should be dismissed because of its classification. This Hadith has been used effectively in campaigns in Egypt, Mauritania,25 and Sudan as a means to minimize the amount of tissue cut.\n\nWhile this mixing of Qur'an, poetry, and Hadiths provides a distorted view of mainstream Islamic teachings, the Biblical intertext reaffirms the Christian theology of redemption. The most recurrent quote from the Bible comes from John 14:6: \"J\u00e9sus a dit : Je suis le Chemin, la V\u00e9rit\u00e9 et la Vie. Nul ne vient au P\u00e8re que par Moi\" 'Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' This quote appears at least four times in the narrative (pages 16, 22, 72, 97). It stresses the importance of Christ as the divinely revealed reality of God, and suggests that Christ is the only way to Heaven. Other quotations, such as \"Le sang de Christ vous lave de tout p\u00e9ch\u00e9\" 'the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin' (19), taken from John 1:7, reinforce the redemptive quality of Jesus' sacrifice.\n\nIn _L'excis\u00e9e_ , the parallels between E. and Jesus are numerous: Indeed, some quotations from the Bible, such as the one on page 43 (inserted in the narrative), taken from Revelation 5:l-5,26 reinforce the association between E. and Christ, and provide a note of optimism in the text: E. being identified as the savior is confident that she will succeed, and she draws from the Bible the courage to go against her family's wishes. On the next page (44), the quote comes from Revelation 3:7-8 and 3:12,27 which again implies at this point of the narrative that E. will triumph over her parents. Another allusion to Genesis 7 (to Noah and the flood) points to the little child Jesus\/Nour as the savior of mankind (23). In fact, women in the text are all somehow associated with the sacrifice of Christ: E.'s mother (whose hand \"accepte d'\u00eatre clou\u00e9e pour que les autres vivent et connaissent la V\u00e9rit\u00e9\" 'accepts to be nailed so that the others may live and know the Truth;' 49), as well as Mary, Jesus' mother (72). E. also becomes a female figure for Christ: first through the \"crucifixion symbolique\" when her father nails the shutters of her bedroom window shut (Marie 71), and when she sacrifices herself through her suicide-drowning at the end of the novel in order to save other women. The book opens with an unidentified citation from the Bible (Revelation 12:13-18),28 about the Woman and the Dragon, followed by a short poem that the reader can retrospectively interpret as being about E.'s flight with Nour. This juxtaposition of scripture and poetry reinforces the association of E. with Mary and Nour with Christ. The sermon given by E.'s father in the tent also refers to the dragon and the child (21): the wait for the child savior (Jesus) parallels the anticipated return of Nour, who is expected to save her sisters from excision and other oppressive customs. Despite the condemnation of the fact that women are being sacrificed, the ending of the novel repeats and reinforces the Christian theology of redemption through sacrifice.\n\nParadoxically, this reappropriation of the Christ figure through the character of E, while interpreted as feminist by Marie (160), participates in the ethnocentrism that First World feminists have been criticized for regarding issues concerning Third World women. As Chandra Mohanty stated in her seminal article, the analytical strategies of assuming one's class and background as the norm applies to Third World women writing about their own cultures (52). At the beginning of the novel, E.'s orientalist attitude is obvious as she reflects while on her way to the village how she will \"p\u00e9n\u00e9trer ce monde des femmes derri\u00e8re le voile, ce monde des \u00eatres du silence, ce monde de l'attente, . . . ce monde qui l'appelle parce qu'elle a \u00e9t\u00e9 choisie pour le comprendre\" 'penetrate that world of the veil, that world of women behind the veil, that world of beings of silence, that world of waiting, . . . that world that calls her because she has been chosen to understand it' (103). E.'s attitude is similar to the one that First World feminists have been criticized for adopting: implying that the veil can only have one meaning, that veiled women cannot speak for themselves, and the quasi-messianic attitude of the character who ultimately fails (and one can argue there is no real attempt) to understand anything that goes on in the village in terms other than her own cultural values.29 The same applies to the novel as a whole, which casts Qur'anic scriptures as the source of oppression for Muslim women while framing its narrative within Christian theology.\n\nWomen practicing FGC are seen by E. and the Egyptian character she meets on the boat as perpetuating the custom as an act of revenge, \"heureuses de voir que . . . la souffrance ne s'est pas arr\u00eat\u00e9e \u00e0 leur propre corps et que le cercle infernal se perp\u00e9tue\" 'happy to see that . . . the suffering did not stop with their body and the infernal circle perpetuates itself' (85). This portrayal of vengeful mothers is very problematic, for it shows a lack of understanding of the social contexts in which FGC is carried out. Researchers have emphasized that in the communities where FGC is the norm, parents would be considered irresponsible if they did not have their daughters conform to the custom. In _L'excis\u00e9e_ , a clear demonization of the midwife performing the infibulation takes place in the course of the narrative: the midwife comes to be designated as a witch. Like Alice Walker who connects her personal eye wound to FGC as a patriarchal wound in _Warrior Marks_ ,30 Accad's character identifies with the excised girls, whose operation becomes the symbol and the height of all patriarchal oppression. E.'s psychological sufferings are mirrored and amplified in the infibulated girls' pain in a graphic scene towards the end of the novel. In a short exchange in which E. attempts to understand the reason for the custom, women are portrayed as passively accepting the tradition (134). There is no real dialogue taking place between E. and the Muslim women of the village, although this would have been an opportunity to insert some explanation for the custom in the narrative.\n\nIn addition, E. panics after the women ask her whether she has been excised or not, and she feels threatened when they make a gesture as if attempting to lift up her skirt to see for themselves: \"Elle regarde les femmes avec effroi, mer en furie, houle pr\u00eate \u00e0 la submerger, \u00e0 la noyer, \u00e0 effacer la difference. . . . Comment se d\u00e9fendre contre ces femmes qui semblent assoiff\u00e9es de sang et de sexes ensanglant\u00e9s? . . . Pourquoi cette rage contre la diff\u00e9rence?\" 'She looks at the women with dread, infuriated sea, swell ready to submerge her, to drown her, to erase the difference. . . . How to defend oneself against these women who seem thirsty for blood and blood-soaked genitals? . . . Why this rage against difference?' (137). E.'s reaction appears rather disproportionate with the question and gesture of the women who never hint that they intend to excise her.31 What is telling in this scene is how E. feels threatened by her distinction and how she constructs the women as hungry for erasure of that bodily difference, which parallels her religious difference with her husband. Just as P., as a Palestinian refugee, is both victim of injustice and E.'s worst oppressor, women, who are often associated with Palestine's sufferings throughout the novel, appear as oppressors of future women by perpetuating the tradition of FGC.\n\nIn _Sexuality and War_ , Accad is aware that changing a society requires \"a long process of in-depth political, economical, psychological, religious, sexual, familial, and social transformations established on an understanding of the different factors, causes and links between these various fields\" (166). While _L'excis\u00e9e_ succeeds in making the reader empathize with the girls subjected to FGC, which is, as Ellen Gruenbaum states, a necessary first step to work on improving their living conditions (201), it falls short in providing the reader an understanding of the factors that perpetuate FGC.32 The main character escapes from the village, taking along a little girl who has not yet been excised. After a chance encounter with the Egyptian woman who had first told her about the custom of infibulation, she entrusts Nour in her care to be taken to Switzerland. E. drowns in the sea, while Nour, who in a melodramatic tirade has gained sudden consciousness of the oppression women face in her village, is portrayed as determined to later return to her country to save her sisters (173).\n\nE.'s failure is the failure of the outsider (in the sense that she does not come from that country) and in this the novel is in agreement with all who believe that change cannot be imposed from outside. History has shown that any imposition or threat from Western powers (such as the one to cut off foreign aid) are seen as imperial moves that threaten indigenous cultures and are not effective (Boyle 104). In Sudan and Kenya, attempts by colonial powers to eradicate FGC failed because it became a political issue (see Dareer 72 for Sudan, Gruenbaum 207 for Kenya). In a similar vein, international pressure in Egypt did succeed in making changes on paper (Boyle 2-5), but these changes seem to have had no impact on the ground: according to a 1996 survey, 97 percent of married women had been circumcised in Egypt (Boyle 2); according to a recent article, the prevalence rate stayed the same in Egypt between 1994 and 2003 (Mekay).\n\nMoreover, the fact that Nour has to leave the village and get a Western education before she can hope to change her village's customs validates the ethnocentric view that the center of change and modernization is in the Western world, and that African countries are stuck with immutable traditions with no conceivable modifications coming from the inside, which is quite contrary to what is happening at the grassroots level. Even Hosken, one of the most vocal and controversial activists against FGC, has become conscious of the fact that action for change cannot come from outside but has to be led by African women who live in Africa (Hosken 9). This is also the recommendation of the Women's Caucus of the African Studies Association in a position paper issued in the early 1980s, with the additional warning that the issue should not be singled out from all others affecting women, especially economic ones (2).33 The ending of Accad's novel, which forecasts Nour as the future savior of African women from FGC after she has been enlightened by the education she will receive in Switzerland,34 runs counter to the recommendation mentioned above, and is symptomatic of the imperialism that Western feminists have been criticized for regarding issues concerning Third World women.35 It demonstrates how tricky it can be to address practices outside of one's culture, since Accad herself is aware that Western feminism has been denounced for its colonial stench when it came to African women (\"Author's\" xii). And yet _L'excis\u00e9e_ can be said to reproduce such cultural imperialism by the way in which it portrays the women of the village, FGC, and Islam.\n\nThe fact that there are varied meanings (such as a rite of passage into adulthood, a code of chastity linked to Islam, cleanliness) assigned to the practice in different locations should influence the strategies used for elimination, since what will work in one area might not work in another (Boyle 31). Boyle has shown that Christian women, whose ideologies are more in line with international ideals (since the latter were formulated in Christian countries) were more likely to be responsive to efforts to eliminate FGC than Muslim women (120). Further, she found that Muslim women who live in cultures that support FGC will justify their opposition to it with medical arguments rather than human rights notions (138), since medicine is viewed as a neutral argument that does not call into question the cultural values of their society (146). As she points out, \"although FGC did not originate with Islam, its continuation is tied up with Islamic beliefs in some areas\" (30). The fact that one type of FGC is called _sunna_ (which means the tradition of the Prophet) in some countries also reinforces the belief held by some that female circumcision is a religious Islamic duty.36 Given that she chose a Muslim setting to describe infibulation in her novel, Accad's rejection of religion seems far removed from the reality on the ground. Asma Dareer emphasizes that Muslim religious leaders can play a crucial role in the fight against FGC, since they have a very strong influence on their communities (103). Gruenbaum also relates an interview with a Sudanese doctor who uses the Qur'an to show that any procedures that affect a woman's sexuality are against the teachings of Islam (189). This Sudanese doctor uses the Qur'anic verse 2:187,37 which places sexual relations as a basic need like hunger and thirst, and that should be of mutual satisfaction to husband and wife, to advocate against FGC. If one is to use religious texts to combat infibulation in Muslim countries, educating people about what the religion actually says about the practice seems to be a more effective strategy.\n\nAccad can be credited for being, to the best of my knowledge, the first Francophone writer from an area where FGC is not practiced, to take up the issue in a creative work when it first began to gain international attention.38 _L'excis\u00e9e_ gave voice to the typical repulsed reaction of people for whom FGC is a foreign custom experience. Since then, however, much progress has been made in grasping the complexity of the issues surrounding this custom, but the absence of contextualization of FGC leads critics who read _L'excis\u00e9e_ to qualify the practice as child abuse (Hottell), or the affliction of a deformity (Marie 116).39 Unfortunately, twenty years after the publication of _L'excis\u00e9e_ , Accad's reductive portrayal of Muslim customs and FGC does not seem to have been refined by the plethora of publications on the issue. In a recent article, she writes of her character E.: \"how could she bend to his [her Muslim husband] customs, which crush women even more than those of her childhood?\" (\"Writing\" 60). _L'excis\u00e9e_ is a telling example of how a Third World author can have as ethnocentric an attitude as the First World critic towards a part of the Third World other than her own.\n\nAlthough Olayinka Koso-Thomas, an activist in Sierra Leone, ends her book, published in 1987, with the hope that by the year 2000 FGC will no longer be practiced in Africa (100), a recent report shows that figures for FGC remain stable.40 Many researchers have noted the \"discrepancies between the global discourse on female circumcision (with its images of maiming, murder, sexual dysfunction, mutilation, coercion, and oppression) and their own ethnographic experiences with indigenous discourses and with social and physical realities at their field settings and research sites\" (Shweder 220). These discrepancies might be a factor in what seems to be an absence of improvement in overall numbers despite two decades of activism and attention. In a remarkable collection of articles on the diversity of FGC, Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund emphasize the fact that \"identifying the most effective and appropriate strategies for eliminating female genital cutting is among the most bitterly contested issues surrounding this practice\" (24). Some activists argue for the complete eradication of the custom, whereas others find it more realistic to promote compromising measures, such as milder forms of FGC in Sudan, or banning the practice for children but legalizing it for adults (Boyle 18). In any case, combating FGC is a multifaceted issue that needs to be discussed in terms of specific contexts. As Fran\u00e7oise Lionnet points out, there is a \"third way\" to frame the debate other than between cultural relativism and human rights universalism: \"to see [these practices] as part of a coherent, rational, and workable system\u2014albeit one as flawed and unfair to women as our own can be\" (165).\n\n### Conclusion\n\nEvents of the past few years have brought Lebanon back in the headlines: the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 and the subsequent Cedar Revolution and withdrawal of Syrian troups, the 2006 July War with massive Israeli bombings that severely damaged Lebanon's infrastructure, and the crisis over the presidency in 2007-2008. These recent developments stem from the complexity of Lebanese domestic politics and their entanglement in the politics of the region, making it all the more urgent for critics to point out when writers such as Ch\u00e9did and Accad have not been up to the task.\n\n### Notes\n\n1. That census had been taken under the French Mandate, and \"there was a general suspicion, even among many Christians, that it had been a rigged one, at least to some extent\" (Salibi, _A House_ 198).\n\n2. For more details about such shifting alliance, see Salem 151, and 163-66.\n\n3. For two other versions of the beginning of the war, see Salem (99-100) and Salibi (1976: 90-101).\n\n4. Naming the practice (commonly referred to as mutilation or circumcision) has become a contested issue, and various terms, such as operation, surgery, and cutting are being used as alternatives. I will use the term Female Genital Cutting, which has been gaining popularity because of its neutral stance, instead of the more established Female Genital Mutilation, because the term \"mutilation\" connotes the intent to inflict harm. FGC ranges from a cut in the prepuce covering the clitoris to removal of the clitoris, all labia, and suturing of the vaginal opening. For explanations of the different types of cutting and terminologies, see Gruenbaum (2-4), and Boyle (25-26, including the fact that people do not always mean the same operation with the same terminology).\n\n5. The book itself and the narrative are not presented as an autobiography.\n\n6. Indeed, Accad knows first hand that a reader can see a lot more than the author intended, as evidenced by her exchange of letters with writer Halim Barakat, who disagreed with Accad's interpretation of his novel. All the endnotes to chapter eight of _Sexuality and War_ are quotes from Barakat's letters refuting Accad's analysis ( _Sexuality and War_ 130-4).\n\n7. In fact in some cases, it is clear that the religious intertext has not been identified and recognized for what it is. For instance, El-Khoury attributes an excerpt of the Qur'an to the novelist (142), while Karnoub and Issa, despite promising titles, do not even mention the Biblical references. Similarly, Cooke incorrectly assimilates all indented passages of the novel to poetry (\"Dying\" 16). Sullivan briefly mentions that the \"narrative is disrupted by words from the Qur'an and the Bible demanding submission from wives and women\" (73-4), but goes on to quote a poetry passage and never comes back to the religious intertext. Verthuy does recognize in a particular passage that one text is \"Christian\" and the other \"Islamic\" and that \"both urge women to obey their husbands\" (164), but does not go further.\n\n8. Given that the novel was written in French and published in Paris, Accad's intended reader might not notice that.\n\n9. Later on, there is a reference to the Algerian war of independence (34).\n\n10. See Kamal Salibi's 1976 book for an account of 1958.\n\n11. All translations from the novel are my own.\n\n12. Accad told Elisabeth Marie during an interview that she had wanted to mix up both wars in order to describe the horrors that took place during both periods and to denounce all wars (Marie, note 22 p. 15).\n\n13. In 1975, the average income of Christians was 16 percent higher than that of Druzes and 58 percent higher than that of the Shiites. Literacy rates among Muslims ranged between one third and half that of the Christians (Abul-Husn 15)\n\n14. In addition to excision, the labia majora are cut and the wound is sutured, leaving only a small opening for urine and menstrual flow.\n\n15. The Western world has a history of FGC, albeit not well known. Clitoridectomy was used as a medical cure for masturbation and hysteria in Europe and in the U.S., from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries (see Gruenbaum 9-12). A new trend has emerged: Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery or FGCS, which is being marketed as a positive advancement not just for medical but also for aesthetic reasons or beautification (see for instance ). According to a _New York Times_ article, \"primarily, doctors say, aggressive marketing and fashion influences like flimsier swim-suits, the Brazilian bikini wax and more exposure to nudity in magazines, movies and on the Internet are driving attention to a physical zone still so private that some women do not dare, or care, to look at themselves closely\" (Navarro).\n\n16. However, others are advocating for some degree of medicalization, such as Fuambai Ahmadu, who as a willing adult underwent excision as part of the Kono initiation for women in Sierra Leone (308-310). See Zabus ( _Between Rites_ 214-221) for an analysis of Ahmadu's autobiographical vignette.\n\n17. \"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you; pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.\"\n\n18. Qur'an 4:11: \"to the male, a portion equal to that of two females\"; 2:282: \"if there are not two men, then a man and two women.\"\n\n19. All verses from the Qur'an are taken from _The Holy Qur'an_.\n\n20. Genesis 3:16: \"To the woman he said, 'I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.\"\n\n21. Peter 3:1 \"Wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands\"; Peter 3:7 \"Husbands, in the same way, show consideration for your wives in your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker sex.\" All quotes from the Bible are taken from _The New Oxford Annotated Bible_.\n\n22. Both opponents and supporters of FGC invoke Islamic teachings (for instance in Sudan, see Asma El Dareer 79).\n\n23. Hadiths are narrations about the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed; they constitute the second source for Muslims after the Qur'an.\n\n24. This translation was taken from the following web site: .\n\n25. See Zainaba's lecture as an example.\n\n26. Revelation 5:1 \"I saw in the right hand of the One who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides, and sealed with seven seals.\"\n\n27. Revelation 3:7-8 \"And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens: 'I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.' \" Revelation 3:12: \"If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.\"\n\n28. Revelation 12:13-18: \"So when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. Then from his mouth the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.\"\n\n29. For an analysis of parallels between E. and Christ, see Marie.\n\n30. For a remarkable analysis, see Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan's article.\n\n31. Some critics read the scene where E. sees the women as threatening to excise her to the extreme by stating that E. \"escapes physical excision by leaving the community\" (Hottell). I concur with Marie who thinks that the women were kidding her (52).\n\n32. In her first scholarly book, Accad incorrectly states that a girl is more likely to be circumcised if she is from the lower classes, and that this is the reason why it is rarely mentioned in fiction from North Africa and the Arab world ( _Veil of Shame_ 20-21). As Shweder states, ethnicity and cultural group affiliation are the best predictor of circumcision (220), while education and economic status have no influence on it (230). Moreover, the reason it is absent from North African fiction is that FGC is nonexistent there.\n\n33. The success of the Tostan program in Senegal is attributed to the fact that FGC is only part of one of several basic education modules and that people are never told what they should do, instead they are given facts and trusted to make the right decisions for themselves (see Mackie 256-261).\n\n34. The choice of Switzerland is ironic given that it has been one of the slowest European countries to affirm women's rights (right to vote in 1971 and legalization of abortion in 2002).\n\n35. See Chandra Talpade Mohanty's article.\n\n36. The _sunna_ type in Sudan is supposed to be the mildest form of FGC and analogous to male circumcision because it consists in removing the tip of the prepuce of the clitoris, although one of the intermediate types of FGC is also called _sunna_ by many (Dareer 2-4).\n\n37. \"Permitted to you, on the night of the fasts, is the approach to your wives. They are your garments and ye are their garments.\"\n\n38. Other writers for whom FGC is a foreign custom have incorporated the practice in their novels. Ben Jelloun's _La nuit sacr\u00e9e_ [ _The Sacred Night_ ] features a scene where a group of women, portrayed as fanatical Muslims, infibulate their sister as an act of revenge (159-60). The first person narrator, who is the victim of the operation, \"pratiqu\u00e9e couramment en Afrique noire, dans certaines r\u00e9gions d'Egypte et du Soudan\" 'commonly practiced in black Africa, in some areas of Egypt and Sudan,' undisputedly calls it a \"torture,\" \"mutilation,\" a \"barbarian idea,\" a \"massacre,\" and the Sudanese guardian, who is blamed for giving the idea to the sisters, is \"une sorci\u00e8re, experte dans les m\u00e9thodes de torture\" 'a witch, expert in methods of torture' (163). While the excision that is performed on the narrator no doubt deserves the epithets that the narrator uses, for it is in that novel an imported cultural practice put to use with the intent to harm an individual, the casual mention that it is performed in black Africa orientalizes the practice and does nothing to inform the reader. While the narrative is careful to mention that such a practice in unknown in the Maghreb and forbidden by Islam (163), Ben Jelloun did not escape criticism of sensationalism. A novel by Canadian writer Marie Auger (pseudonym) is titled _L'excision_ [The Excision]. The title refers to a self-inflicted excision by a woman whose body can feel neither pain nor pleasure. The narrator briefly mentions the fact that some women excise their daughters, and refuses to try to understand why, because, in a categorical judgment, \"Il est plus facile d'accepter l'incompr\u00e9hensible que de comprendre l'inacceptable\" 'it is easier to accept the incomprehensible than to understand the unacceptable' (105).\n\n39. \"La femme excis\u00e9e est afflig\u00e9e d'une sorte de difformit\u00e9. Cette derni\u00e8re a cependant l'avantage d'\u00eatre non apparente et lui \u00e9vite d'\u00eatre davantage exclue de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 qu'elle ne l'est d\u00e9j\u00e0\" 'The excised woman is afflicted with a kind of deformity. The latter however has the advantage of not being apparent and prevents her from being further excluded from society than she already is' (Marie 116). On the contrary, one of the reasons given for performing FGC is aesthetic (Koso-Thomas 7), and in many communities, the uncircumcised woman is the one who would be ostracized.\n\n40. \"The prevalence of FGC in Egypt, for example, stayed roughly the same\u2014about 97 percent\u2014between 1994 and 2003, while it rose in Cote d'Ivoire from 43 percent to 45 percent, slipped back from 95 percent to 89 percent in Eritrea and to 34 percent from 38 percent in Kenya, in the same time period\" (Mekay).\n\n## Chapter 4\n\n## The Algerian Civil War: Rachid Boudjedra's _Le FIS de la haine_ , Rachid Mimouni's _De la barbarie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de l'int\u00e9grisme en particulier_ , and _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_\n\nThe French colonization of Algeria stands out among the other North African countries by the length of time (132 years) and the bloody war that was fought to gain independence. Algeria came back in the news in the late 1980s and 1990s with the rise of an Islamist political party and a devastating civil war. During that period, France was slowly coming out of a period of amnesia, as historians Benjamin Stora and Mohammed Harbi put it, about its painful colonial past and the atrocities it committed in Algeria before and especially during the 1954-1962 war for independence. This is the context in which the books analyzed in this chapter were published.\n\nAs the sole party since it won the war in 1962, the FLN had maintained a strong hold on Algerian politics thanks to oil revenues. The drop of the price of oil in 1986 brought this fragile equilibrium to a halt. Adding to this, a high birth rate, lagging infrastructure, and high unemployment rate took their toll and triggered riots in October 1988, that were severely repressed by the government. As Philip Naylor phrased it, \"On the surface, the riots stemmed from economic pressures, but they were deeply rooted in political, social, and cultural frustration\" (165). These events led to the adoption of a new constitution in early 1989 opening the political arena. One of the newly established political parties was the FIS (Front Islamique du Salut), founded in March 1989, a party that went on to win the first two free elections held in Algeria since Independence: for the local governments in June 1990, and for the National Assembly in December 1991.\n\n1991 was a watershed year for Algerian politics, because the FIS took center stage as the only viable opposition party to the FLN. Tensions grew between the government and the FIS leaders following the imposition of a redistricting before the legislative elections to minimize the FIS's projected gain at the polls. A siege was declared, the FIS leaders (Benhadj and Madani) arrested, and the elections postponed for six months. Some Islamists refused to engage in the elections which they saw as a dupery and took to the maquis, committing violent acts (over which the FIS had no control). After the FIS emerged victorious from the first round of elections in December 1991, the army's coup d'\u00e9tat in January 1992 (making the president resign, cancelling the elections' second round, dissolving the FIS and arresting its militants) marked the beginning of the civil war that would last until 1999 and in which Algerian civilians became targets. The civil war spilled over to France when the GIA hijacked an Air France plane in 1994 and orchestrated terrorist attacks in Paris in 1995.1 These events offered dramatic proof of the neocolonial relationship extant between the two countries; they brought to the fore the fact that France and Algeria's paths had remained intertwined. Despite decolonization,2 economic dependencies, such as the presence of French _coop\u00e9rants_ in Algeria, of Algerian emigrant workers in France, and agreements regulating the exploitation of Algeria's hydrocarbons, existed.3 Naylor notes that \"Though France was politically ambivalent [about the annulment of the elections], it consistently provided Algeria with indispensable economic support\" (196), notably through rescheduling of Algeria's debt. According to him, \"by exercising its influence in multilateral organizations and circles, France disguised its extraordinary economic support to Algeria,\" a support that was crucial in saving Algeria from financial disaster (207).\n\nThis chapter analyzes representations of the rise of the FIS to political prominence and the civil war in nonfiction works. The first section examines two essays that were triggered by the FIS's electoral victory and that were published the year of the annulment of the elections: Rachid Mimouni's _De la barbarie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de l'int\u00e9grisme en particulier_ , and Rachid Boudjedra's _Le FIS de la haine_. My purpose here is not to weigh in on the question of whether intellectuals were right or not in supporting the annulment of the elections.4 My analysis demonstrates that both essays reduce the diversity of Islamist movements to the fundamentalism of the FIS. In addition, I contend that word choices (Mimouni's title and Boudjedra's inflammatory rhetoric) do more to feed the flames of fear than to further our understanding of the events under scrutiny.\n\nA surge of novels and autobiographical accounts set during the civil war were published during the 1990s in Paris by Algerians, but instead of analyzing some of these works in the second section (it would take a book to do them justice), I focus on a collection of short autobiographical narratives where the civil war trespasses on the colonial past. Also published in the 1990s, _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ is set during colonial Algeria, a time period well before the civil war even started, and yet the civil war intrudes in the collection. I give particular consideration to the fact that the devastating effects of colonialism are mostly erased or strikingly downplayed, while the violence that surfaces in places is mainly associated with the Algerian nationalist movement during the war for independence and with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism that constitutes the backdrop to the publication of the text, commissioned in the 1990s. I draw out the implications of the civil war's intrusion into narratives taking place well before the 1990s, and of this shift of perpetrators of violence given the context of publication of the volume.\n\n### The FIS's Electoral Victory in Essays\n\n#### Rachid Boudjedra's _Le FIS de la haine_\n\nIn _Le FIS de la haine_ (2002), Boudjedra identifies several causes for the birth of the Islamist party. In the process, he does not spare any one, as he successively lays the blame on several actors: the West and the Algerian government, the Algerian people and intellectuals are all held accountable. The West is castigated for its double standards (17), its shameless capitalism and neocolonialism not only in the economic, political, but also in the cultural sphere with the concept of _Francophonie_ (20-31, 89-95), and its scorn of the Arabic language and Islamic culture inherited from colonial times that has contributed to the rise of religious fundamentalism (32-34). Regarding the West's project to improve the economic situation, Boudjedra points out that \"on a l'impression que les pays riches sont pr\u00eats \u00e0 s'accommoder de la peste int\u00e9griste si leurs int\u00e9r\u00eats \u00e9conomiques les plus \u00e9go\u00efstes sont garantis par les islamistes\" 'it seems that rich countries are ready to tolerate the fundamentalist plague provided that their most selfish economic interests are guaranteed by Islamists' (133). One can object that there is nothing new here in terms of Western foreign policy in the Middle East overall, for the same has been true with the FLN's authoritarian rule. As Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Volpi noted, the West has been more concerned with its short-term economic requirements than with Algeria's long-term needs to develop a democracy (129). Boudjedra blames the Algerian people for the unrestrained birth rate and the ensuing problems caused by such high demographics.5 Intellectuals are also blamed (56-58). Another factor listed as a cause for the rise of the FIS is the FLN's corruption and its Arabisation policy, which led the government to bring in teachers from abroad, especially from Egypt, some of whom turned out to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood who spread fundamentalism.\n\nScholars have pointed to the same factors as contributing to the Algerian crisis, so it is not so much the content of Boudjedra's essay, but its rhetoric that is objectionable. _Le FIS de la haine_ has been labeled as a pamphlet (Memmi, \"La folie\" 32), a category that is fitting given its virulent tone. While Boudjedra's writing is caustic throughout, I argue that his explicit demonization of the FIS and oversimplification of certain issues to the benefit of the FLN and detriment of the FIS skews Boudjedra's argument. This disproportion, both in quantity and quality, in the criticism of the FIS leaves little space to emphasize the damages caused by the FLN since independence.\n\nBoudjedra is able to paint a nuanced portrait of the West and the FLN, underlining both their achievements and their shortcomings, but he fails to do the same for the FIS. The writer can differentiate between on the one hand, the West that oppresses other nations and its multinationals governed by greed, and on the other hand the West of intellectuals and artists (104-105), but he cannot make the same distinction when it comes to the Algerian Islamist movement. Gilles Kepel has noted that from the very beginning in the early 1980s, the Islamist movement in Algeria has had two trends: an extremist one that advocates armed struggle and a reformist one that works through political channels ( _Jihad_ 170). Although Boudjedra does recognize that there are different \"islams\" (120), his depiction of the Islamist movement in Algeria is monolithic, with the FIS presented as the sole Islamist party, and with no distinction between different groups. After its formation, the FIS did not include all major representatives of the Islamist movement (Kepel, _Jihad_ 173); there were other Islamic parties on the Algerian scene (such as Mahfoudh Nahnah's Hamas, and Abdallah Jaballah's Nahda), who participated in the elections. Indeed, Michael Willis notes that several senior Islamists (such as Ahmed Sahnoun and Mohammed Sa\u00efd) refused to join the party, and that from its inception the FIS represented only part of Algeria's Islamist movement (117), but Boudjedra fails to mention any of this.\n\nBoudjedra faults the FIS leadership for its inconsistencies, which he sees as double talk (with Abassi's public statements differing sharply from Belhadj's hardline rhetoric), but these discrepancies also reflected real divisions between the two leaders of the FIS (Willis 146-48). In addition, there is a difference between the Islamic militants involved in the political process and the Emirs of armed groups, the latter usually composed of marginal people outside the religious sphere until they joined the jihad (Martinez, _The Algerian_ 96). But by lumping them all together under the Islamic fundamentalist label, the atrocities committed by the latter indelibly taint the former. Boudjedra has fallen into the trap of overemphasizing the violent and discriminatory aspect of the Islamic movement in Algeria, thus failing to explain how it came to have such support, whether one situates it in an international context of Islamic fundamentalism, or as a consequence of the evolution of the postcolonial state and society.\n\nBoudjedra portrays FLN leaders in a somewhat more nuanced fashion. Ben Bella was a \"despote . . . gris\u00e9 par le pouvoir\" 'despot, intoxicated by power,' \"inculte, d\u00e9magogue\" 'uneducated, demagogue' (38). While Boudjedra describes how Ben Bella had people arrested and executed, he does not describe him as thirsty for blood (as he does the FIS, more on that later). In his most virulent attack, Boudjedra refers to ministers under Boumediene as \"obs\u00e9d\u00e9s sexuels\" 'sexual maniacs' (42). The FLN's role in bringing about the birth of the FIS is broached briefly (11), but that brief sentence is overshadowed by two pages that praise the party for creating a modern independent state (13-14). Although Boudjedra admits that the FLN was \"autoritaire, m\u00e9prisant, dictatorial, corrompu, perverti, \u00e0 un point inimaginable\" 'authoritarian, comtemptuous, dictatorial, corrupt, perverted, to some unimaginable degree' (14), he exonerates it by intimating that these are characteristics of all political powers. Later on, he finds excuses for the FLN's corruption by recalling the harsh treatment its members endured during colonial times and the war for Independence (53), but shows no such leniency for the FIS leaders.\n\nOn the issue of corruption and poor economic planning, Boudjedra first states that both the state and the FIS are responsible (81); later on he criticizes the West as well as the FIS by naming it twice, but forgets the FLN (102). This is an example of Boudjedra's double standard: the FIS, which controlled the local governments for a year and a half, gets more blame than the FLN, which controlled all levels of government for close to thirty years, as if commensurability existed between the decades of FLN state rule and the brief period when the FIS held local offices. Louis Martinez has pointed out that the FIS could not carry out its policies after its victory in the local elections in June 1990 for lack of financial support from the government, something its victory at the legislative level could have changed ( _The Algerian_ 90-1, see also Willis 159-60).6\n\nBut more than his selective presentation of facts, it is the vocabulary that Boudjedra uses to disparage the FIS's leaders and its members that is striking: Ali Belhadj is \"ignare\" 'ignorant,' a \"petit avorton\" 'small squirt' whose weekly sermons leave its audience \"avide de sang\" 'eager for blood' (11), \"ils [leaders of the FIS] sont devenus aujourd'hui parce que cancres, parce que incomp\u00e9tents, les bourreaux de l'Alg\u00e9rie contemporaine, les fous de Dieu qui \u00e9ructent des insanit\u00e9s\" 'because they are dunces, incompetent, they became the executioners of contemporary Algeria, the madmen of God who eruct insanities' (65), \"les monstres qui dirigent le FIS. . . . Horde d'incultes\" 'the monsters that lead the FIS . . . A horde of uneducated people' (40);7 \"requins voraces qui aiment la couleur du sang et son odeur\" (140), 'voracious sharks that like the color and smell of blood' (15) \"maquereaux qui balafrent et vitriolent les femmes\" 'pimps who gash and throw vitriol at women,' \"des d\u00e9biles attard\u00e9s\" 'backward feebles,' \"rats enrag\u00e9s et pestif\u00e9r\u00e9s\" 'rabid and plague-stricken rats' (16). Boudjedra reserves his vitriolic rhetoric for the FIS, the words he uses animalize the FIS leaders and its members, who are reduced to monsters thirsty for blood. Animalizing one's target is a common colonialist and genocidal rhetorical ploy, used among others by the French in Algeria to refer to the FLN. Given that the pejorative term \"raton\" 'small rat' is still used to designate North Africans, for an Algerian to call other Algerians rats is to be purposefully provocative. Moreover, Boudjedra's accusations are not well informed: Madani held a Ph.D. in education and had published three books (Willis 147-8); Benhadj possessed great oratory talents (Kepel, _Jihad_ 174).\n\nThe party and Islamism are variously called \"un fascisme rampant et gluant\" 'a crawling and gluey facism' (10); \"la peste verte\" 'the green plague' (111, 135); \"monstre verd\u00e2tre\" 'greenish monster' (114); \"le pus vert\" 'green pus' (137); \"un parti ordurier et naus\u00e9abond\" 'a filthy and foul party' (16); \"Parti de la mort, il a la passion du sang, du bain de sang, de la tuerie. La majorit\u00e9 \u00e9crasante de ses responsables sont des cas psychiatriques. La pathologie du FIS est tr\u00e8s profonde\" 'the party of death, it has a passion for blood, blood bath, slaughter. The overwhelming majority of its leaders are psychiatric cases. The pathology of the FIS is very deep' (108). The following hyperbole, stating that the intent of the FIS regarding women is to \"imprison them in concentration camps\" (\"la femme il la parquerait dans des camps de concentration\" (93), crowns it all. One can see clearly here the measure of exaggeration in Boudjedra's text, for if indeed the FIS did not promote gender equality, its sexist pronouncements8 were a far cry from incitement to genocide.\n\nBoudjedra also engages in personal attacks on historians Harbi and Stora (122-23), and rails against Lahouari Addi's statement that the election of the FIS was a \"r\u00e9gression f\u00e9conde\" 'fertile regression' (110-11). Regarding the latter, Boudjedra deprecates the scholar (\"un petit sociologue\" 'a petty sociologist') to better denigrate the argument, with which he does not really engage.9 Boudjedra blames some journalists, whom he faults for believing that \"ils sont objectifs et que toute autre analyse que la leur est passionnelle et subjective\" 'they are objective and that all analysis other than their own is emotional and subjective' (115). However, the vocabulary and hyperbole detailed above are ground enough to turn that same critique against Boudjedra himself. Similarly, the attacks leveled against some journalists for simplifying a complex situation (118) can also be applied to his book.\n\n_Le FIS de la haine_ was reedited with a new afterword by the author in 1994, two years after the original edition. The back cover, signed by Boudjedra, sets the tone: only the FIS is blamed for electoral fraud and terror. He asserts that his book was written \"sans tabous, sans barri\u00e8res et sans pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s\" 'without any taboos, barriers, or prejudice' (backcover). In this new edition, Boudjedra keeps on blaming the FIS, and ignores the military exactions (including torture) committed by the regime, such as the measures taken starting in April 1993 to reconquer the Islamist communes of Greater Algiers (Martinez, _The Algerian_ 22). There is no mention in Boudjedra of the crackdown perpetrated by the government on the FIS in June 1991 and in January 1992 (Volpi 51, 58), of the dissolution of the party and the repression against its members\u2014more than ten thousand prisoners in detention camps (Burgat 304). The new afterword keeps blaming the FIS for all the gruesome news coming out of Algeria, and does not make any mention of the GIA at all, an armed group that split with the FIS and that was responsible for some of the atrocities that Boudjedra attributes to the FIS (Volpi 68).10 In addition, Boudjedra accuses the FIS of propaganda,11 but there is not a single word on the FLN's censorship of the media (Volpi 59).\n\nAccording to Boudjedra, \"le FIS n'est qu'un \u00e9l\u00e9ment de l'internationale int\u00e9griste islamique qui fait tant de mal \u00e0 l'Islam\" 'the FIS is only one component of the Islamic fundamentalist Internationale that wrongs Islam so much' (119). The term \"Islamic fundamentalism\" is used as a blanket term to denote a wide spectrum of movements.12 Boudjedra does not make the distinction that Volpi deems crucial in a Muslim context between Islamic fundamentalism as \"the set of political and ethical precepts which may (or may not) help people to organize their social world better, and Islamic fundamentalism as a name attributed to the activities of a group of political actors . . . claiming to represent Islamic orthodoxy\" (Volpi 10). Boudjedra's statement \"Le FIS n'a qu'un credo: le pouvoir, de n'importe quelle fa\u00e7on\" 'the FIS has only one creed: power, by all means' (\"Postface\" 127), could very well be said of the FLN. Boudjedra cannot come to terms with the fact that the Islamic movement does have a certain appeal, as attested by its capacity for mobilization (Burgat 2), not just to the poor urban youth but also to the pious middle class (Kepel 174),13 with the fact that Muslims may find an ethics and an understanding of modernity governed by Qur'anic principles (Majid, _Unveiling_ 21), and with the fact that democracy and Islam may not be incompatible (Layachi 59).\n\n#### Rachid Mimouni's _De la barbarie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de l'int\u00e9grisme en particulier_\n\nMimouni's _De la barbarie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de l'int\u00e9grisme en particulier_ adopts a perspective similar to Boudjedra's position. The first part, entitled \"Qu'est-ce que le FIS?\" 'what is the FIS?' purports to demonstrate how retrograde the FIS is by focusing on its alleged archaism (fixation of fundamentalists on the past), and its hatred of women, culture, and intellectuals. Mimouni does stress the difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism (particularly in his discussion of women), but does not differentiate different tendencies within the Islamic movement (153, 166, 170). The second part underlines that the power in place shares some responsibility in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria (poor handling of the economy, using the fundamentalists to counter the Berber movement in 1980). The intellectuals are also blamed for their lack of courage and their absence at key moments.14 The third part focuses on the factors that promoted fundamentalism (moral crisis, demographic explosion, dual tracks in education). The fourth part talks about obstacles to democracy in Algeria (no tradition of democracy in Algeria, tribalism and illiteracy).\n\nMimouni's essay perpetuates some of the same stereotypes as Boudjedra's, starting with its title that clearly qualifies Islamic fundamentalism as a barbaric movement, made explicit in the course of the essay: \"ce retour de la barbarie\" 'this return of barbarity' (87). In addition, the treatment of the shortcomings of the FLN and the FIS lacks balance. For instance, only the FIS is presented as benefiting from _trabendo_ (black market, 64), although _trabendo_ predates the 1988 riots (Kepel 167). Even when there might be something positive to be said about the FIS, it is phrased in such a way as to turn it into a negative. For instance, Mimouni acknowledges the FIS's charity work, but in a manner that ends up turning it into a coldly calculated tactic to win more support (66). Several parallelisms between Algerian and French history are made: an interesting comparison is made between Boudiaf's return in 1992 and De Gaulle's in 1958 to solve the Algerian crisis (86), but a rather dubious one between the FIS and the OAS reduces a legally constituted political party that won elections to an underground terrorist organization (166).\n\nDespite these shortcomings, Mimouni's essay endeavors to achieve a rational examination of the situation. The last two pages seem to forecast the civil war that was to unfold (166-67). To his credit, Mimouni also acknowledges that the Islamic tendency is there to stay and must be taken into account,15 and that the dissolution of the FIS is not a long-term solution (165). Robert Mortimer has pointed out that \"What was needed, well before the fateful elections of December 1991, was a dialogue between secularists and Islamists about pluralism and civil liberties\" (19), and added that the urgency for dialogue has been rendered all the more critical by the civil war. Azzedine Layachi envisions the need for a democratic front including Islamists and secularists in order for change to occur; he states that \"the Islamists and the secularists must both change the way they perceive and relate to each other\" (63). Layachi acknowledges that this will be a challenge, but not an impossible task (63). Boudjedra's essay, with its virulent rhetoric, does not demonstrate that kind of willingness from its author, while Mimouni is definitely a step closer. However, the portrayal of Islamism as a barbaric movement does not foster the conditions necessary for dialogue or analysis.\n\nCriticism of the FIS was undoubtedly warranted. Party policies were characterized by vagueness and lack of innovation in terms of economic policy and political institutions. A majority of its pronouncements focused upon social, educational, and cultural issues, mostly advocating Arabization of education and segregation of the sexes (Willis 138-47), and its leadership was fragmented due to a clear cleavage between the two leaders about crucial issues (Willis 145-46, Naylor 220). However, Boudjedra and Mimouni's essays fail to point out that political violence began with the arbitrary arrests and torture of pro-Islamic demonstrators by the government, a fact that historians and political scientists writing about the Algerian crisis underline (see for instance Volpi vii). The fact that the so-called \"Islamist\" violence is a response to state violence is too often occulted (Burgat 115).\n\nMoreover, Burgat noted that the \"interruption of the electoral process and flare up of repression open[ed] a breach in the arguments of the FIS' legalists to the advantage of their most radical challengers\" (318). Mimouni does anticipate that state repression will radicalize the Islamist movement and promote the most extremist leaders (166). As for Boudjedra, he does not reflect in the new edition of his work on the fact that the level of violence was caused by the state's measures, and that the state was responsible for a significant proportion of the exactions committed, whether directly or indirectly by infiltrating Islamic movements (Volpi 90). Burgat notes that this government infiltration of the GIA was designed \"to keep the necessary repulsion in international public opinion and thus block any rational analysis of the crisis\" (328). Thus, the regime in Algeria succeeded in limiting the visibility of its opposition to the excesses of the most radical elements with the cooperation (conscious or not) of the international media (Burgat 316). With their titles, Boudjedra and Mimouni's essays have contributed to that current. In a similar vein, Willis noted the eagerness of the Algerian (and French) government to report items when the FIS implemented measures to conform Algeria's social life to their idea of an Islamic society, some true, but others turned out to be fabricated, distorted, or measures taken by previously FLN-controlled authorities (158-59).\n\nBoudjedra (96) and Mimouni (84) both accuse the FIS of burning a baby in Ouargla in 1989. Boudjedra recalls this incident again at the closing of the book (140-41), and compares it to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 (which marked the end of the democratic republic of Weimar). He invokes lessons from Nazism (137), and from Iran (139). Similarly, Mimouni makes a parallelism between Nazism and the Weimar Republic and Algeria to counter those who defend that the electoral process should have been respected (152), as well as a parallelism with Iran (154). According to journalist Rabha Attaf (who opens her article by quoting Boudjedra's mention of it in his essay), this incident was nothing but a \"sordide affaire de moeurs\" 'sordid sexual immorality case' (202), yet it was exploited and told over and over again as a proof that the FIS hated women. According to her, \"l'utilisation mensong\u00e8re de cette affaire a un objectif bien pr\u00e9cis: disqualifier le FIS et justifier, a post\u00e9riori, un anti-islamisme primaire alimentant une r\u00e9pression sanglante sous couvert de lutte pour le droit des femmes\" 'the deceitful use of this case has a very specific goal: to disqualify the FIS and a posteriori justify a simplistic anti-Islamism that feeds a bloody repression under the guise of a struggle for women's rights' (202). The references to Iran bring foreign history and events to bear on the Algerian context, putting more emphasis on transnational Islamism, and not placing the rise of the FIS within the context of Algeria's unfinished history of (de)colonization.\n\nAs Willis points out, \"the high-profile backing the French media gave to the [secular opposition parties and the FLN] . . . seemed to confirm the FIS' propaganda against the other parties that they were the vehicles of Western and anti-Islamic values\" (153). With its numerous invectives and incendiary tone, _Le FIS de la haine_ can be seen as partaking (unwittingly) in this counter-productive campaign, and most definitely does not help look at the crisis rationally. After 1995 and the election of Zeroual as president, the labeling of the violence as terrorist and Islamic allowed the regime to create a confusion between marginal elements of its opposition (which its brutal repression helped to radicalize), and the entire opposition; this enables it to justify to the West the postponement of democratization indefinitely (Burgat 332).\n\nBurgat has stressed that \"one needs to see beyond its extreme expressions to the essence of the Islamist dialectic that it is possible to understand why it has such a remarkable capacity for mobilization\" (4). Refusing to recognize the appeal that Islamist parties can have in Algeria (and other parts of the Muslim world) will not enhance our understanding of the dynamics of the region. The fact that in several countries Islamist parties have emerged as the main opposition to authoritarian, Western-backed governments must be confronted and understood.\n\nVolpi noted that the problem for Western democracies was that \"the process of democratisation was accompanied by a process of 'Islamicisation,' \" and that \"Western democracies had to make a difficult compromise between their short-term economic and domestic political objectives and the long-term developmental needs of liberal democracy in a Muslim polity\" (129). Moreover, Western democracies are complicit in the ruling elite's system of governance of \"buy[ing] social peace with political repression and economic redistribution\" (131), a system whose stability depends on the price of hydrocarbons. No Francophone writer has noted the contradiction noted by Martinez: \"by refusing to make the FIS a partner in power in 1991 despite its success in the elections, . . . and then giving a privileged role to the AIS, the Presidency showed that the way to power is not through the ballot box but through armed resistance\" ( _The Algerian_ 19).\n\nR\u00e9da Bensma\u00efa rightfully noted the striking \"contrast between the sociopolitical insignificance of intellectuals as a 'group' and the violence carried out against them\" during the civil war in Algeria (86). If during the Algerian crisis Algerian intellectuals played the role of \"Phantom Mediators\" (as Bensma\u00efa phrased it in the title of his article), works published in France contributed to a demonization of Islam that had some repercussions in that context, most notably with the \"affaire du foulard\" 'headscarf affair,' which I discuss in the next chapter.16 In any case, Boudjedra's pamphlet would not have fulfilled the function of intellectuals, which Bensma\u00efa qualifies as \"mediators between the cultures, languages, and morals of the country and to translate the variety of statements coming from the different communities for the . . . nation, so that these could be understood in the different political, ethnic, cultural, and religious idioms\" (90). Although Boudjedra has specified that _Le FIS de la haine_ had been specifically written for the French public (qtd. in Gafa\u00efti, 72), it does not further the French public's understanding of the situation that led to the rise of the Islamic party. Mortimer identified one of the reasons why a third democratic and secular alternative did not materialize as an alternative to the FLN and the FIS, as \"the isolation of the elite from the grass roots\" (25). The essays discussed here are emblematic of that isolation. While the authors denounce the corruption and abuse of the FLN during its thirty years in power, neither Boudjedra nor Mimouni published essays focusing on the FLN, similar to these essays on the FIS. That, in itself, speaks volumes about the authors and the French market conditions.\n\n### Remembering Colonial Algeria in the 1990s: _Une \nenfance alg\u00e9rienne_\n\n_Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ first appeared in Paris in 1997, and was translated into English as _An Algerian Childhood_ in 2001. Edited by Le\u00efla Sebbar, a Franco-Algerian author, this collection is the second in what can be labeled a trilogy of collections of autobiographical short stories.17 In the first, _Une enfance d'ailleurs_ , co-edited with Nancy Huston, the common denominator of the writers (some of whom come from Poland and Russia) is French as a language for written expression. The third volume, _Une enfance outremer_ , features writers from former French colonies. As its title indicates, the second volume focuses on one country; it is the only text in the trilogy to do so. Asked about the genesis of this project, Sebbar explained that she has followed the same approach for all the collections: after selecting a topic of interest to her, linked to the themes of her works (colonization, exile, war, etc.), she then asked writers for an unpublished autobiographical piece on the theme of the book (personal correspondence with the author).\n\n_Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ features sixteen pieces by Francophone writers from diverse backgrounds (Arabs, Jews, French settlers, as well as people of mixed descent), who have in common the fact that they spent their childhood in Algeria. The authors' backgrounds emphasize the diversity of the population of colonial Algeria and the experiences of various constituents. The authors' birth-dates range from the 1920s to the 1950s, and thus the stories cover the period from post World War I to the Algerian war. In addition to their Algerian childhood, these writers also have in common the fact that they all have been living in France for decades, with the exception of one contributor who goes back and forth (according to the short biographical notices that precede each story). Indeed, these writers were chosen because they had to leave Algeria for one reason or another (Donadey, \"Foreword\" xiv). This fact in part explains the nostalgic tone that characterizes several of the stories.\n\nOverall, the narratives seem to stress the cordial relations that existed between the different groups that peopled colonial Algeria. Here are some examples: Arab and Jewish women exchange food (Bencheikh 28), Arab and European kids play together (Alloula 20, P\u00e9l\u00e9gri 193), the diverse ethnic groups enjoy the same doughnuts, their various languages are like soothing lullabies (Dadoun 88, 96), and the diverse religions form a polyphony (Daniel 111). There is an emphasis on the common lot of all, with epidemics (Dib 119) and natural disasters that do not differentiate between the backgrounds of their victims (P\u00e9l\u00e9gri 201). The nostalgia present in several of the stories is expressed through frequent interjections (Bencheikh), and the transfiguration of a weekly routine into an odyssey where prosaic chores are compared to artistic endeavors (Dadoun). William Cohen has noted that \"The pieds-noirs have a vision of history they wish to see adopted by the m\u00e9tropole. The most important 'truth' the pieds-noirs wanted to establish was that they lived in harmony with the other ethnic groups in Algeria\" (132).18 However, the pieds-noirs are not the only ones who \"embellish\" inter-ethnic relations, as Tengour's story for instance emphasizes the fact that his grandfather remained friends with French settlers during the war, while his son was in prison for his nationalist involvement. As Anne Donadey points out in her introduction to the English translation, this volume creates \"a Utopia, an imaginary homeland whose foundation rests on reconciliation and respect for differences. This volume brings into being an open Algerian community that is unfortunately impossible to put together today except within the pages of a book\" (xvii).19\n\nHowever, cracks surface in this \"utopian\" Algeria where different groups supposedly coexisted peacefully. Some passages mention or talk about the misconceptions and prejudices of one group towards another: against Arabs (Annie Cohen 79), Muslims (Daniel 109), and Jews (Tengour 223). In Jean P\u00e9l\u00e9gri's contribution, the earthquake leads Areski, an Arab, to realize the common humanity he shares with his employer, a settler, whom he now sees as his brother, but that acknowledgment is not reciprocal. While Areski insists that they are united in the face of natural disaster, his employer's answer is to stress what differentiates them: in the circumstances, the arbitrariness of grammatical gender. Although the French and Arabic languages do have grammatical gender, they assign opposite gender to the moon and the sun (202). The settlers' indifference to the indigenous population transpires in some stories. Daniel recalls that he and his teacher had no desire to learn Arabic (104). Millecam points out that as a child, he had no awareness of the colonial situation, of the fact that this territory used to belong to the ancestors of the children who are now the most destitute and whom he cannot even name, but only designates as \"les autres\" 'the others' (180). The use of the vague non-descriptive words \"les autres\" to refer to the indigenous children betrays an awareness, even if vague, of the colonial divide accompanied by a refusal to acknowledge who these \"others\" were. Cixous' story strongly contradicts that myth of harmony (more on that particular piece later).\n\nWhile the juxtaposition of short stories emphasizes the plurality of perspectives, this collection overall glosses over the brutalities of colonialism in two ways: by humor, or by emphasizing subsequent violence. In \"Mes enfances exotiques\" 'my exotic childhood,' Alloula mentions the colonial situation in passing, when he locates the story in his \"village colonial de l'Oranie\" 'colonial village of Oran' (11, de Jager 5), and talks about \"la population europ\u00e9enne\" 'the European population (19, de Jager 12). The metaphor that compares the French school to a guillotine using the words \"billots\" 'chopping block,' \"bourreau\" 'tormentor,' and \"calvaire\" 'suffering' (10, de Jager 4-5) could be read as an indictment of the role played by the French school system in the colonies to further the imperial project, but it could also be applied to a non-colonial context, where children have to submit to a strictly enforced discipline. The story starts with the mention of a \"loustic non scolaris\u00e9\" 'uneducated kid' [not enrolled in school] (9, de Jager 3) and the obscenities he would yell to the children attending school through the classroom window. The French school is described as \"ce lieu qui lui \u00e9tait inaccessible mais qu'il ne nous enviait pas\" 'that place that was inaccessible to him, but which he did not envy us' (10, de Jager 4). In 1954, 90 percent of the colonized Algerian population was illiterate (Carlier 361, Naylor 8), and only one out of ten Muslim children was enrolled in elementary school. The word \"inaccessible\" is a euphemism, considering the fact that colonial policies did not make school accessible to all children, and that among numerous inequities, European children had priority over indigenous children (Stora, _Les trois exils_ 66). In addition, that discrimination is tempered by the fact that the child was not eager to go to school. The focus of the story remains on the awakening to sexuality and the tone humoristic throughout, particularly in the skillful description loaded with poetic metaphors that accentuate the grotesque coupling of two adulterous villagers.\n\nAnother story in the same vein is Mohamed Kacimi-El-Hassani's \"A la claire ind\u00e9pendance\" 'By Independence Clear,' set at the beginning of the first school year after independence. The narrator and his friends cannot fathom why they are still being sent to the French school. Convinced that they are the only village in Algeria still under French colonization, they decide to skip school to assess the situation in the next village. The story highlights that colonialism has given way to a neocolonialism that is even harsher, subtly symbolized by the teacher's ruler, changed from wood to steel. The chorus of the French children's song \"A la claire fontaine\" 'by the fountain clear,' whose lyrics serve as a connecting thread throughout, close the story: \"Il y a longtemps que je t'aime\/Jamais je ne t'oublierai\" 'I've loved you for a long time And I shall never forget you' (de Jager 147). These lyrics emphasize the long lasting relationship fostered by colonialism and forecast that, as Naylor pointed out, \"the referendum [for independence] marked a reformulation rather than a repudiation of the relationship between the metropolitan power and the ex-colony\" (1), where the colonizer was replaced by the _coop\u00e9rant_. Despite the strong vocabulary used to describe the school routine, where corporeal punishment seems to be an integral part of the curriculum and the teacher is compared to an executioner, the tone of the story is very light and humoristic thanks to the na\u00efve point of view of the child.\n\nLikewise Mohammed Dib's story, where his encounters with foreigners are all positive: the Greek doctor who saved his leg, his French teacher, and the French language which was to become his language of literary writing. The ironic allusion to the Eurocentric curriculum of the school he will attend is made in the context of the Greek doctor and therefore removed from the otherwise positive portrayal of his French school experience: \"Celui-ci ne descendait pas de ces Gaulois dont je saurai plus tard, \u00e0 l'\u00e9cole, qu'ils \u00e9taient mes anc\u00eatres\" 'He was not a descendant of the Gauls who, as I later learned at school, were my ancestors' (118, de Jager 106).\n\nThe second means by which the narratives downplay the impact of colonization is by emphasizing violence in the post 1962 era. Even the few stories that mention the brutality of colonialism fit into the pattern of lessening the blame through mentioning violence committed after Independence, thereby relativizing the colonial brutality to subsequent events. Kacimi-El-Hassani alludes to post-independence internal violence when he mentions that Ben Bella, the first Algerian president, killed Colonel Cha\u00e2bani, after the latter led an insurrection against him. The war of Independence was multifaceted: a war of Independence waged by Algerians against France, a Franco-French civil war about the fate of French Algeria, and an Algero-Algerian civil war over the leadership of the Independence movement (Stora, \"1999-2003\" 507). In _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ however, only the Franco-Algerian (with emphasis on the Algerian) and the Algero-Algerian dimensions appear.\n\nFar\u00e8s points out the discrimination and violence perpetuated by different parties at different times: from the banning of indigenous children from school in 1940 and their continued discrimination even after they are readmitted to school once WWII was over, to the civil war that targeted Francophone secular intellectuals. There are explicit parallels drawn between the internal strife following the capitulation of France and the Vichy government, and the events of the 1990s. In a very dense passage, Far\u00e8s alludes to some of the pivotal moments in Algerian history:\n\nA chaque crise, r\u00e9pondent les fantasia et les grandes man\u0153uvres militaires, en septembre, au sud du village de Berrouaghia: fin du nazisme, en Europe; refus de la subtile \u00e9mancipation politique, en Alg\u00e9rie; l'est du pays d\u00e9j\u00e0 flambe; le sud se met en ligne sur la longue piste des chevaux! Deux fois les chars: la premi\u00e8re en 1947 \u00e0 l'inauguration\u2014mauvais augure\u2014des grandes man\u0153uvres de la guerre.\n\nLa seconde en 1962, lors des charniers de Boumediene. (136)\n\nWith each crisis, cavalcades and huge military maneuvers respond, in September to the south of the village of Berrouaghia: the end of Nazism in Europe; refusal of fragile political emancipation in Algeria; the East of the country is already in flames; the South lines up on the long road of horses! Tanks twice: the first time in 1947 at the inauguration\u2014a bad omen!\u2014of the great war maneuvers.\n\nThe second in 1962 at the time of Boumedienne's mass graves. (de Jager 123-24)\n\nThe defeat of Hitler in 1945 is juxtaposed with an indirect allusion to the 1945 riots (most commonly known as the S\u00e9tif riots) that shook the country when nationalist demands were brutally suppressed. While Far\u00e8s' style is reputed for being difficult and obtuse, in this passage the allusions to internal postcolonial Algerian violence carried out by Boumedienne are more clearly identified than those committed by the colonial authority. 1947, for instance, is the year of the law giving more representation to Muslim Algerians. The Berrouaghia prison is mentioned twice in the story (136, 141). This prison was founded by the French where they incarcerated revolutionaries; it has kept this function post-independence and has housed leaders of the Berber Spring20 and FIS members. In November 1994, Islamist prisoners died there in suspect circumstances (that could not be investigated because of censorship by the authorities, which claimed that prisoners were trying to escape or caused a mutiny).\n\nJean-Pierre Millecam revisits his childhood as the Eden before the original sin, from the point of view of the child, but as a grown-up narrator he knows that \"la faute avait \u00e9t\u00e9 commise quelque cent ans plus t\u00f4t\" 'the sin had been committed some hundred years before' (181, de Jager 167). Colonialism compared to the original sin forecasts the demise of French Algeria, and the flooding of a town announces the fascism that will sweep his town. The conscription of indigenous soldiers sent to Europe as a \"chair \u00e0 canon\" 'cannon fodder' (188, de Jager 173) is denounced. WWII, the Algerian war, and the civil war as a continuation of it are compared to apocalypses (188). The religious reference of the title, and the quotation from the Bible (\"dans la cuve de la col\u00e8re divine\" 'in the vat of divine wrath' 182, de Jager 168) taken from Revelation 14:19, downplay human agency in historical processes.\n\nSebbar's story, dedicated to her parents who were both teachers, touches on her ambivalence about the role of teachers in the colonial project. The two violent incidents that are recalled in the story are chosen because they target teachers, and are committed by Algerians who are trying to put an end to the colonial domination. Sebbar intertwines a memory she has of hearing her parents talk about teachers being killed, with her research in library archives trying to find more information about these incidents. Describing a newly arrived couple of teachers who were killed on the first day of the war of independence, Sebbar asks: \"Ils ne savent pas que c'est la Colonie et sa langue qu'ils viennent servir, sur ces Hauts Plateaux \u00e9trangers, hostiles et beaux?\" 'Don't they know they've come to serve the colony and its language, there on the foreign High Plateaus, hostile and beautiful?' (212, de Jager 195). By describing them as having \"la candeur curieuse des enfants de la R\u00e9publique\" 'the curious candor of children of the French Republic' (212, de Jager 196), she tilts the balance to their innocence and naivety regarding the role they play, as teachers, in furthering the domination of the settlers' culture. The focus on teachers, together with the mention of burnt libraries (208), puts the emphasis on repositories of knowledge that are targeted during the war. The other incident that Sebbar discovers in archives took place in 1901, when rebellious villagers threatened a teacher. In the context of the publication of the book, the physical violence French teachers are victims of in this story will likely evoke the targeting of indigenous (Francophone) intellectuals during the civil war.\n\nTwo stories offer a striking counterpoint about the depiction of the relations between Muslims and Jews in Algeria. Albert Bensoussan's \"L'enfant perdu\" 'The Lost Child' and H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous' \"Pieds nus\" 'Bare Feet' happen to follow one another by chance, since the narratives appear according to the alphabetical order of their author. Although both narratives have in common the narration of an encounter between a Muslim and a Jewish child, they could not be more dissimilar: positive and nostalgic for Bensoussan, who fondly recalls how he met and lost his friend Fatiha, and negative for Cixous, who was implicitly reminded of her privileged status, despite the abrogation by the Vichy government of the Cr\u00e9mieux decree granting citizenship to all Jews, during an encounter with a shoe shine boy. Both stories take place in 1941, a year that is specified in Cixous' piece, and that can be implied from Bensoussan's story. I contrast both stories, and analyze the implication of Cixous' casting of the Arab shoe shiner boy, who belonged to the most disenfranchised group during colonial Algeria, into an aggressor and symbolic murderer of the little Jewish girl that she was, when he put red shoe polish on her white sandals. A detailed analysis of \"Pieds nus\" shows that the contemporary conditions of its writing distort what was the actual reality on the ground for Algerian Jews and their relationship with Muslims, thereby fueling stereotypes of Arab-Muslim hatred for Jews.\n\n\"L'enfant perdu\" tells the story of the friendship between the narrator, a six-year old Jewish boy, and a Muslim girl, Fatiha, and its abrupt ending. After Albert gets lost while shopping in the market with his mother, he is found by an Arab man, who takes him home, where his daughter Fatiha takes care of him until his family is contacted. Thereafter, his mother drops him off at Fatiha's house every Thursday for about three years while she goes shopping. Bensoussan fondly recalls the games played with Fatiha. Suddenly, he was no longer taken to Fatiha's house, without really knowing why. It is only years later that he understood that as she had reached puberty, Fatiha could no longer play with a boy.\n\nThe title of the story is polysemic. It refers to Bensoussan as the lost child in the market, and evokes the distance between the narrator and his childhood, many years behind him.21 The emotion felt by the loss of his friend is poignantly expressed by the narrator in an apostrophe: \"Fatiha, mon amie, qu'\u00e9tais-tu devenue?\" 'what became of you, Fatiha, my friend?' (52, de Jager 46). Bensoussan's nostalgic tone can be read in two different ways. On the one hand, it can be seen as nostalgia for life prior to what Stora has called the first of three exiles experienced by Algerian Jews. Stora has detailed how the 1870 Cr\u00e9mieux decree, which gave the French citizenship to indigenous Jews, triggered the gradual assimilation of the Jewish community with the European community in Algeria,22 and therefore its separation from the Muslim population. This entailed a gradual loss of Arabic ( _Les trois exils_ 13). In the story, Albert's mother speaks Arabic, but he does not, and it is in French that he communicates with Fatiha. The process of Frenchification and assimilation of Algerian Jews to French culture is evident in some of the linguistic choices between the two generations of the mother and the child: the narrator's mother uses the Arabic term \"Roumis\" to designate Christians, as Arabs do, but the son uses the word \"communion\"\u2014pointing out \"comme on disait, pour bien dire\" 'as they said to put it nicely' (52, de Jager 45)\u2014to talk about what must have been his bar-mitzvah. What separates the two friends is not their different religious background nor the disconnect that took place between the two groups as a consequence of the Cr\u00e9mieux decree, but gender relations as defined by Muslim Arab culture. Calling Fatiha's family his \"famille arabe\" 'Arab family' (51), Bensoussan's text seems to endeavor to recapture the time when there were still bonds between the two communities.\n\nBensoussan's story can also be seen as partaking in the nostalgia that is symptomatic of the \"desire to create and hold on to a memory, to recapture the world that was lost, existing prior to the fall of ' _Alg\u00e9rie fran\u00e7aise_ ,' French Algeria\" (William Cohen 129). William Cohen states that, with a few exceptions, \"What is striking about the many novels and memoirs on French Algeria is the absence in them of any account of strife between Europeans and Muslims. It is as if memories of such incidents had been repressed\" (William Cohen 132).23 Bensoussan's piece fits perfectly in that category. Stora specifies that after the 1962 exile,24 it was not until the 1990s that Algerian Jews began making a distinction between themselves and the pied-noir community (Stora, _Les trois exils_ 9, see also \"L'impossible\" 289). Once Algerian Jews abandoned a pied-noir identity, they were no longer interested in furthering the myth of a French Algeria where the three monotheist communities lived in perfect harmony (William Cohen 136). One can see that change reflected in Cixous' \"Pieds nus,\" albeit in a problematic way.\n\nCixous' story starts with a description of her native city of Oran. References to two different worlds are sprinkled throughout the narrative; it is not always clear for the child what exactly those two worlds are (60, 62), but the divide created by colonization is clear. Colonial Oran is described in negative terms as a sick body, where hatred predominates: \"Le corps d'Oran . . . \u00e9tait un corps politique, tum\u00e9fi\u00e9, articulations enflamm\u00e9es, un monstre peuple, les bouches haletantes les langues charg\u00e9es de glaviots pr\u00eates \u00e0 se les cracher au visage, les genoux boursoufl\u00e9s, les gorges grosses d'arri\u00e8re-pens\u00e9es, \u00e0 soi-m\u00eame \u00e9tranger, \u00e9trangers, furieux\" 'Oran's body . . . was a political body, swollen, limbs inflamed, a monster people, mouths gasping tongues laden with gobs of saliva ready to be spit in each other's faces, puffy knees, throats thick with afterthoughts, strangers to themselves, foreign, furious' (62, de Jager 55-56).\n\nCixous fondly recalls the Sundays her family spent on the mountain (which stands as a sharp contrast with the city) as a happy time:\n\nOn renouait plaisamment avec les morts. C'\u00e9tait des maures qui dormaient famili\u00e8rement tout au long du flanc de la montagne, \u00e0 peine recouverts d'un pan herbu et sur la t\u00eate une jolie mosa\u00efque aux couleurs vives. On marchait entre eux sur eux on s'asseyait avec eux, c'\u00e9tait bon, cet accompagnement hospitalier, jamais plus tard je ne retrouverai cette cong\u00e9nialit\u00e9 paisible, ce partage de la terre, cet acquiescement. (58)\n\nOne reconnected pleasantly with the dead. It was the Moors who slept informally all along the side of the mountain, barely covered with a grassy patch and a pretty, brightly colored mosaic on their head. We would walk between them, on them, we'd sit down with them, and it was good, this hospitable company; never again did I find that peaceful congeniality later on, that sharing of the earth, that acquiescence. (de Jager 51-52)\n\nNicholas Harrison notes that the choice of the word \"maures\" 'Moors' and its assonance with \"morts\" 'deads' translates \"a child's confusion at much of what she hears,\" and that it \"may carry positive connotations,\" since it evokes the Golden Andalusian age, when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived in peace and contributed to a vibrant culture (24). In keeping with Cixous' description of the city as unharmonious, I propose a radically different interpretation of this paragraph: the play on the homonymy between \"morts\" and \"maures\" emphasizes the fact that the only time she and her family enjoy peaceful relations with the Arabs is when the latter are dead, and, to continue on the allusion to the Andalusian era, that the time of peaceful coexistence is long gone.\n\nAfter the abrogation of the Cr\u00e9mieux decree by the Vichy government stripped Algerian Jews of their French citizenship, the little girl that she was felt relieved of her guilt, as she considered that she no longer belonged to the oppressive side (63). Her father, who was forbidden to practice as a doctor, was forced to become a chiropodist. A clever play on the homonyms \"corps\" 'body' and \"cor\" 'corn' highlights the absurdity of the _numerus clausus_25 that was imposed on professional Jews: \"Pour survivre mon p\u00e8re se fit p\u00e9dicure. Je ne sais pas pourquoi Vichy qui lui \u00f4tait le soin des corps lui avait cependant abandonn\u00e9 les cors aux pieds\" 'In order to survive, my father became a pedicure. I don't know why Vichy, which had taken the care of bodies away from him, still left him the care of corns' (62-63, de Jager 56).\n\nCixous likens her new status of outcast to the sensation of being barefoot when she walks on the mountain between the Muslim graves: \"Que nous fussions parias cela obscur\u00e9ment me soulageait, comme d'\u00eatre vrais, comme d'\u00eatre pieds nus sur le chemin des Planteurs parmi les tombes\" 'That we were pariahs consoled me in an obscure way, like true beings [like being true], like barefoot beings [like being barefoot] on the path of the Planters among the tombs' (62, de Jager 56). The motif of walking barefoot in the mountain suggests an organic link with the land. On the mountain, she feels a kinship with the \"maures\/morts\" through her bare feet (\"En grimpant j'\u00f4tais mes sandales et je mettais mes pieds dans les mains des morts, et je caressais l'empreinte de leurs pieds avec les paumes de mes pieds\" 'Clambering up I would take off my sandals and put my feet in the hands of the dead, and I'd caress the imprint of their feet with the soles of my own' (59, de Jager 53). The indigenous of the city (those who are alive) are portrayed as anchored in the ground (\"encore ins\u00e9par\u00e9s de la terre et des pav\u00e9s\" 'not yet separated from the earth and the pavement' 61, de Jager 55) to denote their belonging to Algerian soil. According to Stora, the abrogation of the Cr\u00e9mieux Decree marks the second exile of Algerian Jews, this time not from the Muslim natives, but from the French Republic to which they had assimilated ( _Les trois exils_ 13). Cixous' take on the abrogation of the Cr\u00e9mieux Decree is unique, as she first presents it as a (short-lived) hope for reversing that first exile. No other Algerian Jewish writer, to the best of my knowledge, had anything positive to say about being stripped of their French citizenship.\n\nAfter someone donates to her a brand new pair of sandals, she is reminded that she still enjoys class privileges when an Arab shoeshine boy smears her white sandals with red shoe polish. Their encounter is presented as a rehearsal for the play that will be staged on the scene of independent Algeria (64). The scene is compared to a trial: \"J'avouai. J'\u00e9tais coupable. Devant son tribunal \u00e0 lui, l'acquittement dont je jouissais \u00e0 mes yeux depuis Vichy n'avait aucune valeur. J'habitais rue Philippe au deuxi\u00e8me \u00e9tage et j'avais des sandales donn\u00e9es \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat neuf\" 'I confessed. I was guilty. Before his tribunal, the acquittal I had enjoyed since Vichy was of no value whatsoever. I lived in the rue Philippe on the second floor, and I had been given sandals that were almost entirely new' (65, de Jager 58). Ronnie Scharfman has argued that \"by foregrounding the suffering implied by their exclusion, as Jews, between 1940 and 1943, from an already problematic French identity, both writers [Cixous and Derrida] effect an identification with contemporary Algeria from which they were excluded, paradoxically and painfully, when they lived there as children and were perceived by the Arabs and Berbers as part of the French colonial regime\" (\"Cixous\" 89). Indeed, in the Manichean colonial order, there is no conceptual place for the status of Algerian Jews as both insiders and outsiders. But Scharfman does not comment on the fact that the little girl is aware that she has been on the oppressive side of the colonial divide, and that this knowledge gives her a guilty conscience that is at the core of the story. The focus on the sandals emphasizes class over ethnicity; it is because the sandals seem to indicate a privileged status that the shoe shiner associates her with the colonizer. However, some statements suggest that the Arab boy identifies her as being Jewish, such as the sentence quoted above in which she states that her new status since Vichy did not make a difference to him, and later on when she states: \"Nous savions tout\" 'we knew everything' (65, de Jager 58).\n\nWhile esthetically Cixous' story is undoubtedly a masterpiece, the roles she attributes to the children are problematic in light of historical evidence. The red polish on her sandals is compared to blood (66), this act is for her a symbolic murder with a double edge: anti-colonial and gendered. On the one hand, the violence she is subjected to forecasts the Jews' exile from Algeria after the war of independence. During the narration of this encounter, she sees herself and the shoe shine boy as suddenly becoming adults. This helps to blur the time between 1941, when the scene is set, and when the independence war will be fought. By being cast as a rehearsal for what will unfold during the war for independence, the scene does anticipate some of the attacks that were committed by the FLN against Jews during the war for Independence to push them to side with the Algerians' cause, but it posits the Arab child as the sole embodiment of anti-Semitic violence (even if only symbolic) since the text is mute about violence committed at the time by Europeans (including the future OAS).26\n\nWaves of European anti-Semitism, in the 1890s and 1930s, did not spare Algeria (Stora, _Les trois exils_ 58-59). The Cr\u00e9mieux Decree was vehemently opposed by some pieds-noirs, who considered it as putting natives on the same footing with Europeans. Although anti-Semitism among the European population of Algeria was strong, it is occulted in Cixous' story. Indeed, the discriminatory measures of the Vichy government were overzealously applied in Algeria, where the oppression of Jews during WWII was in some aspects worse than in France, and this despite the fact that there was no German occupation in Algeria (Stora, _Les trois exils_ 87). To top it all, the abrogation of the Cr\u00e9mieux decree was belatedly reversed in 1943, almost a year after the Allied controlled North Africa (Stora, \"L'impossible\" 294). Given that Stora credits the Muslim population for not committing any hostile act against the Jews during the WWII period (\"L'impossible\" 295, 303), Cixous' story goes against the historical record. By casting the Arab boy murdering the Jewish girl, Cixous lends credence to one of the anti-Semites' arguments for repealing the Cr\u00e9mieux decree: that it was causing resentment against France in the Muslim population (Stora, _Les trois exils_ 79), although Stora points out that Muslim leaders did not fall into the trap that tried to antagonize both communities ( _Les trois exils_ 79, 97). I surmise that the culpability that Cixous feels for having been on the privileged side is assuaged by her casting the boy as a would-be murderer that forecasts the exile of the Jewish and French communities from Algeria, as well as other developments of Algerian history, particularly gender discrimination in post-independence Algeria (with the 1984 Family Code, and attacks targeting women during the civil war).\n\nIn addition to the colonial dimension, this scene could also be interpreted as defloration, since there is a glimpse of desire in the boy's eyes, and a symbolic loss of innocence for the child. The gender issue is more obvious in \"Mon alg\u00e9riance,\" at the beginning of which Cixous recalls one image present in \"Pieds nus,\" albeit with a slightly different formulation: she knew that the Arabs were the \"true\" indigenous people of Algeria, and her unease would vanish when she walked bare feet on their graves (71).27 She recalls how she unsuccessfully tried to befriend the three Muslim girls that attended her high school class during 1951-1953,28 and therefore explains her surprise when Algeria came back to her decades later through her friendship with Algerian women exiled in France to escape the atrocities of the civil war (74). Several paragraphs later, she implicitly refers to the violence committed against women in postcolonial Algeria, and labels Algeria \"ennemie des femmes\" 'enemy of women' (74, Prenowitz 172).\n\nIn \"My Alg\u00e9riance,\" Cixous decries and elaborates on the violence of colonialism (and particularly the Arabs' dispossession) as well as the French population's anti-Semitism,29 but this is passed over in \"Pieds nus.\" In the context in which \"Pieds nus\" appeared, and with the historical shifts within the story, the shoe shine boy embodies the oppressive Algerian man, be it the FLN militants who will chase the pieds-noirs out of independent Algeria, or the extremists (religious and nationalist) who will chase women out of public space. The _hic et nunc_ of the narration of the anecdote projects an anachronistic rendering that skews the historical reality. In addition, the fact that Cixous' ethnicity is foregrounded in the narrative will color its reading, as any story involving a Jew and an Arab read from an end of the twentieth-century's standpoint is inevitably colored by the legacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict.\n\nUnlike the war of independence, none of the writers' childhoods unfolded during the civil war, and yet the 1990s events lurk in some stories. One can object to the mention of the 1990s' civil war because these events are anachronistic to the stories about the authors' childhoods, which for all of them ended well before the last decade of the twentieth century. However, autobiographical writing implies a narrator grounded in the present of narration, with a distance that allows some perspective on the events of one's life. As Philippe Lejeune has pointed out, the \"I\" of an autobiographical narrative is multiple: the one of the child at the time of the event, and the one of the narrator at the time the story is told. Therefore, given the time during which these stories were commissioned, it seems understandable, at the very least, that the tragedy of the 1990s surfaces here and there.\n\nJamel Eddine Bencheikh's \"Tlemcen la haute\" is a series of vignettes told in a stream of consciousness from the author's recollection of the summers he used to spend in his parents' native town, that also pays tribute to Arab and Tlemcenian poets and artists. The only mention of violence relates to the civil war. The last page is presented as reality that turned into a nightmare the author wishes to wake up from. The blurring between reality and nightmare emphasizes the horrendousness of the situation, and that Tlemcen is unrecognizable because of it. The descriptions of women veiled in black (instead of the traditional white North African veil) and men sporting Afghani clothing and beards, signal an imported fundamentalism that has been gaining ground. The murders of singers and writers (Alloula, Cheb Hasni, and Djaout) are put in line with Ibn Khamis', a thirteenth-century poet from Tlemcen exiled in Granada where he was assassinated, because of disagreements with the powers in place.\n\nNabile Far\u00e8s' story talks about various wars, and his last page picks up the issue of continuity between the war of independence with its internal strife between various factions and the 1990s' civil war. The narrator says that it is either another war, or that the first one in fact never ended, that \"il est _encore_ question de d\u00e9mocratie\" 'it is _still_ a question of democracy' (141, de Jager 127). Some historians see the origin of the 1990s' war as going back to unresolved issues from the war of Independence (Harbi, \"L'Alg\u00e9rie\" 43) or before. Stora lists the similarities between the two wars, but is quick to add the differences and underlines that the latter weighs more than the former, and that \"ce qui rapproche surtout cette 'seconde' guerre d'Alg\u00e9rie de la 'premi\u00e8re', c'est la _persistence des pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s et des st\u00e9r\u00e9otypes_ qui ont fabriqu\u00e9 une m\u00e9moire de la guerre d'Alg\u00e9rie en France\" 'what brings this second war closer to the first Algerian war is the persistence of prejudice and stereotypes that made a memory of the Algerian war in France' ( _La guerre_ 65). Omar Carlier insists that the extreme violence that took place during these years is not due to a historical determinism ruling Algeria, but to specific historical processes (379). Similarly, Stora repeatedly warns that a comparison between the war of independence and the civil war reinforces the stereotype of Algeria as a country plagued by a never-ending violence ( _La guerre_ 10, 52, 56).\n\nIn a humorous postscript, Far\u00e8s imagines what his mother, who used to wash the nationalist militants' clothes, would do with the current insurgents (which would be to boil the men rather than their clothes). He is silent about the series of events that brought about the war. All direct and indirect references to the civil war in the collection blame the Islamists for the violence that has swept the country, although historians have singled out events during which violence emanated from the state, not the Islamists, as catalysts. For instance, although Stora stresses that it is hard to pinpoint the beginning of the civil war, he identifies several moments as possible starting points: the October 1988 riots, the cancellation of the second round of the January 1992 elections,30 and the murder of president Boudiaf in June 1992 ( _La guerre_ 15-17). Martinez refutes the economic and religious factors as satisfactory explanations for the level of violence during the civil war and singles out \"the failure of democratic transition\" (\"Why the Violence\" 16-17). He assessed that the violence was a \"product of the cancellation of the December 1991 legislative elections and the policy of repression conducted from 1992 to 1994\" (\"Why the Violence\" 22), these being committed by the military-controlled state.\n\nThe consequences of some of the colonial policies that sustained the dominance of the European minority over the Algerian majority (such as massive land expropriations, the \"Code de l'Indig\u00e9nat,\" occultation of the indigenous culture, the status of Arabic as a foreign language) surface here and there, but the policies are not subjected to criticism, nor are their effects on the Algerian population presented as direct consequences of institutionalized discrimination and violence. The poverty of the Algerians, which characterized the overwhelming majority (Carlier 361), is not saliant at all. Habib Tengour seems to be the person whose direct family suffered the most from the colonial yoke. His indigence becomes obvious when he mentions having to skip school when his grandfather could not afford a pair of cheap shoes. We learn that his father, a nationalist, was imprisoned and tortured by the French, but that is mentioned in passing in the space of one sentence. The emphasis of the story is on fostering relationships with others, and on knowing people as the best means to dissipate erroneous stereotypes, such as his grandfather's friendship with settlers despite political problems, and his own friendship with a Jewish family that dispels prejudices conveyed in popular culture.\n\nOne could object that people's lives were not solely determined by the colonial situation, and that in a short piece writers cannot possibly render all aspects of their childhood. Moreover, since they were children at the time, they might not have been fully aware of the gravity of some situations. Some of the Arab authors belonged to the upper class (such as Fatima Gallaire as indicated by the number of servants), and their class privilege mitigated their status of colonial subject. The writers of this collection represent the various groups that peopled colonial Algeria, yet some escape easy cataloguing, since some, such as Sebbar, are the product of mixed marriages. Alain Vircondelet talks about the atrocities of the war of independence (231) and victims on both sides. The child of a Frenchman and an Algerian woman, he takes the side of Algerians (234). To their credit, some of the criticism of colonialism comes from Europeans, even if belatedly. This compilation of short stories by different authors could very well have been called \"Enfances alg\u00e9riennes\" 'Algerian Childhoods' with the plural emphasizing the diversity. The choice of a singular title for the collection signals a desire to emphasize what binds these people together.\n\nWhile the collection seems to be representative of the diversity of the people who lived in Algeria between the 1920s and the 1960s, it is actually deceptive in that it is limited to writers who express themselves in French. Given the high rate of illiteracy when the country became independent (at least 80 percent), these writers, schooled in French, can only be the voice of a small minority. As such, _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ is emblematic of the limitations of the field of Francophone Literature.\n\nThis book was published right before the beginning of the end of amnesia, with 1999 as the key date according to Stora since this is when the French government formally acknowledged that the Algerian \"events\" indeed constituted a war, as well as the publications of articles and books by victims of torture and torturers (\"1999-2003\" 502). Sebbar's collection is still situated at a time when the Algerian war is still not fully dealt with by collective memory. Nevertheless, I contend that the context in which this collection was published makes it an important issue. Farid Laroussi points out that many books by Algerian women about the desperate conditions of women in Algeria were published in the 1990s, in which \"The sociopolitical situation in Algeria rightly comes under attack but only as a way to reassert France's own representation as a land of Enlightenment\" (88). My analysis of _Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_ shows that this process seems to be at play here as well, where past French exactions are minimized to better emphasize Algerian violence (past and present), thereby fueling stereotypes of Arab-Muslim violence, and hatred for Jews in the case of Cixous' story. Stora notes that a plethora of images showing the atrocities committed by Islamist groups in the media, coupled with the absence of images showing the suffering caused by the government's exactions puts all the focus and the blame on the Islamists while dispensing with a critical reflection on the origins of the conflict ( _La guerre_ 82). As demonstrated by this collection of short stories and the essays analyzed in the previous section, I argue that Francophone writers have contributed to this phenomenon through their writings. The context in which this collection was published as well as the implications of the civil war's intrusion in narratives taking place before the 1990s adds to the simplistic rendering of the civil war, blamed solely on Islamists, all conveniently lumped into a homogeneous, dangerous, and threatening mass to be eradicated at all cost, all the while being mute on the role played by other elements, as well as history itself.\n\nRecent cinematic production, such as Nadir Mokn\u00e8che's _Viva Laldj\u00e9rie_ , has questioned the simplistic view of Islamic fundamentalism as being the sole responsible agent of violence during the Algerian civil war. As Sylvie Durmelat points out, the only murder in the film is committed by a high ranking member of the State's security forces, thus suggesting that \"les terroristes ne sont pas ceux que l'on croit\" 'the terrorists are not who we think' (\"L'Alg\u00e9rie\" 110). It is significant that since 1992, no leader has repelled the Family code (Stora, _La guerre_ 64). Therefore, the Islamists are not the ones (or at least not the only ones) to oppress women, though they are (conveniently) blamed for Algeria's woes and the status of women there in particular.\n\n### **Notes**\n\n1. This summary of events is based on Kepel's chapter \"Alg\u00e9rie: les ann\u00e9es FIS\" in _Jihad_ (166-82). For more detailed studies, see Martinez, Volpi, and Willis.\n\n2. This relationship has been rendered by Etienne Balibar as the following numerical equation: that France and Algeria are neither one nor two nations, but that \"l'Alg\u00e9rie et la France, prises ensemble, ne font pas deux, mais quelque chose comme _un et demi_ , comme si chacune d'entre elles, dans leur addition, contribuait toujours d\u00e9j\u00e0 pour une part de l'autre\" 'Algeria and France, put together, do not make two, but something in the order of _one and a half_ , as if each one, when added together, always already contributed to part of the other' (76).\n\n3. See Naylor for a detailed study of complex hydrocarbons contracts between France and Algeria after independence that shows a \"privileged French economic position in Algeria's development plans\" (145), and A\u00eft-Embarek (120-30) about the economic support and pressure of France and the European union for the junta during the civil war.\n\n4. Many saw this as a lesser evil despite the contradiction of having to resort to authoritarian measures to \"save\" democracy (that Algeria was a democracy is highly contestable, given the status of the FLN as sole political party until 1989). Layachi notes that \"people's growing apathy toward the political process\" as evident in the 2002 elections does not foster democracy and seems to indicate little progress (61). There were \"eradicators\" and \"conciliators\" on both sides of the Mediterranean (Naylor 210).\n\n5. \"Dans le subconscient collectif et populaire, il y avait quelque chose de rageur et de pervers dans cette fa\u00e7on de faire surchauffer les statistiques de la natalit\u00e9 galopante\" 'in the collective and popular subconscious, there was something furious and perverse in this way of overheating the statistics of runaway natality' (59).\n\n6. Willis stresses that \"even the most competent of local authorities (let alone totally inexperienced ones like those of the FIS) could [not] be expected to make an impact in the shorter term\" (160).\n\n7. While Boudjedra castigates the FIS leaders for their ignorance, he himself demonstrates some lacunae, such as stating that the Qur'an is composed of 60 suras instead of 114(12).\n\n8. In their study of the pronouncements of _El Mounquid_ , official journal of the FIS, on women, Imache and Nour found that the party asserts women's rights to schooling, inheritance, vote, jihad, and work\u2014although the latter comes with restrictions (45-46).\n\n9. The FIS claimed a filiation with the FLN's ideology, while criticizing the party for deviating from it (Kepel, _Jihad_ 177). In a footnote, Kepel recalls Lahouari Addi's statement that \"le FLN est le p\u00e8re du FIS,\" playing on the homonymy between FIS and \"fils\" ('son') in French, interpreting it in two ways: that the FIS situates itself in the FLN's ideology, but also that they share the same view of a totalitarian, monolithic society (Kepel, _Jihad_ note 26 p.391).\n\n10. It will later be revealed that some of these atrocities were committed by government forces but attributed to Islamic groups to better discredit them (Burgat 278 and note 19 p.319), and others were due to the government's infiltration and manipulation of the GIA (Burgat 327, Volpi 90).\n\n11. \"Il n'arr\u00eate pas de manier l'intox\" 'he keeps on using propaganda' (Boudjedra 1994: 116).\n\n12. \"Since its transformation into a political force in the 1980s, the Islamist movement has constituted a wide and heterogeneous phenomenon with three main fronts: a cultural front aiming at the 're-Islamisation' of society; a non-violent political front acting inside or outside of the system for gradual, peaceful and comprehensive change; and a violent political front aiming at bringing down the regime by force and at instituting a rigid Islamic order\" (Layachi 53). See Layachi (54-56) for more details on the various Algerian Islamist organizations; the FIS is listed under the non-violent Islamist organizations.\n\n13. \"In its essence, populist Islam speaks to the millions of men and women in the MENA who feel marginalized, alienated and abused by their rulers. . . . Whether through religious instruction, education and tutoring, social services, welfare functions, emergency assistance or associational activity, Islamism has come to fulfill basic needs in society that the state has been increasingly ignoring or economically unable to sustain\" (Entelis 207).\n\n14. Willis has stressed the absence of a third unified alternative to the FIS and the FLN because numerous secular political parties ended up fragmenting this opposition (152-53).\n\n15. This is also acknowledged by Layachi (59).\n\n16. Boudjedra sees Algerian women wearing the veil and fighting against fundamentalism as a contradiction, because modernity is to be taken whole or not at all (85), thereby perpetuating stereotypes about covered Muslim women that I will discuss at length in chapter five. Similarly, Mimouni has a very simplistic view of the hijab (49).\n\n17. Other autobiographical collections edited by Sebbar include _C'\u00e9tait leur France_ and _Mon p\u00e8re_. I exclude them from the \"trilogy\" based on the titles, which do not follow the same format of \"une enfance . . .\" and do not put the emphasis on childhood.\n\n18. Cohen also notes that the pieds-noirs, with very few exceptions, did not speak Arabic.\n\n19. The last part of this sentence may allude to the fact that Christian clerics became targets and were murdered in Algeria starting in 1994 (Naylor 206).\n\n20. The Berber Spring, a protest movement to claim recognition for the Berber language and culture, took place in 1980. It started when Mouloud Mammeri was prevented from giving a talk on ancient Berber poetry, and was severely repressed by the FLN.\n\n21. In the English translation, it could also refer to Fatiha as the childhood friend he no longer sees by the end of the story (to refer to Fatiha in French there would need to be a silent \"e\" at the end of the adjective).\n\n22. Stora interprets this event as a colonization of Algerian Judaism by French Judaism (292).\n\n23. For an interesting account of how the pieds-noirs' memory and efforts to cultivate and bring their selective memory of French Algeria to the national level, through memorials, see William Cohen's article.\n\n24. This complete assimilation made the Jews particularly attached to France, and made it impossible for most of them to support an Algeria divorced from France (Stora, \"L'impossible\" 303).\n\n25. That law limited the number of Jews to small percentages in various fields (Stora, \"L'impossible\" 295). See Stora ( _Les trois exils_ 82-84) for more details.\n\n26. This double violence is most \"tragically symbolized by the well-publicized killings of William Levy . . . by the OAS, and of his son by the FLN\" (Naylor 44). Naylor adds that the FLN declared in 1961 \"For the first time in History the Jews have been claimed\u2014and by a government composed of followers of another religion\u2014as the sons of one and the same country\" (qtd. in Naylor, 44).\n\n27. \"Un autre sentiment dans l'ombre: la certitude jamais entamable que 'les Arabes' \u00e9taient les vrais rejetons de ce sol poussi\u00e9reux et parfum\u00e9. Mais quand je marchais pieds nus avec mon fr\u00e8re sur les chemins chauds d'Oran, je sentais la plante de mon corps caress\u00e9e par les paumes accueillantes des anciens morts du pays, et le tourment de mon \u00e2me s'apaisait\" (71) 'Another feeling in the shadows: the unshakeable certainty that 'the Arabs' were the true offspring of this dusty and perfumed soil. But when I walked barefoot with my brother on the hot trails of Oran, I felt the sole of my body caressed by the welcoming palms of the country's ancient dead, and the torment of my soul was assuaged' (126).\n\nThis and a reference to the abrogation of the Cr\u00e9mieux decree in 1940 are the only elements common between \"Pieds nus\" and the French version of \"Mon alg\u00e9riance.\" However, as Harrison pointed out, the English translation of \"Mon alg\u00e9riance\" includes additions to the French original, including the section from \"Pieds nus\" that features the encounter with the shoe shine boy (note 10 p.30).\n\n28. \"Je sus imm\u00e9diatement qu'elles \u00e9taient l'Alg\u00e9rie qui se pr\u00e9parait. Je leur tendais la main, je voulais faire alliance avec elles contre les Fran\u00e7aises. En vain. Pour elles j'\u00e9tais la France\" (74) \"I knew immediately that they were the Algeria that was in store. I held out my hand to them, I wanted to ally myself with them against the French. In vain. For them I was France\" (170).\n\n29. \"Two hates shared the hearts differently between themselves. One of them, which I will never forgive, the colonialists' hate, was made of the scorn from which thieves and usurpers, like all despots, forge deceitful arms. In response there was the other one, which I forgive, even until today, the hate with eyes burning with tears of the humiliated and deprived, the hate of the 'Arabs' for all that was collected in the 'F' [French] group\" (162, this paragraph does not appear in the French original). But even in that text, when it comes to her personal experience in colonial Algeria, there is an overemphasis on the fact that she wanted to be accepted and loved by the Arabs but was only met with hatred.\n\n30. President Bouteflika admitted later on in July 1999 that the government was responsible for the origin of the civil war with the cancellation of these elections, which was a violent act (Stora, _La guerre_ 19).\n\n## Chapter 5\n\n## Islam and the French Republic: The Affair of the Muslim Headscarf in works by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Amin Maalouf, Albert Memmi, Le\u00efla Sebbar, and Yamina Benguigui\n\nIn the second half of the twentieth century, metropolitan France has become home to a substantial, albeit invisible until the 1980s, Muslim minority, composed mostly of immigrant Maghrebian workers and their descendants confined to the outskirts of French society. The number of Muslims in France is notoriously elusive, and estimates range between three and a half and seven million, with five million as the most accepted estimate, for a total population of about sixty-one million. Although the inauguration of Paris' Great Mosque in 19201 would seem to give official recognition, at least symbolically, to the presence of Islam on French soil, its conception is entangled with French colonial history and its policy towards its Muslim subjects. The project was first conceived to strengthen France's power over its Muslim colonies, and then as a monument to honor Muslim soldiers who lost their lives for France during World War I (Kepel, _Les banlieues_ 64-76). In fact, the Paris Great Mosque was not built to serve Muslims living in the capital, which numbered very few at the time (Kepel, _Les banlieues_ 65).\n\nIn recent decades, the Muslim French have been struggling to gain acceptance by French society. The notorious \"affaire du foulard,\" 'affair of the [Muslim] scarf,'2 sparked in 1989 when three teenage girls were expelled from their public middle school for refusing to remove their headscarves, received much coverage from the media.3 Similar incidents reoccurred over the years and culminated into the 2004 law that bans certain religious signs in public schools.4 Similar affairs have broken out in other Western countries such as England, the United States, etc., but France stands out by the level of divisiveness, the length of time of the controversy, and the resort to legislation to solve it. Although the debate on the issue of the scarf was framed exclusively around the issue of secularism, with concerns over the equality of the sexes adding fuel to the fire, several scholars, including Christine Delphy, Sa\u00efd Bouamama, G\u00e9rard Noiriel, Pierre Bourdieu, Fran\u00e7oise Gaspard, and Farhad Khosrokhavar, have pointed out that what was really at stake was the issue of immigration, and, more specifically, the realization that a population that was considered foreign and composed of temporary immigrants had actually settled down and was there to stay.5\n\nIn addition to this heated domestic debate about the issue of the veil in public schools, Islam has been associated with distressing national and international headlines in the 1990s. France was the site of terrorist attacks in 1994 and 1995, carried out by the Algerian extremist GIA (Groupe Islamiste Arm\u00e9 \"armed islamist group\"). The debate over the headscarf affair in France was tainted by international news at a time when the rise of Islamic fundamentalism was regularly making headlines, more specifically during the time in question with the Algerian civil war that ravaged Algeria during the 1990s and the Taliban's government in Afghanistan, both with disastrous consequences, particularly for women.\n\nImages have played an important role during the affair of the scarf. French magazine covers had the tendency to depict Islam as a women-oppressing fundamentalist religion (Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 31), by presenting pictures of veiled women (sometimes burqa style afghani) that most often than not had nothing to do with the scarf worn by the girls concerned. For example, on December 8, 1994, _Le nouvel observateur_ featured a young woman whose head and face were covered, with the cloth molding the face to suggest gagging and suffocation, on the cover of a special issue on women and Islam.\n\nThese images contributed to blurring the difference between the French and foreign contexts, and made the veil a symbol of fanaticism, since pictures of veiled women often accompany articles that deal with fundamentalism in news magazines. Significantly, this so-called debate on secularism was triggered by the presence of a Muslim sign in what is supposed to be the gateway to integration, namely the public school. The French public school became the symbolic place where the various crises plaguing French society converged, including the crisis of the nation-state, for which the public education system is the spearhead (Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 40-41). John Bowen's comprehensive study has demonstrated that explaining the 2004 law on the prohibition of religious signs in public schools, which ended the affair,\n\nwould require unpacking a great deal about France, including France's very particular history of religion and the state, the great hopes placed in the public schools, ideas about citizens and integration (and the challenge posed by Muslims and Islam to those ideas), the continued weight of the colonial past, the role of television in shaping public opinion, and the tendency to think that passing a law will resolve a social problem. (2)\n\nAs he (and others) noted, the issue of the veil in public schools became the symbol of what were seen as both internal and external threats to France, and its prohibition as an expedient to solve social problems of Islamism, sexism, and violence in the suburbs.\n\nIn _Intellectuals and Politics in Post-War France_ , David Drake explains that French intellectuals were split over the affair of the scarf (176-82). His book does not include any Arab intellectual, although some of them (the most famous being Ben Jelloun) have been living and publishing in France for a long time, and did publish opinion pieces on the issue. Because of their status as privileged interpreters on anything linked to Arab-Muslim issues, their writings can influence and shape the terms of the debate. Indeed, Ben Jelloun and Sebbar published on the issue in newspapers, and Meddeb testified in front of a government-appointed commission.\n\nThis chapter examines how Arab writers who were living in France have presented the affair of the scarf in non-fiction writings. The writers treated are representative of the diversity of the Francophone Arab world with their various backgrounds (Muslim for Benguigui, Ben Jelloun, and Meddeb, Christian for Maalouf, Jewish for Memmi, secular for Sebbar; and Moroccan for Ben Jelloun, Franco-Algerian for Sebbar and Benguigui, Tunisian for Memmi and Meddeb, Lebanese for Maalouf). The headscarf affair split French public opinion, but not along lines determined by ethnic, gender, cultural, or religious backgrounds. It would be absurd to assume that just because these writers are Arabs (or of Muslim origin for some), they would side with the veiled girls.6 However, it is fair to expect that because they have ties with countries with majority Muslim population, they might provide a better understanding of the problems faced by Muslims in France. In addition, since they have cogently addressed the devastating effects of colonialism and its role in shaping current events in parts of the Arab world in their writings (often by successfully presenting the point of view or plight of the colonized), one would hope that they could bring a fresh perspective that would enrich the debate. But as this chapter demonstrates, the opposite is the case. Despite such awareness of the legacies of the colonial era, they (with the exception of Benguigui) have failed in two notable ways: they did not help people understand the issue from the point of view of the girls concerned (which would have required depoliticizing the issue), and they did not prod French society to see its blind spots regarding secularism, which has framed the debate. The purpose of this chapter is not to redress the silencing of women.7 Rather, the aim is to demonstrate that prominent Francophone authors limit their readers' understanding of the Muslim world, by refusing to come to terms with the challenge that women who choose to don Islamic garb poses to Western feminism and secular thought.\n\n### 9\/11 and the French Islamic Veil Affair in Essays: \nTahar Ben Jelloun's _L'Islam expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants_ and \nAbdelwahab Meddeb's _La maladie de l'islam8_\n\nBen Jelloun and Meddeb's essays are part of an effort to counter reductive representations of Islam that have been going on for decades, as Said demonstrated in _Covering Islam_. 9\/11 has further exacerbated the association made in the Western media between Islam and terrorism. As a defining moment marking the turn of the century, 9\/11 has not only impelled writers from the Francophone Arab world to respond creatively with fiction,9 but also in essays. Ben Jelloun and Meddeb, of Moroccan and Tunisian origins, respectively, who have both been living in France for decades, published books in Paris in 2002 that use 9\/11 as a point of departure for reflection on the Muslim faith. These essays are aimed at different readerships: Ben Jelloun's _L'Islam expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants_ 'Islam explained to children'10 is a slim, ninety-page book that targets ten- to fifteen-year-olds, while Meddeb's _La maladie de l'islam_ 'The malady of Islam' is highly erudite. Both texts, however, share the similar intent and didactic function of countering reductive representations of Islam fostered by Islamic fundamentalists and the media, as well as explaining and historically tracing the link between terrorism and the Muslim faith.\n\nIt is worth noting that, in these essays, Ben Jelloun and Meddeb's first attempts to explain Islam to their fellow French citizens take 9\/11, an attack on a foreign country,11 as a point of departure when Islam, in fact, had been making domestic headlines well before 2001. How do these essays present the affair of the Muslim scarf that ignited such divisive debates and measures? Moreover, what are the implications of discussing Islam in general, and the affair of the scarf in France in the light of 9\/11? How do these writers handle their pedagogical project given the French context of their publications? I will take up these questions focusing on the essays published in 2002 and Meddeb's _Face \u00e0 l'islam_ 'Facing Islam' (2004).\n\n#### Ben Jelloun's _L'Islam expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants_\n\nBen Jelloun's essay is part of a series for youth published by the prestigious Parisian press Seuil, to which he already contributed _Le racisme expliqu\u00e9 \u00e0 ma fille_ \"racism explained to my daughter\" in 1998. The structure of _L'Islam expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants_ is in accordance with the model of the series, following the format of questions and answers between a child and the author. This text differs from all other titles in the series in that instead of foregrounding a biological link with one child, it addresses all children. This suggests that contrary to the other books in the series, all addressed to \"my daughter\/son, my grand-children, or my children,\" Islam has to be made explicitly relevant to all children since it is not immediately perceived to be so in the way topics such as racism, the French Resistance, or Auschwitz are.12\n\nThe first chapter, entitled \"Le 11 septembre expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants\" '11 September explained to children' makes it clear that Ben Jelloun's daughter's reaction to the coverage of these attacks motivated the writing of the book. Ben Jelloun blames the media's amalgam between terrorists, Arabs, and Muslims for the confusion and denial experienced by his daughter, who refuses to be associated with her Arab and Muslim heritage (7). He then proceeds to tell the story of Islam as a fairy tale, beginning with the story of Mohammed, the five pillars, the Golden Age, and the contributions of Arabs to various fields of knowledge, all of which are interspersed with allusions or brief discussions of contemporary issues in international and domestic politics.\n\nKeeping in mind that the target audience is identified by the author as children between the ages of ten and fifteen, it seems inevitable that such a book cannot engage in highly complex discussions of the various issues mentioned. But this limitation notwithstanding, Ben Jelloun also seems overly concerned to explain Islam, as well as colonization, and the affair of the scarf, in ways that will not alienate his intended readership. On several occasions, for instance, his assertions contradict mainstream Muslim views. It is the case with his interpretation of the word _'alaq_ as really meaning \"sperm\" (19).13 In the same vein, his assessment that the Qur'an does not prescribe women's veiling (68-69) is in accordance with what a few scholars reinterpreting Islamic traditions have concluded,14 but it is not widely accepted. Moreover, some of the recommendations issued by Ben Jelloun's father, and which he uses to discharge himself of the daily prayer requirements, are reminiscent of the Bible's Ten Commandments (12). They are therefore more intelligible to a readership coming mostly from a Judeo-Christian tradition, but they gloss over the fact that the daily prayers are one of the five pillars of Islam, and therefore cannot be avoided lightly, except in specific circumstances, none of which apply to Ben Jelloun.\n\nBen Jelloun's conciliatory efforts with its assumed French readership even leads to distortions in his account of the colonization of North Africa, which states that people revolted only decades after being colonized, and is inaccurate:\n\nCe qui a permis l'occupation de ces pays arabes et musulmans, c'est le d\u00e9clin \nqu'ils connaissaient. C'est comme un corps malade qui ne peut pas se d\u00e9fendre \net se voit envahi par d'autres maladies. \n\u2014Est-ce que les gens se sont r\u00e9volt\u00e9s? \n\u2014Oui, apr\u00e8s quelques d\u00e9cennies, ils se sont r\u00e9veill\u00e9s. (71) \nWhat made the occupation of these Arab and Muslim countries possible was their decline. It's like a sick body that cannot defend itself and is invaded by other diseases. \n\u2014Did people revolt? \n\u2014Yes, after a few decades, they woke up.\n\nBen Jelloun portrays the Arabs as very passive towards colonization, thus writing off resistance movements such as those led by Abdelkader in Algeria and Abdelkrim in Morocco.15 In _Le racisme expliqu\u00e9 \u00e0 ma fille_ , Ben Jelloun was noticeably more virulent about colonialism in general, and the French colonization in particular (48-49), thus the downplay of the effect of colonization in _L'Islam expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants_ is all the more striking. A statement such as \"les croisades sont un lointain souvenir, la colonisation aussi\" 'the Crusades are a distant memory, so is colonization' (65), is certainly not the case in the French context at the turn of the twenty-first century, with France finally coming to \"the end of amnesia,\" as the title of a book edited by historians Stora and Harbi puts it, about its colonial past and the war Algerians fought for independence.\n\nSimilarly, by shifting the blame to an unidentified entity\u2014with the use of the indefinite subject pronoun \"on\" 'one'\u2014to explain the rise of fundamentalism in Muslim countries, Ben Jelloun makes short shrift of the colonial legacy in this historical development:\n\nS'il y a parmi les musulmans des jeunes devenus violents et fanatiques, c'est que leur \u00e9ducation a \u00e9t\u00e9 mal faite, on les a laiss\u00e9s entre les mains de gens ignorants et sans scrupules. On n'a pas su ou voulu leur faire aimer le d\u00e9veloppement, la culture et la vie. On a laiss\u00e9 se d\u00e9velopper la pauvret\u00e9 et l'analphab\u00e9tisme. On a eu peur de la libert\u00e9 et on n'a rien fait contre la corruption et les injustices ( _L'Islam_ 65). \nIf there are among Muslims young people who have become violent and fanatical, it is because their education was poorly done, they were left in the hands of uneducated and unscrupulous people. One was unable or unwilling to make them like development, culture, and life. One has let poverty and illiteracy develop. One was afraid of freedom and has not done anything against corruption and injustices.\n\nThis excessive generalization may be unavoidable because of the limited scope and intended reader, but it underestimates the role that Western nations, including France, have played in various parts of the Muslim world to fuel extremism. The use of the indefinite pronoun masks the fact that no nation exists in a vacuum and that former colonial power structures have been superseded by other, less obvious but no less damaging institutions and neocolonial politics.\n\nBy far, the most conciliatory pages of _L'Islam expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants_ deal with the affair of the scarf. When Ben Jelloun insists that Muslims in France must respect the 1905 law on the separation of church and state, he brings up the affair of the veil.16 He subscribes to the often repeated argument that religion should remain in the private realm (12). Many have said during the course of the debate (and indeed this is what was done in some schools) that girls had to take off their headscarves as soon as they entered school. As Rosello pointed out, in the framework of the Muslim faith and customs, this does not make sense (140), since a Muslim girl is only required to cover in the presence of unrelated men, which is not likely to be necessary in her home, unlike in public. In contrast to his 1984 book about French racism, in which he acted as an effective spokesperson responsible for explaining cultural issues to the French public, Ben Jelloun fails to point out the absurdity of the mandate from the point of view of an observant Muslim. Devout Muslim women would not concede to only veiling in the private realm.\n\nIn addition, his explanation of the consequences of the affair shows that like most accounts in the media, the veiled girls are never credited with any sense of agency in their decision to cover, despite solid evidence to the contrary: \"certaines filles ont renonc\u00e9 \u00e0 porter le foulard. D'autres ont \u00e9t\u00e9 retir\u00e9es de l'\u00e9cole par leurs parents. Ils ont eu tort de les priver d'enseignement\" 'some gave up wearing the scarf. Others were taken out of school by their parents. They were wrong to deprive them of an education' (67-68). Books such as Gaspard and Khoskhovar's, Dounia Bouzar and Sa\u00efda Kada's, and Alma and Lila L\u00e9vy's,17 clearly dispelled the stereotype that the majority of French girls who wear the veil are coerced into doing so.18 Although he later criticizes the custom of taking girls out of school once they have reached puberty in some Muslim communities (88) and sees the school as the place to start establishing gender equality in Islam, he never considers the consequences of denying an education to girls who refuse to take off their headscarves.19\n\nSubsequently, Ben Jelloun states that \"les musulmans de France ont la chance de vivre dans un pays d\u00e9mocratique qui leur garantit le droit de pratiquer librement leur religion\" 'Muslims of France are lucky to live in a democratic country that guaranties them the right to practice their religion freely' (76). Needless to say that from the covered girls' point of view, their expulsion from school because they are dressed as they believe their religion mandates is hardly guaranteeing their right to practice.20 Ben Jelloun's statement implies that the French Republic's principle is fully implemented, which is far from true. There is no mention here (nor elsewhere in the text) of the difficulties Muslims are encountering when trying to establish adequate infrastructure to accommodate their faith. For instance, obtaining building permits for mosques is notoriously difficult. Similarly, the French government refuses to use the Concordat,21 still in place in Alsace-Moselle, to train imams,22 which many recognize as essential to the development of a \"French Islam.\" Failure to exploit well-established structures to the benefit of the French Muslim community is symptomatic of the denial to consider Islam as what it is: the second religion in France.\n\n#### Meddeb's _La maladie de l'islam_\n\nMeddeb's _La maladie de l'islam_ is also inspired by the 9\/11 attacks, which the author condemns in the very first sentence of the book. The book's title echoes Voltaire's writings, such as his _Trait\u00e9 sur la tol\u00e9rance_ , as acknowledged by Meddeb, but also his entry on \"fanaticism\" (which he sees as having sullied all religions) in _Dictionnaire philosophique_.23 In contrast to Voltaire, Meddeb's title implies that Islam as a whole is subject to a disease intrinsic to it, as if fundamentalism was Islam's prerogative and other religions were immune to it. Indeed, Meddeb asserts: \"Si le fanatisme fut la maladie du catholicisme, si le nazisme fut la maladie de l'Allemagne, il est s\u00fbr que l'int\u00e9grisme est la maladie de l'islam\" 'if fanaticism was Catholicism's disease, if Nazism was Germany's disease, it is certain that fundamentalism is Islam's disease' (12).\n\nMeddeb's book endeavors to trace the history and intellectual genealogy of Islamic fundamentalism. Although Meddeb acknowledges that there are internal and external reasons for Islamic fundamentalism, he justifies his focus on internal factors by stating:\n\nIl est du r\u00f4le de l'\u00e9crivain de pointer la d\u00e9rive des siens et d'aider \u00e0 leur ouvrir les yeux sur ce qui les aveugle. Je tiens, comme on dit, \u00e0 commencer par balayer devant ma porte. Ce texte, \u00e9crit en fran\u00e7ais, sera lu par de nombreux lecteurs connaissant le fran\u00e7ais et concern\u00e9s d'une mani\u00e8re ou d'une autre par le drame de leur origine islamique. Je m'adresse \u00e0 tout lecteur, mais j'ai une pens\u00e9e particuli\u00e8re pour les lecteurs qui, comme moi, se sont symboliquement constitu\u00e9s dans la croyance d'islam. (10) \nThe writer's role is to point out his people's drift and to help open their eyes on what blinds them. I insist, as we say, in starting by sweeping in front of my door. This text, written in French, will be read by numerous readers who know French and who are concerned one way or another by the tragedy of their Islamic origin. I address any reader, but I have a special thought for readers who, like me, formed themselves symbolically in Islam's belief.\n\nMeddeb's personal experience of being a Muslim in France might have been tragic, but extending his subjective experience to the whole Muslim population in France without addressing the socio-political context tags Islam negatively without proper justification. When Meddeb talks about \"sweeping in front of his door,\" he positions himself as part of the Muslim world, since his book expressly focuses on problems within Islam. Although the quote above shows Meddeb's awareness of his French readership, it does not demonstrate that he has fully thought out the implication of the fact that his \"door\" is in fact not in the Muslim world, but has been located in Paris for decades.\n\nLike Ben Jelloun, Meddeb gives a distorted view of what mainstream Islam believes to be the proper dress code for women in his subsequent book _Face \u00e0 l'islam_. In a sentence whose syntax obscures its meaning, Meddeb proposes to only consider the verses of the Qur'an and gives an interpretation that does not render the headscarf compulsory, while admitting that this is not mainstream: \"Le voile peut n'\u00eatre pas assimilable \u00e0 un signe religieux si l'on prend la d\u00e9cision de ne pas suivre l'unanimit\u00e9 des docteurs et de lire uniquement en euxm\u00eame les versets coraniques invoqu\u00e9s pour l\u00e9gitimer sa prescription\" 'the scarf may not be assimilable to a religious sign if one takes the decision not to follow the unanimity of scholars and to read only the Koranic verses invoked to legitimize its prescription in themselves' ( _Face_ 198). Meddeb also fails to mention that the decision not to take into account the Tradition by the Prophet would be unacceptable to most Muslims, since these narratives play a crucial role in Qur'anic exegesis.\n\nAlthough Meddeb is very careful in his argument about not essentializing Islam ( _La maladie_ 64), he fails to apply his own caution to the issue of the veil. He admits being shocked at witnessing veiling in Paris ( _La maladie_ 49) because the reveiling of women for him is a sure sign of going backwards. This statement also presupposes that the veil had disappeared from all Muslim countries, which it had not. He takes pity on veiled women in Egypt, as if the veil could only have the meaning of oppression, thus ignoring that the phenomenon of (re)veiling can have different meanings depending on the context in which it occurs, and can even be a revolutionary gesture.24\n\nMeddeb deplores the standardization of the veil throughout the world, as opposed to the time when each Muslim culture had a distinct way of veiling, as if this standardization, if standardization there is (this is highly debatable), could not be a sign of new exigencies. This contradicts what others have noticed, such as Le\u00efla Ahmed, who sees the variety of new styles in Cairo as \"adoption of a 'modern' version of the conventions of dress they . . . were accustomed to\" (222). In the French context, this is also contradicted by the picture on the cover of the L\u00e9vy sisters' book, which shows two young women in turtlenecks wearing headscarves tied at the nape of the neck. This innovative use of a turtleneck sweater, a \"Western\" garment, which allows for tying the scarf behind rather than in front to cover the neck, debunks the standardization deplored by Meddeb. In addition, the tricolor headscarves mimicking the French flag worn by some of the women demonstrating against the law banning religious signs were very much grounded in the French socio-political context and cannot be seen as partaking in standardization.\n\nOverlooking the contradictory nature of his position and the subjectivity of his statements, Meddeb asserts that the veil is a cultural sign only if it is seductive. When it ceases to be attractive, it becomes ideological and a sign of women's subservience to men. This reasoning is particularly evident when he evokes the image of the silk _ha\u00efk_ worn by traditional Tunisian women. While he finds the garb, \"froufroutant \u00e0 chaque pas\" 'rustling with each step' ( _Face_ 198), sexually provocative, one of the young women in Mernissi's autobiography explains that this traditional and impractical dress was \"probably designed to make a woman's trip through the streets so torturous that she would quickly tire from the effort, rush back home, and never dream of going out again\" ( _Dreams_ 118).25 It is quite ironic that Meddeb, who poses as a champion of women's rights, looks nostalgically at the _ha\u00efk_ , a garment that discourages women from being outside, while he denigrates the headcover that enables them to move freely in public space. It is also disputable whether women in general fared better under the Golden Age of Islam that Meddeb looks upon so fondly because of its openness to sensuality. And he is downright orientalist when he laments:\n\nQuelle chape de pudeur a couvert les pays qui virent Flaubert s'ab\u00eemer dans la jouissance! Pour en retrouver la sc\u00e8ne, que faire sinon rappeler les heures ardentes que l'\u00e9crivain normand avait pass\u00e9es avec l'alm\u00e9e Kuchuk-Hanem sur les bords du Nil. ( _La maladie_ 136) \nWhat cope of modesty has covered the countries that saw Flaubert sunk in pleasure! To remember its scene, what can we do, other than recall the passionate hours spent by the Normand writer with the almah Kuchuk-Hanem on the Nile's banks.\n\nThis allusion to the most famous pages of Flaubert's _Voyage en Orient_ glorifies Flaubert's encounter with a prostitute in Cairo without drawing any attention to the ethnic, class, and gender issues in a passage that portrays Arab women as stupid, eager sensual objects of male desire, of whom Kuchuk Hanem, as Said pointed out in _Orientalism_ , is the prototype (207).\n\nAlthough he only indirectly alludes to the affair of the headscarf in _Maladie_ , Meddeb unequivocally affirms his support for the way the law against religious signs in public schools has been justified. He praises the French model of integration as a better system than the American model of multiculturalism, as if the periodical violence in French suburbs, certainly the riots of fall 2005, did not attest to major flaws: \"je reste surpris par ceux qui, en invoquant leur islam, demandent \u00e0 la R\u00e9publique de changer\" 'I am still surprised by those who, invoking their Islam, ask the Republic to change' ( _La maladie_ 221), and adds that this is a \"pr\u00e9tention d\u00e9raisonnable\" 'unreasonable claim.' He follows this with a quote from the Torah to counter this \"unreasonable claim,\" without giving pause to the oddity of invoking Jewish scripture to argue for secularism as a response to concerns expressed by Muslims. In his subsequent book _Face \u00e0 l'islam_ , he is more explicit about the headscarf affair. He interprets the veil as a sign of sexual discrimination against women (159). His delight about the legislation of the law, which he somehow helped to bring about as a consultant for the Debr\u00e9 commission (197), is clearly evident.\n\nLike Ben Jelloun, Meddeb advocates education of his fellow Muslims as a remedy against fundamentalism and women's oppression, but does not consider the fact that the decision to exclude veiled Muslim girls from schools is actually depriving the ones who, according to him, need education the most. To combat fundamentalism, Meddeb also advocates the following: \"au lieu de distinguer le bon islam du mauvais, il vaut mieux que l'islam retrouve le d\u00e9bat et la discussion, qu'il red\u00e9couvre la pluralit\u00e9 des opinions, qu'il am\u00e9nage une place au d\u00e9saccord et \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence, qu'il accepte que le voisin ait la libert\u00e9 de penser autrement\" 'instead of distinguishing between a good and a bad Islam, it is better that Islam find again debate and discussion, that it rediscover the plurality of opinions, that it carve out a place for disagreement and difference, that it accept that the neighbor be free to think differently' ( _La maladie_ 13). However, when it comes to the issue of the veil, he fails to apply his own recommendation.\n\nUnlike Ben Jelloun's and Meddeb's essays, Benguigui, Maalouf, Sebbar and Memmi do not focus on Islam per se in the works discussed here, and were not triggered by 9\/11. But their respective topics do lead them to talk more or less about France's colonial legacy and Muslims, and briefly about the issue of the headscarf in public schools.\n\n### The Affair of the Headscarf in Amin Maalouf's _Identit\u00e9s meutri\u00e8res_ and Albert Memmi's _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman et de quelques autres_\n\n#### Amin Maalouf's _Identit\u00e9s meutri\u00e8res_\n\nIn _Identit\u00e9s meutri\u00e8res_ , an essay published in 1996, Amin Maalouf sets out to explore the question of multiple belongings, and the disastrous consequences that can ensue when we are pressed to deny some of our affiliations. Drawing on his personal situation as a Christian Arab, a \"paradoxical\" fact (23) that puts him at the border and allows him to affiliate with Christians and Muslims alike, Maalouf gives examples of situations when one's identity can change because of political events. He strongly advocates that one should be encouraged to see one's identity as multiple, and warns of the dangers that come with pushing people to single out one element and repress the others (183). Maalouf advocates learning languages as a remedy to two forces that crush plurality: essentialist identity politics and globalization. In the process of this argument, Maalouf reminds us that religious fundamentalism has not been the first choice of Arabs and Muslims, but a last resort when everything else failed (96). Maalouf contrasts languages with religion, in the way that one can speak several languages, but only belong to one religion. This leads Maalouf to write: \"Il faudrait faire en sorte que personne ne se sente exclu de la civilisation commune qui est en train de na\u00eetre, que chacun puisse y retrouver sa langue identitaire, et certains symboles de sa culture propre\" (187-88) 'We must act in such a way as to bring about a situation in which no one feels excluded from the common civilisation that is coming into existence; and in which everyone may be able to find the language of his own identity and some symbols of his own culture' (Bray 163). This is a very general statement and Maalouf abstains from giving examples of what to retain and what to keep, yet that is the thorny issue. However, the Muslim headscarf is not one of the symbols he seems to deem appropriate to display, as I will explain shortly.\n\nMaalouf does mention the affair of the scarf, but does not elaborate on it. After a development on the situation of migrants, and the fact that the host society is \"ni une page blanche, ni une page achev\u00e9e, c'est une page en train de s'\u00e9crire\" 'neither a tabula rasa, nor a fait accompli, but a page in the process of being written' (50, Bray 40), Maalouf asks a crucial question that deserves to be quoted at length:\n\nil s'agit, \u00e0 vrai dire, d'un contrat moral dont les \u00e9l\u00e9ments gagneraient \u00e0 \u00eatre pr\u00e9cis\u00e9s dans chaque cas de figure: qu'est-ce qui, dans la culture du pays d'accueil, fait partie du bagage minimal auquel toute personne est cens\u00e9e adh\u00e9rer, et qu'est-ce qui peut \u00eatre l\u00e9gitimement contest\u00e9, ou refus\u00e9? La m\u00eame interrogation \u00e9tant valable concernant la culture d'origine des immigr\u00e9s: quelles composantes de cette culture m\u00e9ritent d'\u00eatre transmises au pays d'adoption comme une dot pr\u00e9cieuse, et lesquelles\u2014quelles habitudes? quelles pratiques?\u2014devraient \u00eatre laiss\u00e9es \"au vestiaire\"? (51-52). \nWhat we are really talking about\u2014a moral contract, the elements of which need to be defined in each case to which it is applied: what, in the culture of a host country, is the minimum equipment that everyone is supposed to possess, and what may legitimately be challenged or rejected? The same question may be asked about the immigrants' own original culture: which parts of it deserve to be transmitted like a valuable dowry to the country of adoption, and which\u2014which habits? which practices?\u2014ought to be left at the door [cloakroom]? (Bray 41)\n\nThe use of the word \"vestiaire\" 'cloakroom' is important (and is missing in the English translation), since it is a place where one leaves clothing; it indirectly alludes to the affair of the headscarf that will be mentioned later. By using a term associated with clothing, Maalouf's statement can be read as implicitly suggesting that the veil, an article of clothing that has been the source of great polemics, should be left in the cloakroom. Four paragraphs later, Maalouf resorts to a paralipsis to mention the affair: \"Aurais-je \u00e0 l'esprit, en disant cela, des controverses comme celle qui s'est engag\u00e9e, dans divers pays, autour du 'voile islamique'? Ce n'est pas l'essentiel de mon propos\" 'Am I thinking of controversies like that which has arisen in various countries over the 'Islamic veil'? These are not my main concern' (53, Bray 42). The paralipsis, a rhetorical figure of speech that allows one to bring up a topic while denying it should be discussed, allows Maalouf to mention the affair while distancing himself from it. However, he continues using vocabulary that is associated with the debate over the issue of the scarf in France: \"Lorsqu'on sent sa langue m\u00e9pris\u00e9e, sa religion bafou\u00e9e, sa culture d\u00e9valoris\u00e9e, on r\u00e9agit en affichant avec ostentation les signes de sa diff\u00e9rence\" 'When one feels that his language is despised, his religion ridiculed and his culture disparaged, he is likely to react by flaunting the signs of his difference' (53, Bray 43). The word \"ostentation\" recalls the language used in the directive issued in 1994 by the French Minister of Education that aimed to exclude headscarves from public schools and led to the expulsion of more than a hundred girls.26 When Maalouf returns to the issue of the scarf explicitly a couple of paragraphs later, he qualifies it as \"un comportement pass\u00e9iste et r\u00e9trograde\" 'a reactionary, backward-looking behavior' (54, Bray 43). His interpretation of the resurgence of religion here as something that valorizes the past to the detriment of the present and progress does not take into account women's explanations and understanding of this gesture. Bowen has noted that many young women draw a clear distinction between the Islam that they practice and the one of their parents, which shows that it is not simply a return to the past (71). To his credit, Maalouf adds that the real question that needs to be asked is to understand why sometimes modernity is not perceived as a progress (54), but he never questions that the only possible path to modernity is the French and Western model. Although he is acutely aware of the discrimination that immigrants and their children have been victims of, Maalouf refuses to consider that the decision to wear the scarf can be \"the result of a personal commitment rather than an intention to signal something to others\" from the point of view of the girls (Bowen 81).\n\n#### Albert Memmi's _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman et de \nquelques autres_\n\nIn an essay that aims to examine the situation of the formerly colonized, in the same vein as his landmark _Portrait du colonis\u00e9_ , Memmi talks about the issue of the scarf in a very brief section entitled \"Le voile ou le m\u00e9tissage\" 'Head Scarves and _M\u00e9tissage_ ' (105, Bononno 86). In two pages, he constructs an imaginary dialogue with veiled girls that begins as follows:\n\nPassons sur leurs arguments, m\u00e9diocres ou rus\u00e9s; au nom de la libert\u00e9, par exemple: \"On est libre en France, non? Eh bien, je suis libre de porter le voile!\"; \u00eatre libre de ne pas l'\u00eatre, est-ce encore de la libert\u00e9? Ces petites sottes ne voient pas qu'elles agissent contre elles-m\u00eames, en refusant des lois qui les lib\u00e8rent au profit de dogmes qui les asservissent. Elles exigent, au nom d'une la\u00efcit\u00e9 mal interpr\u00e9t\u00e9e, de ne pas \u00eatre la\u00efques. (106) \nTheir arguments, some weak, some clever, often had to do with freedom. For example, \"We're free in France, aren't we? So, I'm free to wear a headscarf, right?\" It is a foolish argument. For they [these stupid girls] fail to see that they are acting against their own interests in rejecting the laws that freed them in favor of the dogmas that enslaved them. In the name of a poorly understood secularism, they demand not to be secular. (Bononno 86-87)\n\nAlthough the question and answer format can been seen as indirectly giving voice to some of the girls' motivation for wearing a scarf, Memmi chooses and frames arguments so as to immediately discredit them in a manner reminiscent of the asymmetry of roles played by guests on various programs on French TV in 2003-2004 (Bowen 240-41). Bowen noticed in a specific program that included the L\u00e9vy sisters that \"they [the L\u00e9vy sisters] were only allowed to speak as examples of the problem, the real understanding of which was provided by the 'experts' \" (240). Memmi's use of the adjective \"sotte\" 'stupid' for the girls (lost in the translation) is harsh and condescending, and although Memmi's tone is very sarcastic throughout the book, this is the only instance that I have noticed when he disparages the intelligence of people (in this instance young women) to better attack their arguments. His dismissal of arguments advanced by young women is symptomatic of the general silencing of the women concerned during the affair. For example, Bowen notes that the Stasi Commission27 did not hear from any girl who had been expelled (117), and only from one \"token\" veiled woman (118). He also notes that the media coverage of the affair perpetuated the stereotype that only uncovered women were seen as having earned the agency to speak for themselves, whereas covered girls were perceived as only parroting words dictated to them by men (245). Indeed, what Mohanty's ground-breaking article \"Under Western Eyes\" denounced well over a decade ago, can be seen operating in full swing here. First World feminists working on Third World issues posited themselves as the norm and in the process refused the idioms of agency that are relevant for Third World women. As for the issue of the interpretation of secularism, there is no acknowledgement here of the fact that the French have interpreted it in different ways, including the ruling of the _Conseil d'Etat_ during the first affair, which stated that students' wearing of religious signs was not in itself incompatible with secularism.28 Indeed, Drake underlines that both the intellectuals who opposed the headscarf in schools and those who opposed exclusion of the veiled girls did so in the name of secularism, a term that they understood in different ways (178). There is no hint of the complexity of the French debate about the issue of secularism during the second half of the twentieth century, most notably with the issue of public subsidies of private religious schools.29\n\nAfter dismissing the argument based on the issue of freedom, Memmi dismisses other arguments (of the veil as a protection, and as a religious obligation) in a similarly expedient manner, invoking, after secularism, the equality of the sexes, jeopardized by the meaning of the veil:\n\n\"Le voile prot\u00e8ge les femmes du regard des hommes\"; pourquoi ne pas prot\u00e9ger \u00e9galement les hommes du regard des femmes? N'est-ce pas un traitement particulier pour la sexualit\u00e9 f\u00e9minine? Pour les prot\u00e9ger du d\u00e9sir des hommes, faut-il qu'elles ne soient pas d\u00e9sirables, comme les d\u00e9votes juives qui se font raser la t\u00eate? Et surtout: respecter celles qui souhaitent \u00eatre ainsi prot\u00e9g\u00e9es ne donne pas le droit de vitrioler celles qui ne le souhaitent pas. (106) \n\"The headscarf protects women from men's stares,\" they say. Why not also protect men from the stares of women? Aren't we showing favoritism to the female sex? To protect them from men's desires, is it necessary that they be undesirable, like those Orthodox Jewish women who shave their head? What's more, respecting those who wish to be protected in this way does not give you the right to criticize [throw vitriol at] those who do not wish to be so protected. (Bononno 87)\n\nWhen Memmi gets indignant in the first two rhetorical questions that the head covering is a \"special treatment\" and therefore violates the equality of the sexes, there is no question that the French model is taken as the desired norm, despite the fact that the advertisement industry has long been basing many campaigns on the very premise of a different treatment of the female body. Memmi's question \"faut-il qu'elles ne soient pas d\u00e9sirables\" betrays an assumption in the prerogative of the male spectator to look at attractive women that has been fostered in Western art, and most notably the traditional European nude painting, as demonstrated by John Berger's _Ways of Seeing_. In fact, I would argue that one of the reasons why the veil has crystallized public attention is because it goes against the Western pictorial tradition from the Renaissance to contemporary advertising that depicts women as sexual objects for the gaze of a male spectator. This includes the Orientalist tradition of languid odalisques that has been analyzed at length, and contemporary French society's tendency to undress women, from contemporary fashion styles to the topless and thong trends on the beach.30 The opponents of the scarf in public schools who use the gender discrimination argument are not able to see it simply as a dress code nor look critically at French society's norms. Western societies have long had different dress codes for men and women, yet it would not come to anybody's mind to propose banning skirts from public schools on the ground that they promote inequality between the sexes because only girls wear them (not to mention the historical and religious reasons behind that fact).\n\nThere is a striking slip in the last sentence of the quote above between one issue and another: the use of the verb \"vitrioler\" (again, lost in the English translation), which can be used literally and figuratively, will not just mean \"to criticize\" for a French reader. It will evoke real-life cases of women who were disfigured by men who threw vitriol in their faces. These incidents happened in Muslim countries such as Algeria and Bangladesh during the 1990s and were reported in the media during Taslima Nasreen's visit to France, in particular, in the case of Bangladesh. Here, foreign contexts are brought to bear on the domestic one. The argument of forbidding the veil to better protect women who do not want to wear it was a powerful one (Bowen 208). Arab-Muslim culture was blamed for much of the violence that affected women in the poor suburbs, and as a sign of that culture, the veil was judged guilty in contributing to perpetuate this violence. The _tournantes_ (gang rapes) that made sensational headlines during 2001-2003 helped give more momentum for the law (Bowen 214-17). According to a study cited by Bowen, the only new feature about gang rapes, which date back to the 1960s and were committed by non-immigrants, is the (false, though convenient) claim that they are due to Arab-Muslim culture (214).\n\nMemmi counters the girls' argument that wearing a headscarf is a divine obligation by asserting that it is only suggested by the Qur'an (106), and that it boils down to men controlling women's sexuality. Here again, Memmi refuses to recognize that there are various interpretations of the Qur'an, and that those that have challenged the compulsory head cover do not represent the beliefs of the Muslim majority. The last sentence he attributes to the girls alludes to the fact that the veil is a reaction to the non-acceptance of French society:\n\nEn fait, par del\u00e0 les arguties, on a vu appara\u00eetre un aspect revendicatif, sinon provocant: le voile est devenu le drapeau d'une cause: \"Vous n'aimez pas les musulmans, leur vue vous irrite? Eh bien, je le proclame, je suis musulmane, je vous en impose la vue! Celle d'un membre du groupe honni par vous.\" (107) But underlying the arguments we find an element of protest, if not downright provocation: the headscarf has become the flag of a cause. \"You don't like Muslims, the sight of them irritates you? Well, I'm proclaiming my Muslim-hood; I'm forcing you to see it. To see a member of a group you have made to feel ashamed.\" (Bononno 87-88)\n\nAlthough the discrimination faced by Muslims in France is acknowledged, the girls are faulted for resorting to the veil, a \"ghetto portatif 'portable ghetto' (107, Bononno 88). Their choice is constructed as a provocation, which runs counter to all the accounts that have been published telling about the various paths and motivations behind French women's decisions to cover (see Gaspard and Khosrokhavar, Bowen, Bouamama). This is a clear example of what Noiriel, quoted earlier, has pointed out: how the victims are transformed into aggressors by changing a social issue into a religious problem. Although a key argument in the affair was to see the veil as a symbol of patriarchal oppression, the girls, who are then constructed as double victims of patriarchal oppression and social discrimination, as acknowledged by the above quote, are paradoxically turned into deliberate aggressors of French secularism.\n\n### Missing Images of Veiled Girls: Leila Sebbar's _Journal de mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ and _Mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ , and Yamina Benguigui's _M\u00e9moires d'immigr\u00e9s: L'h\u00e9ritage maghr\u00e9bin_31\n\nA few writers have nonetheless displayed a more complex attitude towards the young women concerned and showed more discrimination in their representation of the scarf affair than those just examined. The works I focus on have in common that they either feature texts and images, such as _Journal de mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ and _Mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ , Sebbar's illustrated (autobiographical narratives, or blur the boundaries between the two, such as the film and book by Benguigui, which bear the same title, _M\u00e9moires d'immigr\u00e9s: L'h\u00e9ritage maghr\u00e9bin_ , and whose contents overlap without being completely identical. Sebbar and Benguigui are both Franco-Algerian. Sebbar was born in Algeria of an Algerian father and a French mother; she moved to France at the age of 18. Benguigui was born in France of Algerian parents. Despite different situations and a generation separating them, they are both at the threshold between two communities, and the works examined unearth the links that have been woven by history between the Maghreb (and specifically Algeria) and France in order to fill a void through texts and images.\n\nWhile Benguigui and Sebbar's works share the goal of giving its proper place to the Algerian and Maghrebian communities in France in the French collective memory, they also have in common a \"visual omission\": they do not include any pictures or any shots of veiled girls in France.32 The affair of the scarf is mentioned to various degrees in the texts, but the scarf worn by middle and high school girls in contemporary France does not appear, as if one could talk about it but not show it.33\n\n#### Sebbar's _Journal de mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ and _Mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_\n\nAt the very beginning of the affair, Sebbar sarcastically mentions in an article published in _Le Monde_ the case of \"la\u00efcit\u00e9 aigu\u00eb\" 'acute secularism' that is plaguing the teaching profession, and the irrational panic caused by the scarves that are seen as a war sign of the advance of a fanatical Islam. Already, Sebbar maintained what others have since elaborated on: that secularism is not threatened by the religious signs worn by students, that the veil expresses modesty (\"un foulard qui cache leurs cheveux comme on cache ses cuisses et ses seins\" 'a scarf that hides their hair just as one hides one's thighs and breasts')34 and that the real victims in this case are the young girls who are excluded from the very institution supposed to promote equal opportunity.\n\n_Mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ and _Journal de mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ are books that mix (auto)biographical narratives, portraits, and diary; both are illustrated with images ranging from textbook pages35 to Orientalists paintings and personnal photographs. The narratives feature the experiences of diverse groups, including those of pieds-noirs in Algeria, children of immigrants in contemporary France, etc. In her foreword to _Journal_ , Sebbar explains her project by saying: \"Prise par un besoin f\u00e9brile de m\u00ealer l'Alg\u00e9rie \u00e0 la France . . . je tente par les mots, la voix, l'image, obstin\u00e9ment, d'abolir ce qui s\u00e9pare\" 'Caught by a feverish need to mix Algeria with France, I try with words, voice, image, to abolish what separates.' Since the affair was such a divisive topic, one could expect to see Sebbar give it some attention in these texts. In _Mes Alg\u00e9ries_ , the headscarf issue is briefly mentioned via a third party. In a section entitled \"le foulard. . . . Je ne suis pas jacobine,\" Michelle Perrot (who also happens to have written a preface to Sebbar's book), is reported to have said in 1999 that she was against the expulsion of veiled girls from school, and therefore had not signed Badinter's text.36 However, a footnote informs the reader that Perrot did sign a petition to support the law prohibiting religious signs in December 2003 (Sebbar, _Mes Alg\u00e9ries_ 167), thus underlining her change of mind. This footnote is the only (indirect) comment by Sebbar on the issue in that book, and demonstrates a hardening of opinion.37 Bowen also noted that more politicians gradually came to support the law (105).\n\nIn _Journal de mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ , Sebbar dedicates a few lines to the affair. While _Mes Alg\u00e9ries_ was organized thematically, _Journal_ is a diary written between March 2004 and January 2005; therefore, the news is mentioned occasionally. Her diary starts the very month that the law was passed, but only two paragraphs evoke the issue later on. First, she recalls French Muslim organizations' stand and mobilization to obtain the release of French journalists kidnapped in Iraq, but does not mention that the kidnappers had demanded the abrogation of the law as a ransom for the hostages (61-62). She then follows up with the following sentence: \"Par ailleurs, les jeunes filles au _hijeb_ ont accept\u00e9 d'\u00eatre semblables \u00e0 leurs condisciples sans _hijeb_ (sauf en Alsace), conscientes peut-\u00eatre qu'elles seront les b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaires de l'\u00e9cole la\u00efque fran\u00e7aise\" 'besides, the young women wearing a headscarf have agreed to be like their fellow students without headscarves (except in Alsace), conscious maybe that they will be the beneficiaries of the French secular school' (62). Given that this entry is dated September 3rd, it most probably alludes to the beginning of the first school year under the 2004 law that prohibits religious signs in schools. Although Sebbar is quick to point out the ineptitude of French politicians regarding equal opportunity for all ( _Journal_ 131), she no longer has anything to say about the cases of girls excluded.38 While the parenthesis \"sauf en Alsace\" indirectly alludes to the fact that the 1905 law of separation between Church and State, which defines the principle of secularism in France, does not apply to some parts of the Hexagon, it only does so in the context of the headscarf affair. Sebbar has nothing to say about the fact that the Concordat statute that governs the area of Alsace and Moselle constitutes a breach of secularism, since according to the Concordat the president is involved in the appointment of religious clerics remunerated by the state, which also funds religious instruction in public schools (Haarscher 32, Baub\u00e9rot 119-20).39 Indeed, this has been one of the most salient omissions by those invoking the fate of secularism during the debate: the failure to acknowledge the double standard hidden in the argument, since in fact the law of separation of Church and State is not being applied in all parts of France, not to mention the fact that the Concordat statutes benefit only Judeo-Christian religions.\n\nOne can surmise that Sebbar's change of mind on the issue, expressed indirectly in her photographical essays, and confirmed to me directly during an interview conducted in June 2006 in Paris, probably unconsciously influenced her choice of pictures.40 The only pictures of veiled women included in her books were taken in Algeria, and all the young women of Algerian origins living in France are bareheaded. In works endeavoring to document the diversity of the Algerian-French connection, it would have been pertinent to include in _Mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_ a picture of the girls wearing tricolor headscarves and singing the French national anthem during several demonstrations that took place at the beginning of 2004 (see Ternisien). The blue, white, and red headscarves were meant as a symbol of these young women's identity, claiming their attachment to both Islam and France. If, as Roland Barthes puts it, \"toute photographie est un certificat de pr\u00e9sence\" 'every photograph is a certificate of presence' (135), the absence of images of veiled French girls in Sebbar's books contributes to their rejection by French society.\n\n#### Yamina Benguigui's _M\u00e9moires d'immigr\u00e9s: L'h\u00e9ritage maghr\u00e9bin_\n\nBenguigui's successful documentary film, _M\u00e9moires d'immigr\u00e9s_ , broadcast on Canal + in May 1997, was followed by the publication of the book in July of the same year (Durmelat, \"Transmission\" 172). While there are some differences between the testimonies in the film and the book, the narratives match up and describe similar experiences. The headscarf affair is not mentioned at all in the film, and the only shots of veiled women were either filmed in Algeria, or are of immigrant women in black-and-white archival footage.\n\nIn contrast to the film, the first paragraph of Benguigui's book puts the headscarf affair in the foreground, and sees it as a key event in France's awareness of the definitive presence of a Muslim population in the Hexagon: \"Un foulard islamique apparu sur la t\u00eate de trois adolescentes d'un coll\u00e8ge de Creil, en septembre 1989, a vite sem\u00e9 l'inqui\u00e9tude. D'o\u00f9 viennent ces musulmanes? Comment sont-elles parvenues \u00e0 se faufiler au c\u0153ur des \u00e9tablissements scolaires?\" 'A Muslim scarf on the head of three teenage girls in a middle school in Creil, in September 1989, quickly spread anxiety. Where were these Muslim girls coming from? How did they manage to sneak in the heart of schools? '(7). Similar questions are asked a couple of pages later.41 The questions that Benguigui attributes to public opinion and the choice of verbs give the impression that the presence of Islam is considered illegal on French soil.\n\nFurthermore, one chapter of the book is dedicated to Na\u00efma, a young woman who challenges the stereotypes, since she decided to wear the veil under no pressure from her family. To the contrary, her father was worried by it and feared he would be expelled from the country (186). Her mother and sister are dressed European style. Benguigui is startled when she first sees Na\u00efma, her reaction is emblematic of the ambivalence and uneasiness that the scarf triggers in France, even for those who opposed the exclusion of veiled girls from school (178). While one can object to Benguigui's interpretation of Na\u00efma's choice in Christian idiom (see Durmelat \"Transmission,\" Bourget \"A l'\u00e9crit\"), Benguigui stands out in that she does give voice to a veiled girl in her book without demonizing or dismissing her choice of dress, taking a step to bridge the gap of misunderstanding by letting the silenced party speak for herself. One can only regret that she did not include Na\u00efma in the film, since, if \"photographic images are pieces of evidence in an ongoing biography or history\" (Sontag 166), the non-inclusion of veiled girls in the contemporary French landscape contributes to relegating these girls to the margins.\n\n### Conclusion\n\nBen Jelloun, Maalouf, Meddeb, and Memmi seem to belong to the \"hard-line secularists\" (Drake 181) who were the most vocal during the fifteen-year affair. In their works that focus on Islam, neither Meddeb nor Ben Jelloun alludes to the various sides of the debate regarding the issue of the veil. By only presenting the opinions of a minority regarding certain religious rulings and by silencing the French girls' motivations for veiling, they contribute to deepening the gap of misunderstanding rather than bridging it. Since both writers lament the absence of debate in the Muslim world (indeed Meddeb's main argument is that fundamentalism is caused by the lack of debate and its intolerance of diverse opinions), the least we could have expected of them would be to render the plurality of voices in the debate surrounding the veil. For two writers who pose as champions for the emancipation of Arab women, it is unfortunate that they contribute to what Bouamama has noted as one of the characteristics of the debate: the absence of the voice of the women concerned.\n\nBy waiting for the terrorist attacks of 9\/11 to try to explain Islam to the French, Ben Jelloun and Meddeb are exacerbating the main problem that Muslim French, many of whom are descendants of immigrants, face in France: they are not recognized as full-fledged and trustworthy citizens solely because of their choice to practice the religion of their ancestors. This choice is seen as incompatible with French values and subject to foreign allegiance. Thus, international news is made to bear on domestic issues even though they are not directly related to them. Not only do these essays fail to present a balanced account of the issue of the veil in France, they contribute to the confusion between Islam and terrorism by the mere fact of mentioning the affair in essays motivated by 9\/11.\n\nBen Jelloun, Maalouf, Meddeb, and Memmi fail on two counts: they do not present a balanced account of the issues surrounding the headscarf affair in France, nor do they draw attention to the use and abuse of the concept of secularism in an affair that, as G\u00e9rard Noiriel pointed out, was more a \"sous-produit des pol\u00e9miques sur l'immigration lanc\u00e9es par les conservateurs au d\u00e9but des ann\u00e9es 1980\" 'by-product of polemics about immigration launched by conservatives at the beginning of the 1980s' (181).42 According to Noiriel, the 2004 law on religious signs was a victory for the most conservative government intellectuals, who managed to reverse the relationship between victims and aggressors by transforming a social question into a religious one. The phrase \"identit\u00e9 nationale\" 'national identity' was dropped because it brought to memory extreme right-wing slogans, \"nation\" was replaced by \"R\u00e9publique\" and \"identit\u00e9\" by \"la\u00efcit\u00e9\" 'secularism.' Thus when one used to say \"Les \u00e9trangers ne s'assimilent pas et menacent notre nation, parce qu'ils sont de connivence avec l'ennemi\" 'foreigners do not assimilate and threaten our nation, because they are in connivance with the enemy,' one now says \"les Maghr\u00e9bins ne s'int\u00e8grent pas et menacent la la\u00efcit\u00e9 r\u00e9publicaine car ils sont de m\u00e8che avec les islamistes\" 'Maghrebians do not integrate and threaten republican secularism because they are hand in glove with Islamists' (Noiriel 182).\n\nWhy did these writers not underline the \"extraordinary symbolic weight given to a scarf worn on the head by a small number of schoolgirls\" (Bowen 7)? Why did they not give some recognition to the girls' effort to reconcile their Muslim and French identity as they saw fit? These are writers who have risen up to the challenge of showing the shortcomings of French society in the past, particularly regarding racism. The climate of course has changed. In a chapter of _Jihad_ entitled \"Europe, terre d'islam: le voile et la _fatwa_ ,\" Kepel puts the Islamic scarf affair in the international context of the rise of Islamism. Unlike Bowen, who, among other factors, demonstrates that the scarf affair brought to light the contradictions that already existed regarding secularism in France, Kepel takes it for granted that there is a well-established consensus about the definition of secularism, something that is debunked by two contrary developments: the 1989 ruling of the Conseil d'Etat that stated that the headscarf was not in itself a breach to secularism, and the 2004 law that forbids it. Kepel rightly underscores the role played by the international rise of Islamism, and particularly Khomeini's _fatwa_ against Salman Rushdie, and its role in the change that considered Western countries that are home to Muslim citizens as part of _dar el islam_. His analysis puts the international political situation to the foreground, and the headscarf as one manifestation of political Islam, and only that. This is mostly what was disseminated in the media. The guilt by association factor (to which I will return in the next chapter), which prompts writers to take a strong stance to distance themselves clearly from any fundamentalist association, comes into play. However, this analysis reduces Islam to its political dimension and does not take the girls' point of view into account at all. Gaspard and Khosrokhavar noted that no link had been established between the veiled girls and Islamist groups in France (54). As for link to foreign groups, they note that the FIS had issued a call asking these girls to remove their scarves, that went ignored during the second affair in 1994 (29), thereby putting into question the notion that the girls were merely puppets in the hands of (foreign) fundamentalists. This shows a gap between political analysis and sociological fieldwork, a gap that one also finds between the writers discussed in this chapter and personal accounts of veiled women.\n\nA telling statistic during the affair was that 91 percent of French teachers had never seen a veiled girl at their school (Bowen 121), and yet the teaching profession overwhelmingly supported the law. Of the writers discussed in this chapter, Benguigui might be the only one who actually met in person a girl who decided to wear a headscarf (Sebbar told me during an interview in 2006 that she did not meet veiled girls and did not want to because she already knew their discourse). Benguigui put aside the politics, both internal and external, and listened with an open mind and a sympathetic ear.\n\nWhile Sebbar went from supporting the girls to supporting the law that excludes them, Benguigui does not take a position, but her work moves from exclusion to inclusion, albeit in a different way. The works of both, however, meet in excluding pictures of covered girls. This brings me, in closing, to comment on a picture that accompanied a 2006 article in _L'Express_ on the rise of Islam in Europe (see Conan). As John Bowen noted, the weekly magazine _L'Express_ ' coverage of the scarf affair was strongly anti-veil from the very beginning (107). The picture features a girl wearing a tricolor headscarf and holding a French flag on her face, as a face veil.43 The article warns about the danger of the rise of Islam in Europe, in general. The picture was probably chosen as an illustration of the rise of Islam in France because of the two icons it contained, and which summed up the gist of the article: a veiled girl representing Islam, and the tricolor flag for the French republic. I would suggest another reading of that picture, which I can only surmise was taken during a demonstration against the law on the prohibition of religious signs in public schools. I would read the girl's gesture as showing that it is the French flag, the icon of the French Republic, which is silencing and occulting Muslim women from public space and debate.\n\nIn his book, Bowen notes that he is gratified when, after people listen to him speaking on the 2004 law, they still do not know where he stands (7). Like Bowen in his study, my aim is not to take a position, although my view has probably become obvious to my reader. If anything, the 2005 riots seemed to confirm to me that the time, resources, and energy spent on the single issue of the scarf during the past fifteen years could have been more fruitful had they been directed towards concrete and pressing, and not symbolic, issues. There were no veiled girls burning cars all over the country that fall. One consequence of the affair is that it will have, ironically, triggered the establishment of private Islamic schools that will eventually receive government subsidies, like their Jewish and Catholic counterparts.\n\n### Notes\n\n1. Incidentally, this mosque was partially funded by the French government, despite a 1905 law (much-brandished during the headscarf affair) that prohibits governmental funding of religious entities.\n\n2. In France, the incident was referred to as \"l'affaire du foulard\" 'the affair of the scarf,' with the words \"foulard,\" \"voile,\" and hijab used interchangeably to denote a cloth covering the hair and neck. The Muslim veil comes in many shapes and colors throughout the Muslim world, with specific forms and vocabulary associated with some countries (for instance the Iranian chador, the Afghan burqa). I use the terms scarf and veil interchangeably, as was done in France, to refer to a head cover only, and not something that hides the face and\/or the whole body.\n\n3. Disproportionate attention was given to the affair. Alec Hargreaves notes that in 1994, the number of girls concerned constituted less than 1 percent of the number of Muslim girls in public schools. Bouamama points out that there was no increase in these numbers in 2003, the year when the move to legislate gained momentum (70).\n\n4. For excellent analysis of the controversy, see Gaspard and Khosrokhavar (of which a short excerpt translated into English appears in _Beyond French Feminisms_ ) as well as Bouamama, the collection of essays edited by Nordmann, and Bowen.\n\n5. In his provocative study, Bouamama places the law in the context of social regression for the working class. According to him, the headscarf affair was a timely way to divide the 2003 social movements that unified the teaching profession.\n\n6. Indeed, one should not assume that a specific religious background entails better representation (see Bowen about the only Muslim member on the Stasi commission).\n\n7. For the motivations behind some girls' choice to wear the scarf, see excerpts of interviews in the books by Bouzar and Kada, Gaspard and Khosrokhavar, Giraud, Sintomer, and the L\u00e9vy sisters.\n\n8. This section has appeared as \"9\/11 and the Affair of the Muslim Headscarf in Essays by Tahar Ben Jelloun and Abdelwahab Meddeb.\" _French Cultural Studies_ 19.1 (February 2008): 71-84. It has been revised.\n\n9. A particular subset of novels that endeavors to imagine the mindset and indoctrination of a 9\/11 hijacker is the subject of chapter 5.\n\n10. These works have been translated into English (see bibliography). However, unless indicated otherwise, most translations in this chapter are mine.\n\n11. The famous editorial published in _Le Monde_ on 9\/13\/2001, \"Nous sommes tous Am\u00e9ricains\" 'we are all Americans' had so much resonance probably in part because France still had vivid memories of terrorist attacks on its soil.\n\n12. See Aubrac and Wieviorka.\n\n13. Ben Jelloun explains that \"Certains ont traduit ce mot par 'caillot de sang.' En v\u00e9rit\u00e9, il s'agit du liquide visqueux form\u00e9 par les spermatozo\u00efdes; on l'appelle 'sperme.' C'est gr\u00e2ce aux spermatozo\u00efdes que les \u00eatres humains se reproduisent\" 'some have translated this word by 'blood clot.' Actually, it's the viscous liquid formed by spermatozoa; it's called 'sperm.' Human beings multiply thanks to spermatozoa' (19). Jacques Berque's translation (among others) favor the term \"adh\u00e9rence\" 'adhesion' which renders another meaning of the word ' _alaq_ (which also translates as \"a sticky thing\") and would refer in this context to the embryo). References to semen occur in other parts of the Qur'an using a different word. Not to mention that such a statement, which completely occults the woman's biological reproductive role, is quite patriarchal for a man who otherwise poses as a champion of women's rights.\n\n14. See Mernissi's _Le harem politique_ as one example, although her approach is radically different from Ben Jelloun's. Mernissi knows that in order to be taken seriously and to have an impact, she cannot disregard summarily the body of _hadiths_ as Ben Jelloun does, which would be totally unacceptable for mainstream Islam.\n\n15. Abdelkader fought the French invasion of Algeria from 1832 till 1847, when he was forced to surrender. Abdelkrim was imprisoned in 1917 for his opposition to Spanish rule in Morocco. He escaped in 1919 and led the Moroccan resistance against Spanish and French colonial expansion from 1921 until 1926, when he was defeated.\n\n16. Ben Jelloun made it clear in a newspaper article that he fully supported the 2004 ban on religious signs in public schools (see \"Contamination\").\n\n17. These last two were published after Ben Jelloun and Meddeb's texts. For the L\u00e9vy sisters, see Giraud.\n\n18. The L\u00e9vy sisters point out that the media gave inaccurate accounts of their story in slant articles and news reports that portrayed them as intransigent fundamentalists when they were expelled from their high school in 2003 (see pages 37 and 42).\n\n19. There was a split among French feminists about the issue: none supported the veil, but several recognized that taking a hard stance and expelling the girls would definitely not be in the latter's best interests, and would not help promote equality between the sexes.\n\n20. The French government's position on the issue changed over the years, but follows a pattern of hardening public opinion. In 1989, the _Conseil d'Etat_ ruled that the veil worn by students was not incompatible with secularism. In 1994, the minister of education issued a circular, making a distinction between signs that are discrete versus ostentatious. In fact, cases were generally handled at the discretion of the schools' principals.\n\n21. The Concordat is an agreement reached between Napoleon and the Pope in 1801, according to which Catholicism is no longer the religion of the State, although the State nominates and remunerates the clergy. This agreement covers Protestantism and Judaism as well. The Concordat ended in 1905 with the law of separation of Church and State, except in the areas of Alsace-Moselle which were at the time annexed by Germany. The Concordat was left untouched in Alsace-Moselle even after they were reincorporated into French territory following WWII. This has seldom been mentioned as a danger in debates about secularism.\n\n22. Some intellectuals, such as Mohammed Arkoun, have been advocating the creation of a degree in Islamic theology to be offered at the University of Strasbourg (which already offers degrees in Catholic and Protestant theology, the only French public university accredited to do so).\n\n23. \"Lorsqu'une fois le fanatisme a gangren\u00e9 un cerveau, la maladie est presque incurable\" 'once fanaticism has gangrened a brain, the disease is almost incurable' (254)\n\n24. See for instance El-Solh and Mabro, and Ahmed.\n\n25. Memmi recalls how he used to joke that his Jewish grandmother, who would not leave the house without her _ha\u00efk_ , looked like a ghost (105-06).\n\n26. For more on that, see Bowen 89-91.\n\n27. This was the commission appointed by the president to issue recommendations in 2003, one of which was to pass a law banning religious signs in public schools. For a critique of the Stasi commission, see Bowen (for instance, the members ignored the sociological studies that had been carried out about the girls, and did not interview a single girl that had been expelled from school because of her headscarf (70, 117).\n\n28. .\n\n29. For more on that issue see Baub\u00e9rot and Haarscher.\n\n30. The compromise solutions adopted in certain cases, which modified the ways the scarf is worn (by showing the hairline, or the earlobes and neck, or wearing a bandana), demonstrate an attempt to align the head cover with practices accepted by mainstream French society (and showing more skin).\n\n31. This section has appeared as part of \"A l'\u00e9crit sans images: le foulard islamique dans des oeuvres de Le\u00efla Sebbar et Yamina Benguigui.\" _Expressions maghr\u00e9bines_ 6.1 (Summer 2007): 19-35. It has been revised and augmented.\n\n32. It is important to stress that the immigrant women's scarves never bothered anyone. According to Dounia Bouzar, \"jusqu'\u00e0 ces derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, les femmes en foulard qui faisaient le m\u00e9nage dans les administrations ne posaient aucun probl\u00e8me ni \u00e0 la soci\u00e9t\u00e9, ni \u00e0 la la\u00efcit\u00e9: un islam inf\u00e9rioris\u00e9 . . . est acceptable, c'est lorsqu'il revendique d'intervenir dans l'espace public en situation d'\u00e9galit\u00e9 qu'il appara\u00eet intol\u00e9rable\" 'till the last few years, women in headscarves cleaning the government's buildings never posed a problem either to society or to secularism: an inferiorized Islam . . . is acceptable, it is when it claims to intervene in public space on equal footing that it appears unbearable' (\"Fran\u00e7aises\" 61).\n\n33. For a detailed analysis of the presence and absence of Muslim icons in the images of these works, see my article \"A l'\u00e9crit sans images: le foulard islamique dans des \u0153uvres de Le\u00efla Sebbar et Yamina Benguigui.\"\n\n34. It is important to remember that as a sign of modesty the headscarf goes against the current, at a time when images of naked women's bodies are commonplace. Georgette Hamonou, a teacher who opposed the exclusion of two girls from her middle school, states: \"Je souris lorsque j'entends Mme Badinter s'insurger contre le foulard qu'elle distingue \u00e0 peine de la burka afghane, et qui ne dit mot de la fa\u00e7on dont on galvaude le corps f\u00e9minin, cent fois plus qu'il y a trente ans, au bon temps du f\u00e9minisme!\" 'I smile when I hear Mrs. Badinter rising up against the headscarf which she barely distinguishes from the Afghan burka, and who does not say a word about the way the female body is debased, and this a hundred times more than was the case thirty years ago, at the good old time of feminism!' (Bouamama 141)\n\n35. The copy of a page of a textbook entitled _Histoire de France et d'Alg\u00e9rie_ shows the history of both countries presented side by side: a lesson on one side on Charlemagne for French history, on the kingdom of Tiaret for Algerian history (Sebbar, _Mes Alg\u00e9ries_ 41). This questions the commonplace idea of the Eurocentrism of the curriculum in colonial schools evoked by the phrase \"nos anc\u00eatres les Gaulois\" 'our ancestors the Gauls,' so often cited ironically by writers and scholars in Francophone studies.\n\n36. The text she refers to here is the letter signed by intellectuals and published in _Le Nouvel Observateur_ on November 2, 1989, protesting the stand against exclusion taken by the Minister of Education in front of the National Assembly. For a close analysis of that letter, see Gaspard and Khosrokhavar (22-24).\n\n37. Emmanuel Terray applies Bibo's concept of political hysteria to the debate of the headscarf in France. Political hysteria consists in substituting to a real problem \"un probl\u00e8me fictif, imaginaire, construit de telle sorte qu'il puisse \u00eatre trait\u00e9 avec les seules ressources du discours et par le seul maniement des symboles\" 'a fictitious, imaginary problem, framed in such a way that it can be dealt with the sole resources of discourse and symbols' (103). According to him, the fact that many people changed their minds during the course of the affair, mostly in favor of the law, shows that this case of political hysteria was \"highly contagious,\" and not a sign of an open debate (117).\n\n38. See Laronche and the following articles in _Le Monde_ : \"Dix fois moins de foulards\" (published in the September 4, 2004 issue) and \"Premi\u00e8res exclusions scolaires apr\u00e8s la loi sur le voile\" (October 21, 2004).\n\n39. Haarscher (32) and Baub\u00e9rot (120) both point this out by means of rhetorical questions.\n\n40. Sebbar explained to me during the interview that the Islamisation of the suburbs had triggered her change of mind on the issue. Her reversal is far from unique. She justified that the absence of veiled girls was due to the fact that her books were about people she had met personally, and that she would not try to meet with veiled girls because she already knew their discourse. However, the two books I discuss here include reproductions that do not fit the criteria just mentioned (for instance, the picture of an anonymous man\u2014maybe a Chibani\u2014in _Journal_ page 90). The assumption that Sebbar already knows these girls' discourse is symptomatic of what was propagated in the media. Sebbar has featured veiled girls in her fiction (see, for instance, the short stories \"Vierge folle, vierge sage\" and \"La fille au hijeb\"), but here I am focusing on non-fictional texts.\n\n41. \"D'o\u00f9 viennent les foulards islamiques de Creil? Comment ont-ils p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9 dans les \u00e9coles fran\u00e7aises?\" (9).\n\n42. See also Bourdieu, Bouamama, Gaspard and Khosrokhavar. One of the L\u00e9vy sisters recalls how the agreement their father had reached with their high school principal to let them wear their scarves was an exception: \"Un jour, je discutais dans le couloir avec une fille qui portait un foulard laissant appara\u00eetre la racine des cheveux, les oreilles et le cou, quand le proviseur est arriv\u00e9 vers nous et l'a somm\u00e9e de le retirer \u00e0 l'instant m\u00eame. . . . La fille \u00e9tait d\u00e9go\u00fbt\u00e9e, et plusieurs comme elle, des Fran\u00e7aises d'origine maghr\u00e9bine, sont all\u00e9es se plaindre et demander des explications. Le proviseur ou des professeurs, je ne me rappelle plus, leur ont donn\u00e9 deux justifications: la premi\u00e8re \u00e9tait que mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tait juif et la seconde, qu'il \u00e9tait avocat! On cumulait \u00e0 la discrimination religieuse une discrimination sociale et professionnelle!\" 'One day, I was talking in the hallway with a girl who was wearing a scarf showing her hairline, her ears, and her neck, when the principal arrived and demanded that she take it off right away. . . . The girl was disgusted, and several like her, French girls of Maghrebian origin, went to complain and ask for explanations. The principal or some teachers, I can't remember, gave them two justifications: the first one was that my father was Jewish and the second that he was a lawyer! Social and occupational discrimination were added to religious discrimination!' (27)\n\n43. I am grateful to Siobh\u00e1n Shilton for showing that picture during her talk on visual arts works and for helping me locate the picture, and to the website owners for giving me the reference of the article in which it appeared.\n\n## Chapter 6\n\n## Portrait of a Terrorist: Slimane Bena\u00efssa and Salim Bachi's 9\/11 Novels\n\n9\/11 has already given rise to a genre of its own: the 9\/11 fiction. Kristiaan Versluys rightly notes that three of the most interesting novels dealing with 9\/11 were written by outsiders, and specifically Europeans, whose link with 9\/11 is \"more tangential than tangible\" (69). But he does not mention Francophone Arab writers, who have directly engaged this event in essays (such as the works of Ben Jelloun and Meddeb discussed in the previous chapter) and works of fiction. Two of them, Slimane Bena\u00efssa in _La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_ (2003) and Salim Bachi in _Tuez-les tous_ (2006), have made it the sole focus of a novel. Contrary to the 9\/11 novels written by American and French writers,1 these Francophone Arab writers have endeavored to portray the time leading up to the attacks, rather than their aftermath, and from the point of view of a hijacker instead of a victim's or a witness's. They are the only authors, to the best of my knowledge, to have done so in a novel.2\n\nWhile providing a very different reading experience, these two novels have several resemblances: they are both creative attempts to imagine the indoctrination and thoughts of a 9\/11 hijacker just before the attacks, and they both feature extensive quotations from the Qur'an, which are clearly marked and identified in Bena\u00efssa's narrative but not in Bachi's. Both authors are Algerians exiled from their country in the 1990s because of the civil war that pitted Islamists against the army. However, neither pretends to offer a realistic reconstitution: elements in both novels depart from what we know about the 9\/11 hijackers.3 The most salient of these divergences are the following: Bena\u00efssa's protagonist is Arab-American, and he does not board the plane; Bachi's protagonist is an Algerian who does go through with the attack but knows that his action will not earn him Paradise.\n\nIn this chapter, I sketch the various interpretations that have been given as explanations for 9\/11, in order to examine where one can situate these novels in this debate. I analyze and compare the function of the intertext in both novels, with particular attention to religious references, and its effect on the representation of the role played by Islam in terrorism.\n\n### 9\/11, Islam, and Terrorism\n\n9\/11 has been a watershed event in many aspects, one of them being to bring religion back on the Humanities' radar screen. Scholars in the _PMLA_4 issue of May 2005 noted that literary scholars had not taken notice that colleagues in the social sciences had been \"debunking the illusion of the secularization thesis for some time\" (Brown 884), and seemed to discover their \"own intellectual impotence, [their] insistent refusal to recognize religion as part of the _current_ (rather than past or primitive) state of humanity\" (Chow 875).\n\n9\/11 has also given new currency to the theory of the clash of civilizations, and thus prompted numerous inquiries into the link between terrorism and Islam. The most prominent scholars who champion that theory, Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, assert that Islam is by its very essence hostile to Western values (Qureshi and Sells 2-9). According to them, this antagonism rather than specific historical processes explains the current conflict between the West and Islam (a view also held, incidentally, by Islamic extremists). They question the Left's tendency to explain Islamic fundamentalism as a religious cloak for economic and political grievances.5 This theory enjoys broad appeal, even with some postcolonial writers (such as Naipaul,6 who has taken on and propagated that view as well, and Soyinka7). This view shows little recognition of the fact that had colonial policies been different, there might have been less sense of urgency by such newly independent states as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia to affirm Islam as the state religion. As underlined by Qureshi and Sells,\n\nIf such identities, in the words of Edward Said, are constructed and inherently conflictual, then the claim of a clash of civilization is true, in the philosophically trivial sense of tautology: generalized identities that have been constructed in opposition to one another [as was the case in colonial contexts] are in opposition to one another. Said also points out that colonization justified by conflictually constructed ideologies generated reactive, conflictually constructed politics of identity among the colonized. (27)\n\nAs Stephen Morton noted, the equation of terrorism with Islam \"is precisely a form of orientalism, which obfuscates the political dimension of resistance against western imperialism\" (40). Scholars in fields ranging from philosophy (Baudrillard, Derrida) to political science have debunked the theory of the clash of civilizations. Jean Baudrillard's _The Spirit of Terrorism_ and Slavoj \u017di\u017eek's _Welcome to the Desert of the Real_ , both essays on 9\/11, dedicate considerable space to emphasizing the importance of socio-political factors. \u017di\u017eek, recalling that Bin Laden was funded by the CIA, stresses that the USA is fighting \"its own excess\" (27).8\n\nWhile it has become commonplace in the media and (popular) culture to explain suicide attacks through reference to Islamic fundamentalism, membership in Islam alone is not a prerequisite, since the vast majority of Muslims do not engage in such acts. Indeed, in a talk with the provocative title \"Radical Sheik and the Missing Martyrs: Why Are There So Few Islamic Terrorists?\" Charles Kurzman debunked the idea that terrorism is intrinsic to Islamic fundamentalism by addressing the question from the following angle: \"If a considerable proportion of the world's billion Muslims believes in armed jihad and the joys of martyrdom, why don't we see terrorist attacks around the world every day?\"\n\nAn alternative has emerged to both those who assert that religion serves only as a means to an end to redress socio-eco-political grievances and those who see it as an end in itself. In the field of International Relations, Scott Thomas argues that religion makes a difference because \"religious terrorism seeks a cosmic or transcendent justification rather than only political, social or economic objectives\" (147).\n\nA close look at the history of suicide terrorism and ethnographic studies on the issue yields a more complex picture. Several studies on terrorism have demonstrated that suicide bombings are not the exclusive resort of Islamic groups: they have also been used by secular groups. The first wave of suicide missions in the twentieth century was conducted by Russian anarchists, and was followed by the second wave of Japanese Kamikaze9 during World War II (Gambetta 285). The Tamil Tigers is a non-Muslim group that commits suicide missions. In _Making Sense of Suicide Missions_ , scholars of political science show that suicide missions inspired by an Islamic rhetoric account for about a third of the suicide missions that took place between 1981 and 2003 (Gambetta 261). Indeed, their studies demonstrate that Islam is \"neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for SMs\" (Kalyvas and S\u00e1nchez-Cuenca 216), since non-Muslim groups have resorted to it, while many Islamist groups who have resorted to violence (as in Algeria for instance) have not.\n\nSimilarly, Christoph Reuter shows that various explanations offered in the media do not stand scrutiny; he makes a strong case for looking at the specifics of each context (9-13). He states that \"Islam as such is not the cause of terrorism and suicide attacks. Particular aspects of Islam do, however, lend themselves to being interpreted to justify a declaration of outright war against the West and against any opponents among their own peoples. They can equally be used to construct a democratic society\" (Reuter 32).\n\nHowever, religion can play a role in fostering and creating a receptive environment for terrorism, notably by promoting a cult of martyrdom. Stephen Holmes demonstrates that the grievances articulated by Atta and Bin Laden are almost entirely secular. Gambetta answers the question of how we can decide which of the religious or non-religious motives was predominant in the 9\/11 attacks by concluding that they are intertwined: \"While the real sources of the conflicts in which SMs [suicide missions] emerge are ultimately social and political, and secular groups can resort to these attacks too, those organizations that can bank on the 'right' religious beliefs can more easily summon the energy to enter into or . . . to continue, fighting against all odds\" (293, see also Pedahzur).10 This intertwining has been pointed out by an earlier study on the secularization theory that examined the revival of religions in countries ranging from Iran to the U.S. It concludes that religions \"were not the principal causes of the radicalization of the conflicts, but rather conflict radicalization found symbolic resources in religion to further certain social and political causes\" (Ricolfi 112). Holmes notes that Atta's grievances against the U.S. and the Muslim regimes it supports were \"almost entirely secular\" (139), as are Al-Qaeda's main objectives (164), and Bin Laden's (166); he concludes that \"such a blurring of personal frustration, political protest, and religious convictions makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate the specifically _religious_ roots of Atta's commitment to jihadist violence\" (140). It is therefore clear that grievances grounded in the here and now (specifically the presence and\/or occupation of Arab countries by American soldiers and Israel) are necessary to spur Islamic terrorism.\n\n### Slimane Bena\u00efssa's _La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_\n\nBena\u00efssa has been primarily a playwright11 who had already explored the issue of violence and religion on the stage. His novel _La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_ is told in the first person by Raouf, an Arab American software engineer whose father is Egyptian and mother Lebanese. His father's death less than a year prior to the beginning of the story is a key event that marks the beginning of Raouf's questioning about life (20). His coworker Athmane, a Palestinian trained in France, introduces him to Djamel, a rich Kuweiti who grew up in London, led a life of debauchery before repenting, and broke ties with his family because of the Gulf War. After three months of Islamic theology lessons with Djamel, Raouf converts to Islam, and is recruited as a martyr for a mission. We see Raouf abandoning his ordinary life (starting with his separation from Jenny, his long-time girlfriend), undergoing his training, and planning for the mission. On the morning of the attack, Raouf decides to not take the pills he was given, and at the last minute does not board the plane. He is arrested shortly thereafter. The novel ends with a letter written by his mother on her deathbed, which Raouf reads in prison.\n\nIn his foreword, Bena\u00efssa aligns himself with Victor Hugo's and Alexandre Solzhenitsyn's writings. He explains that Hugo's _Le dernier jour d'un condamn\u00e9_ and Solzhenitsyn's _Une journ\u00e9e d'Ivan Denissovitch_ can be credited for being catalysts for change (9). Bena\u00efssa feels compelled to follow in their footsteps for two reasons: because he is a Muslim and because of his \"histoire personnelle face \u00e0 l'int\u00e9grisme\" 'personal experience with religious extremism' (9, Gross vii), which alludes to the death threats that forced Bena\u00efssa to leave Algeria in 1993 (as indicated in the short biographical notice on the back cover) during the civil war. The title _La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_ modifies the title of Hugo's text, a plea against capital punishment, to reflect a different situation: Bena\u00efssa refutes the doctrine that a suicide attack will earn his character a place in paradise. In a striking move, he apologizes to the families of victims of fundamentalism: _\"en tant que musulman, je demande pardon \u00e0 toutes les famillesdes victimes de l'int\u00e9grisme international, quelle que soit leur confession\" 'speaking as a Muslim, I ask for forgiveness from all of the families who have been victims of religious extremism across the globe, regardless of their faith'_ (11, Gross ix). This statement is set off typographically: it is a paragraph in itself and is the only passage that is italicized. Bena\u00efssa's reaction emblematizes what Arab and\/or Muslim writers and intellectuals have been feeling in the last decades, and more intensely since 9\/11. Said sadly recalled in 1996 that after the Oklahoma City bombing his office received numerous phone calls from journalists,\n\nall of them acting on the assumption that since I was from and had written about the Middle East that I must know something more than most other people. The entirely factitious connection between Arabs, Muslims, and terrorism was never more forcefully made evident to me, the sense of guilty involvement which, despite myself, I was made to feel struck me as precisely the feeling I was meant to have. The media had assaulted me, in short, and Islam\u2014or rather my connection with Islam\u2014was the cause. ( _Covering_ xiv)\n\nJust as Said, it seems that Bena\u00efssa felt guilty from the loose association, all the more prevalent since 9\/11, between terrorism and Arabs and Muslims, possibly made all the more acute by the criticism levied both in France and in the U.S. that Muslims had not spoken out forcefully enough against the attacks. Unfortunately, Bena\u00efssa's apology has the (most probably unintended) consequence of validating the perception that Muslims are guilty by association.\n\nIn addition to asking for forgiveness, Bena\u00efssa apologizes for \"la duret\u00e9 de certains propos dans ce roman. Car tout au long de cette \u00e9criture, je me suis demand\u00e9 si je devais dire ce que je crois \u00eatre l'\u00e9clairage d'une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 pr\u00e9cise ou m\u00e9nager la douleur des familles des victimes\" 'some of the harsh sections [remarks] in this novel. Throughout the entire time of writing, I wondered whether I should say what I felt to be the most illuminating truth, or take into consideration the pain it might bring to the victims' families' (11, Gross ix). By this I assume he means the criticism of the West, and Unites States foreign policy, which is put in the mouth of the terrorists, and which actually takes up very little space in the novel. Bena\u00efssa appears to be writing defensively, in an immediate post-9\/11 climate of binary rhetoric that left no place between \"us\" and \"them\" and for critical discourse. As Judith Butler points out, \"the binarism that Bush proposes in which only two positions are possible\u2014'Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists'\u2014makes it untenable to hold a position in which one opposes both and queries the terms in which the opposition is framed\" (2). Any criticism of U.S. foreign policy can be easily dismissed by a chauvinistic American reader on the assumption that it is uttered by the terrorists or their sympathizers, although it is grounded in various political claims that have widespread support in the Arab world (such as the Palestinian cause), and are recognized as legitimate by scholars worldwide.\n\nAthmane and Raouf have disparate motivations for becoming martyrs. Athmane is the most politicized of the two: through his mouth comes much of the criticism of the West, and particularly of America's injustices in the world. Thus, while Raouf becomes indignant about the political dimension of the sermon of the clandestine imam, Athmane insists that since the Crusades, the West has had imperial designs on the East (135). The first planning meeting of the future hijackers is inaugurated by a speech that first presents grievances against the U.S. and the West: non-recognition of the contributions of Arab-Muslim civilization to Western civilization and wars of Western aggression that are plaguing the Muslim world; this political situation is given as the reason why they should strike the West to humiliate it in order to restore God's honor, thus mixing a political with a religious motive in a murky way (192-95). Athmane and the rest of the hijackers use Islam to address political issues of dispossession.\n\nAs for Raouf's motivation for participating, he mentions that he hopes to atone for his father's sins, while making Americans pay for refusing to acknowledge that his father's death was a work accident (190-91). Raouf has been shaken by his father's death, the mention of which recurs at key moments throughout the narrative to signal it as the event that marks Raouf's vulnerability to fundamentalist discourse (see pages 20, 93, 103, 110, 156, 165, 188, 217, 233). The insistence on a psychological motif has been explained as such by Butler: \"That kind of story [what Mohammed Atta's family life was like, Bin Laden's break with his family] is interesting to a degree, because it suggests that there is a personal pathology at work\" (5). Butler argues that this kind of story, with its emphasis on personal responsibility and agency, is easier for us to accept than a narrative with a global political and historical framework (5-8). Bena\u00efssa's depiction of Raouf's indoctrination follows the brainwashing methods that psychologists have reconstructed based on their experience with Western sects (Reuter 8). However, Reuter points out that these \"individual psychological models of interpretation . . . can't function as the complete explanation\" (9).\n\nRaouf obviously knows little about Islam. During some of his conversations with Athmane about religious issues, Raouf perceives that something is wrong with Athmane's arguments, though he does not have the tools to contradict him. The first such conversation occurs at the very beginning of the novel, during which Athmane uses the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Ishma\u00ebl to argue that Judaism exists thanks to Islam and not the other way around (28-29). In a rather unpersuasive section at the end, Raouf explains that, unconvinced by the guide's argument, he stopped taking the pills he was prescribed to help him go through with the attack, and did not board the plane.\n\nAccording to the translators' statement preceding the English version, Bena\u00efssa turned to the novel to treat this subject matter because fiction would allow him greater ease in introducing complex matters: \"We acknowledge his [Bena\u00efssa's] courage in turning to the novel as a way of introducing complex perspectives on Islam to a broad reading public, both Muslim and non-Muslim\" (Gross, \"Translators' Notes\" xiv). The translators of the English edition have noted that \"to demonstrate how Islamic teachings were used to shape the thinking of the main character, Slimane Bena\u00efssa's novel makes use of extensive quotations from three types of religious writing\" (Gross, \"Translators' Notes\" xiii). The reader is informed in a \"note de l'\u00e9diteur\" 'Publisher's Note' of the convention that was added to make the religious intertext easily identifiable (with different typographical conventions to distinguish the Qur'anic quotes from the Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) and supplications, as well as a glossary at the end of the novel. There is a recurrent opposition between \"l'ici-bas\" 'Here and Now' and \"l'au-del\u00e0\" 'Hereafter,' the only words that are in bold font throughout the novel (in the original, not maintained in the English translation). The bold font is meant to attract the reader's attention to the opposition between the two notions (which indeed are part of monotheist faiths); they stress that worldly life is only a test and will determine one's fate in the afterlife (see for instance page 37). Despite these efforts to make the novel more legible to a readership that might not know much about Islam, nothing in the novel points out the different status of these religious writings in Islamic theology. Contrary to the translators' statement, my analysis demonstrates that Bena\u00efssa's text falls short of presenting the complexity of Islam. In fact, I argue that his novel not only fails to counter stereotypes, it in fact perpetuates them.\n\nBena\u00efssa's intertext is overwhelmingly Islamic. Most of the Qur'anic quotes are interspersed in sermons that each occupy several pages, and contribute to making this novel a rather tedious reading. The sermons at the beginning of the novel treat general theological issues framed by Islamic beliefs. The first sermon deals with the reconciliation of predestination and free will (32-41); the verses quoted insist on God's omnipotence and omniscience, and recall that man accepted the gift of free will from God; it also contains injunctions not to get distracted by worldly riches. The second sermon (a recording that Raouf listens to) talks about worldly inequities and about God's supreme authority to judge (54-58). During Raouf's repentance ceremony, the verses quoted emphasize God's mercy (98-103). One of the sermons he goes to with Athmane is on the topic of \"parole, acte et action\" (117-24) 'speech, act, and action' (99), the verses insist that God will put the believers to the test, and exhorts them to be patient and steadfast in their faith.\n\nOnce Raouf becomes involved with the terrorists in training, the sermons become more political and deal with specific worldly topics. These sermons are preached in an underground network, as is underlined by the precautions that are taken when the terrorist plotters go to listen to a clandestine imam. Tellingly, that sermon starts with a verse (24:31) specifying women to whom they may show themselves without a head cover, and goes on to making a parallel with Judaism and Christianity since all three religions place restrictions on women (130). This choice of verse is not innocent: it underlines that Muslim fundamentalists in different countries have made the implementation of restrictions on women one of their first priorities, be it in Iran after the Islamic revolution, Afghanistan with the Taliban, or Algeria during the 1990s' civil war, but does not point out that men are also subjected to restrictions (albeit lesser ones) in the preceding verse. The verses that are quoted during that sermon (130-35) are very general but are inserted as if to confirm the main development, which concentrates on the disparity between the Western and the Muslim worlds, blames colonialism, accuses Jews and Christians of having teamed up against Islam, and scolds Arab leaders for their corruption.\n\nThe first sermon during the training is a long one on death, with verses focusing on death in different contexts (167-74). Its purpose is to stress the centrality of death to the believer. This sermon is followed almost immediately by one on purity. It only contains two brief quotations from the Qur'an (one stating that God loves those who purify themselves, the second that God does not change a people until they change themselves). There is a logical slippage from the verse about purification to its interpretation, according to which the acculturation that came with being educated or trained in the West, as were the trainees, is considered an element of impurity (175-79). It also includes advice on how to behave in the airport. The next sermon informs the participants that a fatwa has recognized their action as part of jihad; it is peppered with Qur'anic quotes and Hadiths on death in combat for the cause of God, the privileged status of martyrs, and a promise that God will not burden anyone beyond endurance (181-87). The next sermon treats angels and includes several Qur'anic verses (210-13). After emphasizing that the angels stand out by their unconditional obedience to God, the sermon concludes with a syllogistic argument that the one who decides to become a martyr will be equal to angels in his obedience to God (212). Although the verses' meanings are general, they are brought to bear on specific issues by being interspersed in the sermon to lend credence to various statements.\n\nIn addition to the sermons, the Islamic intertext appears in other occasions. The future hijackers' wills (214-18) contain general verses that insist on God's testing of believers, and on Islam as the last revealed religion. A recurrent verse associated with death emphasizes that mankind belongs to God and will return to him (2:156). The pledge of allegiance to God recited by the new recruits contains some short suras (or chapters) from the Qur'an (sura 112 on God's unicity, a truncated part of verse 5:106, and the Fatiha, on pages 209-10). When informing Raouf that he will volunteer to become a martyr, Athmane quotes a verse that stresses faith to give credence to his argument that people who have been educated in Western universities need to fight for the cause (126). An example of a Hadith is given by Athmane in the context of his argument that Raouf must get rid of his dog (16). The recommendations, clearly inspired by the \"road map\" that was found by the FBI and translated and published in various newspapers, including _Le Monde_ , are sprinkled with supplications praising and trusting God and a few verses about God granting victory to the believers.\n\nA few passages show the distortion effected by fundamentalist discourse: for instance, when Athmane argues about Judaism existing thanks to Islam, or during a sermon about America being discovered by accident, by a man who got lost, and forecasting its perdition (177). In the last speech, a parallel is established between the five phases of the terrorist action, the five daily prayers, and the five pillars of Islam, as if to better inscribe the terrorist act in the rituals required of the faithful (219-21). However, this mechanism is not made at all obvious when it comes to Qur'anic quotes, which are often taken out of context. The subtle shift between the sermons that Raouf hears at the mosque and the ones in the terrorist network might not be noticed by readers who have never read the Qur'an. The Qur'anic quotes add a touch of authenticity to the fundamentalist discourse, but do not prompt a reflection on the faith or on alternate interpretations. When Athmane urges Raouf to break up with his girlfriend on the grounds that she is not a Muslim, Raouf wonders if there is an exception for the \"gens du Livre\" (142) 'people of the Book,'12 which indeed there is, although nothing in the narrative hints at it except for Raouf's question, which remains unanswered since the terrorists consider no counter discourse to the fundamentalists' interpretation. And most importantly, there is no commentary whatsoever about practices not sanctioned by contemporary Islam, such as the fact that Djamel has slaves, or that an imam has the authority to recognize Raouf's repentance.\n\nIn the foreword, Bena\u00efssa laments that \"il y a certainement des milliers de fa\u00e7ons de vivre l'islam. Malheureusement, aujourd'hui, il n'en appara\u00eet que deux: celle d'un islam qui s'exprime et qui utilise toutes sortes de violences, et celle d'un islam qui se tait et dont le silence est plus qu'une absence\" 'there are certainly thousands of ways to live as a Muslim. Unfortunately, in today's world there seem to be only two: one is an Islam that is expressed through all manner of violence, the other is an Islam that is silent and whose silence amounts to more than just an absence of words' (10, Gross viii). Indeed, these are the only two Islams that are featured in his book: that which uses the religion to justify terrorist attacks, and that of Raouf's parents (and more specifically of his mother), which is actually hidden and nonexistent, as exemplified by the scene when his mother refuses to bury his father according to Islamic rites. The novel ends with the mother's letter, which strongly advocates Western modernity as a solution to the Arab world's problems, a modernity where Islam does not seem to have much place. And yet, there is much evidence to the contrary throughout the Muslim world, as seen in the opinions of Muslims for whom Islam and modernity are not incompatible and who have spoken strongly against their faith being used as a justification for 9\/11.13\n\nThe intertext seems to reinforce the idea of a clash of civilizations. Most of it is Islamic, with the exception of the mention of the film _Fureur de vivre_ when describing Djamel's dissolute life style (73) and of the _Cantique des cantiques_ as Jenny's reference (51), with an excerpt quoted (52). The intertext generally reinforces the dichotomy that is posited between East and West, Christianity and Islam. Most of the Qur'anic quotes in Bena\u00efssa's novel function only to inscribe the hijackers' act in the Islamic faith. There are no Qur'anic quotations when Raouf recalls how he did not go through with the action; in fact, at that point in the story, he cannot recall any of the verses beyond the initial formula \"in the name of God\" that starts all the suras. The author could have quoted some well-known verses that condemn the killing of innocents (Bachi does so, as we shall see later). Similarly, his mother's letter, written on her death bed, does not contain a single Qur'anic quote. If her way of life is another path for Islam, then it is one that has eliminated all religious reference. The text's objections to the terrorist act are not grounded in the Islamic faith. The political grievances behind 9\/11 are given very minimal space, whereas the sermons and Islamic material predominate in the narrative, thereby confirming the stereotype that there is something intrinsic to Islam that spurs terrorism, or at least, that devout believers are likely to be fanatical.\n\n### The Multicultural Intertext of Salim Bachi's _Tuez-les tous_\n\nTold in the third person by an omniscient narrator, Bachi's novel presents the last hours of one of the pilots up to the moment when he crashed a plane into the World Trade Center. The protagonist, whose real name is never disclosed, is an Algerian who went on to France to pursue his education, and fell in love with a French woman, who aborted their child. This abortion is the symbol of his failed integration into French society and one of the key reasons why he joined a terrorist organization which he found via a Parisian mosque and a trip to Afghanistan, where he was given the name Seyf el Islam. Although the character tries a few times to back out of his mission (he tries to drown himself, to turn himself in to the police), he is saved every time, and the ineluctability of the tragedy of 9\/11 looms constantly over the narrative through prolepses.\n\nContrary to Bena\u00efssa, Bachi has no qualms when it comes to writing pointed criticism about the West, and more specifically the U.S. and France. The phrase \"Paris, ville lumi\u00e8res \u00e9teintes\" 'Paris, city of lights out' recurs like a leitmotiv through the course of the narration, and emphasizes the failure of the Enlightenment. Strident passages and allusions strongly chastise American politics, both domestic and foreign, indicting the CIA, the plight of the Blacks and the poor (20). In general, the Western world is accused of being responsible for numerous conflicts in various geographical areas. It is designated as \"les adorateurs du veau d'or noir\" 'the worshippers of the black golden calf (21) adapting a Biblical (and Qur'anic) reference to the oil-dependent economies of the twentieth century. Several prolepses function as indirect criticism of the attention granted to 9\/11 by the media: \"tous verraient que leurs victimes [celles de l'Occident] avaient plus de poids que celles du monde entier\" 'all would see that their victims carried more weight that those of the entire world' (17). This sentence refers to the U.S.'s \"reputation as a militaristic power with no respect for lives outside of the First World\" (Butler 17). There is also an ironic allusion to _Le Monde'_ s article entitled \"nous sommes tous am\u00e9ricains\" 'we are all Americans' (20), which was published two days after the attacks.14\n\nThe title of the book _Tuez-les tous_ alludes to one of the darkest pages in French Medieval history: the Albigensian Crusade in the thirteenth century, indirectly recalling that Christianity has had its share of religious fanaticism. Arnaud Amaury (Arnold Amalric), abbot of C\u00eeteaux, before the massacre at B\u00e9ziers in 1209, when asked how to distinguish the Cathars, considered heretics, from the other inhabitants of the town, infamously answered: \"Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconna\u00eetra les siens.\" (Roquebert 245-61).15 Bachi's title significantly omits the second part, which is a reference to the Bible: \"The Lord knows those who are his\" (2 Timothy 2:19). According to Michel Roquebert, the crusaders massacred the inhabitants of B\u00e9ziers, including women and children, \"parce que les crois\u00e9s voulaient faire un exemple, propre \u00e0 semer la terreur\" 'because the crusaders wanted to make an example that would spread terror' (263). This event can thus be seen as an example of pre-modern terrorism in the name of religion. In modern times, that phrase (kill them all, let God sort them out) was used by American military during the Vietnam War. The title thus bridges French medieval and twentieth-century American histories, reflecting the recurrent criticism of both countries in the novel. The title is also used in Hitchcock's film _The Birds_ , one of Bachi's intertextual references, when one of the characters argues for the destruction of the whole species following attacks by birds in the small town.\n\nThe terrorist \"Organisation\" sent Seyf to spend a month in Granada before flying him to Portland, Maine to accomplish his mission. His stay in Granada is an important detail that gives rise to several remarks by the character about the coinciding dates of the fall of the last Muslim ruler in Spain with the date that marks Columbus' journey to America. Granada was the last bastion of Muslim Spain, or al-Andalus, to fall. As Majid emphasizes, al-Andalus was characterized for the mutual tolerance between the three monotheistic faiths ( _Freedom_ 23), although he cautions that \"the myth of a golden era of multicultural relations or of Islamic tolerance should not lead us into believing that there were no tensions among religious communities\" ( _Freedom_ 24). For Seyf el Islam, the new world is \"cette nouvelle saloperie, extension de l'Europe des lumi\u00e8res \u00e9teintes\" (55). His journey seems to mirror Columbus' journey, since he spends time in Cadix before going to Portland, and takes on a Spanish name, San Juan, as a pseudonym to accomplish his mission. The name San Juan evokes the town founded in 1521 by Spanish colonists in Puerto Rico, the oldest European settlement in the United States territory. The historian Fernand Braudel singles out 1492 as the date that marks the beginning of modern European colonialism. Majid states that \"the defeat of Islam and the 'conquest' of America in 1492 were interrelated events that culminated a long process of increasingly strident Christian missionary wars against Islam in Spain\" ( _Freedom_ 23). By calling attention to Columbus' journey, Seyf el Islam seems to incarnate the revenge of the West's Other by mimicking the path of the beginning of colonialism. This allusion to Columbus, going back in history well before our current era, shows that globalization started well before our century.\n\nAs in Bena\u00efssa's novel, the Qur'an is the salient intertext (although the quotes are unidentified), but it is more than a device to legitimize fundamentalist discourse. The quotations and allusions to the Muslim scriptures fall into several categories. First, the Qur'an is evoked to stress the discrepancy between what the religious text advocates and the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to women. Verse 2:187, which describes the (sexual) relations between husband and wife (\"elles sont un v\u00eatement pour vous, vous \u00eates, pour elles, un v\u00eatement\" 'They are your garments \/ And ye are their garments') is followed by the observation that Seyf El Islam had not seen anything like this in the world, and stresses that instead he has seen \"des femmes d\u00e9nud\u00e9es offertes \u00e0 l'assouvissement des b\u00eates\" 'women stripped bare and offered to gratify the lusts of beasts' (31). This verse is repeated twice more (68, 85), again to emphasize the distance between what the verse evokes and his experience. This verse is again alluded to when hijackers are faulted for being \"incapables d'\u00eatre un v\u00eatement pour une quelconque femme, mais pr\u00eats \u00e0 piloter un Boeing pour faire sauter la plan\u00e8te\" 'incapable of being a garment to any woman, but ready to pilot a Boeing to blow up the planet' (84). The Qur'an is also evoked when the character reflects about the gap between the world without women of Kandahar and what the Holy book says (61).16 Likewise, two quotations (78 and 123) compare the Islamic terrorists he joins to the hypocrites who are persistent opponents of the Prophet in the Qur'an (verse 4:63 and 9:56-7).17\n\nIn the same vein as the first category, the second use of the Muslim scriptures features verses that are quoted to highlight Seyf's straying from Islam and its precepts, and most importantly his awareness of doing so. For instance, he remembers verse 2:154 (\"Ne dites pas de ceux qui sont tu\u00e9s dans le Chemin de Dieu: 'ils sont morts!' Non! Ils sont vivants\" 'Say not of those who are slain in the way of God: 'They are dead.' Nay, they are alive'), to better reflect that he himself \"avait conscience d'\u00eatre mort et de ne plus \u00eatre sur le chemin de Dieu\" 'was aware of being dead and no longer on God's path' (23, again on pages 108, 112, 132, with slight modifications). When alluding to verse 5:35 (\"Celui qui a tu\u00e9 un homme qui lui-m\u00eame n'a pas tu\u00e9, ou qui n'a pas commis de violence sur la terre, est consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme s'il avait tu\u00e9 tous les hommes\" 'if anyone slew a person\u2014unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land\u2014it would be as if he slew the whole people'), he adds that \"je vais tuer des innocents, sortir de la communaut\u00e9 des hommes\" 'I'm going to kill innocents, leave the community of human beings' (25). Verse 5:35 is repeated during a dialogue between Seyf and Khalid in Kandahar in the presence of \"le Saoudien\" 'the Saudi' (Bin Laden, never named in the novel) (pages 58 and 118).18 These verses and the character's reflections on them emphasize that Seyf el Islam knows his terrorist act is counter to Islamic religious precepts. Additional examples are as follows: verse 2:161 is quoted to emphasize that Seyf counts himself as a non-believer (34). Verse 4:74, about the reward awaiting those who fight in the way of God, is followed by \"il allait \u00eatre tu\u00e9 mais sans pardon sans victoire car Dieu rejetterait son acte\" 'he was going to be killed but without forgiveness nor victory because God would reject his act' (54). Verse 24:35, which ends in \"Dieu guide, vers sa lumi\u00e8re, qui il veut\" 'God doth guide whom He will to His Light' is followed in the novel by \"et Il l'avait oubli\u00e9\" 'and He had forgotten him' (70), the same with the quote from 5:41 (\"tu ne peux rien faire contre Dieu pour prot\u00e9ger celui que Dieu veut exciter \u00e0 la r\u00e9volte\" 79),19 thereby inscribing his straying from the religion as something inscribed in it. In the same vein, verses 14:4 and 4:76 are juxtaposed to stress that his going astray is part of God's will (117).\n\nThird, the Qur'an is also invoked to draw parallelisms between events recounted in it and the 9\/11 attacks. Part of verse 2:50 about the Pharaoh being drowned to allow Moses to flee Egypt forecasts in Seyf el Islam's mind the abyss he will fall into the next day. Bachi modifies slightly the translation of verse 2:35 when God enjoins Adam to eat from the garden with the exception of one tree, and puts \"tree\" in the plural, for a slip in Seyf's mind assimilates the tree with the twin towers, with the acknowledgment that he will be \"au nombre des injustes\" 'among the unjust' (32). This verse and parallelism between the trees and the towers recurs on pages 69 and 123. Similarly, when he is in the elevator, and his ascent is compared to the Prophet Mohammed's _mi'raj_ or ascent to heaven, his act is paralleled with 7:24 (121). Seyf remembers the following verse: \"ils jurent par Dieu qu'ils sont des v\u00f4tres, alors qu'ils n'en sont pas, amis ce sont des gens qui ont peur, s'ils trouvaient un asile, des cavernes ou des souterrains, ils s'y pr\u00e9cipiteraient en toute h\u00e2te\"20 followed by \"et cela \u00e9tait bien ce qu'avait fait le Saoudien\" 'and that was exactly what the Saudi had done' (123), recalling Bin Laden's flight to the caves during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.\n\nThe Qur'an is cited out of context to apply to a variety of situations. For instance, verse 8:5 (\"c'est au nom de la V\u00e9rit\u00e9 . . . que ton Seigneur t'a fait sortir de ta demeure\" 'Just as thy Lord ordered thee out of thy house in truth') is recited by Seyf during the takeoff, as if to sanction the act he is about to commit (130). When Seyf is in the plane, he keeps reciting Qur'anic verses that seem to announce what is about to happen, such as verse 7:4-5 about the destruction of cities, verse 17:1 about the Prophet's ascension (the original \"de nuit\" 'by night' is changed into \"de jour\" 'by day'), as if Seyf were a new prophet (131). Verses 17:16 and 16:112 are quoted as if they followed each other, with an indented passage to stress how the description fits New York and the World Trade Center towers. The change in the verb tense in 16:112 (in the past tense in the original and in the future in Bachi's quotation page 132) highlights the distortion caused by applying a verse that describes a past event to something yet to happen.\n\nAs in Bena\u00efssa's novel, the Qur'anic quotes inscribe Bachi's narrative in the Arab cultural tradition and give it an authentic, legitimate touch. But in Bachi's text, they also highlight the discrepancy between Islamic ideals and reality in parts of the Muslim world. These quotes also emphasize the complexity of the character: a believer on the one hand, who sees some parallels between his terrorist act and stories recounted in the Qur'an, he knows his action is condemned by the religion, and yet rationalizes it through the theological tenet of destiny: he goes through with it since it is the will of God.\n\nContrary to Bena\u00efssa's text, Bachi's novel features a rich multicultural intertext. It makes frequent allusions not only to the Qur'an and _The Conference of the Birds_ , but also to _Hamlet, The Birds_ , and _Hiroshima mon amour_. The Qur'an and _The Conference of the Birds_ can be categorized as belonging to the Muslim religious tradition: one is a Holy book and the other a classic of Sufi (mystic) poetry. _Hamlet, The Birds_ , and _Hiroshima mon amour_ belong to the Western tradition and are more preoccupied with worldly issues than with spiritual questions.\n\nSeveral citations from _Hamlet_ appear in the novel; they draw a parallel between Seyf el Islam and Hamlet, his French girlfriend and Ophelia. Hamlet is called on by his father's ghost to avenge his wrongful death; to do so he has to fight the dominant power of the usurper king, his uncle. The spirit of Seyf's father comes to visit him as Hamlet's father's specter appears, but contrary to _Hamlet_ , Seyf's father enjoins him to dissociate himself from the terrorists and their \"unjust war\" (63). Like Hamlet in the eponymous play, Bachi's protagonist wreaks havoc in the process of seeking revenge, and ends up dead.\n\nThe numerous mentions of the film _Hiroshima mon amour_ are negative; it is described as \"un sale titre de film vu dans une salle obscure \u00e0 Paris\" 'a nasty film title seen in a dark theater in Paris' (14, 49, 97) and is associated with the period when Seyf was trying to assimilate to French society. On a formal level, _Tuez-les tous_ recalls _Hiroshima mon amour_ with constant analepses and prolepses intertwining the past and the present, and not clearly indicated (sometimes happening within a single sentence). In _Hiroshima mon amour_ , the French woman's love affair with the Japanese man brings back her love story with the German officer in Nevers. Similarly, Seyf's encounter with the American woman recalls memories of his French wife. In addition, repetitions of several passages blur the time sequence and can be quite disorienting for the reader.\n\nMentions of the film and pictures of Holocaust victims in a long sentence that intertwines the descriptions of bodies burnt by the atomic bomb and gassed in the concentration camp explain why the epithet of \"sale\" precedes the title: \" _Hiroshima mon amour_ , Auschwitz mon amour, br\u00fbl\u00e9s, irradi\u00e9s\" ' _Hiroshima my love_ , Auschwitz my love, burnt, irradiated' (49).21 The character's rejection of the title, expressed by always referring to it as a \"sale\" title, refuses the intent inscribed by Duras with her oxymoronic juxtaposition of love and the mass murder of civilians. Or rather, this rejection points out what Higgins formulated as follows: the film knows \"that the desire to represent horror through a love story must be counterbalanced by an awareness of the danger of forgetting the horror entirely\" ( _New Novel_ 22).\n\nOne passage highlights the misunderstandings that can result from referring to different traditions. When Seyf starts telling the story of the king of the birds, the well-known Sufi tale written by Farid Addin Attar in the twelfth century, the American woman he picked up in the Portland club thinks he is referring to Hitchcock's film (72). Birds are a constant reference in the novel, starting with the American woman he keeps referring to as a bird (recalling British slang), but more importantly through the Sufi tale. Attar's epic poem is a famous piece that tells the story of birds and their quest for the Simorgh (God); their journey exemplifies the different stages of the Sufi path, until at the end, only thirty birds reach the desired destination, only to realize that the Simorgh (which means thirty birds) is in themselves. The tale ends with the birds' fusion with the Simorgh, reflecting the Sufi doctrine that God is not external to or separate from the universe. In Bachi's text, the gist of the tale is recounted in the middle of the novel (72-74) and again at the end with slight modifications in the details. At the end of Bachi's novel, the plane flying into the World Trade Center is described as a bird and the tower as the mirrors. Although at the beginning the intertextual references to birds are a token of intercultural miscommunication, the final pages of the novel synthesize both references: the plane is compared to a bird that sees its image reflected in the windows of the tower (as in Attar's Sufi tale, except that Seyf merges with nothingness instead of with God). At the same time, the plane is attacking innocent people (as are the birds in Hitchcock's film). \u017di\u017eek has compared the shot of the plane crashing into the second tower with the scene when Melanie is hit by a bird while on the boat in _The Birds_ (14).\n\nThis merging of cultural references seems to highlight the destructiveness that acculturation can entail. At the beginning of the novel, Seyf invokes the Bible as well as Qur'anic scriptures when he quotes verses from Psalm 22 addressing God (\"Mon Dieu. Pourquoi m'as-tu abandonn\u00e9\" 'my God, why have you forsaken me?' 31). Majid notes:\n\nThat Muslims were in the throes of a maddening identity crisis should have been obvious to readers of novels by Muslim writers in the last four decades. Whether the writer hails from Senegal, Sudan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, or India, the story is always the same: Islam's encounter with the West, whether at home or abroad, provokes terrible confusions that are often resolved through some violent, and often self-destructive, act. (\"The Failure\")\n\nAs Majid points out, there is a darker side to the positive effects of hybridity, touted by postcolonial studies (\"The Failure\"), and that is encapsulated by 9\/11 in Bachi's narrative. _The Birds_ , released the year after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, has been read as an allegory of the human condition during the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and the birds as a symbol of the nuclear war threat (Hare 279-91). The allusions to Hitchcock's film by Bachi, whereby the plane that crashes in the WTC is compared to a bird, replaces the Cold War threat with that of Islamic fundamentalism, as occurs in Huntington's theory of the clash of civilizations.\n\nBachi's protagonist seems to conform to Khosrokhavar's portrait of Al Qaeda's members, whom he describes as \"des \u00eatres en mal d'identit\u00e9\" 'beings short of\/longing for identity' ( _Les nouveaux_ 111). Khosrokhavar noted that although the Al Qaeda's martyrs are multicultural (they have lived in the West and master its language and cultural code), they still reject Western culture and civilization ( _Les nouveaux_ 241), and this rejection follows a feeling of betrayal ( _Les nouveaux_ 242). This sequence of experiences describes Seyf's itinerary very well. The following quote describes the main character: \"il . . . s'appr\u00eatait \u00e0 devenir un des leurs, un sale type sans histoires et sans Histoire, un int\u00e9gr\u00e9 en voie de d\u00e9sint\u00e9gration, mais il avait pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 l'int\u00e9grisme\" 'he was getting ready to become one of them, a nasty character with no story and no history, an integrated person in the process of disintegrating, but who had prefered fundamentalism' (14). The core of this quote comes back in other passages of free indirect speech, with some slight modifications (14, 36). Derrida's interpretation of 9\/11 as a symptom of an autoimmune crisis argues that the 9\/11 hijackers were trained by people who themselves were trained by the U.S. during the Cold War: the mechanism that was set up to protect the West against Soviet advances turned against what it was supposed to defend (Borradori 140). The terrorists are, in some sense, not an absolute other, but a reflection of ourselves (Borradori 115), as in Bachi's novel when the hijacker sees his reflection in the towers: the religious reference gives way to the symbolism of the West's horrible creations as consequences of its imperial policies.\n\n_Tuez-les tous_ also contains allusions to Conrad, the Bible, _L'\u00e9temel retour, Casablanca_ (1942), _Le Faucon Maltais_ ( _The Maltese Falcon_ 1941), and _Le grand sommeil_ ( _The Big Sleep_ 1946). These last three films, all starring Humphrey Bogart, are labeled as \"mauvais film[s]\" 'bad movie[s]'(124). Since the narrator talks about destroying Hollywood, these films stand for the popularity and hegemony of American popular cultural production. The last two sentences of Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_ serve as an epigraph to the book. Conrad's novel is set during the most somber period of Belgian imperialism in the Congo. As Said pointed out about the darkness to which the title refers, \"They [Marlow and Kurtz] (and of course Conrad) are ahead of their time in understanding that what they call 'the darkness' has an autonomy of its own, and can reinvade and reclaim what imperialism had taken for _its_ own\" ( _Culture_ 30). Said continues stressing that these characters along with the author are unaware that what they label 'darkness' is a resistance to European imperialism: \"As a creature of his time, Conrad could not grant the natives their freedom, despite his severe critique of the imperialism that enslaved them\" ( _Culture_ 30). But taken from its original context, \"le c\u0153ur m\u00eame d'infinies t\u00e9n\u00e8bres\" 'the very heart of infinite darkness' that ends the sentence can in the context of a novel on 9\/11 connote the evil motivation of the kamikazes.\n\nThe first part of the book is entitled \"L'\u00e9ternel retour\" and can evoke two things: Nietzsche's idea of eternal return, and the film of the same title (1943), partially inspired by Nietszche's thought, for which Jean Cocteau wrote the screenplay. Although the plot is set in the twentieth century, there is no reference to historical events or socio-political issues. Nevertheless, the plot has been interpreted as an allegory of France during the Occupation (Tarr). According to Carrie Tarr, \"In _L'Eternel retour_ , Cocteau aimed to 'elevate a modern story to the status of myth' ( _Art of Cinema_ 189) by proving that Nietzsche's notion of 'eternal return' could be applied to the fate of the doomed lovers whose story is relived by others, without their even realizing it\" (55).\n\n### Conclusion\n\nThese novels show that religious motivation is not an end in itself in suicidal terrorism, since socio-political grievances play a role. Both novels do in different ways point to a middle ground between the two interpretive grids that have been used to understand 9\/11. Between attributing the attacks to Islamic fundamentalism or to sociopolitical factors, Bachi and Bena\u00efssa point out that both factors are present. They also emphasize that, as Derrida phrased it, \"Those called 'terrorists' are not, in this context, 'others,' absolute others whom we, as 'Westerners,' can no longer understand. We must not forget that they were often recruited, trained, and even armed, and for a long time, in various Western ways by a Western world that itself, in the course of its ancient as well as very recent history, invented the word, the techniques, and the 'politics' of 'terrorism' \" (cited in Borradori, 115).\n\nAlthough Bena\u00efssa's novel can be interpreted as demonstrating that 9\/11 was triggered by socio-political claims, and that religion supplies the means to get attention to those claims, the prominent Qur'anic intertext overwhelms any such argument. The imbalance present in Bena\u00efssa's novel will only confirm the average Western reader in the stereotypes perpetuated in the media, and which have only worsened since 9\/11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. These stereotypes have contributed to strengthening the association between Islam and terrorism, with Islamic fundamentalism being conveniently and constantly brandished as an easy explanation for any bombing that happens in the Middle East. Indeed, the predominance of the Islamic intertext in Bena\u00efssa's novel seems to confirm the belief that Islam (or a particular interpretation of it) is to blame for terrorism, and that Western policies in the Middle East have nothing to do with it (contrary to what many political scientists say, see Fuller 83-96).\n\nBachi's text, which traces the complexity of contemporary problems to historical events of the last six hundred centuries, offers a counter narrative to the simplistic reductions of \"us versus them\" or \"the axis of evil\" that flourished after 9\/11 in official American discourses.22 Bachi's novel is more apt than Bena\u00efssa's to prod the reader to do what Butler advocates. Butler distinguishes between the conditions that foster terrorism and its causes, and urges that we \"take collective responsibility for a thorough understanding of the history that brings us to this juncture,\" instead of becoming paralyzed by the faulty argument that to understand is to exculpate (10). As Derrida explains: \"one can thus condemn _unconditionally_ , as I do here, the attack of September 11 without having to ignore the real or alleged conditions that made it possible\" (qtd. in Borradori, 107).\n\nMartin Amis and John Updike's works show that one does not need to be Arab, or Muslim, or both, to write a fictive portrayal of a Muslim terrorist complete with Qur'anic quotes (if one needed such proof). That Francophone Arab writers, contrary to other 9\/11 novelists, have so far restricted their narratives to depicting the itinerary of a 9\/11 hijacker seems to imply that a syndrome of guilt by association has been at work. While Bena\u00efssa's apology gives fodder to that association, Bachi's novel, with his critique of the West, complex narration, and multicultural intertext, prompts the reader to go beyond such simplistic views.\n\nThat these writers decided to depart from what we know about the hijackers, I would argue, constitutes one of the strengths of these novels: they make us see 9\/11 not just through the eyes of the actual hijackers (as Amis does in his short story), but through those of other potential hijackers as well, thereby drawing attention to the social conditions that breed terrorism. Khosrokhavar distinguishes two different kinds of martyr: on the one hand the ones who are linked to defense and\/or establishment of the nation (such as the Iranian, Palestinian, and Lebanese cases), and on the other hand the one exemplified by Al Qaeda, which \"revendique la r\u00e9alisation d'une communaut\u00e9 mondiale incarn\u00e9e par l'universalisme islamique en brisant la puissance du Mal qui s'y oppose: l'Occident\" 'claims the realization of a world community incarnating Islamic universalism by smashing the Evil that opposes it: the West' (329). In addition to an identity crisis, Khosrokhavar (and others) emphasizes that Al Qaeda members represent the globalization of martyrdom (111). Reuter points out that \"What makes this relatively new, clandestine network so dangerous is its recipe for combining two formidable elements so as to create a uniquely deadly form of militant group: an uncompromising, seductive, Manichean worldview that attracts a cult-like following, and a set of real, local grievances and ethnic and\/or religious conflicts waiting to be enflamed. Like a parasite, al-Qaeda moves among the conflicts in the Islamic world, deriving sustenance from genuine, often well-founded local anger and grievances\" (Reuter 153). According to Holmes, \"What hit the United States on 11 September was not religion . . . Instead, the 9\/11 terrorists represented the _pooled insurgencies_ of the Arab Middle East. The fusing of these local insurgencies took place largely among diaspora Arabs outside the Middle East itself, in Afghanistan and Europe\" (168).23 By giving a different nationality to their hijacker, Bena\u00efssa and Bachi seem to stress how local grievances can become global.\n\n### Notes\n\n1. Novels by French authors include Luc Lang's _11 septembre mon amour_ (Stock, 2003) and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Beigbeder's _Windows on the World_ (Gallimard, 2005).\n\n2. See also Tahar Ben Jelloun and Martin Amis, who each wrote a short story in the same vein.\n\n3. See Terry McDermott's _Perfect Soldiers_ for a reconstitution of the historical events of 9\/11.\n\n4. The publication of the leading association for scholars of literature in the U.S. (Modem Language Association).\n\n5. See Brown's critique of \u017di\u017eek (Brown 746). Brown points out that the distinction in the argument by \u017di\u017eek (Islamic fundamentalism explained as \"the sacralization of proper (economic) politics\") depends on \"an a priori distinction between religion and politics and on the separation of church and state\" (747). Such a distinction, he adds, is not in operation in other parts of the world. Brown's assumption betrays an Orientalist mode of thinking as well as blindness to the influence of religion in American politics.\n\n6. See Nixon's article in _The New Crusades_.\n\n7. Although Soyinka does not refer to the clash of civilizations, his branding Islam as an element foreign to African culture partakes of the same essentialist view of cultures.\n\n8. Morton criticizes Baudrillard, \u017di\u017eek, and others' recent essays on terrorism because they overlook \"the imperialist interests that are served by the discourse of terrorism by focusing on the emotional and aesthetic connotation of terror instead of examining the geopolitical context of its production\" (37). Such works \"reinforce the aestheticisation of terror . . . rather than examining the geopolitical determinants of terrorism as a discourse\" (Morton 37). I find this criticism is only partially warranted for Baudrillard, and definitely not for \u017di\u017eek.\n\n9. The Japanese Kamikazes represent the highest number of suicide missions organized by a single source (Gambetta viii).\n\n10. Reflecting on the fact that certain groups, such as the Christian Maronites, did not resort to suicide missions, and that self-immolations are mostly confined to Hindu and Buddhist countries, Gambetta concludes that \"Different sets of religious beliefs are enabling and disabling different forms of self-sacrifice\" (293). This conclusion, however, does not seem to recall that an entire chapter of the book is dedicated to the Tamil Tigers, who are 90 percent Hindu with a small minority of Christians (Hopgood 47).\n\n11. Despite Gross' excellent analysis of Bena\u00efssa's plays, I concur with Micheline Servin that his theater is more like sketches than full-fledged productions (qtd. in Gross 387).\n\n12. That is Christians and Jews.\n\n13. See the list compiled by Kurzman at .\n\n14. The comparison of 9\/11 to the attack on Pearl Harbor was a misleading one; as an attack on civilians in an urban area the comparison with the bombing of Hiroshima would have been more pertinent, though more controversial (see Versluys n.23).\n\n15. There is some dispute about the veracity of this story. See Sibly and Sibly (289-93).\n\n16. Most of these allusions are to the advantage of women, with one exception. An allusion to a Hadith works the other way around: \"ce n'\u00e9tait pas le paradis aux pieds de sa m\u00e8re\" 'it was not paradise at his mother's feet' is followed by a virulent critique of Maghrebian mothers (82).\n\n17. \"Il croyait parce qu'il n'\u00e9tait pas seulement un de ces hypocrites, ceux-l\u00e0 Dieu connaissait le contenu de leurs coeurs '\u00e9carte-toi d'eux' il ne l'avait pas fait\" (78) alludes to \"These are they, the secrets of whose hearts Allah knows; so turn aside from them and admonish them\" (4:63).\n\n18. To which Khalid answers with another verse (2:216): \"Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you.\"\n\n19. \"And he for whom Allah intends temptation, thou controllest naught for him against Allah\" (5:41).\n\n20. \"And they swear by Allah that they are truly of you. And they are not of you, but they are a people who are afraid. If they could find a refuge or caves or a place to enter, they would certainly have turned thereto, running away in all haste\" (9:56-57).\n\n21. Duras did not want to depict the horror of Hiroshima as had already been done by showing the actual devastating and horrific effects of the bomb; she wanted to \"make this horror rise again from its ashes by [inscribing] it in a love [story]\" (qtd. in Higgins 21-22).\n\n22. See Butler's first chapter (\"Explanation and Exoneration, or What We Can Hear\") for a detailed analysis of the rise of censorship and anti-intellectualism that took place in the U.S. after 9\/11 to disparage anyone who tried to understand the reasons why the attacks had taken place.\n\n23. This analysis seems to me more accurate than Khosrokhavar's statement that the Al-Qaeda martyr struggles for a transnational Umma (233). Khosrokhavar also points out that Al Qaeda is a product of globalization, the Muslim diaspora in the West, and crisis in Muslim society (233), and of course the issue of humiliation by proxy (239). However, Khosrokhavar's affirmation that this is a terrorism that has no specific territorial claim contradicts what has been demonstrated by Holmes: that is, that Bin Laden had very specific grievances regarding the presence of American troops on Saudi soil.\n\n## Conclusion\n\n## The Politics of Translation: Francophone Literature from the Arab World in the U.S.\n\nIn conclusion, I turn to the impact that international news has had on the translation of some of the texts treated in this study, as emblematic of Francophone literature from the Arab world. Two factors play in the translation, packaging, and reception of these texts: the U.S.' unconditional support of Israeli policies towards Palestinians, and 9\/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Reflecting on the spike of American interest in the cultural production of the Arab and Muslim world in general, this chapter offers a critical evaluation of this trend's implications in general and for Francophone Studies in particular.\n\nWell-established writers usually see their work automatically translated into English. Given that Ben Jelloun, winner of the prestigious Goncourt prize in 1987, is one of the most prominent Francophone Maghrebian writers (and one whose creative work has been translated into numerous languages), it should be no surprise that his essay on Islam was promptly translated into English in 2002.1 However, his book promises more than it delivers, since it contains several statements that are not representative of mainstream practitioners of Islam in France or elsewhere, and fails to account for the complexity of issues tied to the affair of the scarf (as demonstrated in chapter five). Maalouf, another Goncourt prize winner (in 1993), also enjoys international recognition since his work has been widely translated into many languages. The English translation of his essay _Identit\u00e9s meurtri\u00e8res_ came out in England in 2000; the 2003 Penguin North American edition consists of the very same English version, but repackaged in light of 9\/11. The paratext, in the form of excerpts from book reviews that appear on the front cover and first page, casts the essay as shedding light on why 9\/11 happened. As an example, the cover features a quote from the _Los Angeles Times_ that states: \"This striking and pungent polemic is so searingly pertinent, it confirms that . . . the mass murder of September 11, while indelibly shocking, is not wholly surprising.\"\n\n9\/11 has had sizeable repercussions not only on the packaging, but especially on the publication of translations of texts from the Arab world in the United States, as evidenced by the following cases. Although Myriam Antaki has published four novels in French since 1985, she is unknown in the field of Francophone literature. _Les versets du pardon_ , published in 1999 in France, was her first (and only book to date) to be translated into English (New York: Other Press, 2002). The subject matter of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the novel's setting in historical Palestine are not commonly thought of as being within the realm of Francophone studies, despite the fact that events in the Middle East have been having repercussions in France on the relations between the French Muslim and Jewish communities and on the Jewish minorities in the Maghreb, as elaborated on in chapter two.\n\nAlthough Bena\u00efssa is a relative newcomer as a novelist, _La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_ (2003) appeared in English the next year after its French publication, and is his only novel and second book to have been translated into English. Despite being a rather unremarkable novel by a minor writer, it enjoys a relatively wide distribution, if one can judge by the number of libraries that own it (over 600 according to the WorldCat database), and was reprinted in 2005. Novelists such as Antaki and Bena\u00efssa are minor writers, yet they have in common that one of their works has made it quickly on the U.S. market post 9\/11 thanks to their subject matter linked to \"Arab-Muslim\" terrorism.\n\nIn contrast, Meddeb is a well-established writer who has been publishing since 1979, yet none of his creative work, which has long engaged with Islam,2 has been translated into English. However, the English version of his essay _La maladie de l'islam_ was published promptly in 2003. This is an example of an established writer's work receiving selective translation, a fact that can be explained on several accounts. First and foremost, the subject matter linked to 9\/11 made it a timely and relevant publication. Second, its title confirms from the start the horizon of expectations of readers fed with prejudiced media accounts that something is inherently wrong with Islam (while Meddeb's other works offer a more complex picture).\n\nIn any event, the availability of Francophone authors to an Anglophone readership should provide cause for rejoicing for scholars, all the more so when the former offer perspectives not widely presented in the mainstream American media, particularly the criticism of the double standards of American foreign policy and the Palestinians' plight. For instance, Antaki's novel, which features Zionist terrorist acts by Irgoun and Stern in 1948 and subsequent displacement of Palestinian refugees, does offer a historical perspective and a point of view that are usually absent from contemporary media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This novel helps humanize Palestinians by showing the suffering that Marie goes through and linking it directly with the tragedy of the Holocaust. In the United States, Palestinians' suffering is considered too politically charged to even be mentioned. Butler has demonstrated that when it comes to the Middle East, Israeli and Palestinian deaths do not entail the same reaction in the U.S., that there is \"a hierarchy of grief (32) at work.3 Popular culture in the U.S. frequently associates Palestinians with terrorist violence, suicide bombings, and Islamic extremism. These associations have only been reinforced by the 9\/11 attacks, after which Israel banked on the U.S.'s \"War on Terror\" to justify its policies in the Occupied Territories. Said observed that public discourse always occults the fact that \"Israeli violence against Palestinians has _always_ been _incomparably_ greater in scale and damage\" than the reverse (Said, \"The Essential\" 153), a fact that still rings true twenty years after he made that remark (witness the December 2008 massive bombing of Gaza).\n\nHowever, I would like to express a reservation concerning this recent phenomenon of craze for translating such works in general. Different contexts affect how works are read and received. Antaki writes in Syria (she is one of the few writers treated in this study who still lives in the Arab world), but her work is in French and is published in Paris. The cultural production of the second half of the twentieth century in France and in French has given its due attention to World War II and the Holocaust, but the harm of colonization, such as Arabs' plight during the Algerian war for instance, has lagged behind. In fact, the third and fourth phase of the Vichy syndrome (the return of the repressed and obsession, respectively), as defined by historian Henri Rousso, \"may have been precipitated by the desire to cover up the double loss caused by the Algerian trauma\" (Donadey, _Recasting_ 7).\n\nAntaki's novel was not well received in the Middle East4 for two reasons. First, it features the Holocaust, a fact that was not well received in an area where there is widespread downplaying of the suffering endured by Jews under Nazism because of the crucial role played by Western nations' guilt about it in the establishment of the state of Israel. Second, because it uses the word \"terrorist\" to describe Ahmed (E-mail to the author, January 22, 2007). Various scholars have insisted on the exploitation of the term \"terrorist\" by powers suppressing independence movements; Butler (among others) insists that, \"The term 'terrorist' is used, for instance, by the Israeli state to describe any and all Palestinian acts of resistance, but none of its own practices of state violence\" (4). I believe that Antaki's use of the term terrorist, juxtaposed to \"dreamer,\" serves to highlight the fact that terrorism is not an end in itself, but only a tactic. But as Antaki's book travels to other readerships, particularly in the U.S., it might reinforce the image of the Palestinian as \"the essential terrorist\" (to borrow Said's phrase).\n\nSimilarly, as previously noted, Meddeb's essay was promptly translated into English because it directly addressed issues of immediate concern to the U.S. Shohat and Stam rightly point out that \"in the current situation, U.S. power is global, yet the knowledge of too many of its citizens is local and monoperspectival\" (5). Hence, people are unable to make a connection between resentment about the U.S.'s foreign policy of support for dictators and attacks on American interests.5 On the one hand, Meddeb, who chastises the double standard of American foreign policy in the Middle East, does offer a perspective on the world that is rarely presented in mainstream American media. However, since less than five pages are dedicated to a brief recapitulation of U.S. interference in the politics of the Arab world, this book will add to what has become a pervasive problem:\n\nMuch of what one reads and sees in the media about Islam represents the aggression as coming from Islam because that is what \"Islam\" is. Local and concrete circumstances are thus obliterated. In other words, covering Islam is a one-sided activity that obscures what \"we\" _do_ , and highlights instead what Muslims and Arabs by their very flawed nature _are_. (Said, _Covering_ : xxii)\n\nThe emphasis on Islamic fundamentalism (for which Meddeb's title, _La maladie de l'islam_ , is a periphrasis) relegates external interferences and influences to the background, and foregrounds Islam as the main source of terrorism. As S. Sayyid points out, \"Islamist challenges to the prevailing order can only be represented as acts of terrorism, because there is no space for challenges to the prevailing political order. Thus, the legitimacy of the Islamist struggle against repression is denied as the protestors are labeled as terrorists, while those who staff and command the repression machines of the state are presented as reasonable and moderate members of the international community\" (xii). Meddeb's uneven-handed account of the internal and external reasons for Islam's so\u2013called disease might not be what his readership is most in need of.\n\nThe same reservation applies to Bena\u00efssa's novel. Unfortunately, since few pages are dedicated to the disastrous legacy of colonialism and current imperialist foreign policies, while the Muslim scriptures are given ample space, this book will do little to redress the pervasive popular view that violence is intrinsic to Islam. As already detailed in chapter six, Bena\u00efssa's and Bachi's 9\/11 novels have a lot in common. Bachi is also an emerging novelist, but his work has already earned several literary prizes, most notably the Goncourt for a first novel ( _Le chien d'Ulysse_ in 2001). Nevertheless, there is no sign of _Tuez-les tous_ being considered for an English translation. According to Bachi, \"Il semblerait que le sujet du livre d\u00e9range les \u00e9diteurs outre-Manche et outre-Atlantique\" 'it seems that the topic of the book disturbs British and American publishers' according to the person in charge of foreign rights at Gallimard (E-mail to the author, March 29, 2007). Although _Tuez-les tous_ was only recently published, the translation of Bena\u00efssa's _La derni\u00e8re nuit_ shows that it is not the subject matter that is in dispute, on the contrary. I can only surmise that the way the subject is treated is the culprit (in addition to its narrative structure and elaborate intertext which both contribute to making this a challenging read), in the sense that it questions stereotypes and commonplace ideas that mainstream America might not be ready, or willing to reconsider.\n\nThe impact of 9\/11 on what is made available in American bookstores is not without implications. In the case of Francophone literature published in the U.S. post 9\/11, the recent translations discussed above seem to indicate that the spike of American interest in the literary production of that region is limited to whatever can be linked to the traumatic event of 9\/11, and not literary recognition already established by the original publication, as is customarily the case. For instance, the English translation of Antaki's novel makes no mention of her previous novels, as if knowing about her untranslated work was superfluous and of no value to an American readership. Thus, the American public does not acknowledge that the cultural production of these countries is worthy of interest regardless of their centrality to U.S.'s interests, and not because they have been defined by public discourse as potential enemies. As Mary Louise Pratt aptly states in the context of language learning and national security imperatives, \"It is critical that . . . linguistic others not be defined from the start as potential enemies\" (115), and that we not become interested in foreign cultural production only when it is too late.\n\nSome of the texts treated in this study perpetuate uncalled-for stereotypes about Islam and Muslims. While texts such as _L'excis\u00e9e_ and _La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_ do mention socio-political factors that play a role in fomenting and perpetuating various conflicts, their religious intertexts, and specifically Qur'anic quotations, contribute to marking Islam as the culprit and thus downplay essential triggers.\n\nIn _L'excis\u00e9e_ , religious sources are quoted in such a way as to suggest that Islam, which is the source of subjugation of these women, requires excision, which the women perpetuate in a ruthless manner, with no hope of change and progress coming from the inside (as demonstrated in chapter 3). Despite a few passages critical of Christian theology, the allegorical reading supported by the novel inscribes it within a Christian framework that subscribes to the values of sacrifice, redemption, and salvation.\n\nGiven this, it should not be viewed as a coincidence, therefore, that _L'excis\u00e9e_ , in addition to being featured in various anthologies,6 has found a new readership, if one can judge by the fact that the French original was reedited in 1992 and its English translation in 1994 (and reprinted in 2005),7 during a period when Islam made notorious headlines, both domestically in France (with the issue of the veil in public schools for instance) and internationally.8 In addition, _L'excis\u00e9e_ (and Accad's work in general) is starting to receive more attention from scholars.9\n\nThe implications of the new interest generated by this novel in the contemporary socio-political U.S. climate can be serious. As a teacher in the United States, I would think twice before assigning _L'excis\u00e9e_ for a general education course, for the same reasons reported by an unnamed Middle Eastern scholar, who\n\nwanted no part of the tendency in the West to focus on this image of Middle Eastern and African women. In her experience, many people know little about the Middle East except the topics of veils and circumcision. We should be writing about many other topics . . . , lest unflattering North American and European stereotypes of Arabs, Muslims, and Africans be reinforced and allowed to fuel hostile political and economic policies, (qtd. in Gruenbaum 204)\n\nThis concern is particularly valid in the post-9\/11 climate. A recent example of women's oppression being used for political purposes would be the plight of Afghani women under the Taliban's regime, which became a concern of the Bush administration only after September 11, 2001, and was then used as an additional validation to gain support for invading Afghanistan. More recently, critics have analyzed why the success of Azar Nafisi's memoir _Reading Lolita inTehran_ is highly problematic, with its criticism of the Iranian Islamic revolution and government without sufficient contextualization happening concurrently with increased threats from the Bush administration against Iran, therefore leading itself to being recuperated for conservative political purposes (see Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh). A similar conclusion could be reached about the success of Marjane Satrapi's animated film _Persepolis_ (2007), although the film, with its criticism of European racism, and the English translation of the graphic novel, with an introduction giving a brief historical background that focuses on Western intervention in Iran, lend themselves less easily to such a reappropriation.\n\nWhile this certainly does not mean that one should only present positive aspects of a culture, I fear that in the current political climate, a novel such as _L'excis\u00e9e_ only reinforces stereotypes. A teacher would have to nudge students into a critical self-reflection, relating how some Western cultural practices can be paralleled to Female Genital Cutting, such as fraternity hazing in the U.S. as a form of ritualized violence and the corset10 as an \"ideal of femininity . . . mediated by _pain_ \" (Lionnet 133),11 the \"neotribal\" practices that have gained some popularity in Western countries among the \"modern primitives\" (Zabus, _Between Rites_ 269-73), or unnecessary hysterectomies, procedures that also involve the removal of an organ, still being performed in the U.S. despite the potential loss of libido and health consequences they entail. Otherwise, students whose understanding of African and Middle Eastern cultures is often too scanty and prejudiced, all the more so when it comes to Muslim cultures in a post-September 11, 2001 period, would only feel comforted in their view of this threatening Other.\n\nIn light of post 9\/11 events, the following question is very pointed: \"To what extent have Arab peoples, predominantly practitioners of Islam, fallen outside the 'human' as it has been naturalized in its 'Western' mold by the contemporary workings of humanism?\" (Butler 32). One could easily replace the adjective \"Arab\" with \"Muslim\" in the previous quote, and extend Butler's question about the nameless Palestinian dead to Afghani and Iraqi civilians. The U.S. news memorializes daily the U.S. military that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq by showing their pictures and their names on the news, while the Afghan and Iraqi civilians remain bundled into some abstract numbers whose accuracy is impossible to determine.\n\nSome of the texts treated in this study, while written well before 9\/11, have found a renewed relevance. I have already mentioned the repackaging of Maalouf's _Identit\u00e9s meurtri\u00e8res_. Reading Maalouf's _Les croisades vues par les Arabes_ in the United States in the context of post-September 11, 2001 and after the Iraq invasion of 2003, where a widespread discourse of the clash of civilizations among policy makers influences American public opinion, it is evident that Maalouf's essay is as timely now as it was when it was published twenty years ago. Witness the outcry that followed the use of the word \"crusade\" by George W. Bush to describe the military campaign against terrorism in Afghanistan. While Maalouf's epilogue is colored by the Middle Eastern politics of the twentieth century up to the early 1980s (as detailed in chapter 1), reading this text in the United States in the post-September 11, 2001, post-Iraq invasion era, I cannot help lamenting the total lack of impact that his essay, which was translated into many languages (and into English as early as 1984) has had in the political sphere.12 For had George W. Bush read Maalouf, he might have at the very least avoided making such a blunder as to characterize the American invasion of Afghanistan, a Muslim country, as a \"crusade,\" and rethought the terms in which his foreign policy is clad.\n\nMaalouf's historical essay, despite its shortcomings, exemplifies the form of political engagement that Said and Bourdieu advocated for public intellectuals. As Said put it, \"we need to think about breaking out of the disciplinary ghettos in which as intellectuals we have been confined, to reopen the blocked social processes ceding objective representation (hence power) of the world to a small coterie of experts and their clients, to consider that the audience for literacy is not a closed circle of three thousand professional critics but the community of human beings living in society\" (\"Opponents\" 146).13 One only wishes that their voices had been heard, and their words taken to heart.\n\nInstead, postcolonial theory (and Said's _Orientalism_ as emblematic of it) found itself at the center of a controversy about the alleged bias of Title VI-funded programs in Middle Eastern Studies (Kurtz). The House Committee on Education had approved H.R. 3077, which creates an Advisory Board to supervise Title VI programs.14 Had that bill passed, _The Crusades through Arab Eyes_ might be declared by the proposed advisory board unfit to be taught by faculty affiliated with Title VI centers, since its title easily identifies it as a work giving a one-sided approach. Such a measure would silence an Arab perspective on a crucial page of history at a time when it has been made extremely relevant by public discourse and foreign policy. As Said reminds us in his posthumous work, \"At least since Nietzsche, the writing of history and the accumulations of memory have been regarded in many ways as one of the essential foundations of power, guiding its strategies, charting its progress\" ( _Humanism_ 141). And Maalouf's 1983 revisiting of the Crusades resonates in uncannily relevant ways twenty years later.\n\nOne of the most depressing insights gained from this study was to note that even scholars of Said's stature seem to have had little impact, witness the current debacle of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Scholars working on the Middle East have been particularly scrutinized and under fire lately. There has been some progress since Hassan lamented in his article that \"given the U.S.'s imperial role in the region, notably its unconditional economic and military commitments to Israel, there is not more criticism of Israel in those quarters of academic study that claim to oppose colonialism in all its forms\" (33). However, Barghouti's piece about the dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society published in _PMLA_ , the journal of the leading association for scholars and teachers of language and literature in the U.S., elicited two negative letters (see the Forum section of the March 2007 issue), demonstrating that scholars of literature will not be immune to their peers wrongly equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Indeed, young scholars critical of Israel in various fields in the United States have seen their bid for tenure denied or generating intense campaigns,15 while preeminent scholars such as John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt have had their invitation to lecture cancelled (Jaschik). As Butler points out, the distinction between Israel and Jews needs to be clearly maintained, so that criticism of Israeli policy not be automatically branded as anti-Semitism, and vice versa, to not reduce Jews and Judaity to Israeli concerns (125).\n\n_JuifsArabes_ , Boudjellal's best selling comic book, has been translated into German and Italian, but not English (personal interview, July 2, 2008), while Albou's film is available on DVD in the U.S. Memmi's writings, both fictional and non-fictional, have been translated into English and are widely available.16 His stance on Arabs and Jews, which recuperates the colonial ideology of separation between the two groups, has become the dominant one. In a series of interviews with Marie Redonnet, El Maleh deplores that his books did not get any recognition in France.17 His work, which offers a different perspective, remains marginalized, despite the increased recognition and critical attention that it has been getting in recent years. El Maleh started writing later than Memmi, which partially explains why he is less well-known. Another factor is that his writings have not easily found publishers, partially because they did not correspond to the horizon of expectation of readers. El Maleh recalls that one of the publishers he submitted his manuscript to could not understand why he had linked his story to the events taking place in Lebanon, and would rather have seen him talk about his \"enfance juive, entre deux cultures: l'origine traditionnelle, l'acculturation, la d\u00e9couverte et l'entr\u00e9e dans la culture fran\u00e7aise\" 'Jewish childhood, between two cultures: the traditional origin, acculturation, discovery and entrance into French culture' (Redonnet 75). Contrary to Memmi's writings, which correspond to the description given by El Maleh of French publishers' expectations, El Maleh's texts challenge these expectations and current political agendas. None of El Maleh's books have been translated into English. Given his strong stance on Israeli policies towards Palestinians, and his comparisons between them and Nazi crimes, I would surmise that this will not be remedied any time soon in the United States.\n\nGiven the stature of some of the writers treated in this study, essays such as Ben Jelloun's and Meddeb's exacerbate the distortion that the field of Francophone studies creates, in that, as Richard Serrano stated in a provocative study entitled _Against the Postcolonial_ , \"the Francophone Studies model promotes a tiny sliver of literary and cultural production as representative\" of the Francophone world (1), although its cultural output is expressed in many languages. As this study has shown, several books by well-known writers are not helping to bring a full picture about what is going on in the Arab world and its diaspora, particularly when Islam is concerned.18 In fact, many of them just give us a skylight rather than a window on those issues.\n\nUnfortunately, in the current political climate, such texts, with their downplaying of the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism, and emphasis on Islam as a fundamentalist religion opposed to the democratic West as the source of all problems, participate, even if unwillingly, in manufacturing consent (as Herman and Chomsky demonstrated for the mass media) to justify military intervention against other nations. In addition, these writers fail to render the fact that Islam does have a certain appeal, as attested by its growth. In his analysis of the global resurgence of religion, Thomas presumes that this phenomenon may indicate that there are other ways of being modern than Westernization (45). Majid makes a persuasive case for non-Western peoples, including Muslims, to reconnect with their religious traditions, and sees \"the insistence on secular solutions in profoundly religious cultures\" as \"yet another sign of Eurocentrism\" ( _Freedom_ 212-21). In the same vein, Graham Fuller points out that \"efforts in the Muslim world to advance political and social thought _totally independent of the framework of Islamic culture_ is doomed to be fractured, unintegrated, rootless, and alienated\" (201). As Majid emphasizes after persuasively recapitulating the destructiveness and impoverishment (both culturally and materially) brought about by capitalism worldwide, there are other ways of being in the world than the one promoted by the West.19 Increased translation might be seen as transparently helpful in a post-9\/11 world, but given that it tends to disseminate the least critical writings that come from the Arab world, it only serves to assuage the liberal conscience.\n\n### Notes\n\n1. Another edition of the French text with activities targeted at learners of the French language also appeared in 2002 in Italy.\n\n2. _Phantasia_ for instance is replete with literary allusions and references from the Qur'an and Arab poets (among others); this intertext contributes to his work not being easily accessible.\n\n3. Butler tells about the case of obituaries and memorials of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army that were rejected by a U.S. newspaper on the ground that \"the newspaper did not wish to offend anyone\" (35). Butler then proceeds to ask pointed questions about the implications of this incident, among some: \"What is the relation between the violence by which these ungrievable lives were lost and the prohibition on their public grievability? . . . Does the prohibition on discourse relate to the dehumanization of the deaths\u2014and the lives?\" (36).\n\n4. Carol Corm states in a brief interview that it \"stirred strong reactions in the Middle East\" (15); similarly, Nathalie Galesne states that \"des d\u00e9bats houleux ont eu lieu \u00e0 l'occasion des pr\u00e9sentations de l'ouvrage, notamment en Jordanie\" 'stormy debates took place during presentations of the book, notably in Jordan' (157), but neither specifies any further.\n\n5. See for instance Said's discussion of then President Carter's reaction to the hostage crisis in Tehran as symptomatic of this in _Covering Islam_ (xiv-xvi).\n\n6. See Mary Ann Caws' and Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke's anthologies.\n\n7. Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner, 2005.\n\n8. See the new introduction to Said's revised edition of _Covering Islam_ , especially xii-xiv for an abbreviated list for events between 1983 and 1996.\n\n9. When I first started working on this book, a search in the MLA International Bibliography only yielded four entries (see Heistad 2000, Marie, Mudimbe-Boyi, and Zahnd; see also Zabus' 1999 article). Since then, a volume of essays on Accad's work has been published in France (see Heistad 2005) and another one in English just appeared (see Toman), both edited by former students of Accad.\n\n10. Cosmetic surgery such as breast implants would be a contemporary equivalent of the now defunct corset. Here is an example of how culture determines our choice of words: cosmetic surgery (most of which is not performed to heal) is never thought of as mutilation; in a similar vein see Lionnet for a provocative discussion of abortion as mutilation (160-61).\n\n11. Richard Shweder reports how a proposal developed by a Seattle hospital to accommodate an immigrant Somali family was discarded, although \"from a medical point of view, the proposed procedure (a small cut in the prepuce that covers the clitoris) was less severe than a typical American male circumcision\" (234).\n\n12. After Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq, the same can be said of _Orientalism_ , where Said, after quoting Chateaubriand, comments: \"Already in 1810 we have a European talking like Cromer in 1910, arguing that Orientals require conquest, and finding it no paradox that a Western conquest of the Orient was no conquest after all, but liberty\" (172).\n\n13. See also Bourdieu's _Contre-feux 2_. Here is what he advocated in his 1999 intervention at the MLA convention entitled \"A scholarship with commitment\" [\"Pour un savoir engag\u00e9\"], later published in _Contre-feux 2_ : \"Les \u00e9crivains, les artistes et surtout les chercheurs . . . doivent transcender la _fronti\u00e8re sacr\u00e9e_ , qui est inscrite aussi dans leur cerveau, plus ou moins profond\u00e9ment selon les traditions nationales, entre le _scholarship_ et le _commitment_ , pour sortir r\u00e9solument du microcosme acad\u00e9mique, entrer en interaction avec le monde ext\u00e9rieur . . . au lieu de se contenter des conflits 'politiques' \u00e0 la fois intimes et ultimes, et toujours un peu irr\u00e9els, du monde scolastique\" (39-49).\n\n14. The American Council on Education reports concerns from the higher education community that such a board might interfere with the curriculum (\"Controversial Graduate and International Education Bills Pass House Committee\" _Higher Education and National Affairs_ 52.18 (10\/6\/03). 14 December 2003 <>.\n\n15. Norman Finkelstein, a political scientist, and Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropologist (see Jaschik's \"Middle East Tensions Flare Again in U.S. (Update).\"\n\n16. Incidentally, the translation of _Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman et de quelques autres_ received financial assistance from the French Ministry of Culture.\n\n17. \"Je n'ai pas trouv\u00e9 ma place en tant qu'\u00e9crivain en France, malgr\u00e9 la r\u00e9\u00e9dition de mes livres et l'illusion qu'elle allait pouvoir amorcer une relance\" 'I did not find my place as a writer in France, despite the new edition of my books and the illusion that it would begin an upturn' (Redonnet 13). Later on, he indicates being awarded the title of Chevalier de la l\u00e9gion d'honneur (for which he was nominated by the French embassy): \"Paradoxalement, il m'a fallu revenir au Maroc pour qu'une reconnaissance officielle me consacre en tant qu'\u00e9crivain ayant une place particuli\u00e8re dans la litt\u00e9rature de langue fran\u00e7aise\" 'paradoxically, I had to go back to Morocco before an official recognition consecrated me as a writer having a special place in literature in French' (Redonnet 14).\n\n18. Francophone writers are not the only ones downplaying colonialism when it comes to better accusing Islam (see Nixon's article).\n\n19. Taking the example of Islamic cultures, he contends that \"By stating that Allah has deliberately divided humanity into many nations and tribes, then challenged us to know one another, the Qur'an clearly revealed that God's design is for a world of diversities competing in pious deeds. There is no reason to believe that such a divine intent is less inspiring than the one that champions a brave new world of interest-seeking individuals whose collective endeavors, we are told, automatically add up to the coveted blessings of happiness and social harmony\" ( _Unveiling_ 21).\n\n## Bibliography\n\nAbul-Husn, Latif. _The Lebanese Conflict. Looking Inward_. Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner, 1998.\n\nAccad, Evelyne. \"Author's Preface. Ectomy.\" _The Excised_. Trans. David K. Bruner. Revised and augmented ed. Colorado Springs, CO: Three Continents Press, 1994. ix-xvii.\n\n\u2014\u2014. _L'excis\u00e9e_. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1982. Trans. as _The Excised_ , by David K. Bruner. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1989.\n\n\u2014\u2014. _Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East_. New York: New York University Press, 1990.\n\n\u2014\u2014. _Veil of Shame. The Role of Women in the Contemporary Fiction of North Africa and the Arab World_. 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Paris: Seuil, 1999.\n\nWillis, Michael. _The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History_. New York: New York University Press, 1996.\n\nWomen's Caucus of the African Studies Association. \"Position Paper on Clitoridectomy and Infibulation.\" _Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood. Disputing U.S. Polemics_. Ed. Stanlie M. James and Claire Robertson. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. 1-3.\n\nZabus, Chantal. _Between Rites and Rights: Excision in Women's Experiential Texts and Human Contexts_. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.\n\n\u2014\u2014. \"Bouches cousues: l'autobiographie de l'excis\u00e9e.\" _L'animal autobiographique: Autour de Jacques Derrida_. Ed. Marie-Louise Mallet. Paris: Editions Galil\u00e9e, 1999. 331-52.\n\nZafrani, Ha\u00efm. _Mille ans de vie juive au Maroc: Histoire et culture, religion et magie_. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1983.\n\nZahnd, Elizabeth. \"Two Eyes for an Eye: Women, Violence, and Modernity in Two Lebanese Novels.\" _Literature and Cruelty\/Litt\u00e9rature et cruaut\u00e9_. Proc. of the 6th Annual Graduate Conf. in French, Francophone and Comparative Lit., Columbia Univ., March 1, 1996. Ed. Vincent Desroches. New York: Columbia University, 1996.\n\nZainaba. \"Lecture on Clitoridectomy to the Midwives of Touil, Mauritania.\" Introduced and translated by Elizabeth Oram. _Opening the Gates_. Ed. Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke. 63-71.\n\n\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. _Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates_. London & New York: Verso, 2002..\n\n## Index\n\nThe index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below\n\nAbdelkader\n\nAbdelkrim\n\nAbdel Qader al-Hussayni\n\nAbul-Husn, Latif\n\nAccad, Evelyne\n\n_L'excis\u00e9e_\n\nAdana massacre\n\naffaire du foulard. _See_ headscarf affair\n\naffiliation\n\nAhmadu, Fuambai\n\nA\u00eft-Embarek, Moussa\n\nAlbou, Karin\n\n_La petite J\u00e9rusalem_\n\nAlcalay, Ammiel\n\nAlgeria\n\ncivil war\n\nFrench colonization of\n\nwar of independence\n\nAlloula, Malek\n\nAl Qaeda\n\nAmerican invasion of Iraq\/Afghanistan\n\nAmis, Martin\n\nAndalusia\n\nAntaki, Myriam\n\n_Les versets du pardon_\n\nanti-Semitism\n\nArab world. _See also_ Muslim world\n\nArab-Israeli conflict\n\nArabic language\n\nArmstrong, Karen\n\nAshcroft et al.\n\n_Ast\u00e9rix_\n\nAtta, Mohammed\n\nAttar, Farid. _See The Conference of the Birds_\n\nAuger, Marie\n\nAzria, R\u00e9gine\n\nBachi, Salim\n\n_Tuez-les tous_\n\nBadran, Margot\n\nBalibar, Etienne\n\nBarghouti, Omar\n\nBarthes, Roland\n\nBaub\u00e9rot, Jean\n\nBaudrillard, Jean\n\nBena\u00efssa, Slimane\n\n_La derni\u00e8re nuit d'un damn\u00e9_\n\nBenbassa, Esther\n\nBencheikh, Jamel Eddine\n\nBenguigui, Yamina\n\n_M\u00e9moires d'immigr\u00e9s: L'h\u00e9ritage maghr\u00e9bin_\n\nBen Jelloun, Tahar\n\n\"L'enfant trahi\"\n\n_Hospitalit\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise_\n\n_L'Islam expliqu\u00e9 aux enfants_\n\n_La nuit sacr\u00e9e_\n\n_Le racisme expliqu\u00e9 \u00e0 ma fille_\n\nBensma\u00efa, R\u00e9da\n\nBensoussan, Albert\n\nBerbers\n\nBerger, John\n\nBeur\n\nBible\n\nBin Laden\n\n_The Birds_\n\nBouamama, Sa\u00efd\n\nBoudjedra, Rachid\n\n_Le FIS de la haine_\n\nBoudjellal, Farid\n\n_JuifsArabes_\n\nBourdieu, Pierre\n\nBouzar, Dounia\n\nBowen, John\n\nBoyle, Elizabeth\n\nBrown, Bill\n\nBurgat, Fran\u00e7ois\n\nBush, George W.\n\nButler, Judith\n\nCarlier, Omar\n\nCarrard, Philippe\n\nCaws, Mary Ann\n\nCh\u00e9did, Andr\u00e9e\n\n_La maison sans racines_\n\nchildhood\n\nChomsky, Noam\n\nChow, Rey\n\nChra\u00efbi, Driss\n\nChristianity\n\nChristians\n\nArab Christians\n\nCixous, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne\n\n\"Mon alg\u00e9riance\"\n\n\"Pieds nus\"\n\nclash of civilizations theory\n\nclitoridectomy. _See also_ excision, FGC\/FGM, infibulation\n\nCohen, Annie\n\nCohen, William\n\nColombani, Jean-Marie\n\ncolonialism\n\n_See also_ imperialism, occupation\n\nColumbus\n\nConan, Eric\n\nConcordat\n\n_The Conference of the Birds_\n\nconflict resolution\n\nConstable, Giles\n\nCooke, Miriam\n\nCr\u00e9mieux decree\n\nCr\u00e9pon, Marc\n\nCrusades\n\nDadoun, Roger\n\nDaniel, Jean\n\nDareer, Asma El\n\nDe Certeau, Michel\n\nDe Goncourt, Edmond & Jules\n\nDeir Yassin\n\nDeleuze, Gilles\n\nDelphy, Christine\n\nDerrida, Jacques\n\nDesai, Gaurav\n\nDib, Mohammed\n\nDirlik, Arif\n\nDjebar, Assia\n\nDonadey, Anne\n\nDouglas, Allen\n\nDrake, David\n\nDurmelat, Sylvie\n\nEl Maleh, Edmond Amran\n\n_Mille ans, un jour_\n\nEl-Solh, Camillia Fawzi\n\n_Une enfance alg\u00e9rienne_\n\nEntelis, John\n\nEsposito, John\n\n_L'\u00e9ternel retour_\n\nEuben, Roxanne\n\nEurocentrism\n\nEurope\n\nEuropean imperialism\n\nexcision\n\n_L'Express_\n\nFar\u00e8s, Nabile\n\nFGC (Female Genital Cutting)\/FGM. _See also_ excision, clitoridectomy, infibulation\n\nFernea, Robert\n\nfiliation\n\nFIS (Front Islamique du Salut)\n\nFlaubert\n\nFLN (Front de Lib\u00e9ration Nationale)\n\nforgiveness\n\nFrance\n\nArabs in\n\n1905 law\n\n2004 law\n\nFrancophone literature\n\nFrancophone Studies\n\n_Francophonie_\n\nFranks\n\nFrench language\n\nFuller, Graham\n\nGafa\u00efti, Hafid\n\nGalesne, Nathalie\n\nGallaire, Fatima\n\nGambetta, Diego\n\nGaspard, Fran\u00e7oise\n\nGaumer, Patrick\n\nGaza\n\ngenealogy\n\nGenette, G\u00e9rard\n\nGIA (Groupe Islamique Arm\u00e9)\n\nGopin, Marc\n\nGossman, Lionel\n\nGravdal, Kathryn\n\nGreat Mosque, Paris\n\nGrewal, Inderpal\n\nGroensteen, Thierry\n\nGross, Janice\n\nGrosser, Paul\n\nGrousset, Ren\u00e9\n\nGruenbaum, Ellen\n\nGu\u00e9noun, Solange\n\nHaarscher, Guy\n\nHadith\n\nha\u00efk\n\nHallam, Elizabeth\n\n_Hamlet_\n\nHarbi, Mohammed\n\nHare, William\n\nHargreaves, Alec\n\nHarrison, Nicholas\n\nHartman, Michelle\n\nHasenclever, Andreas\n\nHassan, Salah\n\nHatzopoulos, Pavlos\n\nheadscarf affair\n\n_Heart of Darkness_\n\nHerman, Edward\n\nHiggins, Lynn\n\n_Hiroshima mon amour_\n\nhistoriography\n\nHitchcock\n\nHochberg, Gil\n\nHolmes, Stephen\n\nHolocaust\n\nHoly Land\n\nHopgood, Stephen\n\nHosken, Fran\n\nHottell, Ruth\n\nHugo, Victor\n\nHuntington, Samuel\n\nHutcheon, Linda\n\nIbn-Munqidh, Usamah\n\nImache, Djedjiga\n\nInstrumentalists\n\ninternational relations\n\nintertext\n\nimmigration\n\nimperialism\n\nIran\n\nIrgoun\n\nIslam\n\nin the West\n\nwomen in\n\nIsrael\n\nJadla, Ibrahim\n\nJaschik, Scott\n\nJerusalem\n\nJesus\n\nJews\n\nArab Jew\n\nJudaism\n\nJudeo-Christian tradition\n\nKacimi-El-Hassani, Mohamed\n\nKalyvas, Stathis\n\nKandiyoti, Deniz\n\nKenbib, Mohammed\n\nKepel, Gilles\n\nKhosrokhavar, Farhad\n\nKing David hotel bombing\n\nKinoshita, Sharon\n\nKoso-Thomas, Olayinka\n\nKurzman, Charles\n\nLargu\u00e8che, Abdelhamid\n\nLaronche, Martine\n\nLaroussi, Farid\n\nLaskier, Michael\n\nLayachi, Azzedine\n\nLebanon\n\ncivil war\n\nLevant\n\nL\u00e9vy, Alma and Lila\n\nL\u00e9vy, Simon\n\nLewis, Bernard\n\nLionnet, Fran\u00e7oise\n\nLloyd, Simon\n\nMaalouf, Amin\n\n_Les croisades vues par les Arabes_\n\n_Les \u00e9chelles du Levant_\n\n_Identit\u00e9s meurtri\u00e8res_\n\nMackie, Gerry\n\nMaghreb. _See also_ North Africa\n\nMajid, Anouar\n\nmandate\n\nMaronites\n\nMartinez, Louis\n\nMarx-Scouras, Danielle\n\nMasson, Pierre\n\nMcDermott, Terry\n\nMcKinney, Mark\n\nMcQuillan, Libbie\n\nMearsheimer, John\n\nMeddeb, Abdelwahab\n\n_Face \u00e0 l'islam_\n\n_La maladie de l'islam_\n\n_Phantasia_\n\nMekay, Emad\n\nMemmi, Albert\n\n_Juifs et Arabes_\n\n_Portrait du colonis\u00e9_\n\n_Portrait du d\u00e9colonis\u00e9 arabo-musulman et de quelques autres_\n\nMernissi, Fatima\n\nMichaud, Joseph\n\nMiddle East\/Near East\n\nMillecam, Jean-Pierre\n\nMimouni, Rachid\n\n_De la barbarie en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de l'int\u00e9grisme en particulier_\n\nMiraglia, Anne-Marie\n\nMitchell, W.J.T.\n\nmodernization theory\n\nProphet Mohammed\n\nMohanty, Chandra\n\nMokn\u00e8che, Nadir\n\n_Le Monde_\n\nMorocco\n\nMortimer, Robert\n\nMorton, Stephen\n\nMudimbe-Boyi, Elisabeth\n\nMuslims\n\nand Crusaders\n\nin France\n\nNaipaul\n\nNasreen, Taslima\n\nNavarro, Mireya\n\nNaylor, Philip\n\nNazism\n\nNixon, Rob\n\nNoiriel, G\u00e9rard\n\nNordmann, Charlotte\n\nNorth Africa. _See also_ Maghreb\n\nNoudelmann, Fran\u00e7ois\n\noccupation\n\nOldenbourg, Zo\u00e9\n\npackaging\n\nPalestine. _See also_ West Bank, Gaza\n\nPalestinians\n\npan-Arabism\n\nPapp\u00e9, Ilan\n\npartition\n\nPedahzur, Ami\n\nP\u00e9l\u00e9gri, Jean\n\n_Persepolis_\n\npieds-noirs\n\nPhoenicianism\n\nPodselver, Laurence\n\nPoitiers\n\nPostcolonial Studies\n\nPratt, Mary Louise\n\nPrimordialists\n\nProtectorate\n\nQur'an\n\nQureshi, Emran\n\nrape\n\n_Reconquista_\n\n_Reading Lolita in Tehran_\n\nRedonnet, Marie\n\nreligion, resurgence of\n\nReuter, Christoph\n\nrhizome\n\nRicolfi, Luca\n\nRiley-Smith, Jonathan\n\nRoquebert, Michel\n\nRosello, Mireille\n\nRosenthal, Franz\n\nRoy, Olivier\n\nRunciman, Steven\n\nRushdie, Salman\n\nSaid, Edward\n\nSalem, Elise\n\nSalibi, Kamal\n\nSarcelles\n\nSassine, Antoine\n\nSatrapi, Marjane\n\nSayyid, Salman\n\nScharfman, Ronnie\n\nScreech, Matthew\n\nSebag, Paul\n\nSebbar, Le\u00efla\n\n_Journal de mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_\n\n_Mes Alg\u00e9ries en France_\n\nsecularism\n\nSephardim\n\nSeptember\n\nSerrano, Richard\n\nShell-Duncan, Bettina\n\nShih, Shu-Mei\n\nShiites\n\nShilton, Siobh\u00e1n\n\nShohat, Ella\n\nShumway, David\n\nShweder, Richard\n\nSiberry, Elizabeth\n\nSivan, Emmanuel\n\nSmith, Charles\n\nSolomon, Alisa\n\nSolzhenitsyn, Alexandre\n\nSontag, Susan\n\nSoyinka, Wole\n\nStasi Commission\n\nSteel, James\n\nStora, Benjamin\n\nsuicide bombing\n\nSullivan, Zohreh\n\nSunnis\n\nSyria\n\nTalbi, Mohamed\n\nTalibans\n\nTarr, Carrie\n\nTengour, Habib\n\nTernisien, Xavier\n\nTerray, Emmanuel\n\nterrorism\n\nThieme, John\n\nThomas, Scott\n\nTorah\n\nTramson, Jacques\n\ntranslation\n\nTunisia\n\nTurkey\n\nTyerman, Christopher\n\nUpdike, John\n\nValensi, Lucette\n\nveil. _See also_ headscarf affair\n\nVersluys, Kristiaan\n\nVichy government\n\nVienna, siege of\n\nviolence\n\nVircondelet, Alain\n\nVolpi, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric\n\nVoltaire\n\nWatt. Stephen\n\nWest\n\nWest Bank\n\nWieviorka, Annette\n\nWillis, Michael\n\nZabus, Chantal\n\nZafrani, Ha\u00efm\n\nZainaba\n\nZionism\n\n\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj\n\n## About the Author\n\n**Carine Bourget** is associate professor of French and Francophone studies in the French and Italian Department at the University of Arizona, and holds a courtesy appointment with the Near Eastern Studies Department. Her research focuses on the cultural production from the Francophone Arab world, with special interests in Islam in literature, Islam in France, politics and literature, and history and literature. She is the author of _Coran et tradition islamique dans la litt\u00e9rature maghr\u00e9bine_ (Paris: Karthala, 2002), a study that analyzes the religious intertext in works by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Driss Chra\u00efbi, Assia Djebar, and Fatima Mernissi. Her most recent articles have appeared in _L'Esprit Cr\u00e9ateur, The French Review, Research in African Literatures, Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature, Expressions maghr\u00e9bines_ , and _French Cultural Studies_.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\nPENGUIN BOOKS\n\n# My Father's Moon\n\nElizabeth Jolley is one of Australia's most celebrated writers, with a formidable international reputation. She was recognised in Australia with an AO for services to literature and was awarded honorary doctorates from four universities.\n\nBorn in England in 1923, she was brought up in a strict, German-speaking household and attended a Quaker boarding school. She became a nurse, married Leonard Jolley and with three children moved to Western Australia in 1959.\n\nAlthough she wrote all her life, it was not until she was in her fifties that Elizabeth's books started to receive the recognition they deserved. She won the _Age_ Book of the Year Award on three separate occasions (for _Mr Scobie's Riddle_ , _My Father's Moon_ and _The Georges' Wife_ ) and the Miles Franklin Award for _The Well_ , as well as many other awards. Elizabeth Jolley died in 2007.\n\n## Elizabeth Jolley\n\n# My Father's Moon\n\nWith an Introduction by\n\n## J.M. Coetzee\n\n### PENGUIN BOOKS \nPENGUIN BOOKS\n\nPublished by the Penguin Group\n\nPenguin Group (Australia)\n\n250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia \n(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)\n\nPenguin Group (USA) Inc.\n\n375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA\n\nPenguin Group (Canada)\n\n90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto ON M4P 2Y3, Canada \n(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)\n\nPenguin Books Ltd\n\n80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England\n\nPenguin Ireland\n\n25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland \n(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)\n\nPenguin Books India Pvt Ltd\n\n11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi \u2013 110 017, India\n\nPenguin Group (NZ)\n\n67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand \n(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)\n\nPenguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd\n\n24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa\n\nPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England\n\nFirst published in Viking by Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 1989\n\nPublished in Penguin, 1989\n\nThis edition published by Penguin group (Australia), 2008\n\nText copyright \u00a9 The Estate of Elizabeth Jolley, 1989\n\nIntroduction \u00a9 J.M. Coetzee\n\nThe moral right of the author has been asserted\n\nAll rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.\n\nISBN: 978-1-74-228215-2\n\nwww.penguin.com.au\n\n# ALSO BY ELIZABETH JOLLEY\n\n## Stories\n\n_Five Acre Virgin_\n\n_The Travelling Entertainer_\n\n_Woman in a Lampshade_\n\n_Fellow Passengers_\n\n## Novels\n\n_Palomino_\n\n_The Newspaper of Claremont Street_\n\n_Mr Scobie's Riddle_\n\n_Miss Peabody's Inheritance_\n\n_Foxybaby_\n\n_Milk and Honey_\n\n_The Well The Sugar Mother_\n\n_Cabin Fever_\n\n_The Georges' Wife_\n\n_The Orchard Thieves_\n\n_Lovesong_\n\n_An Accommodating Spouse_\n\n_An Innocent Gentleman_\n\n## Non-fiction\n\n_Central Mischief_\n\n_Off the Air_\n\n_Diary of a Weekend Farmer_\n\n_Learning to Dance_\nFor Leonard Jolley\nI would like to express my thanks to the Curtin University of Technology (formerly the Western Australian Institute of Technology) for the continuing privilege of being with students and colleagues in the School of Communication and Cultural Studies and for the provision of a room in which to write. I would like, in particular, to thank Don Watts, Peter Reeves, Brian Dibble and Don Grant.\n\nA special thanks is offered to Nancy McKenzie who, for a great many years, has typed my manuscripts. Her patience is endless.\n\n# AUTHOR'S NOTE\n\nIt comes as a surprise to realize that time has gone by and that there are now people who are no longer familiar with the abbreviations which were once a part of everyday existence.\n\nATS was the abbreviation for Auxiliary Territorial Service. ARP stood for Air Raid Precaution, NA was Nursing Auxiliary (or sometimes Naughty Annie). The abbreviations were always used. They were part of the idiom. I never heard the words spoken in full. Similarly RMO and RSO were always said for the Resident Medical Officer and the Resident Surgical Officer respectively.\n\nElizabeth Jolley\n\n# THE VERA WRIGHT TRILOGY:\n\n## My Father's Moon, Cabin Fever, The Georges' Wife\n\nFrom her home in Australia, Vera Wright looks back over her life. A doctor by profession, she has recently begun to haunt the waiting rooms of other doctors. The endgame with death has begun.\n\nImages from the past come to her mind \u2013 for instance, of absentmindedly walking into the bathroom without knocking and seeing her daughter naked. 'I was never [long-limbed and graceful] like this,' she ruminates, 'or if I was once, perhaps briefly, on the edge of this innocence and smooth youthfulness, the time came and went by without my noticing any of it, without my noticing my own body and how I might look as a young woman. I have no idea.'\n\nRegret that in some sense she did not fully possess her own young womanhood runs through Vera's recollections. Part of her aim in writing her life story is to catch sight of herself as she must have been four decades ago, when she was too self-absorbed to see herself from the outside.\n\nVera may have little idea of how she looked to others, yet as her story proceeds we do get glimpses of her in her heyday. Like her daughter, she was tall and long-legged. ' _Eine Valkyrie_ ,' remarked a German-speaking friend of her mother's admiringly. To a colleague at work, the snowdrop seemed the right flower for her, 'clean, green and white'. According to another colleague, she had no sex appeal. Sunbathing did not help: she got hot but stayed pale. She wore spectacles. She lacked fashion sense.\n\nVera comes from a cultivated middle-class family of modest means in the Midlands of england. She reads a lot, and writes poetry. Her mother hopes that she will go to europe to study art and architecture and music. So she is dismayed when, at the outbreak of war in 1939, her seventeen-year-old daughter announces she is going to enrol as a nurse. She is even more dismayed when, in the last months of the war, Vera falls pregnant. Yet she pays for Vera's accouchement in a private maternity hospital and soon bonds with the baby, to the point that her daughter grows jealous.\n\nFive years later Vera is pregnant a second time, again by a man unable or unwilling to marry her; and again, after berating her daughter for her promiscuity, Margarethe Wright is captivated by her new granddaughter.\n\nBetween mother and daughter (Vera has a younger sister, but she is only a shadowy presence) there are strains that remain unresolved to the end, strains that go a long way towards dictating the course of Vera's life. At the risk of oversimplifying, one can say that Mrs Wright wants to be proud of her daughter but is continually being shamed (what the neighbours think matters a great deal to her), while Vera is torn between wanting to be independent of her mother and wanting to be loved by her. Her babies are, at the deepest level, offerings she brings home; if she is upset by her mother's rapport with them, it's because she is the one (she feels) who really needs to be soothed and cuddled and fed.\n\nThe author of the first pregnancy is a married man, Jonathon Metcalf, a doctor at St Cuthberts, the hospital where Vera does her training. According to hospital gossip, Dr Metcalf has got a number of young nurses into trouble. When Vera, in a panic, not knowing where to turn, begins to put emotional pressure on him, he enlists in the army and is promptly killed in an accident. Vera is never certain whether he enlisted to escape her or, as gossip again has it, to be reunited with a male lover.\n\nThe second child is fathered, after Vera has moved to Glasgow, by her employer there, a middle-aged academic, Oliver George. With Mr George she will later sail to make a new life in Australia, leaving behind her daughters, by then aged twelve and seven, in the willing care of Mr George's elderly sister.\n\nThere are three men with whom Vera reports sexual relations: Dr Metcalf, Mr George, and the proto-hippie social dropout No\u00ebl. In no case is the relationship straightforward. Though Vera is infatuated with Metcalf, her deeper feelings, both erotic and rivalrous, are for Metcalf's wife. In the case of the Georges, on the other hand, there are moments when she wonders whether the brother and sister are not simply using her to make a child for themselves (hence the title of the third book of the trilogy, _The Georges' Wife_ ). As for No\u00ebl, sharing a bed with him entails sharing it with his wife too.\n\nThere is no hint that Vera finds sex with any of these men unpleasant. Indeed, with Mr George it is particularly sweet. Nevertheless, Vera's more significant emotional entanglements \u2013 or at least the entanglements that most engage her as she looks back \u2013 are with women, particularly women older than herself. Aside from her mother, the significant women in her life are a family friend named Gertrude; a senior nurse, Sister Ramsden; and Mrs Ruperts, a wealthy widow whom she meets on the boat to Australia. Part of what Vera wants from these women is the mothering she feels has been withheld from her. (In their company her behaviour tends to become juvenile and\/or coquettish.) But in addition she seeks \u2013 and with Gertrude and Mrs Ruperts finds \u2013 an intimacy, generosity of emotion, and fellowship that men do not provide.\n\nShe craves this kind of love, and blossoms when she finds it. Yet finally, when commitment is called for on her side, she pulls back in a most hurtful and (to use her own word) shabby way. This bewildering behaviour is a source of bitter later regret, remorse and self-laceration. One of her motives for writing down her story is to comprehend a recurrent pattern in her emotional life: of courting love but then freezing when she is called on to respond. It is a pattern that can properly be called compulsive.\n\nWith her mother, Vera is locked in a pattern of blame, remorse and accusation from which the two find it hard to free themselves. Yet Vera has a moment of illumination in which she recognises that her mother is not simply being snobbish in opposing her decision to go into nursing. She sees herself as she might have become after a lifetime on the career ladder: '[a] District Nurse, enormous in navy blue, on a bicycle, visiting patients, admonishing husbands and delivering babies on sheets of newspaper in overcrowded kitchens'.\n\nVera fails to follow the path laid down for her by her mother of genteelly dabbling in art and music before making a good marriage and having a family. Nor does she become a professional nurse. But is the alternative path she takes, first as an au-pair, then as an aide in a maternity home, then as general factotum at a boarding school, then as a housekeeper, then finally as a doctor practising what, when she is in a bad mood, she calls 'third-rate psychiatry', any better?\n\nVera disappoints her mother, but her mother disappoints Vera too. In middle age Mrs Wright falls under the influence of a neighbour named Mrs Pugh. Listening to her mother speak, Vera increasingly hears the voice and accents of Mrs Pugh. To Vera, Mrs Pugh represents the British lower-middle class at its worst: insular, mean-minded, close-fisted. Why, she wonders, has her mother \u2013 a cultivated woman, Viennese by birth \u2013 allowed herself to be taken over in this way? What does the development portend for Vera herself? Will her horizons too grow narrower as she grows older? Is her fear of commitment an inherited trait against which it is futile to fight?\n\nVera's father is a Quaker schoolteacher with a special fondness for the novel, which, he says, shows us how the passions work and also offers the fullest picture we have of life as it is or was in a particular place and time. Her father's unwavering love sets a standard to which Vera repeatedly fails to rise. Her failures lead her to formulate a first law of parent-child relations: that the love the parent gives the child cannot be given back by the child. (Cannot be given back but imprints itself nevertheless, one might add, in the form of guilt.)\n\nVera may find it hard to show love to her father, but she takes his lessons on literature to heart. Considering that its theme is the progress towards self-knowledge of a notably introspective woman from the provinces, the document that she comes to write half a century later \u2013 in her eyes, an autobiography; in ours, a trilogy of novels \u2013 contains notable insights into the workings of the passions (of which more later). It also gives a remarkably sharp picture of life as it was in england from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, from the Great Depression through World War II to the austerities of the postwar years, a time-span treated by Jolley as a single unbroken historical period.\n\nVera's family is 'political' \u2013 her father went to jail as a conscientious objector in World War I; her parents open their home to refugees from hitler's germany \u2013 but she does not think politically. She barely registers the lead-up to the war; the reality of what is going on hits her only when St Cuthberts is flooded with young men with ghastly wounds; and she realises the war is over only when people start dancing in the streets. There is not a word about the progress of arms in the various theatres of war, about hitler or Churchill or stalin. Young Vera's preoccupations are more immediate: Who are the trend-setters among the trainee nurses? How can I get my hands on more sugar? When is my next leave allotment due?\n\nIn the midst of great historical upheavals, life goes on in all its multifariousness. The minds of ordinary people are occupied not with the great questions of the day but with a myriad petty personal concerns. I am not suggesting that Jolley consciously advances this Tolstoyan thesis; yet her creation of Vera's life, seemingly empty of historical consciousness, is full of observations that illuminate the england of those hard years: what a luxury a real egg was compared with egg powder; how important to people's lives german music remained, particularly Beethoven; how uncommon it was to have a bath more than once a week.\n\nThe story of Vera also reminds us what a calamity it was in those days for a middle-class girl to fall pregnant. From her lover Dr Metcalf Vera receives no help at all. Afraid to tell her mother, she absconds from St Cuthberts in disgrace and moves into a kind of social limbo. Though as an expectant mother she is entitled to extra food rations, censorious social-welfare bureaucrats make it as difficult as possible for her to get her hands on them.\n\nThe company into which Vera drifts is that of the free-thinking intelligentsia, some of them academics (the high-minded Wellingtons, with their carefully managed simultaneous orgasms; the Georges), others social misfits, descendants of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, dabblers in pottery, tapestry-weaving, free love, nude sunbathing and vegetarianism. As Quakers and Germanophiles, Vera's parents are at some risk of falling into this marginal class; they are saved by her father's devotion to his schoolmastering duties and her mother's strict sense of propriety.\n\nVera experiences the alternative lifestyle at its dreariest during her time at Fairfields School, a dumping ground for the offspring of broken marriages, a failing enterprise run by a pair of predatory lesbians where the children, fed on raw vegetables, are continually hungry and squabbling with one another, and the teachers only sporadically get paid. A few years later Vera is taken in by another couple of Fairfields types, no\u00ebl and Felicity, who exploit her financially, use her sexually, sneer at her accent, and leave her with a dose of tuberculosis. (Why are you always falling in love with couples, asks her bewildered mother?)\n\nAs a training hospital St Cuthberts attracts young nurses from across the social spectrum, including some with rich parents who have been to private schools and speak with posh accents. Embarrassment at her own provincial speech and manners, far from turning Vera into a foe of class prejudice, entrenches in her what she calls her comparison game \u2013 her practice of dividing any new group into which she moves into those above her (prettier, savvier, more chic), whom she cultivates and imitates, and those below her, whom she snubs and avoids. She learns the comparison game early, at school; her first victim is a classmate, Muriel, for whom she invents the derisive nickname 'Bulge'. Throughout her hospital years she remains wedded to the game, even though she is more often than not the loser. The consequences for her self-esteem are wounding. The dashing Metcalf couple, for instance, seen in the nude, impress her as examples of 'fne breeding', whereas her own body is 'badly made'.\n\nFrom early on Vera longs to be a member of a couple: the very word 'couple' becomes a mantra to her. Yet in her unorthodox erotic attachments she is clearly, if unconsciously, in quest of something more than monogamy, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Time and again she plunges into situations that excite her in their promise of erotic community: she wants those she loves to love one another too. Time and again her na\u00efve enthusiasm is exploited by people who do not share her utopian yearnings. The third book ends with her pushing an aged and mentally fragile husband around the sleepy streets of Claremont, Western Australia, in a wheelchair. At last 'we, Mr George and I, are a couple'. There is no one else in her life. Her lover, the merry widow Mrs Ruperts, condemned by Mr George as 'extraordinarily vulgar and nondescript', is dead; her daughters have made lives for themselves back in the United Kingdom. It is hard to read this ending as other than a defeat for her youthful aspirations.\n\nVera's feelings for Oliver George are not easily pinned down. Having seduced him as soon as she arrives in Glasgow, and fallen pregnant, she is impatient to regularise her position in the George household. Yet year after year he resists her efforts to do just that. On board ship en route to Australia she impulsively suggests that they enlist the captain to marry them. Mr George makes it clear how distasteful he finds the idea: 'the idea of being conspicuous in this way and being a part... of something cheap, a vulgar celebration instead of something private and tender'. Once he has taken his bearings in Perth society, however, he changes his tune: 'Mr George says that he thinks we should look for an apartment where we can live together. He says too that he will need to accept and give invitations and that he wants me to be a part of this new life.'\n\nOut of Vera's impassive _oratio obliqua_ Mr George emerges in a most unpleasant light: snobbish, reserved, selfish. Much the same might be said of Dr Metcalf, who from Vera's deadpan reports comes across as a practised seducer of the fatherly variety whose wife turns a blind eye to, and even encourages, his conquests, as long as he keeps his girls on a tight leash. This is how everyone around Vera sees the Metcalfs; it is a mark of Jolley's control of tone, as well as of the complexity of the attitude of the older Vera looking back, that the younger Vera is not for a moment held up to ridicule as a gullible child. On the contrary, visions of Metcalf sitting in a chair 'naked and handsome and shameless' come back unbidden. Vera puzzles about why her memory should be throwing them up, yet in the book their function is clear: despite all the misery that followed in their train, says the vision, those times with Metcalf were good.\n\nThere is no such ambiguity of treatment when it comes to the women who matter to Vera. The largely female community of the hospital is crisscrossed with erotic currents. Vera has an affair with a more experienced fellow trainee and expands her sexual repertoire. But her main crush is on the senior nurse Ramsden ('I love her. Perhaps. I think.'), who holds out the promise of being mother, sister and lover rolled into one, as well as confidante and guide in the realms of philosophy and music and poetry (Rilke). To make an impression on Ramsden Vera carries around a violin case. (she alone knows it is empty.) Wistful memories of Ramsden haunt her late in life, intensified by remorse over the shameful way in which she treated the older woman, inviting her to spend a weekend, then dismissing her.\n\nOf all the people Vera meets, it is Mrs Ruperts, the Australian, who has the shrewdest insight into her. 'Am I the sweet english sixth-form girl, [Mrs Ruperts] wants to know, or am I a very clever intelligent woman hiding behind a clear youthful complexion and a remarkable and convincing innocence.' Later Mrs Ruperts, going out of her mind with loneliness in her rural isolation, will make a bold appeal to Vera to come and live with her, an appeal to which Vera, following the old compulsive pattern, will give no reply. Mrs Ruperts is killed in an accident (leaving Vera a great deal of money), and in Vera's inner world becomes properly 'my widow', the one to whom she is sole survivor, or vice versa.\n\nIt is her widow who asks what turns out to be the key question of Vera's mature life: why did she give up her career in surgery for which she was trained in favour of a general practice that seems to consist mainly of counselling? Vera's response is that while surgery provides clearcut answers to clearcut problems, the malaises that concern her are those 'wrapped up... unseen in hidden wishes, in blame and remorse and in accusation' \u2013 in other words, that stem from a neurotic fixation on old grievances, trapping the self in a destiny from which there seems no escape.\n\nIs there a balm for such illnesses? Is there a healer? Yes, affirms Vera: anyone who embarks on the task with trust and courage and kindness can become a healer. But to the nub of the widow's question \u2013 why she in particular seeks the role of healer \u2013 she has no answer.\n\nVera's story must be imagined as being written down in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the three volumes were published in 1989, 1990, and 1993) and thus as being an autobiographical document by a woman in her late sixties. The bulk of the document is concerned with her earlier years, between the outbreak of war and her arrival in Australia in about 1960. Apart from the affair with Mrs Ruperts, which is covered in some detail, her later life is treated only sketchily.\n\nWithin the three volumes, Vera is represented not only as a woman who acted and suffered in the past but also as a woman in the present, thinking and sometimes writing about that past. This happens most explicitly in the second volume, _Cabin Fever,_ set in the late 1980s. Vera spends days alone in a hotel room in New York City, where she is attending a medical conference, revising her presentation while wondering what her life amounts to and what the point is of continuing to keep a diary. (We gather that the conference will be about sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS; Vera's paper is entitled 'Perspectives on Moral Insanity': we can only guess at its content.)\n\nVera is in a slightly crazed state (she fears the walls of her room are going to burst and inundate her with hot water) for which she uses the term 'cabin fever'. But soon the term shifts in meaning. In the grip of 'cabin fever' time stands still for her and she is transported back into the past, into a static moment filled with the intimation of revelation. Redefined as 'the long drawn-out pause of intention', cabin fever thus becomes a state of being possessed by an idea on the point of coalescing, and a concurrent feeling of being on the point of breaking out in speech.\n\nOut of such heightened moments, suspensions of the flow of time, germinates the story of Vera's life. Another suspension of time will take place at a bus stop, as Vera watches the rising of the moon \u2013 the moon that stands for her father watching over her. The bus stop itself is generic: sometimes it is in the Midlands of her childhood, though the landscape is quite changed; at other times in Australia or even india. A third suspension of time comes in a train, where she feels herself about to speak to a fellow passenger who may or may not be the beloved Ramsden. A fourth and final one occurs in a doctor's waiting room, which is also the universal waiting room for death.\n\nThe technique Jolley uses to construct her narrative is nominally based on association. We are to imagine that motifs from the past float into the mind of Vera as narrator, at her bus stop or in her hotel room or wherever. Vera then takes it on herself to flesh them out, at the same time inquiring by what subconscious logic the psyche dictates that this specific motif should come up now. Fleshing out motifs entails delving into memory and reconstructing episodes from the past. However, one or two sharp asides to the reader make it clear that Vera recognises no firm division between memory and invention or fabulation. For example, we are presented with a vividly realised recollection of Ramsden going for a walk wearing ankle socks over her stockings; then much later we are informed that Ramsden never wore ankle socks, that the socks were given to her to mark her as the kind of woman who would put on socks, that is, to _characterise_ her, to give her body as a character in a novel.\n\nTo explain how text construction by association works, Vera uses a musical analogy. The new motif, at first sight arbitrary or puzzling, is like the Neapolitan sixth, a chromatic chord used now and again by Beethoven to mark or foreshadow transition to a new key. Like this dissonant chord, the apparently meaningless association initiates a new phase in the narrative. Only as the new phase (the passage in the new key) develops and thickens does the logic of the dissonance become clear.\n\nIn the first book of the series, _My Father's Moon,_ the technique of interwoven narratives linked by associative logic is used with sure-footed confidence. The seventh chapter, 'Gertrude's Place', provides an example of Jolley at her masterful best, mingling the most intense phase of Vera's friendship with Gertrude, her betrayal of Gertrude, and Gertrude's last illness, with Vera's ambivalent invitation to Ramsden, the progress of her intimacy with the Metcalf couple, and the arrival on British shores of the first wave of war-wounded. The ordering of narrative modules in the chapter is dictated not by chronology but by a structural and emotional logic that is, in a large sense, symphonic.\n\nThe second book, _Cabin Fever,_ is generally more orthodox in its narration. By the time we reach the third book, _The Georges' Wife_ , both the associative technique and the recurrent motifs themselves are familiar enough to occasion no difficulty.\n\nDispensing with chronology, doing without the unities of space and time and action, is a risky business. Jolley's Vera lives longer than Proust's Marcel. There is no formal reason why her life story should not take up six volumes, or ten, rather than three, or indeed why it should not, like Tristram Shandy's, threaten to go on for ever. Ultimately the length and shape of Vera's story will be dictated not by its content \u2013 the facts of her life \u2013 but by her author's aesthetic intuitions, which are by and large trustworthy, though not infallible. Thus, for instance, the first forty pages of _Cabin Fever_ do little but repeat material from _My Father's Moon_ \u2013 one suspects that Jolley felt under pressure to make the second volume stand on its own feet. The pages towards the end of the same book given over to Vera's dolls might well have been dispensed with. The lengthy second-person address to the dead Metcalf in _My Father's Moon_ occludes the double vision \u2013 the younger Vera refracted through her mature self \u2013 that is a strength of the work as a whole. The two big scenes between Vera and Madga Metcalf \u2013 the recovery of the incriminating letter in _My Father's Moon_ ; Magda's visit to the hospital in _Cabin Fever_ \u2013 stand out as too well-crafted, too novelistic, too Jamesian.\n\n'I am a shabby person,' writes Vera from New York. 'I understand, if I look back, that I have treated kind people with an unforgivable shabbiness. For my work a ruthless self-examination is needed for, without understanding something of myself, how can I understand anyone else.' What work is It that she refers to here? In the first place, it is her work as a healer or therapist in the tradition of Freud and of Socrates before Freud, work for which the Delphic 'Know thyself' is a prerequisite. But it is also the autobiographical work she is engaged in. In the latter case, what exactly does self-understanding have to do with shabby behaviour in the past? Will it matter to Muriel ('Bulge') whether or not, fifty years after the event, her ex-schoolmate Vera begins to comprehend why she treated her so badly? What Muriel wants is surely something else: remorse on Vera's part, and an expiatory act \u2013 confession, apology.\n\nYet confession and apology are, in the end, exactly what Muriel gets \u2013 Muriel and Gertrude and Ramsden and Mr Wright and even Mrs Wright. Vera may claim that she is writing her story in order to understand herself, but in the larger scheme she writes it in order to get it down on paper and thus into the world. Once it is in the world, we can make up our minds what kind of thing it is, what kind of act it constitutes. And as Vera apologises to Muriel, and Muriel (if she is still in Vera's world) perhaps forgives what Vera finds unforgivable, so we too can without difficulty forgive Vera for the intermittent shabbiness to which she has confessed \u2013 shabbiness quite outweighed by her courage and resilience and curiosity and passion and kindness and devotion and humour and intelligence.\n\nWhy you, asks the widow? What is special about you? Vera can find no answer. 'there is a great deal that must be known and, at the same time, it must stay hidden in the heart.' This is the moment when Vera (and Jolley behind her) comes closest to expressing a personal credo for the work of writing. Fiction or autobiography (the line that Jolley draws between the two is nowhere less clear than in the trilogy) may be a healing art, but as to pinning down the motive that drives its practitioner, here the Delphic prescription simply ceases to hold. The motive must indeed be sought \u2013 there may be no limit to self-inquiry \u2013 but it cannot, dare not be pinned down.\n\nThough the order of composition of Jolley's writings is as yet far from clear (parts of the Vera Wright trilogy, for instance, seem to have been drafted in the 1960s), we can in general say that the later novels stand up to scrutiny better than the earlier ones, which rely on a sort of verbal humour that now seems dated, based on english models and refecting the english class system.\n\nWhile the late novels do not eschew comedy \u2013 Jolley always believed that novels should entertain \u2013 they also make forays into the erotic, particularly the male erotic. _Lovesong_ (1997) traces the progress of a gentle soul, a man drawn to children, who after being trapped _in flagrante_ with a choirboy is subjected to a programme of behaviour modification and then set loose in a robust adult world where he soon loses his way. In _An Accommodating Spouse_ (1999) a vain, complacent, but timorous academic who has fallen in love with a lesbian colleague takes at face value a suggestion of his wife's that it would be a good idea if he gave the colleague a child. _An Innocent Gentleman_ (2001) reworks a childhood episode recounted by Jolley in one of her autobiographical sketches. An uxorious english schoolteacher gives his wife permission to have an affair with another man, then finds he cannot cope with the consequences. In the sketch the focus is on the fifteen-year-old child as she witnesses her father's humiliation. In the novel dates are juggled so as to reduce the child's role: the focus is on the married couple themselves, on the wife's erotic infatuation and the husband's inability to square his belief in free marriage with his jealous anger.\n\nAll three of these late novels pose the question 'What do men want?', and reveal desire and its vicissitudes to be quite as inscrutable in men as in women. Idealistic and impulsive, Jolley's men typically have no insight into their own motives and are competent to deal neither with the demands of the world nor with the wiles of women.\n\nOf the novels antedating the trilogy, _The Sugar Mother_ (1988) is the most accomplished. Here a canny english immigrant tricks a na\u00efve Australian academic out of his money by persuading him he has got her daughter pregnant, then offering that for a price the girl will bear the child and bestow it on him and his unwitting wife. _Miss Peabody's Inheritance_ (1983) is an ingeniously constructed fiction about the writing of fiction; _Mr Scobie's Riddle_ (1983) takes a sobering look at the exploitation of the aged; but both of the latter are hampered by heavy-handed comedy.\n\nFor a novelist reluctant to appear too serious, Jolley is remarkably daring in the topics she takes up: erotic infatuations on the part of both men and women with children who are often more seducer than seduced; sexual accommodations between women getting on in years; jealousy as a spur to sexual arousal; spousal love as a mask for control; the heartlessness behind the soothing discourse of aged care; impotence and incontinence; prurience; the never-to-be-appeased hunger of the old, the ugly, and the despised to be touched.\n\nMonica Elizabeth Knight was born in Birmingham in 1923. After some years of home schooling, she was sent to a Quaker boarding-school. While working as a trainee nurse in 1940 she met Leonard Jolley (1914-1994), by profession a librarian, whom she later married and with whom she in 1959 emigrated to Australia.\n\nElizabeth Jolley (the name under which Monica Knight published) wrote fiction and poetry from an early age. Her posthumous papers include a novel completed when she was sixteen. Her career as a published writer took off only in 1976, but she had been circulating manuscripts \u2013 including the manuscript of a novel entitled _The Georges' Wife and the Feast_ \u2013 since the mid-1960s. During the next twenty-five years she published prolifically. Most of her fiction is set in Australia, where she was honoured as a major writer. She died in 2007.\n\nThe Vera Wright trilogy stands out as the most ambitious and most accomplished work in Elizabeth Jolley's oeuvre. It draws heavily on the early life of Monica Knight, but \u2013 as its author warns again and again \u2013 amends and invents details and circumstances freely. In memoirs and other occasional pieces Jolley was in the habit of presenting herself as a self-taught writer who had done ordinary and indeed menial jobs most of her life. But this was just protective coloration. In truth Jolley was steeped in literature, particularly english and german poetry. From the Modernist novelists of the generation before hers, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf in particular, as well as from their forebear Laurence Sterne, she absorbed the essentials of the narrative method so strikingly deployed in the trilogy. They also confirmed in her her sense of the self as the shifting and evanescent issue of a dialectic between memory and the fabulating intelligence.\n\nJ. M. Coetzee\n\nMarch 2008\n\n# FAIRFIELDS\n\n'Why can't the father, the father of your \u2013 what I mean is why can't he do something?'\n\n'I've told you, he's dead.'\n\n'How can you say that, he was on the phone last night. I could tell by your voice, that's who it was.'\n\n'He's dead. I've told you.'\n\nAt last the day has come when I must leave for Fairfields. It is all arranged. I have been there once already and know it to be a place of grated raw vegetables and children with restless eyes. It is also a place of poetry and music and of people with interesting lives and ideas.\n\n'I simply can't understand you. How could you with your education and your background breed like a rabbit\u2014'\n\n'You're always saying that, for years you've said it. I've told you, rabbits have six, I only one.'\n\n'How can you speak to me, your mother, like that.'\n\n'Oh shut up and remember this. I'm never coming back. Never!'\n\n'And another thing, Helena looks like a miner's child dressed up for an outing!' My mother does not like the white frock and the white socks and the white hair ribbons. I tie Helena's hair in two bunches with enormous bows and do not remind my mother that she bought the white frock, and the white socks and the white ribbons.\n\n'She'll get a headache, her hair pulled tight like that. And why white for a train journey, two train journeys. Oh Vera!' My mother, I can see, has tears in her eyes. 'Leave Helena here with me, your father and I would like to have her here with us, please! Besides, she is happy with us.'\n\nBut I will not be parted from my child. I throw a milk bottle across the kitchen, it shatters on the tiles and I am pleased because my mother is frightened. 'What's wrong with miners and their children and their outings?' I shout at her.\n\nPerhaps Helena would be happier with her grandmother. I do not want to think this and it is painful to be told.\n\nMy father comes with us to the station.\n\n'That's a nice coat,' he says, carrying it for me. It is my school winter coat, dark green and thick. It would not fit into my case so I have to carry it or wear it.\n\n'It's a new coat, is it?' he says feeling the cloth with his hands. I don't reply because I have been wearing the coat for so many years.\n\nWe are too early for the train. The platform is deserted.\n\n'It looks like a Loden,' he is still talking about the coat. 'Like an Austrian Loden cloth.' He is restless, my father, very white faced and he holds Helena's hand and walks up and down the platform, up and down. The coat on his other arm.\n\nAlways when my father sees off a train he is at the station too soon. And then, when the train is about to leave, when the whistle is being blown and the doors slam shut, one after the other down the whole length of the train, he rushes away and comes back with newspapers and magazines and pushes them through the window as he runs beside the now moving train. As the engine gets up steam and the carriages clank alongside the platform my father increases his speed, keeping up a smiling face outside the window.\n\nHis bent figure, his waving arms and his white face have always been the last things I have seen when leaving. I know too from being with him, seeing other people off, that he stands at the end of the platform, still waving, long after the train has disappeared.\n\nWalking up and down we do not speak to each other. The smell of the station and the sound of an engine at the other platform remind me of Ramsden and of the night several years earlier when I met her train. Ramsden, staff nurse Ramsden, arriving at midnight. There was a thick fog and her train was delayed.\n\n'I've invited Ramsden to come and stay for a few days,' I said to my mother then, assuming a nonchalance, a carelessness of speech to hide Ramsden's age and seniority.\n\n'Why of course Vera, a nursing friend is always welcome...' There had been a natural progression from school friend to nursing friend. My father never learned to follow, to keep up with this progression.\n\n'And is Miss Ramsden a good girl?' would be his greeting, a continuation of, 'and is Jeanie a good girl?' He would say it to Ramsden without seeing the maturity and the elegance and without any understanding of the superior quality of her underclothes.\n\n'My parents are looking forward to meeting you.' I invited Ramsden knowing already these other things.\n\nRamsden, with two tickets to Beethoven, in our Town Hall, prepared herself to make the long journey.\n\nPutting off the visit, in my mind, from one day to the next, reluctantly, at last I was in the Ladies Only waiting room crouched over a dying fire, thin lipped and hostile with the bitter night. My school coat heavy but not warm enough and my shoes soaked.\n\nRamsden, who had once, unasked, played the piano for my tears, arrived at last. I could see she was cold. She was pale and there were dark circles of fatigue round her eyes. She came towards me distinguished in her well-cut tailored jacket and skirt. Her clothing and manner set her apart immediately from the other disembarking passengers.\n\n'Miss Ramsden will have to share the room,' my mother said before I left for the station, 'your sister's come home again.' Shrugging and blinking I went on reading without replying. Reading, getting ready slowly, turning the page of my book, keeping one finger in the page while I dressed to go and meet the train.\n\nRamsden came towards me with both hands reaching out in leather gloves. At once she was telling me about the Beethoven, the choral symphony, and how she had been able to get tickets. There was Bach too, Cantata eighteen. Remember? She said. _For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven,_ she, beating time with one hand, sang, _so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth_... In the poor light of the single mean lamp her eyes were pools of pleasure and tenderness. She did not mind the black-out she said when I apologized for the dreariness of the station. 'Ramsden,' I said, 'I'm most awfully sorry but there's been something of a tragedy at home. I couldn't let you know... I'm so most awfully sorry...'\n\n'Not...?' Concern added more line to Ramsden's tired face. I nodded turning away from the smell of travelling which hung about the woollen cloth of her suit.\n\n'Oh Wright! I am so sorry, Veronica.' It was the first time she had spoken my first name, well almost the first time. I glanced at her luggage which stood by itself on the fast emptying platform. The case seemed to hold in its shape and leather the four long hours of travelling, the long tedious journey made twice as long by the fog.\n\nThere would be a stopping train to London coming through late, expected at three in the morning the porter said as Ramsden retrieved her case from its desolation.\n\nA glance into the waiting room showed that the remnant of the fire was now a little heap of cold ash. Perhaps, she suggested, even though there was no fire it would be warmer to sit in there.\n\n'I'm so sorry,' I said, 'I shall not be able to wait for your train.' So sorry, I told her, I must get back, simply must get back.\n\n'Is it...?' More concern caused Ramsden to raise her dark eyebrows. The question unfinished, I drew my arm away from her hand's touch. I thought of the needlework and embroidery book I had chosen from her room, too nervous with my act, then, to read the titles when, to please me, she said to choose a book to have to keep, as a present, from her shelf. The badly chosen book I thought, at the time, made me feel sick. I began that day, almost straight away, to feel sick.\n\nWe walked along the fog-filled platform. 'I've come to you all the way from London,' Ramsden, drawing me to her, began in her low voice. 'I'd hoped...' I turned away from the clumsy embrace of her breathed-out whispered words knowing her breath to be the breath of hunger.\n\n'I'm sorry,' I said again stiffening away from her, 'but I'll have to go.'\n\n'To them,' she said, 'yes of course, you must.' She nodded her understanding and her resignation.\n\n'I am sorry I can't wait till your train comes. I can't wait with you. I'm most awfully sorry!' Trying to change, to lift my accent to match hers.\n\nShe nodded again. I knew from before, though I couldn't see them, what her eyes would be like.\n\nI had to walk the three miles home as there were no buses at that time of night. The fog swirled cold in my face. The way was familiar but other things were not. My own body, for one thing, for I was trying, every day, to conceal my morning sickness.\n\nI turn away trying to avoid the place on the platform where Ramsden tried to draw me towards an intensity of feeling I could not be a part of that night.\n\n'She wasn't on the train,' I told my mother the next morning standing on purpose behind her flowered overall and keeping to the back of her head which was still encased in metal rollers. She was hurrying to get to the Red Cross depot. Her war effort.\n\n'It was a dreadful night for travelling,' my mother said, not turning from the sink, 'perhaps your Miss Ramsden will send a letter. You can invite her again, perhaps in the spring, we'll have more space then, perhaps by then your sister will be better.'\n\nMy father, running now beside the moving train, pushes a magazine and a comic through the window. I, because I feel I must, lean out and see him waving at the end of the platform. Helena, clinging to my skirt, cries for her Grandpa.\n\nUnable to stop thinking of Ramsden I wonder why do I think of her today after all this time of forgetting her. I never write to her. I never did write even when she wrote to me saying that she was still nursing and that she lived out, that she had a little flat which had escaped the bombs and if I liked to stay she would love to have me stay as long as I liked, 'as long as you feel like it'. I never answered. Never told her I had a child. Never let her into my poverty and never let her into my loneliness.\n\nLondon is full of people who seem to know where they are and to have some purpose in this knowing. I drag my case and the coat and Helena and change stations and at last we are travelling through the fields and summer meadows of Hertfordshire. The train, this time, is dirty and has no corridor and immediately Helena wants the lavatory. I hate the scenery.\n\nAt last we are climbing the steep field path from the bus stop to the school. Fairfields, I have been there once already and know the way. The path is a mud path after it leaves the dry narrow track through the tall corn which is turning, waving and rippling, from the green to gold, spotted scarlet with poppies and visited by humming hot-weather insects. I have seen before that the mud is caused by water seeping from two enormous manholes in the trees at the top of the hill. Drains, the drains of Fairfields School.\n\n'Who is that?' Helena stops whimpering. And I see a man standing quite still, half hidden by trees. He does not seem to be watching, rather it is as if he is trying to be unseen as we climb together. He does not move except to try and merge into a tree trunk. With the case I push Helena on up the steepest part of the path and I do not look back into the woods.\n\nIn the courtyard no one is about except for a little boy standing in the porch. He tells me his Granny will be coming to this door, that he is waiting to be fetched by her. 'My Granny's got a gas stove,' he tells me. I think suddenly of my mother's kitchen and wish that I could wait now at this door for her to come and fetch me and Helena. Straight away I want to go back.\n\nMiss Palmer, the Principal, the one they call Patch, I know this too from my earlier visit, carrying a hod of coke, comes round from an outhouse.\n\n'Ah!' she says. 'I see you mean to stay!' she indicates my winter coat. 'So this is Helena!' She glances at my child. 'She's buttoned up I daresay.' I know this to mean something not quite explained but I nod and smile. Patch tells me that no one is coming to fetch Martin. 'He's new, he hasn't,' she says, 'adjusted yet.'\n\nShe shows me my room which I am to share with Helena. It is bare except for a cupboard and two small beds. It is bright yellow with strong smelling distemper. There is a window, high up, strangled with creeper.\n\n'Feel free to wander,' Patch says, 'tea in the study at four. Children's tea in the playroom at five and then the bathings. Paint the walls if you feel creative.' She has a fleshy face and short, stiff hair, grey like some sort of metal. I do not dislike her.\n\n'Thank you,' I say, narrowing my eyes at the walls as if planning an exotic mural.\n\nHelena, pulling everything from the unlocked case, intones a monologue over her rediscovered few toys. I stare into the foliage and the thick mass of summer green leaf immediately outside the window.\n\nLater the Swiss girl, Josepha, who has the room opposite mine, takes me round the upstairs rooms which are strewn with sleeping children. We pull some of them out of bed and sit them on little chipped enamel pots. There is the hot smell of sleeping children and their pots.\n\nJosepha tells me the top bathroom is mine and she gives me a bath list. The face flannels and towels hang on hooks round the room.\n\nJosepha comes late to breakfast and takes most of the bread and the milk and the butter up to her room where her sweetheart, Rudi, sleeps. I heard their endless talk up and down in another language, the rise and fall of an incomprehensible muttering all night long, or so it seemed in my own sleeplessness.\n\nThe staff sit at breakfast in a well-bred studied shabbiness huddled round a tall copper coffee pot and some blue bowls of milk. Children are not allowed and it seems that I hear Helena crying and crying locked in our room upstairs. Patch does not come to breakfast but Myles, who is Deputy Principal, fetches prunes and ryvita for her. She is dark-eyed and expensively dressed like Ramsden but she has nothing of Ramsden's music and tenderness. She is aloof and flanked by two enormous dogs. She is something more than Deputy Principal. Josepha explains.\n\n'Do not go in,' Josepha points at Patch's door, 'if both together are in there.'\n\nWhen I dress Helena I take great trouble over her hair ribbons and let her, with many changes of mind, choose her dress because I am sorry for leaving her alone, locked in to cry in a strange place. I have come to Fairfields to work with the idea that it will give Helena school and companionship and already I have tried to persuade her, to beg her and finally rushed away from her frightened crying because staff offspring (Myles' words) are not allowed at staff meals. I take a long time dressing Helena and find that Josepha has dressed all the children from my list as well as her own. I begin to collect up the little pots.\n\n'No! Leave!' Josepha shouts and, tying the last child into a pinafore, she herds them downstairs. Moving swiftly Josepha can make me, with Helena clinging to my dress, seem useless.\n\nJosepha does the dining room and I am to do, with Olive Morris, the playroom where the smaller children have their meals. Mrs Morris has a little boy called Frank but Helena will not sit by him. She follows me with a piece of bread and treacle and I have to spend so much time cleaning her that Olive Morris does the whole breakfast and wipes the tables and the floor. She does not say anything only gets on with ladling cod-liver oil, which is free, into the children as they leave the little tables.\n\nI discover that Olive Morris has three children in the school and that Josepha feels it is morally right that Olive should work more than anyone else because of this. Josepha is always dragging children off to have their hair washed. She has enormous washing days and is often scrubbing something violently at ten o'clock at night. The smell of scorching accompanies the fierceness of her ironing.\n\n'Do not go in there,' she points to the first-floor bathroom, 'when Patch and Tanya are in there and,' she says, 'do not tell Myles!'\n\nTanya teaches art. She looks poor but Josepha says she is filthy rich and wears rags on purpose.\n\nTanya, on my first day, was painting headless clowns on the dining-room walls. She stepped back squinting at her work. 'They are going to play ball with the heads,' she explained bending down over her paint pots as if she had been talking to me for years.\n\n'What a good idea,' I said, ashamed of my accent and trying to sound as if I knew all about painting.\n\nThat day she asked me what time it was, saying that she must hurry and get her wrists slashed before Frederick comes back from his holiday.\n\nLater, in the pantry, she is there with both arms bandaged. 'Frederick the Great,' she says, 'he'll be back. Disinfectant, fly spray, cockroach powder and mouse traps. He will,' she says, 'ask you to examine his tonsils.'\n\nOlive Morris looks ill. Sometimes when I sit in my room at night with an old cardigan round the light to keep it off Helena's bed I think of Olive and begin to understand what real poverty is; her dreadful little bowls of never clean washing, the rags which she is forever mending and her pale crumpled face from which her worried eyes look out hopelessly.\n\nI have plenty of pretty clothes for Helena. And then it suddenly comes to me that this is the only difference. My prospects are the same as Olive's. I have as little hope for the future as she has. It just happens that at present, because of gifts from my mother, Helena, for the first years of her life, has been properly fed and is well dressed.\n\nOne hot afternoon I sit with the children in the sand pit hoping that they will play. There are only two little spades and the children quarrel and fight and bite each other. It is hard to understand why the children can't enjoy the spacious lawns and the places where they can run and shout and hide amongst the rose bushes. Beyond the lawn is deep uncut grass bright with buttercups and china-blue hare-bells. I am tired, tired in a way which makes me want to lie down in the long grass and close my eyes. Helena, crying, will not let me rest. The children are unhappy. I think it is because they do not have enough food. They are hungry all the time.\n\nI do lie down and I look up at the sky. Once I looked at the sky, not with Ramsden but after we had been talking together. I would like to hear Ramsden's voice now. It is strange to wish this after so long. Perhaps it is because everyone here seems to have someone. Relationships, as they are called here, are acceptable. And I, having no one, wishing for someone, vividly recall Ramsden. She said, that time in the morning before I went for my day off to sleep among the spindles of rosemary at the end of my mother's garden, that love was infinite. That it was possible, if a person loved, to believe in the spiritual understanding of truths which were not fully understood intellectually. She said that the person you loved was not an end in itself, was not something you came to the end of, but was the beginning of discoveries which could be made because of loving someone.\n\nLying in the grass, pushing Helena away, I think about this and wonder how I can bring it into the conversation at the four o'clock staff tea and impress Patch and Myles. I practise some words and an accent of better quality.\n\nBecause of being away from meadow flowers for so long I pick some buttercups and some of the delicate grasses adding their glowing tips to the bunch wondering, with bitter uneasiness, how I can get them unseen to my room. I can see Patch and Myles at the large window of Patch's room. Instead of impressing them I shall simply seem vulgar, acquisitive and stupid, clutching a handful of weeds, ineffectually shepherding the little children towards their meagre plates of lettuce leaves and Patch-rationed bread.\n\nIn the evening there is a thunder storm with heavy rain. I am caught in the rain on the way back from the little shop where I have tried to buy some fruit. The woman there asks me if I am from the school and if I am, she says she is unable to give me credit. In the shop there is the warm sweet smell of newspapers, firelighters and cheap sweets, aniseed, a smell of ordinary life which is missing in the life of the school. Shocked I tell her I can pay and I buy some poor-quality carrots as the apples, beneath their rosy skins, might be rotten. I will wash the carrots and give them to Helena when I have to leave her alone in our room in the mornings.\n\nThe storm is directly overhead, the thunder so loud I am afraid Helena will wake and be frightened so I do not shelter in the shop but hurry back along the main road, through the corn and up the steep path. I am wet through and the mud path is a stream. The trees sway and groan. I slip and catch hold of the undergrowth to stop myself from falling. When I look up I see that there is someone standing, half hidden, quite near, in the same place where a man was standing on that first afternoon. This man, I think it is the same man, is standing quite still letting the rain wash over him as it pours through the leaves and branches. His hair is plastered wet-sleeked on his round head and water runs in rivulets down his dark suit. He, like me, has no coat. He does not move and he does not speak. He seems to be looking at me as I try to climb the steep path as quickly as I can. I feel afraid. I have never felt or experienced fear like this before. Real terror, because of his stillness, makes my legs weak. I hurry splashing across the courtyard and make my way, trembling, round to the kitchen door. Wet and shivering I meet Olive Morris in the passage outside my room. She is carrying a basin of washing. Rags trail over her shoulder and her worn-out blouse, as usual, has come out of her skirt.\n\nI tell her about the man in the woods. 'Ought I to tell Patch?' I try to breathe calmly. 'It's getting dark out there. He's soaked to the skin. I ought to tell Patch.'\n\nOlive Morris's shapeless soft face is paler than ever and her lips twitch. She looks behind her nervously.\n\n'No,' she says in a low voice. 'No, never tell anyone here anything. Never!' she hurries off along to the other stairs which lead directly up to her room in the top gable of the house.\n\nWhile I am drying my hair, Olive Morris, in a torn raincoat, comes to my door.\n\n'I'm going down to post a letter,' she says putting a scarf over her head. 'So if I see your stranger in the trees I'll send him on his way \u2013 there's no need at all to have Myles go out with the dogs. No need at all.'\n\nMy surprise at the suggestion that Myles and the dogs might hunt the intruder is less than the feeling of relief that I need not go to Patch's room where Myles, renowned for her sensitive nudes, will be sketching Patch in charcoal and reading poetry aloud. They would smile at each other, exchanging intimate glances while Patch pretended to search her handbag for a ten shilling note as part of the payment owing to me, Myles had looked up gazing as if thoughtfully at me for a few minutes and then had resumed her reading of the leather-bound poems.\n\nJosepha is on bedroom duty and the whole school is quiet. Grateful that Helena has not been disturbed by the storm I lie down in my narrow bed.\n\nInstead of falling asleep I think of the school and how it is not at all as I thought it would be. Helena stands alone all day peering through partly closed doors watching the dancing classes. She looks on at the painting and at the clay-modelling and is only on the edge of the music.\n\nThere must be people who feel and think as I do but they are not here as I thought they would be. I want to lean out of a window in a city full of such people and call to some passer-by. I am by my own mistakes buried in this green-leafed corruption and I am alone.\n\nMy day off which Josepha did not tell me about till all the children were washed and dressed was a mixture of relief and sadness. A bus ride to town. Siting with Helena in a small cafe eating doughnuts. Choosing a sun hat for Helena. Buying some little wooden spades and some coloured chalks. Trying to eat a picnic lunch of fruit and biscuits on a road mender's heap of gravel chips. I can hardly bear to think about it. As I handed Helena her share and saw her crouched on the stones with her small hands trying to hold her food without a plate I knew how wrong it was that she was like this with no place to go home to.\n\nI think now over and over again that it is my fault that we are alone, more so than ever, at the side of the main road with cars and lorries streaming in both directions.\n\nThere is a sudden sound, a sound of shooting. Gun shots. I go into the dark passage. From Josepha's room comes the usual running up and down of their voices, first hers and then his. I am afraid to disturb them. A door further down clicks open and I see, with relief, it is Tanya.\n\n'Oh it's you Tanya! Did you hear anything just now?'\n\n'Lord no. I never hear a thing m'dear and I never ask questions either so if you've been letting anyone in or out I just wouldn't know darling.'\n\nI tell her about the shot.\n\n'Lord!' Tanya says. 'That's Frederick. Back from his leave. Frederick the Great, literature and drama. Room's over the stables. Never unpacks. Got a Mother. North London. Cap gun. Shoots off gun for sex. The only trouble is darling,' Tanya drawls, 'the orgasm isn't shared.' She disappears into the bathroom saying that she's taken an overdose and so must have her bath quickly.\n\nI go on up the next lot of stairs to Olive's room. I have never been there. I must talk to someone. Softly I knock on the door. At once Olive opens it as if she is waiting on the other side of it.\n\n'Oh it's you!' Her frightened white face peers at me.\n\n'Can I come in?' I step past her hesitation into her room. It is not my intention to be rude, I tell her, it is my loneliness. Olive catches me by the arm. Her eyes implore. I am suddenly ashamed for, sitting up in bed wearing a crumpled shirt and a tie, is a man. The man I had seen standing with sinister patience in the rain.\n\n'Oh Olive, I am so sorry. I do beg...'\n\n'This is Mr Morris, my husband. This is Vera Wright, dear,' Olive whispers a plain introduction.\n\n'Pleased to meet you I'm sure,' Mr Morris says. I continue to mumble words of apology and try to move backwards to the door.\n\nThe three Morris children are all in a heap asleep in a second sagging double bed up against the gable window. Washing is hanging on little lines across the crowded room and Mr Morris's suit is spread over the bed ends to dry.\n\n'Mr Morris is on his way to a business conference,' Olive begins to explain. I squeeze her arm. 'I'll see you tomorrow,' I say. We are wordless at the top of the steep stairs. She is tucking her blouse into her too loose skirt. It seems to me that she will go on performing this little action forever even when she has no clothes on.\n\n'No one at all knows that Mr Morris is here,' she says in a breaking whisper.\n\nAt breakfast I wish I had someone to whom I could carry, with devotion, bread and butter and coffee. I could not envy Myles because of Patch, or Josepha because of Rudi. Tanya must be feeling as I feel for she prepares a little tray for Frederick and is back almost at once with a swollen bruised bleeding nose and quite quickly develops two black eyes which, it is clear, will take days to fade.\n\nIt would be nice for Olive to sail into breakfast and remove a quantity of food bearing it away with dignity to the room in the top gable.\n\n'I suppose you know,' I say to Patch when we meet by chance in the hall, 'that Olive Morris's husband arrived unexpectedly last night and will be with us for a few days.'\n\nPatch says, 'Is he dear?' That is all.\n\nMr Morris, who is a big man, wears his good suit every day thus setting himself somewhat apart from the rest of us. He comes to supper and tells us stories about dog racing. His dogs win. He tells us about boxing and wrestling. He has knocked out all the champs. He knows all their names and the dates of the matches. He knows confidence men who treble their millions in five minutes. His brothers and sisters teach in all the best universities and his dear old mother is the favourite Lady in Waiting at Buckingham Palace. Snooker is his forte, a sign, he tells us, of a misspent youth. He sighs.\n\nPatch comes to supper every night. Josepha stops shouting at Olive. Mr Morris calls Olive 'Lovey' and reminds her, for us all to hear, of extravagant incidents in their lives. He boasts about his older children regaling us with their exam results and sporting successes. Olive withers. She is smaller and paler and trembles visibly when Patch, in a genial mood, with mockery and amusement in her voice, leads Mr Morris into greater heights of story telling. While he talks his eyes slide sideways as he tries to observe us all and see the effects of his fast-moving mouth.\n\nMr Morris, we have to see, is the perfect husband and father. During the day he encourages his children and the other children to climb all over him. He organizes games and races, promising prizes.\n\nHe gives all sorts of presents, the table in the kitchen is heaped with chickens and ducks, ready for the oven, jars of honey and expensive jams and baskets of apples and fresh vegetables. Patch prepares the meals herself. Our vegetarian diet was only because the local butchers, unpaid, no longer supply the school.\n\nFrederick, refusing to come to meals, refusing to leave the loft, has a bucket on a string into which Josepha, he will not take from anyone else, puts chicken breasts and bread and butter and a white jug of milk. Tanya says if there is any wormy fruit or fly-blown meat Frederick the Great will get it. He, she explains, because of always searching for them, attracts the disasters in food.\n\n'Where is Mr Philbrick?' Patch asks correcting quickly what she calls a fox's paw, a slip of the tongue. 'Mr Morris? Why isn't he here?' She is carving, with skill, the golden chickens and Myles is serving the beans and baby carrots which shine in butter. Olive can hardly swallow a mouthful.\n\n'What's keeping Mr Morris?' I ask her loud enough for Patch's ears. 'Anything wrong?' devouring my plateful. 'Is someone ill?'\n\n'No. No \u2013 it's nothing at all,' she whispers.\n\nTowards the end of the meal Mr Morris comes in quietly and sits down next to the shrinking Olive. Patch, with grease on her large chin, hands a plate of chicken to him. Thickset, stockily at the head of the table, she sings contralto as if guarding a secret with undisturbed complacence.\n\nThere is a commotion in the hall and the sound of boots approaching.\n\n'It is the Politz!' Josepha, on bedroom duty, calls from the stairs.\n\nMr Morris leaps up.\n\n'Leave this to me dear Lady,' he says to Patch. And, with a snake-like movement, he is on his way to the door.\n\nWe follow just in time to see Mr Morris, suddenly small and white-faced, being led in handcuffs to the front door and out to a car which, with the engine running, is waiting.\n\nI want to say something to Olive to comfort her.\n\n'It's better this way,' she says, 'better for him this way, better than them getting him with dogs. And the children,' she says, 'they didn't see anything.' I don't ask her what Mr Morris has done. She does not tell me anything except that Mr Morris finds prison life unbearable and that he has a long stretch of it ahead.\n\nPatch walks about the school singing and eating the ends off a crusty loaf. When the bills come addressed to her for all the presents from Mr Morris she laughs and tosses them into the kitchen fire.\n\nOne of the little boys rushing through the hall stops to glance at Tanya's latest painting.\n\n'How often do you have sexual intercourse?' he pauses long enough in his flight to ask.\n\n'Three times a week.' Tanya steps back to squint at her work. 'Never more, never less,' she says.\n\nTanya says that Frederick the Great is coming down from the loft and will be at supper. I wash my hair and put on my good dress and go down to the meal early rejoicing that it is Olive's night to settle the children. I am looking forward to meeting Frederick. Perhaps, at last, there will be someone for me. Olive scuttles by with her tray which she must eat upstairs. I hear the uproar from the bedrooms and smile to myself.\n\nFrederick is bent in a strange contortion over the sink in the pantry. He is trying to see into his throat with a torch and a small piece of broken mirror stuck into the loose window frame. I am glad to be able to meet him without Josepha and Tanya.\n\n'Would you mind looking at my throat,' he says straightening up. He is very tall and his eyes enclosed in gold-rimmed spectacles do not look at me. 'I've been trying a new gargle.' He hands me the torch and I peer into his throat.\n\n'Is it painful?' I feel I should ask him.\n\n'Not at all,' he says, taking back the torch.\n\nIn the dining room Frederick has a little table to himself in the corner. He eats alone quickly and leaves at once. I sit in my usual place. One of the children is practising on the pantry piano. I listen to the conscientious stumblings. Ramsden played Bach seriously repeating and repeating until she was satisfied and then moving on to the next phrases.\n\nIn my head I compose a letter to Ramsden... _this neck of the woods_ , this is not my way but it persists, _this neck of the woods is not far from London. Any chance of your coming down one afternoon? Staff tea is at four. I'd love to see you and show you round_...\n\nThere is so much I would tell Ramsden.\n\n_For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth_\n\n_not thither, but watereth the earth, and make it bring forth and bud,_\n\n_that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:_\n\nI want to write to Ramsden. After that night and after almost five years how do I address her? Dear Ramsden? Dear staff nurse Ramsden? She might be Sister Ramsden. She might not be nursing now though she did go on after the end of the war. She might be married though I think that is unlikely, perhaps she is on concert platforms...\n\n_Dear Ramsden I have no way at all of getting away from this place. Please Ramsden can you come? Please?_\n\nPatch and Myles come in to supper. Ignoring me they devotedly help each other to mountains of grated raw carrots and cabbage.\n\n# MY FATHER'S MOON\n\nBefore this journey is over I intend to speak to the woman. _Ramsden_ , I shall say, _is it you?_ The train has just left the first station, there is plenty of time in which to contemplate the conversation; the questions and the answers and the ultimate revelation. It is comfortable to think about the possibilities.\n\nThe woman siting on the other side, diagonally opposite, could be someone I used to know. A long time ago. In another place. Her clothes are of the same good quality, the same materials, even the same colours. It is the tilt of the head which is so remarkably similar. She looks like someone who is passionately fond of the cello. Fond of listening to the cello. I look at her hands and feel sure she plays the piano. When I look at her hands it is as if I can hear her playing a Mozart sonata or practising something from Bach. Repeating and repeating phrases until a perfection is achieved. I am certain, as I go on looking, that she plays Cyril Scott's _Water Wagtail_.\n\nFor some time now I have travelled by suburban train to and from the places where I work. This evening I am on the earlier train. I caught the earlier train on purpose even though, because of this, I arrive too soon...\n\nThe unfamiliar early train travels, of course, through the same landscape, the familiar. There is nothing remarkable in this. It is my reason for taking this train which makes the journey remarkable. The train stops at the same stations but naturally the people getting in or out are not the same people as those of the later train.\n\nI sit staring out of the window at the same meeting places of unknown roads, at the backs of the same shabby houses and garden fences, at the same warehouses and the same smash repair yards and at the now well-known backs of the metropolitan markets.\n\nAbout once a week I catch the earlier train for a special reason. Every week it is the same. Every week I think that this time I will speak to her. This week I am on this train in order to speak to her. I will cross from my seat and sit by her and I will speak to her. I always sit where I can see her from the side and from the back and I sit close enough to hear her voice if she should speak. I long to hear the voice, her voice, to know whether it is the same voice. Voices and ways of speaking often remain unchanged.\n\nThis time I almost brought the violin case with me though I am not now accustomed to carrying it when I go out. If Ramsden saw the violin case, if the woman saw it, she would remember.\n\n'They're both in good condition,' the man in the shop said. 'Both the same price. Choose your pick,' he said. 'Take your time.'\n\nI could not make up my mind, and then I chose the violin case. The following week I went back for the camera case but it had gone. The violin case had once been lined with some dark red soft material, some of it was still left. I only opened it once and it was then I saw the remains of the lining. I carried the case whenever I went out.\n\nThe first time I saw Ramsden the sentry at the hospital gates had his bayonet fixed. He looked awkward and he blushed as he said, 'Who goes there!' Surprised, I told him my name and my identity-card number, it was the middle of the morning and we were challenged, as a rule, only after dark. I supposed the rule must have been changed. A despatch from H.Q., I thought, seeing in my mind the nimble motor cyclist arrive.\n\nRamsden, on her way out, gave a small smile in the direction of the violin case and I was pleased that I had bought it. On that day I had been at the hospital for seven weeks.\n\nTwo people sitting behind me are talking in German. I begin to listen to the animated conversation and grope for meanings in what they are saying in this language which was once familiar. I begin to recognize a few words: _eine Dame_... _keine Ahnung_... _langsam_... _Milch und Tr\u00e4nenb\u00e4che_... _mein Elend_... _zu grosser Schmerz und so weiter_. But I want the words of cherishing spoken in German. I want those first words the child remembers on waking to the knowing of language. I wish now in the train to be spoken to as _du_...\n\nThe woman sitting on the other side is looking calmly out of the window. Naturally she sees the same things that I see. It is quite comfortable to know that I have only to lean over and touch her sleeve.\n\nI never worked with Ramsden. I saw her sometimes in the dining room. There are several little pictures of her in my mind. The doctors called her Miss Ramsden. She did the penicillin syringes too. One nurse, usually a senior, spent the whole day cleaning and sterilizing the syringes and the needles, setting up the trolley, giving the injections and then clearing the trolley and cleaning and sterilizing and checking all over again. Whenever I passed the glass doors of the ward where she was I saw her in the sterilizing room seriously attending to the syringes and needles for the three-hourly injections.\n\n'Ramsden,' I said, 'this is the part we like isn't it? This part, this is it, we like this...'\n\n'It's the anticipation,' she replied, 'it's what is hoped for and then realized.' She was sitting on the edge of her bed.\n\n'This part, this...' I said once more. I pointed with one finger as if to place the cello somewhere in the space between us. 'This going down part,' I said, 'is the part we like best.'\n\nRamsden nodded. She was mending a stocking. Her stockings were not the usual ones, not the grey uniform stockings which were lisle and, after repeated washing, were hard to mend. Ramsden's stockings, I noticed immediately, were smooth and soft and they glistened like honey. Dark, honey-coloured stockings. Ramsden's stockings were silk stockings. She was oversewing a run at the ankle. Her sewing was done so carefully I knew the repair would be invisible. She had invited me into her room to listen to a record.\n\n'Do you know why you like it?' she repeated an earlier question. The cello reminded me of her. How could I tell her this. It shook my head. Staff nurse Ramsden, she was senior to me. When she listened to music she sat with her legs crossed over and she moved her foot very slightly, I could see, in time to the music. How could I speak to her about the downward thrust of the cello and about the perfection in the way the other instruments came up to meet the cello. How could I say to her that I thought someone had measured the movement of the notes controlling carefully the going down and the coming up in order to produce this exquisite mixture. There were other things too that I could not speak about. How could I say to her what I thought about the poet Rilke, about his face and about how I felt when I looked at his photograph in the book she had. She knew his poems, understood them. I wanted to tell her that when I looked at Rilke's face I felt clumsy as if made of wood. Even the way he stood in the photograph had something special about it and when I read a poem of his to myself I wanted to read lines aloud to her. 'Listen to this, Ramsden,' I wanted to say, 'listen to this.'\n\nBut hand in hand now with that God she walked,\n\nher paces circumscribed by lengthy shroudings\n\nuncertain, gentle, and without impatience.\n\nWrapt in herself, like one whose time is near...\n\nThere were other things too from _Orpheus_ , but she knowing his poems might have felt I was intruding. When I read Rilke everything I was trying to write seemed commonplace and unmusical, completely without any delicacy and refinement. I never told Ramsden I was trying to write because what I wrote was about her. I wanted to write about Ramsden. How could I tell her that?\n\nLater when she talked about the music she said the soloist was innocent and vulnerable. She said the music was eloquent ant that there was something intimate about the cello. She was very dignified and all her words seemed especially chosen. I wanted her to say them all again to me. The word intimate, I had never before spoken to anyone who used this word. She said the cello, the music of the cello, was intimate. Ramsden's discipline prevented her from repeating what she had said. She continued to oversew her stocking and we listened once more to the second movement. When I listened to a particular passage in this movement I seemed to see Ramsden walking ahead of me with great beech trees on either side of her. Magnificent smooth trees with their rain-soaked branches darkened and dripping. Then we were walking together, I imagined, beneath these trees, with the wet leaves deep round our ankles. Ramsden, I thought, would have small ribbed socks on over her stockings...\n\nLyrical, she said the music was lyrical and I was not sure what she meant. She said then, that, if I liked, I could borrow her records.\n\nWhen I played the record at home my father, not knowing the qualities of the cello, asked if I could make the music a bit quieter. It was my day off, most of it had been wasted because I slept and no one woke me. My father asked was there a piano piece, he said he liked the piano very much. I told him that staff nurse Ramsden played the piano and my mother said perhaps Miss Ramsden would come some time and play the piano for us. She said she would make a fire in the front room and we could all sit and listen...\n\nBecause I caught the earlier train I have an hour to spare before it is time for the clinic to open. The people who attend this clinic will be setting off from their houses in order to keep their appointments.\n\nI walk to a bus stop where there is a bench and, though I am in a familiar place, I feel as if I have come to a strange land. In one sense there is a strangeness because all the old houses and their once cared for gardens have gone. In their place are tall concrete buildings, floor upon floor of offices, all faced with gleaming windows. Some lit up and some dark. The buildings rise from parking lots all quite similar but unrecognizable as though I have never seen them before. Small trees and bushes planted as ornaments offer a few twigs and leaves. The new buildings are not at peace with their surroundings. They are not part of the landscape, they are in imposition. They do not match each other and they have taken away any tranquillity, any special quality of human life the streets may have had once.\n\nThe Easter lilies, uncherished, appear as they do every year with surprising suddenness, their pink and white long-lasting freshness bursting out of the brown, bald patches of earth at the ends of those places which have been left out from the spreading bitumen.\n\nIf I had spoken in the train I could have said, 'Ramsden,' I could have said, 'I feel sad. Lately I seem unable to prevent a feeling of melancholy which comes over me as soon as I wake up. I feel nervous and muddled and everything is accompanied by a sense of sorrow and futility.' Should I join a sect? I could have asked her. A cult? On TV these people, with a chosen way, all look light hearted. They dance carrying bricks and mortar across building sites. They jive and twist and break-dance from kitchens to dining rooms carrying wooden platters of something fresh and green neatly chopped up. Perhaps it is uncooked spinach. Perhaps it is their flying hair and their happy eyes which attract, but then the memory of the uneasiness of communal living and the sharing of possessions and money seems too difficult, too frightening to contemplate. In real life it won't, I could have told her, it won't be the same as it is on T V. Probably only the more sparkling members of the sect are filmed, I could have said this too, and something is sure to be painted on the spinach to make it look more attractive. Food in advertisements, I could have been knowledgeable, food in advertisements is treated before being photographed. I left the train at my station without another glance in her direction.\n\nPerhaps the lilies are a reminder and a comfort. Without fail they flower at Easter. Forgotten till they flower, and unsought simultaneous caution and blessing.\n\nIt seems to me now, when I think of it, that my father was always seeing me off either at a bus stop or at the station. He would suggest that he come to the bus or the train just as I was about to leave. Sometimes he came part of the way in the train getting out at the first stop and then, waiting alone, he would travel on the first train back. Because of the decision being made at the last minute, as the train was moving, he would have only a platform ticket so, as well as all the waiting and the extra travelling, he would be detained at the other end to make explanations and to pay his fare for both directions. All this must have taken a lot of time. And sometimes in the middle of winter it was bitterly cold.\n\nThe strong feeling of love which goes from the parent to the child does not seem a part of the child which can be given back to the parent. I realize now with regret that I never thought then of his repeated return journeys. I never thought of the windswept platforms, of the small smouldering waiting-room fires and the long, often wet, walks from the bus to the house. I simply always looked ahead, being already on my journey even before I set out, to the place to which I was going.\n\nThe minutes which turned out to be the last I was to have with my father were at a railway station. When it was time for my train to leave even when the whistle was being blown my father went on with what he was saying. He said that if we never saw each other again I must not mind. He was getting older he said then, he was surprised at how quickly he was getting older and though he planned to live a long time it might be that we should not be able to make the next journeys in time. It is incredible that I could have paid so little attention then and the longing to hear his voice once more at this moment is something I never thought of till now.\n\nHe had his umbrella with him and when the train began to move he walked beside the moving train for as long as he could waving the umbrella. I did not think about the umbrella then either. But now I remember that during the years he often left it in trains and it travelled the length and breadth of England coming back at intervals labelled from Liverpool, Norfolk, St Ives and Glasgow to the lost-property office where he was, with a kind of apologetic triumph, able to claim it.\n\nThe huge Easter moon, as if within arm's length, as if it can be reached simply by stretching out both hands to take it and hold it, is low down in the sky, serene and full, lighting the night so that it looks as if everything is snow covered, and deep shadows lie across pale, moon-whitened lawns. This moon is the same moon that my father will have seen. He always told me when I had to leave for school, every term when I wept because I did not want to leave, he told me that if I looked at the moon, wherever I was, I was seeing the same moon that he was looking at. 'And because of this,' he said, 'you must know that I am not very far away. You must never feel lonely,' he said. He said the moon would never be extinguished. Sometimes, he said, it was not possible to see the moon, but it was always there. He said he liked to think of it as his.\n\nI waited once for several hours at a bus stop, a temporary stop on a street corner in London. There was a traffic diversion and the portable sign was the final stop for the Green Line from Hertford. It was the long summer evening moving slowly into the night of soft dusty warmth. A few people walked on the pavement. All of them had places they were going to. A policeman asked me if everything was all right.\n\n'I'm waiting for someone,' I told him. I waited with Helena for Ramsden.\n\nIn the end, in my desperation, I did write my letter to Ramsden asking her to help me to leave Fairfields, the school where I had gone to live and work taking Helena with me. It was a progressive boarding school. There was not enough food and I was never paid. In my letter I told Ramsden everything that had happened, about my child, about my leaving home, about my loneliness, about my disappointment with the school. I had not expected, I told her, such fraudulent ways. My poverty, I thought, would be evident without any description. After writing the letter I was not able to wait for a reply from Ramsden because, when I went to give notice that I wanted to leave in a fortnight, Patch (the headmistress) replied in her singing voice, the dangerous contralto in which she encouraged people to condemn and entangle themselves, 'By all means but please do go today. There's a bus at the end of the field path at three o'clock.' Neither she nor Miss Myles, after exchanging slightly raised eyebrows with one another, said anything else to me.\n\nI sent my letter to the last address I had from Ramsden almost five years earlier. She was, she said then, still nursing and had a little flat where I would be welcome. Five years is a long time.\n\nI told her in my letter that I would wait for her at the terminus of the Green line. As I wrote I could not help wondering if she was by now playing the piano in concerts. Perhaps on tour somewhere in the north of England; in the places where concert pianists play. I tried to think of likely towns and villages. As I wrote I wept, remembering Ramsden's kind eyes and her shy manner. Staff nurse Ramsden with her older more experienced face \u2013 as someone once described her \u2013 and her musician's nose \u2013 someone else had said once. She had never known what there was to know about the violin case I carried with me in those days. It had been my intention always to tell her but circumstances changed intentions.\n\nI begged her in the letter and in my heart to be there. Five years is a long time to ignore a kind invitation from someone. A long time to let pass without any kind of reply. With failing hope I walked slowly up and down the pavement which still held the dust and the warmth of the day. I walked and waited with Helena who was white faced and hungry and tired. Sometimes she sat on our heavy case on my roughly folded school winter coat. I tried to comfort myself with little visions of Ramsden playing the piano and nodding and smiling to Helena who would dance, thump-thump, on the carpet in the little living room. I seemed to remember that Ramsden said in the letter, sent all those years ago, that the flat was tiny.\n\n'You'd best be coming along with me.' It was the policeman again. He had passed us several times. Helena was asleep on the folded coat and I was leaning against the railings at the front of an empty house.\n\nThe woman in charge of the night shelter gave me a small huckaback towel and a square of green soap. She said she had enough hot water if Helena and I could share a bath.\n\n'She's very like you,' the woman said not trying very hard to hide her curiosity behind a certain sort of kindness. She gave us two slices of bread and butter and a thick cup of tea each. She handed me two grey blankets and said Helena would be able to sleep across the foot of the bed she was able to let me have for one night. The girl who had the bed, she explained, was due to come out of hospital where she had been operated on to have a propelling pencil removed from her bladder.\n\n'The things they'll try,' the woman said. 'I or anyone, for that matter, could have told her she was too far gone for anything like that. All on her own too pore thing. Made herself properly poorly and lorst her baby too.' She looked at Helena who was eating her bread and butter, crusts and all, neatly in what seemed to me to be an excessive show of virtue.\n\n'There's some as keeps their kiddies,' the woman said.\n\n'Yes,' I said avoiding her meaning looks. The night shelter for women carried an implication. There was more than the need of a bed. At St Cuthberts the nurses had not been too sympathetic. I remembered all too clearly herding A.T.S. girls into one of the bathrooms every evening where they sat naked from the waist down in chipped enamel basins of hot water and bicarbonate of soda. In her lectures the Sister Tutor reminded often for the need to let patients be as dignified as possible. The hot basins defied this. Many of the girls were pregnant. Some women, the Sister Tutor said, mistook the orifices in their own bodies. All this, at that time, belonged to other people.\n\nLater my own child was to be the embodiment of all that was poetical and beautiful and wished for. Before she was born I called her Beatrice. I forgot about the A.T.S.\n\nGrateful for the hot bath and the tea and the promised bed I addressed the woman in charge as Sister.\n\nDid the Sister, I asked her, ever know a staff nurse called Ramsden? The woman, narrowing her eyes, thought for a moment and said yes she thought she had \u2013 now she recalled it. There was a Ramsden she thought, yes she was sure, who joined the Queens Nurses and went to Mombassa. I tried to take comfort from the doubtful recollection. Yes, went to Mombassa with the Queens Nurses. Very fine women the Queens Nurses. And one night, so she'd heard, the cook in the nurses' quarters was stabbed by an intruder. Horribly stabbed, a dozen or more times in the chest, the neck and the stomach. Apparently the murder was justified, brought on by the cook's own behaviour \u2013 him having gone raving mad earlier that same day. But of Ramsden herself she had no actual news.\n\nI understood as I lay under the thin blanket that she had been trying to offer some sort of reply to my stupid and hopeless question. Perhaps the cook in Mombassa was often murdered horribly in these attempts to provide answers.\n\nI tried to sleep but Helena, accustomed to a bed to herself, kicked unbearably all night.\n\nBeing at a bus stop, not waiting for a bus, and with the dusk turning quickly to darkness, I think of my father's moon. This moon, once his moon and now mine, is now climbing the warm night sky. It hangs in the branches of a single tree left between the new buildings.\n\nThe journey to school is always, it seems, at dusk. My father comes to the first stop. This first journey is in the autumn when the afternoons are dark before four o'clock. The melancholy railway crawls through water-logged meadows where mourning willow trees follow the winding steams. Cattle, knee deep in damp grass, raise their heads as if in an understanding of sorrow as the slow train passes. The roads at the level crossings are deserted. No one waits to wave and curtains of drab colours are pulled across the dimly lit cottage windows.\n\nAt the first stop there is a kind of forced gaiety in the meetings on the platform. Some girls have already been to school and others, like me, are going for the first time. My father watches and when the carriage doors are slammed, one after the other, he melts away from the side of the train as it moves slowly along the platform gradually gathering speed, resuming its journey.\n\nI sink back at once into that incredible pool of loneliness which is, I know now but did not understand then, a part of being one of a crowd. I try to think of the moon. Though it is not Easter, my father said before the doors had all slammed, there will be, if the clouds disperse, a moon. He pointed as he spoke towards the dome of the railway station. Because he pointed with his umbrella I felt embarrassed and, instead of looking up, I stared at my shoes. I try to think about his moon being behind the clouds even if I cannot see it. I wish, I am wishing I had smiled and waved to him.\n\nIn the noisy compartment everyone is talking and laughing. We are all refected in the windows and the dark, shadowed fields slip by on both sides.\n\nThe school bus, emblazoned with an uplifting motto, rattles through an unfamiliar land. The others sing songs which I have never heard before. There is no moon. The front door of the school opens directly on to the village street. Everyone rushes from the bus and the headmaster and his wife stand side by side in a square of light to receive us.\n\n'Wrong hand Veronica. It is Veronica isn't it?' he ticks my name on a list he has. 'Other hand Veronica. We always shake hands with the right hand.'\n\nWhen I unpack my overnight bag I am comforted by the new things, the new nightdress, the handkerchiefs and the stockings folded carefully by my mother. Especially my new fountain pen pleases me.\n\nAlmost at once I begin my game of comparisons, placing myself above someone if more favourable and below others if less favourable in appearance. This game of appearance is a game of chance. Chance can be swayed by effort, that is one of the rules, but effort has to be more persistent than is humanly possible. It is a game of measuring the unfamiliar against the familiar. I prefer the familiar. I like to know my way, my place with other people, perhaps because of other uncertainties.\n\nI am still on the bench at the bus stop. My father's moon is huge and is now above the tree in a dark-blue space between the buildings. A few cars have come. I have seen their headlights dip and turn off and I have seen the dark shapes of people making their way into the place where my clinic is. They will sit in the comfortable chairs in the waiting room till they are called in to see me. Unavoidably I am late sometimes but they wait.\n\nAt the other place where I work there is a scent of hot pines. The sun, beating down on a nearby plantation all day, brings into the warm still air a heart-lifting fragrance. There is a narrow path pressed into the dry grass and the fallen pine needles. This is the path I take to and from the railway station. Sometimes I suggest to other people that they walk on this path. The crows circling and calling suggest great distance. Endless paddocks with waving crops could be quite close on the other side of the new tall buildings. The corridors indoors smell of toast, of coffee and of hot curries. It is as if there are people cooking at turning points on the paths and in corners between the buildings. It is as if they have casually thrown their saris over the cooking pots to protect them from the prevailing winds.\n\nFrom where I sit it seems as if the moon is shining with some secret wisdom. I read somewhere that it was said of Chekhov that he _shows us life's depths at the very moment when he seems to reflect its shimmering surface_.\n\nMy father's moon is like this.\n\nBut the game. The game of comparisons. Before meals at school we have to stand in line beginning with the smallest and ending with the tallest. The room is not very big and the tallest stand over the smallest. We are not allowed to speak and our shoes and table napkins are examined by the prefects. It is during this time of silence and inspection that I make my comparisons. Carefully I am comparing my defects with those of my immediate neighbours. I glance sideways at the pleats of their tunics and notice that the girl next to me bulges. In my mind I call her Bulge; her pleats do not lie flat, they bulge. She is tall and awkward, taller than I am and more round shouldered. I try to straighten my back and to smooth my tunic pleats. I can be better than Bulge. She has cracked lips and she bites her nails. I try not to chew my nails but my hands are not well kept as are the hands of the girl on the other side of me. She has pretty nails and her hair is soft and fluffy. My hair is straight but not as greasy and uneven as Bulge's. Fluffy Hair's feet turn out when she walks. My feet are straight but my stockings are hopelessly wrinkled and hers are not. We all have spots. Bulge's spots are the worst, Fluffy Hair's complexion is the best. She is marred by a slight squint. We all wear spectacles. These are all the same except that Bulge has cracked one of her lenses. My lenses need cleaning.\n\nIt is the sound of someone closing a case very quietly in the dormitory after the lights have been turned off which makes me cry. It is the kind of sound which belongs to my mother. This quiet little closing of a case. My nightdress, which she made, is very comfortable. It wraps round me. She knitted it on a circular needle, a kind of stockinette she said it was, very soft, she said. When she had finished it she was very pleased because it had no seams. She was telling our neighbour, showing her the nightdress and the new clothes for school, all marked with my name embroidered on linen tape. The cabin trunk bought specially and labelled clearly 'Luggage in Advance' in readiness for the journey by goods train produced an uneasy excitement. My mother, handling the nightdress again, spoke to me:\n\n_ein weiches reines Kleid f\u00fcr dich zu weben,_\n\n_darin nicht einmal die geringste Spur_\n\n_Von Naht dich dr\u00fcckt_...\n\n'Shut up,' I said, not liking her to speak to me in German in front of the woman from next door. 'Shut up,' I said again, knowing from the way she spoke it was a part of a poem. 'Shut up,' I crushed the nightdress back into the overnight bag, 'it's only a nightgown!'\n\nWhen I stop crying I pretend that the nightdress is my mother holding me.\n\nOn our second Sunday afternoon I am invited with Bulge and Fluffy Hair and Helen Ferguson and another girl called Amy to explore a place called Harpers Hill. Bulge is particularly shapeless in her Sunday dress. My dress, we have to wear navy-blue serge dresses, is already too tight for me and it is only the second Sunday. Fluffy Hair's dress belongs to her Auntie and has a red lace collar instead of the compulsory white linen one. The collars are supposed to be detachable so that they can be washed.\n\nI wish I could be small and neat and pretty like Amy, or even quick like Helen Ferguson who always knows what's for breakfast the night before. Very quickly she understands the system and knows in advance the times of things, the difference between Morning Meeting and Evening Meeting and where we are supposed to be at certain times, whose turn it is to mop the dormitory and which nights are bath nights. I do not have this quality of knowing and when I look at Helen Ferguson I wonder why I am made as I am. In class Helen Ferguson has a special way of sitting with one foot slightly in front of the other and she sucks her pen while she is thinking. I try to sit as she does and try to look as if I am thinking while I suck the rounded end of my new pen.\n\nDuring Morning Meeting I am worrying about the invitation which seems sinister in some way. It is more like a command from the senior girls. I try and listen to the prayer at the beginning of Meeting. We all have to ask God to be in our hearts. All the time I am thinking of the crossroads where we are supposed to meet for the walk. Bulge does not stop chewing her nails and her fingers all through Meeting. I examine my nails, chew them and, remembering, sit on my hands.\n\nBetween autumn-berried hedges in unscratched shoes and new stockings we wait at the crossroads. The brown ploughed fields slope to a new horizon of heavy cloud. There are some farm buildings quite close but no sign of people. The distant throbbing of an invisible tractor and the melancholy cawing of the rooks bring back the sadness and the extraordinary fear of the first Sunday afternoon walk too vividly. I try not to scream as I screamed that day and I try not to think about the longed for streets crowded with people and endlessly noisy with trams. It is empty in the country and our raincoats are too long.\n\nThe girl, the straw-coloured one they call Etty, comes along the road towards us. She says it's to be a picnic and the others are waiting with the food not far away. She says to follow her. A pleasant surprise, the picnic. She leads us along a little path across some fields to a thicket. We have to bend down to follow the path as it winds between blackberry and under other prickly bushes. Our excited talk is soon silenced as we struggle through a hopeless tangle of thorns and bramble. Amy says she thinks we should turn back. Bulge has the most awful scratches on her forehead. Amy says, 'Look, her head's bleeding.' But Etty says no we shall soon get through to the place.\n\nSuddenly we emerge high up on the edge of a sandy cliff. 'It's a landslide!' I say and, frightened, I try to move away from the edge. Before we have time to turn back the girls, who have been hiding, rush out and grab us by the arms and legs. They tie us up with our own scarves and raincoat belts and push us over the edge and down the steep rough walls of the quarry. I am too frightened to cry out or to resist. Bulge fights and screams in a strange voice quite unlike any voice I have ever heard. Four big girls have her by the arms and legs. They pull her knickers off as she rolls over kicking. Her lumpy white thighs show above the tops of her brown woollen stockings.\n\n'Not this man but Barrabas! Not this man but Barrabas!' they shout. 'She's got pockets in her knickers! Pockets in her knickers!' The horrible chant is all round Bulge as she lies howling.\n\nAs quickly as the big girls appeared they are gone. We, none of us, try to do anything to help Bulge as we struggle free from the knotted belts and scarves. Helen Ferguson and Amy lead the way back as we try to find the road. Though we examine, exclaiming, our torn clothes and show each other our scratches and bruises the real hurt is something we cannot speak about. Fluffy Hair cries. Bulge, who has stopped crying, lumbers along with her head down. Amy, who does not cry, is very red. She declares she will report the incident. 'That's a bit too daring,' I say, hoping that she will do as she says. I am wondering if Bulge is still without her knickers.\n\n'There's Etty and some of them,' Helen Ferguson says as we approach the crossroads. It has started to rain. Huddled against the rain we walk slowly on towards them.\n\n'Hurry up you lot!' Etty calls in ringing tones. 'We're getting wet.' She indicates the girls sheltering under the red-berried hawthorn.\n\n'I suppose you know,' Etty says, 'Harpers Hill is absolutely out of bounds. So you'd better not tell. If you get the whole school gated it'll be the worse for you !' She rejoins the others who stand watching us as we walk by.\n\n'That was only a rag. We were only ragging you,' Etty calls, 'so mind you don't get the whole school gated!' Glistening water drops fly from the wet hedge as the girls leap out, one after the other, across the soaked grass of the ditch. They race ahead screaming with laughter. Their laughter continues long after they are out of sight.\n\nIn Evening Meeting Bulge cannot stop crying and she has no handkerchief. Helen Ferguson, sitting next to me on the other side, nudges me and grins, making grimaces of disgust, nodding in the direction of Bulge and we both shake with simulated mirth, making, at the same time, a pretence of trying to suppress it. Without any sound Bulge draws breath and weeps, her eyes and nose running into her thick fingers. I lean away from her heaving body. I can see her grazed knees because both her stockings have huge holes in them.\n\nBefore Meeting, while we were in line while two seniors were practising Bach, a duet on the common-room piano, Bulge turned up the hem of her Sunday dress to show me a large three-cornered tear. It is a hedge tear she told me then while the hammered Bach fell about our ears. And it will be impossible, when it is mended, she said, for her mother to lengthen the dress.\n\nI give another hardly visible but exaggerated shiver of mirth and pretend, as Helen Ferguson is doing, to look serious and attentive as if being thoughtful and as if listening with understanding to the reading. The seniors read in turn, a different one every Sunday. It is Etty's turn to read. She reads in a clear voice. She has been practising her reading for some days.\n\n'Romans chapter nine, verse twenty-one.' Her Sunday dress is well pressed and the white collar sparkles round her pretty neck.\n\n_Hath not the potter power_\n\n_over the clay, of the same lump_\n\n_to make one vessel unto honour_\n\n_and another unto dishonour?_\n\n'And from verse twenty.' Etty looks up smiling and lisping just a little,\n\n_Shall the thing formed say to_\n\n_him that formed it, Why hast_\n\n_thou made me thus?_\n\nEtty minces from the platform where the staff sit in a semi-circle. She walks demurely back to her seat.\n\n'These two verses,' Miss Vanburgh gets us and puts both hands on the lectern, it is her turn to give the Address, 'These two verses,' she says, 'are sometimes run together.'\n\n'Shall the clay say to the potter why hast thou made me thus...'\n\nBulge is still weeping.\n\nMiss Besser, on tiptoe across the creaking boards of the platform, creeps down, bending double between the rows of chairs, and, leaning over, whispers to me to take Muriel.\n\n'Take your friend out of Meeting, take her to...'\n\n'I don't know her. She isn't my friend,' I begin to say in a whisper, trying to explain, 'she's not my friend...'\n\n'To Matron,' Miss Besser says in a low voice, 'take Muriel.'\n\nI get up and go out with Bulge who falls over her own feet and, kicking the chair legs, makes a noise which draws attention to our attempted silent movement.\n\nI know it is the custom for the one who leads the other to put an arm of care and protection round the shoulders of distress. I know this already after two weeks. It is not because I do not know...\n\nI wait with Bulge in the little porch outside Matron's cottage. Bulge does not look at me with her face, only with her round and shaking shoulders.\n\nMatron, when she comes, gives Bulge a handkerchief and reaches for the iodine. 'A hot bath,' she says to Bulge, 'and early bed. I'll have some hot milk sent up. Be quick,' Matron adds, 'and don't use up too much hot water. Hot milk,' she says, 'in half an hour.'\n\nI do not go back into Meeting. Instead I stand for a time in a place where nobody comes, between the cloakroom and the bootroom. It is a sort of passage which does not lead anywhere. I think of Bulge lying back if only for a few minutes in the lovely hot water. I feel cold. Half an hour, that is the time Matron has allowed Bulge. Perhaps, if I am quick...\n\nThe lights are out in our dormitory. I am nice and warm. In spite of the quick and secret bath (it is not my night), and the glass of hot milk \u2013 because of my bed being nearer the door the maid brings it to me by mistake \u2013 (it has been sweetened generously with honey) in spite of all this I keep longing for the cherishing words familiar in childhood. Because of the terrible hedge tear in the navy-blue hem and, because of the lumpy shoulders, I crouch under my bedclothes unable to stop seeing the shoulders without an arm round them. I am not able to weep as Bulge weeps. My tears will not come to wash away, for me, her shoulders.\n\nAt night we always hear the seniors, Etty in particular, singing in the bathroom. Two of them, tonight, may have to miss their baths. Etty's voice is especially noticeable this night.\n\n_little man you're crying,_ she sings,\n\n_little man you're blue_\n\n_I know why you're crying_\n\n_I know why you're blue_\n\n_Some-one stole your Kiddi-Kar away from you_\n\nThe moon, my father's moon, is too far away.\n\n# RECHA\n\nThe constant sound of television might be for a great many people what a mountain stream was to Wordsworth. Instead of these I have the sound of doves.\n\nThere are times during these golden afternoons when I know that I am not hearing the doves. It seems impossible that I should not hear them when they sidle to and fro, back and forth, along the edge of the roof above my window, endlessly scraping and tapping and rustling along the tremulous gutters. If I do hear them it is only because I hear them all the time, even when they are not there. Their voices are like the voices of a family, heard still even though this family has ceased to exist.\n\nThe little guest, on heat, I remember quite clearly, all those years ago, replete with more than food, stuffed, they would say now, took away with her my silk frock and the Swiss cotton embroidered pillow-slips with which my mother, to honour and please a visitor rather than to offer mere shelter to a homeless refugee, had made the bed.\n\nShe, the little guest, tipping forward on high heels, walks to and fro on the kitchen floor busily scraping left-over morsels of food on to saucers. Scraps of fried bread and bits of chopped-up liver. She carries them one by one to the pantry shelf. As she walks she lets slip from her person little swabs of bloodstained cotton wool. These catch on her heels and are trodden, back and forth, mottling the tiles as if with squashed strawberries.\n\n'It is as if she is on heat,' my mother says.\n\n'The expression, this expression,' my father corrects gently, 'is not, as a rule in English, applied to a human being.'\n\n'Bloodstain,' my mother complains, 'everywhere a bloodstain. Look! Wherever she goes. People, when they grow up, should be able to look after themselves. They should be able to look after their _monatsfluss_.'\n\nLater my mother comes to me.\n\n'Lend Recha your dress, the new one,' she says, persuading. 'Lend her the new dress, the one with the little blue flowers.'\n\n'The one with the forget-me-not flowers? But it's my Liberty silk. It's my good dress. I haven't worn it yet.'\n\n'Yes. Yes. I know but Recha has an interview. She has to go for an interview. You know, she might find for herself a post as a housekeeper. She has no home now. She must find herself a home. We must help her.'\n\n'But she's not my size. The skirt will be much too long.'\n\n'I know this. We can gather it up at the waist. You understand. With a nice sash. You have some ribbon...'\n\n'Why hasn't she got a home then? A house. She's here now in England. She's got a husband. An English soldier, isn't he? He was here with her, in my room, in my bed. Why can't she go? With him? She's safe now.'\n\n'He is in a camp,' my mother explains. 'I don't need to tell you. She has to find somewhere to live. He has to go back to Salisbury, to his camp.'\n\n'But he must have a family, her mother-in-law why can't she...?'\n\n'Be quiet now,' my mother says quickly, 'she is coming downstairs again.'\n\nRecha stands in front of the long mirror in my mother's bedroom twitching the soft folds of my dress over her plump body. She pulls at her black hair frizzing it out on her forehead. Her cheeks are red and shine as if about to burst.\n\n'Senk you,' she says to me. I have never seen her before. She is already, with her husband, in my room when I come home from school for the summer holiday. My sister tells me straight away that there are people in my room. It is her room too. She has a bed in our mother's room. She tells me that for ages now people have been arriving, sometimes on the night train from London, arriving and going to bed at once, sleeping and sleeping and then talking in whispers and crying.\n\n'The crying is the worst,' she says. She says she heard one woman crying all night. Even our father was not able to stop her crying.\n\n'He walks to the station in the night,' my sister says. She says that he has given away his winter coat and that it's all right for now but what will he do in winter.\n\n'These people,' my mother says, 'they have nothing. Recha must have packed the things in her luggage with her rags and bits of cotton wool.' She explains the treachery in her soft up-and-down voice. 'Perhaps she thought they were gifts from us.' Her voice is like a stream running. 'The time!' she says to my father, 'it's time for you to leave for the station. Look!' she says, 'Look at the time!'\n\nTwo more people are arriving. They will have our bedroom. My sister and I move our bedclothes once more.\n\n'The oil-cloth on here is so thin the horsehair's prickling through,' I complain to my sister.\n\n'I'll have the sofa then,' she says. 'I'll sleep there.'\n\n'Oh no. It's all right.' We slide off the sofa laughing as we did when we were little. One of our old games.\n\nI am ashamed because I have been robbed. This is the strange thing about it. When one is robbed there is this feeling of being ashamed. I do not want to admit to anyone that my silk frock has been stolen. And, even more, I do not want my father and mother to admit that they have been deceived in any way. Especially by people they are trying to help, and in their own house.\n\nBut of course they do not even think they have been deceived or robbed.\n\n'Recha,' my mother is saying to my father in the kitchen, 'Recha has never done any housework or cooking in her life. How will she manage as housekeeper? She has such beautiful hands.'\n\nSimply, my mother and father are seeing impossible suffering, especially people being separated from each other or making hurried marriages in order to escape from something they are not able to endure, something they must, at all costs, get away from.\n\n'It is an irony, is it called irony?' My mother's soft voice reaches the horsehair sofa. She is talking still to my father. 'Is it called irony. If it was once a joke,' she says, 'for a bespectacled shrimp of an intellectual, a Jew, to be an officer in a Red Cossack regiment during the Polish campaign of 1920, is this the same joke, if it can be called a joke, which is being repeated now twenty years later?' I have heard her before talking about these men, the grey beards, she calls them, with their gold-rimmed glasses and flying side curls, desperate to disguise their accents and their hand movements, marching or trying to march, walking on thin bent legs, their narrow shoulders and their intellectual superiority, 'bowing,' she is saying it again 'to the healthy pink flesh of the English Tommies.'\n\nMy father's voice, like a boulder in a wild mountain stream, interrupts her. I can hear his deep voice soothing.\n\nIt is not like my mother to use a word like Tommy. If English people use it they say Our Tommies, Our Boys, not English Tommies. I pull my sheets back over the inadequate horsehair. I think, in the morning, I will correct my mother so that she need not make a mistake of this sort in front of the neighbours. \n\n# BATHROOM DANCE\n\nWhen I try on one of the nurse's caps my friend Helen nearly dies.\n\n'Oh!' she cries, 'take it off! I'll die! Oh if you could see yourself. Oh!' she screams and Miss Besser looks at me with six years of reproach stored in the look.\n\nWe are all sewing Helen's uniform in the Domestic Science room. Three pin-striped dresses with long sleeves, buttoned from the wrist to the elbow, double tucks and innumerable button holes; fourteen white aprons and fourteen little caps which have to be rubbed along the seam with a wet toothbrush before the tapes can be drawn up to make those neat little pleats at the back. Helen looks so sweet in hers. I can't help wishing, when I see myself in the cap, that I am not going to do nursing after all.\n\nHelen ordered her material before persuading me to go to the hospital with her. So, when I order mine it is too late to have my uniform made by the class. It is the end of term, the end of our last year at school. My material is sent home.\n\nMister Jackson tells us, in the last Sunday evening meeting, that he wants the deepest responsibility for standards and judgements in his pupils, especially those who are about to leave the happy family which is how he likes to think of his school. We must not, he says, believe in doing just what we please. We must always believe in the nourishment of the inner life and in the loving discipline of personal relationships. We must always be concerned with the relentless search for truth at whatever cost to tradition and externals. I leave school carrying his inspiration and his cosiness with me. For some reason I keep thinking about and remembering something about the reed bending and surviving and the sturdy oak blown down.\n\nMy mother says the stuff is pillow ticking. She feels there is nothing refined about nursing. The arrival of the striped material has upset her. She says she has other things in mind for me, travelling on the continent, Europe, she says, studying art and ancient buildings and music.\n\n'But there's a war on,' I say.\n\n'Oh well, after the war.'\n\nShe can see my mind is made up and she is sad and cross for some days. The parcel, with one corner torn open, lies in the hall. She is comforted by the arrival of a letter from the Matron saying that all probationer nurses are required to bring warm sensible knickers. She feels the Matron must be a very nice person after all and she has my uniform made for me in a shop and pays extra to have it done quickly.\n\nHelen's mother invites me to spend a few days with Helen before we go to St Cuthberts.\n\nThe tiny rooms in Helen's home are full of sunshine. There are bright-yellow curtains gently fluttering at the open windows. The garden is full of summer flowers, roses and lupins and delphiniums, light blue and dark blue. The front of the house is covered with a trellis of flowers, some kind of wisteria which is sweetly fragrant at dusk.\n\nHelen's mother is small and quiet and kind. She is anxious and always concerned. She puts laxatives in the puddings she makes.\n\nI like Helen's house and garden, it is peaceful there and I would like to be there all the time but Helen wants to do other things. She is terribly in love with someone called David. Everything is David these few days. We spend a great deal of time outside a milkbar on the corner near David's house or walking endlessly in the streets where he is likely to go. No one, except me, knows of this great love. Because I am a visitor in the house I try to be agreeable. And I try to make an effort to understand intense looks from Helen, mysterious frowns, raised eyebrows, head shakings or noddings and flustered alterations about arrangements as well as I can.\n\n'I can't think what is the matter with Helen,' Mrs Ferguson says softly one evening when Helen rushes from the room to answer the telephone in case it should be David. We are putting up the black-out screens which Mrs Ferguson has made skilfully to go behind the cheerful yellow curtains every night. 'I suppose she is excited about her career,' she says in her quiet voice, picking up a little table which was in Helen's way.\n\nEveryone is so keen on careers for us. Mister Jackson, at school, was always reading aloud from letters sent by old boys and girls who are having careers, poultry farming, running boys' clubs and digging with the unemployed. He liked the envelopes to match the paper, he said, and sometimes he held up both for us all to see.\n\nHelen is desperate to see David before we leave. We go to all the services at his mother's church and to her Bible class where she makes us hand round plates of rock cakes to the Old Folk between the lantern slides. But there is no David. Helen writes him a postcard with a silly passionate message. During the night she cries and cries and says it is awful being so madly in love and will I pretend I have sent the postcard. Of course I say I won't. Helen begs me, she keeps on begging, saying that she lives in the neighbourhood and everyone knows her and will talk about her. She starts to howl and I am afraid Mrs Ferguson will hear and, in the end, I tell her, 'All right, if you really want me to.'\n\nIn the morning I write another card saying that I am sorry about the stupid card which I have sent and I show it to Helen, saying, 'We'll need to wash our hair before we go.'\n\n'I'll go up first,' she says. While she is in the bathroom using up all the hot water, I add a few words to my postcard, a silly passionate message, and I put Helen's name on it because of being tired and confused with the bad night we had. I go out and post it before she comes down with her hair all done up in a towel, the way she always does.\n\nMrs Ferguson comes up to London with us when we set off for St Cuthberts. Helen has to dash back to the house twice, once for her camera and the second time for her raincoat. I wait with Mrs Ferguson on the corner and she points out to me the window in the County Hospital where her husband died the year before. Her blue eyes are the saddest eyes I have ever seen. I say I am sorry about Mr Ferguson's death, but because of the uneasiness of the journey and the place where we are going, I know that I am not really concerned about her sorrow. Ashamed, I turn away from her.\n\nHelen comes rushing up the hill, she has slammed the front door, she says, forgetting that she put the key on the kitchen table and will her mother manage to climb through the pantry window in the dark and whatever are we waiting for when we have only a few minutes to get to the train.\n\nDavid, unseen, goes about his unseen life in the narrow suburb of little streets and houses. Helen seems to forget him easily, straight away.\n\nJust as we are sitting down to lunch there is an air-raid warning. It is terrible to have to leave the plates of food which have been placed in front of us. Mrs Ferguson has some paper bags in her handbag.\n\n'Mother! You can't!' Helen's face is red and angry. Mrs Ferguson, ignoring her, slides the salads and the bread and butter into the bags. We have to stand for two hours in the airraid shelter. It is very noisy the A.R.P. wardens say and they will not let us leave. It is too crowded for us to eat in there and, in any case, you can't eat when you are frightened.\n\nLater, in the next train, we have to stand all the way because the whole train is filled with the army. Big bodies, big rosy faces, thick rough greatcoats, kitbags, boots and cigarette smoke wherever we look. We stand swaying in the corridor pressed and squeezed by people passing, still looking for somewhere to sit. We can't eat there either. We throw the sad bags, beetroot soaked, out onto the railway lines.\n\nI feel sick as soon as we go into the main hall at St Cuthberts. It is the hospital smell and the smell of the bread and butter we try to eat in the nurse's dining room. Helen tries to pour two cups of tea but the tea is all gone. The teapot has a bitter smell of emptiness.\n\nUpstairs in Helen's room on the Peace corridor as it is called because it is over the chapel, we put on our uniforms and she screams with laughter at the sight of me in my cap.\n\n'Oh, you look just like you did at school,' she can't stop laughing. How can she laugh like this when we are so late. For wartime security the railway station names have been removed and, though we were counting the stops, we made a mistake and went past our station and had to wait for a bus which would bring us back.\n\n'Lend me a safety pin,' I say, 'one of my buttons has broken in half.' Helen, with a mouthful of hair grips, busy with her own cap, shakes her head. I go back along the corridor to my own room. It is melancholy in there, dark, because a piece of black-out material has been pinned over the window and is only partly looped up. The afternoon sun of autumn is sad too when I peer out of the bit of window and see the long slanting shadows lying across unfamiliar fields and roads leading to unknown places.\n\nMy school trunk, in my room before me, is a kind of betrayal. When I open it books and shoes and clothes spill out. Some of my pressed wildflowers have come unstuck and I put them back between the pages remembering the sweet, wet grass near the school where we searched for flowers. I seem to see clearly shining long fingers pulling stalks and holding bunches. Saxafrage, campion, vetch, ragged robin, star of Bethlehem, wild strawberry and sorrel. Quickly I tidy the flowers \u2013 violet, buttercup, King cup, cowslip, coltsfoot, wood anemone, shepherd's purse, lady's slipper, jack in the pulpit and bryony...\n\n'No Christian names on duty please,' staff nurse Sharpe says, so, after six years in the same dormitory, Helen and I make a great effort. Ferguson \u2013 Wright, Wright \u2013 Ferguson.\n\n'Have you finished with the floor mop \u2013 Ferguson?'\n\n'Oh you have it first \u2013 Wright.'\n\n'Oh! No! by all means, after you Ferguson.'\n\n'No, after you Wright.'\n\nStaff nurse Sharpe turns her eyes up to the ceiling so that only the whites show. She puts her watch on the window sill saying, 'Quarter of an hour to get those baths, basins and toilets really clean and the floors done too. So hurry!'\n\n'No Christian names on duty,' we remind each other.\n\nWe never sleep in our rooms on the Peace corridor. Every night we have to carry our blankets down to the basement where we sleep on straw mattresses. It is supposed to be safe there in air raids. There is no air and the water pipes make noises all night. As soon as I am able to fall asleep Night Sister Bean is banging with the end of her torch saying, 'Five-thirty a.m. nurses, five-thirty a.m.' And it is time to take up our blankets and carry them back upstairs to our rooms.\n\nI am working with Helen in the children's ward. Because half the hospital is full of soldiers the ward is very crowded. There are sixty children; there is always someone laughing and someone crying. I am too slow. My sleeves are always rolled up when they should be rolled down and buttoned into the cuffs. When my sleeves are down and buttoned it seems they have to be rolled up again at once. I can never remember the names of the children and what they have wrong with them.\n\nThe weeks go by and I play my secret game of comparisons as I played it at school. On the Peace corridor are some very pretty nurses. They are always washing each other's hair and hanging their delicate underclothes to dry in the bathroom. In the scented steamy atmosphere I can't help comparing their clothes with mine and their faces and bodies with mine. Every time I am always worse than they are and they all look so much more attractive in their uniforms, especially the cap suits them well. Even their finger nails are better than mine.\n\n'Nurse Wright!' Night Sister Bean calls my name at breakfast.\n\n'Yes Sister.' I stand up as I have seen the others do.\n\n'Matron's office nine a.m.' she says and goes on calling the register.\n\nI am worried about my appointment with the Matron. Something must be wrong.\n\n'What did Matron want?' Ferguson is waiting for me when I go to the ward to fetch my gas mask and my helmet. I am anxious not to lose these as I am responsible for them and will have to give them back if I leave the hospital or if the war should come to an end.\n\n'What did Matron want?' Ferguson repeats her question, giving me time to think.\n\n'Oh it is nothing much,' I reply.\n\n'Oh come on! What did she want you for? Are you in trouble?' she asks hopefully.\n\n'Oh no, it's nothing much at all.' I wave my gas mask. 'If you must know she wanted to tell me that she is very pleased with my work and she'll be very surprised if I don't win the gold medal.' Ferguson stares at me, her mouth wide open, while I collect my clean aprons. She does not notice that one of them is hers. It will give me an extra one for the week. I go to the office to tell the ward sister that I have been transferred to the theatre.\n\n_Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,_\n\n_Enwrought with golden and silver light,_\n\nO'Connor, the theatre staff nurse, is singing. She has an Irish accent and a mellow voice. I would like to tell her I know this poem too.\n\n_The blue and the dim and the dark cloths_\n\n_Of night and light and the half light,_\n\nIn the theatre they are all intimate. They have well-bred voices and ways of speaking. They look healthy and well poised and behave with the ease of movement and gesture which comes from years of good breeding. They are a little circle in which I am not included. I do not try to be. I wish every day, though, that I could be a part of their reference and their joke.\n\nIn a fog of the incomprehensible and the obscure I strive, more stupid than I have ever been in my life, to anticipate the needs of the theatre sister whose small, hard eyes glitter at me above her white cotton mask. I rush off for the jaconet.\n\n'Why didn't you look at the table!' I piece together her angry masked hiss as I stand offering a carefully opened and held sterilized drum. One frightened glance at the operating table tells me it is catgut she asked for.\n\n'Boil up the trolley,' the careless instruction in the soft Irish voice floats towards me at the end of the long morning. Everything is on the instrument trolley.\n\n'Why ever didn't you put the doctors' soap back on the sink first!' The theatre is awash with boiled-over soap suds. Staff nurse O'Connor, lazily amused, is just scornful enough. 'And,' she says, 'what in God's Holy Name is this!' She fishes from the sterilizer a doll-sized jumper. She holds it up in the long-handled forceps. 'I see trouble ahead,' she warns, 'better not let sister see this.' It is the chief surgeon's real Jaeger woollen vest. He wears it to operate. He has only two and is very particular about them. I have discovered already that sister is afraid of the chief surgeon, consequently I need to be afraid of her. The smell of boiled soap and wool is terrible and it takes me the whole afternoon to clear up.\n\nTheatre sister and staff nurse O'Connor, always in masks, exchange glances of immediate understanding. They, when not in masks, have loud voices and laugh. They talk a great deal about horses and dogs and about Mummy and Daddy. They are quite shameless in all this Mummy and Daddy talk.\n\nThe X-ray staff are even more well-bred. They never wear uniform and they sing and laugh and come into the theatre in whatever they happen to be wearing \u2013 backless dinner dresses, tennis shorts or their night gowns. All the time they have a sleepy desirable look of mingled charm and efficiency. War-time shortages of chocolate and other food stuffs and restrictions on movement, not going up to London at night for instance, do not seem to affect them. They are always called by pet names, Diamond and Snorter. Diamond is the pretty one, she has a mop of curls and little white teeth in a tiny rosebud mouth. Snorter is horsey. She wears trousers and little yellow waist coats. She always has a cigarette dangling from her bottom lip.\n\nI can't compare myself with these people at all. They never speak to me except to ask me to fetch something. Even Mr Potter, the anaesthetist who seems kind and has a fatherly voice, never looks in my direction. He says, holding out his syringe, 'Evipan' or 'Pentothal', and talks to the others. Something about his voice, every day, reminds me of a quality in my father's voice; it makes me wish to be back at home. There is something hopeless in being hopeful that one person can actually match and replace another. It is not possible.\n\nSometimes Mr Potter tells a joke to the others and I do not know whether I should join in the laugh or not.\n\nI like Snorter's clothes and wish that I had some like them. I possess a three-quarter-length oatmeal coat with padded shoulders and gilt buttons which my mother thinks is elegant and useful as it will go with everything. It is so ugly it does not matter what I wear it with. The blue skirt I have is too long, the material is heavy, it sags and makes me tired.\n\n'Not with brown shoes!' Ferguson shakes her head.\n\nIt is my day off and I am in her room. The emptiness of the lonely day stretches ahead of me. It is true that the blue skirt and the brown shoes, they are all I have, do look terrible together.\n\nFerguson and her new friend, Carson, are going out to meet some soldiers to go on something called a pub crawl. Ferguson, I know, has never had anything stronger than ginger beer to drink in her life. I am watching her get ready. She has frizzed her hair all across her baby round forehead. I can't help admiring her, the blaze of lipstick alters her completely.\n\nCarson comes in balancing on very high-heeled shoes. She has on a halo hat with a cheeky little veil and some bright-pink silk stockings.\n\n'What lovely pink stockings!' I say to please her.\n\n'Salmon, please,' Carson says haughtily. Her hair is curled too and she is plastered all over with ornaments, brooches, necklaces, rings and lipstick, a different colour from Ferguson's. Ferguson looks bare and chubby and school-girlish next to Carson.\n\nBoth of them are about to go when I suddenly feel I can't face the whole day alone.\n\n'It's my day off too,' I say, 'and I don't know where to go.'\n\nFerguson pauses in the doorway.\n\n'Well, why don't you come with us,' Carson says. Both of them look at me.\n\n'The trouble is, Wright,' Carson says kindly, 'the trouble is that you've got no sex appeal.'\n\nAfter they have gone I sit in Ferguson's room for a long time staring at myself in her mirror to see if it shows badly that I have no sex appeal.\n\nI dream my name is Chevalier and I search for my name on the typed lists on the green baize notice boards. The examination results are out. I search for my name in the middle of the names and only find it later at the top.\n\nMy name, not the Chevalier of the dream, but my own name is at the top of the lists when they appear.\n\nI work hard in all my free time at the lecture notes and at the essays 'Ward Routine', 'Nursing as a Career', 'Some Aspects of the History of Nursing' and 'The Nurse and her Patient'.\n\nThe one on ward routine pleases me most. As I write the essay, the staff and the patients and the wards of St Cuthberts seem to unfold about me and I begin to understand what I am trying to do in this hospital. I rewrite the essay collecting the complete working of a hospital ward into two sheets of paper. When it is read aloud to the other nurses, Ferguson stares at me and does not take her eyes off me all through the nursing lecture which follows.\n\nI learn every bone and muscle in the body and all the muscle attachments and all the systems of the body. I begin to understand the destruction of disease and the construction of cure. I find I can use phrases suddenly in speech or on paper which give a correct answer. Formulae for digestion or respiration or for the action of drugs. Words and phrases like gaseous interchange and internal combustion roll from my pen and the name at the top of the lists continues to be mine.\n\n'Don't tell me you'll be top in invalid cookery too!' Ferguson says and she reminds me of the white sauce I made at school which was said to have blocked up the drains for two days. She goes on to remind me how my pastry board, put up at the window to dry, was the one which fell on the headmaster's wife while she was weeding in the garden below, breaking her glasses and altering the shape of her nose forever.\n\nMy invalid carrot is the prettiest of them all. The examiner gives me the highest mark.\n\n'But it's not even cooked properly!' Ferguson is outraged when she tastes it afterwards. She says the sauce is disgusting.\n\n'Oh well you can't expect the examiner to actually eat all the things she is marking,' I say.\n\nFerguson has indigestion, she is very uncomfortable all evening because, in the greedy big taste, she has nearly the whole carrot.\n\nIt is the custom, apparently, at St Cuthberts to move the nurses from one corridor to another. I am given a large room in a corridor called Industry. It is over the kitchens and is noisy and smells of burning saucepans. This room has a big tall window. I move my bed under the window and, dressed in my school jersey, I lie on the bed for as long as possible to feel the fresh cold air on my face before going down to the basement for the night. Some evenings I fall into a deep and refreshing sleep obediently waking up, when called, to go down to the doubtful safety below.\n\nEvery day, after the operations, I go round the theatre with a pail of hot soapy water cleaning everything. There is an orderly peacefulness in the quiet white tranquillity which seems, every afternoon, to follow the strained, bloodstained mornings.\n\nIn my new room I copy out my lecture notes:\n\n... _infection follows the line of least resistance_...\n\nand read my school poetry book:\n\n_Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,_\n\n_And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see_\n\n_Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep;_\n\n_And air-swept lindens yield_\n\n_Their scent_...\n\nI am not able to put out of my mind the eyes of a man who is asleep but unable to close his eyes. The putrid smell of wounded flesh comes with me to my room and I hear, all the time, the sounds of bone surgery and the troubled respiration which accompanies the lengthy periods of deep anaesthetic...\n\n_Oft thou hast given them store_\n\n_Of flowers \u2013 the frail leaf 'd, white anemony,_\n\n_Dark blue bells drench'd with dews of summer eves_\n\n_And purple orchises with spotted leaves_...\n\n...in the theatre recovery ward there are fifteen amputations, seven above the knee and eight below. The beds are made in two halves so that the padded stumps can be watched. Every bed has its own bell and tourniquet...\n\nSt Cuthberts is only a drop in the ocean; staff nurse O'Connor did not address the remark to me, I overhead it.\n\nNext to my room is a large room which has been converted into a bathroom. The dividing wall is a wooden partition. The water pipes make a lot of noise and people like to sing there, usually something from an opera.\n\nOne night I wake from my evening-stolen sleep hearing two voices talking in the bathroom. It is dark in my room; I can see some light from the bathroom through a knot-hole high up in the partition. The voices belong to Diamond and Snorter. This is strange because they live somewhere outside the hospital and would not need to use that bathroom. It is not a comfortable place at all, very cold, with a big old bath awkwardly in the middle of the rough floor.\n\nDiamond and Snorter are singing and making a lot of noise, laughing and shrieking above the rushing water.\n\nSinging:\n\n_Give me thy hand O Fairest_\n\n_la la la la la la la_\n\n_I would and yet I would not_\n\nLaughter and the huge bath obviously being filled to the brim.\n\n_Our lives would be all pleasure_\n\n_tra la la la la la la_\n\n_tra la la la la la la_\n\n_tum pe te tum_\n\n_tum pe te tum_\n\n'That was some party was it not!'\n\n'Rather!' Their rich voices richer over the water.\n\nI stand up on my bed and peer through the hole which is about the size of an egg. I have never looked through before, though have heard lots of baths and songs. I have never heard Diamond and Snorter in there before \u2013 if it is them.\n\nIt is Diamond and Snorter and they are naturally quite naked. There is nothing unusual about their bodies. Their clothes, party clothes, are all in little heaps on the floor. They, the women not the clothes, are holding hands, their arms held up gracefully. They are stepping up towards each other and away again. They have stopped singing and are nodding and smiling and turning to the left and to the right, and, then, with sedate little steps, skipping slowly round and round. It is a dance, a little dance for two people, a minuet, graceful, strange and remote. In the steam the naked bodies are like a pair of sea birds engaged in mating display. They appear and disappear as if seen through a white sea mist on some far-off shore.\n\nThe dance quickens. It is more serious. Each pulls the other more fiercely, letting go suddenly, laughing and then not laughing. Dancing still, now serious now amusing. To and fro, together, back and forth and together and round and round they skip and dance. Then, all at once, they drop hands and clasp each other close, as if in a private ballroom, and quick step a foxtrot all round the bathroom.\n\nIt is not an ugly dance, it is rhythmic and ridiculous. Their thighs and buttocks shake and tremble and Snorter's hair has come undone and is hanging about her large red ears in wispy strands.\n\nThe dance over, they climb into the deep hot bath and tenderly wash each other.\n\nThe little dance, the bathroom dance, gives me an entirely new outlook. I can't wait to see Diamond and Snorter again. I look at everyone at breakfast, not Ferguson, of course (I know everything there is to know about her life) with a fresh interest.\n\nLater I am standing beside the patient in the anaesthetic room, waiting for Mr Potter, when Snorter comes struggling through the swing doors with her old cricket bag. She flops about the room dragging the bag:\n\n_And on the beach undid his corded bales_\n\nshe says, as she always does, while rummaging in the bag for her white wellington boots. I want to tell Snorter, though I never do, that I too know this poem.\n\nI look hard at Snorter. Even now her hair is not combed properly. Her theatre gown has no tapes at the back so that it hangs, untied and crooked. She only has one boot on when Mr Potter comes. The unfairness of it all comes over me. Why do I have to be neatly and completely dressed at all times. Why do they not speak to me except to ask for something to be fetched or taken away. Suddenly I say to Snorter, ' _Minuet du Salle de la Bain_ ', in my appalling accent. I am surprised at myself. She is hopping on one foot, a wellington boot in her hand, she stops hopping for a moment.\n\n' _de la salle de bain_ surely,' she corrects me with a perfect pronunciation and a well-mannered smile. 'Also lower case,' she says, 'not caps, alters the emphasis.'\n\n'Oh yes of course,' I mutter hastily. An apology.\n\n'Pentothal.' Mr Potter is perched on his stool at the patient's head, his syringe held out vaguely in my direction.\n\n# NIGHT RUNNER\n\nNight Sister Percy is dying. It is my first night as Night Runner at St Cuthberts. Night Sister Bean, grumbling and cackling, calls the register and, at the end, she calls my name.\n\n'Nurse Wright.'\n\n'Yes Sister,' I reply, half rising in my chair as I have seen the others do. The Maids' Dining Room, where we eat, is too cramped to do anything else.\n\n'Night Runner,' she says and I sit down again. The thought of being Night Runner is alarming. Nurse Dixon has been Night Runner for a long time. All along I have been hoping that I would escape from these duties and responsibilities, the efficient rushing here and there to relieve on different wards; every night bringing something new and difficult.\n\nThe Night Runner has to prepare the night nurses' meal too; one little sitting at twelve midnight and a second one at twelve forty-five and, of course, the clearing up and the washing up.\n\nEvery night I admire Nurse Dixon in the tiny cramped kitchen where we sit close together, regardless of rank, in the hot smell of warmed up fish or mince and the noise of the jugs of strong black coffee, keeping hot, in two black pans of boiling water. We eat our meal there in this intimacy with these two hot saucepans splashing and hissing just behind us. The coffee, only a little at the bottom of each jug, looks thick and dark and I wonder how it is made. Tonight I will have to find out and have it ready when the first little group of nurses appears.\n\nWhen I report to Night Sister Bean in her office, she tells me to go for the oxygen.\n\n'Go up to Isolation for the oxygen,' she says without looking up from something she is writing. I am standing in front of her desk. I have never been so close to her before, not in this position, that is, of looking at her from above. She is starch scented, shrouded mysteriously in the daintily severe folds of spotted white gauze. She is a sorceress disguised in the heavenly blue of the Madonna; a shrivelled, rustling, aromatic, knowledgeable, Madonna-coloured magician; she is a wardress and a keeper. She is an angel in charge of life and in charge of death. Her fine white cap, balancing, nodding, a grotesque blossom flowering for ever in the dark halls of the night, hovers beneath me. She is said to have powers, an enchantment, beyond the powers of an ordinary human. For one thing, she has been on night duty in this hospital for over thirty years. As I stand there I realize that I do not know her at all and that I am afraid of her.\n\n'Well,' she says, 'don't just stand there. Go up to Isolation for the oxygen and bring it at once to Industry.'\n\n'Yes, Sister,' I say and I go as quickly as I can. The parts of the hospital are all known by different names; Big Boys Big Girls, Top Ward, Bottom Ward, Side Ward and Middle, Industry, Peace, Chapel and Nursery. I have a room on the Peace corridor, so named because it is above the chapel and next to Matron's wing.\n\nIndustry is the part over the kitchens. There are rooms for nurses there too. Quite often there is a pleasant noise and smell of cooking in these rooms. The Nurses' sick bay is there and it is there that I have to take the oxygen.\n\nI am frightened out here.\n\nFor one thing, Isolation is never used. It is, as the name suggests, isolated. It is approached by a long, narrow covered way sloping up through a war-troubled shrubbery where all the dust bins are kept. Because of not being able to show any lights it is absolutely dark there. When I go out into the darkness I can smell rotting arms and legs, thrown out of the operating theatre and not put properly into the bins. I gather my apron close so that I will not get caught by a protruding maimed hand.\n\nWhen I fash my torch quickly over the bins I see they are clean and innocent and have their lids firmly pressed on. In the torchlight there is no smell.\n\nThe sky at the end of the covered passage is decorated with the pale moving fans of search lights. The beams of light are interwoven with the sounds of throbbing engines. The air-raid warning might sound at any moment. In the emergency of being made Night Runner so suddenly, I have forgotten to bring my tin hat and gas mask from the Maids' Dining Room.\n\nI am worried about the gas mask and the tin hat. I have signed for them on arrival at the hospital and am completely responsible for them. I will have to hand them back if I leave the hospital or if this war comes to an end. Usually I never leave either of them out of my care. I have them tied together with thick string. I put them under my chair at meal times and hang them up in the nurses' cupboard on the ward where I am working.\n\nIt is hard to find the oxygen. My torch light picks up stacks of pillows, shelves of grey blankets, rolls of waterproof sheets, and some biscuit tins labelled Emergency Dressings, all with dates on them. There are two tea chests filled with tins and bottles. The chests are marked Emergency, Iron Rations, Doctors Only in red paint. There do not seem to be similar boxes marked for nurses or patients.\n\nAt last I find the oxygen cylinder and I rush with the little trolley up to Industry.\n\nSister Percy is dying. She is the other Night Sister and is very fat. She is propped, gasping, on pillows, a blue trout with eyes bulging, behind the floral screens made by Matron's mother for sick nurses.\n\nIt is the first time I have seen someone who is dying. Night Sister Bean is there and the R.M.O. and the Home Sister. They take the oxygen and Sister Bean tells me I need not stay. She pulls the screens closer round Sister Percy.\n\nIn the basement of the hospital I set about the secrets of making the coffee and having it come only so far up the jugs.\n\nLater Night Sister Bean comes and says why haven't I lit the gas, which, when you think about it, is a good thing to say as they will surely want that potato and mince stuff hot. Before she leaves she makes me get down on my knees to hunt behind the pipes for cockroaches. She has a steel knitting needle for this and we knock and scrape and rattle about, Night Sister Bean on her knees too, and we chase them out, the revolting things, and sprinkle some white powder which, she says, they love to eat without knowing it is absolutely fatal to them.\n\nIt is something special about night duty, this little meal time in the middle of the night, with everyone sitting together, even Night Sister Bean, herself, coming to one or the other of the sittings. She seems almost human, in spite of the mysterious things whispered about her, at these meals. Sometimes she even complains about the sameness of them, saying that one thing the war cannot do is to make these meals worse than they are and that it is sheer drudgery to eat them night after night. When I think about this I realize she has been eating stewed mince and pounded fish for so many years and I can't help wishing I could do something about it.\n\nThis first night it takes me a long time to clear up in the little pantry. When at last I am finished Night Sister Bean sends me to relieve on Bottom Ward. There is a spinal operation in the theatre recovery room just now, she says, and a spare nurse will be needed when the patient comes back to the ward.\n\nOn my way to Bottom Ward I wish I could be working with staff nurse Ramsden.\n\n'I will play something for you,' she said to me once when I was alone and filled with tears in the bleak, unused room which is the nurses' sitting room.\n\nShe ran her fingers up and down the piano keys. 'This is Mussorgsky,' she said. 'It's called Gopak, a kind of little dance,' she explained. She played and turned her head towards me nodding and smiling. 'Do you like this?' she asked, her eyes smiling. It is not everyone who has had Mussorgsky played for them; the thought gives me courage as I hurry along the unlit passage to the ward.\n\nThere is a circle of light from the uncurtained windows of the office in the middle of the ward. I can see a devout head bent over the desk in the office. I feel I am looking at an Angel of mercy who is sitting quietly there ready to minister to the helpless patients.\n\nStaff nurse Sharpe is seated in the office with an army blanket tucked discreetly over her petticoat. Her uniform dress lies across her lap. She explains that she is just taking up the hem and will I go to the kitchen and cut the bread and butter. As I pass the linen cupboard I see the other night nurse curled up in a heap of blankets. She is asleep. This is my friend Ferguson.\n\nI sink slowly into the bread cutting. It is a quiet and leisurely task. While I cut and spread I eat a lot of the soft new bread and I wonder how Sharpe will manage to wear her uniform shortened. Matron is so particular that we wear them long, ten inches off the ground, so that the soldiers do not get in a heightened excitement about us.\n\nSharpe comes in quite soon. She seems annoyed that I have not finished. She puts her watch on the table and says the whole lot, breakfast trays all polished and set, and bread and butter for sixty men, must be finished in a quarter of an hour. I really hurry up after this and am just ready when the operation case comes back and I have to go and sit by him in the small ward. I hope to see Ferguson but staff nurse Sharpe has sent her round changing the water jugs.\n\nEasily I slip into my dream of Ferguson. She owes me six and sevenpence. I have written it on the back of my writing pad. I'll go out with her and borrow two and six.\n\n'Oh Lord!' I'll say, 'it's my mother's birthday and I haven't a thing for her and here I am without my purse. Say, can you lend me two and six?' And then I'll let her buy a coffee and a bun for me that will bring it to three shillings and I won't ever pay it back and, in that way, will recover some of the six and sevenpence.\n\n'Cross my heart, cut me in two if my word is not true,' I say to myself and I resolve to sit in Ferguson's room as soon as I am off duty. I'll sit there till she pays me the money. I'll just sit and sit there till it dawns on her why I am there.\n\nThe patient, quite still as if dead, suddenly moves and helps himself to a drink of water. He vomits and flings the bowl across the room. He seems to be coming round from his anaesthetic. I grope under the bedclothes. I should count his pulse but I am unable to find his wrist.\n\n'Oh I can't,' he groans, 'not now I can't.'\n\nHe seems to be in plaster of paris from head to foot. He groans again and sleeps. Nervously I wait to try again to find some place on his body where I can feel his pulse.\n\nHigh on the wall in the Maids' Dining Room is an ancient wireless. It splutters and gargles all day with the tinny music of workers' play time and Vera Lynn plaintively announcing there'll always be an England. Sometimes in the early mornings, while we have our dinner, the music is of a different kind. Sometimes it is majestic, lofty and sustaining.\n\n'Wright!' Staff nurse Ramsden calls across the crowded tables. 'Mock Morris? Would you say?' she waves a long-fingered hand.\n\n'No,' I shake my head, 'not Mock Morris, it's Beethoven.' She laughs. She knows it is not Beethoven. It is a little joke we have come to share. It is the only joke I have with anyone. Perhaps it is the same for Ramsden. She has a slight moustache and I have noticed, in her room, an odour, a heaviness which belongs with older women perhaps from the perfumed soap she has and the material of well-made underwear. Her shoes and stockings, her suits and blouses and hats have the fragrance of being of a better quality. Ramsden asked me once about the violin I was carrying. She has said to me to choose one of her books, she has several in her room, as a present from her to me. Secretly I think, every day, that I admire Ramsden. I love her. Perhaps. I think, I will tell her, one day, the truth about the violin case.\n\nA special quality about working during the night is the stepping out of doors in the mornings, the first feeling of the fresh air and the sun which is hardly warm in its brightness.\n\nWe ride our bicycles. Not Ramsden. There is a towing patch along the river. I, not knowing it before, like the smell of the river, the muddy banks and the cattle-trodden grass. Water birds, disturbed, rise noisily. Our own voices echo.\n\nThough we have had our meal we want breakfast. Ferguson hasn't any money. Neither has Queen. Ferguson says she will owe Queen if Queen will owe me for them both. We agree and I pay. And all the way back I am trying to work out what has to be added to the outstanding six and sevenpence.\n\nFerguson's room, when I go to sit there, looks as if it should be roped off as a bomb crater. Her clothes, and some of mine, are scattered everywhere. There is a note from the Home Sister on her dusty dressing table. I read the note, it is to tell Ferguson to clean her hair brush.\n\nBored and sleepy I study the note repeatedly, and add 'Neither a Borrower nor a Lender be' in handwriting so like the Home Sister's it takes my breath away.\n\nI search for Ferguson's writing paper. It is of superior quality and very suitable. I write some little notes in this newly learned handwriting and put them carefully in my pocket. I continue to wait for Ferguson, hardly able to keep my eyes open.\n\nI might have missed my sleep altogether if I had not remembered in time that Ferguson has gone home for her nights off.\n\nI do not flash the torch for fear of being seen. I grope in the dark fishing for something, anything, in the cavernous tea chest, and hasten back down the covered way.\n\nNight Sister Bean says to me to go to Bottom Ward to relieve and I say, 'Yes Sister', and leave her office backwards, shuffling my feet and bending as if bowing slightly, my hands, behind my back, clasping and almost dropping an enormous glass jar.\n\nIt is bottled Chinese gooseberries, of all things, and I put one on each of the baked apples splashing the spicy syrup generously. Night Sister Bean smiles, crackling starch, and says the baked apples have a piquant flavour. She has not had such a delicious baked apple for thirty years. 'Piquant!' she says.\n\nStaff nurse Sharpe sits in the office all night with nursing auxiliary Queen. Queen has put operation stockings over her shoes to keep warm. Both Sharpe and Queen are wrapped up in army blankets. Sharpe has to let down the hem of her dress. Sister Bean asked her to stay behind at breakfast.\n\nWhenever I come back to the office Sharpe says, 'Take these pills to bed twelve' or 'Get the lavatories cleaned,' and 'Time to do the bread and butter \u2013 and don't leave the trays smeary like last night.'\n\nAt the end of the ward I pull out the laundry baskets and I move the empty oxygen cylinders and the fire equipment; the buckets of water and sand. I simply move them all out from their normal places, just a little way out, and later, when Sharpe and Queen go along to the lavatory, they fall over these things and knock into each other, making the biggest disturbance ever heard in a hospital at night. Night Sister Bean comes rushing all the way up from her office in the main hall. She is furious and tells Sharpe and Queen to report to Matron at nine a.m. She can see that I am busy, quietly with my little torch, up the other end of the ward, pouring the fragrant mouth wash in readiness for the morning.\n\nThe tomato sauce has endless possibilities. The dressed crab is in such a small quantity that the only thing I can do is to put a tiny spoonful on top of the helpings of mashed potato. Night Sister Bean is appreciative and says the flavour seeps right through. Tinned bilberries, celery soup and custard powder come readily to my experienced hands.\n\nI do not see staff nurse Ramsden very often. She has not asked me in to her room again to choose the book. Perhaps she has changed her mind. She is, after all, senior to me.\n\nThere are times when an unutterable loneliness is the only company in the cold early morning. The bicycle rides across the heath or along the river are over too quickly and, because of this, are meaningless. With a sense of inexplicable bereavement my free time seems to stretch ahead in emptiness. I go to bed too soon and sleep badly.\n\nI am glad when Ferguson comes back; very pleased. In the pantry I am opening a big tin, the biggest thing I have managed to lift out so far. I say 'Hallo' to Ferguson as she sits down with the other nurses; they talk and laugh together. I go on with my work.\n\n'Oh, you've got IT,' I say to Ferguson. 'Plenty of S.A. Know what that is? Sex appeal, it's written all over you.' And seeing, out of the corner of my eye, Night Sister Bean coming in, I go on talking as if I haven't seen her.\n\n'How you do it beats me Fergie,' I say. 'How is it you have all the men talking about you the way they do? You certainly must have given them plenty to think about. They all adore you. Corporal Smith's absolutely mad about you, really!' Unconcernedly I scrape scrape at the tin. 'He never slept last night. Sharpe had to slip him a Mickey Finn, just a quick one. He's waiting for another letter from you and I think he's sending the poem you asked for. Who on earth is your go between?' so I go on and scrape scrape at the tin.\n\nI know why there is silence behind me. I turn round.\n\n'Oh, here you are at last Sister,' I say to Night Sister Bean. Ferguson is a dull red colour, pity, as she was looking so well after her nights off.\n\n'Here we are Sister,' I say, 'on the menu we have Pheasant Wing in Aspic. Will you have the fish pie with it?' I serve all the plates in turn. The coffee hisses and spits behind us.\n\n'Matron's office, nine o'clock,' Nigh Sister Bean says to Ferguson.\n\n'Yes, Sister.'\n\nFerguson is sent to Big Girls for the rest of the night and I am to relieve, as usual, on Bottom Ward. I wake Corporal Smith at four a.m. and urge him to write to Nurse Ferguson. 'Every day she waits for a letter,' I tell him, 'she'll get ill from not eating if you don't write.' Staff nurse Sharpe finds me by his bed and sends me to scrub the bathroom walls.\n\n'And do out all the cupboards too, and quickly,' she says.\n\nIn the morning when I see Sharpe safely in the queue for letters I rush up to the Peace corridor and find her room. I cram her curtains into her messy wet soap dish and leave one of my neatly folded notes on her dressing table.\n\n_Do not let your curtains dangle in the soap dish. Sister._\n\nThere is not much I can do with cherry jam. I serve it with the stewed mince as a sweet and sour sauce. It is a favourite with the Royal family, I tell them, but I can see I shall have to risk another raid on my secret store.\n\nThe next night I have a good dig into both chests and load myself up with tinned tomato soup, a tinned chicken, some sardines and two tins of pears.\n\nNurse Dixon is mystified. Her eyes are full of questions.\n\n'Where d'you get all...' her lips form whispered words.\n\n'No time to chat now, sorry,' I say. I am hastily setting a little tray for Night Sister Bean. I have started taking an extra cup of coffee along to her office. It seems the best way to use up a tin of shortbread fingers. Balancing my tray I race up the dark stairs and along the passage to Night Sister Bean's office.\n\n'Bottom Ward,' Night Sister Bean says without looking up. Again I am at the mercy of Sharpe.\n\n'Wash down the kitchen walls,' she says, 'and do all the shelves and cupboards and quickly \u2013 before you start the blanket baths.' She gives me a list of the more disagreeable men to do; she says to change their bottom sheets too. All the hardest work while nursing auxiliary Queen, who is back there, and herself sit wrapped up in the office, smoking, with a pot of hot coffee between them on the desk.\n\nI go into the small ward and give the emergency bell there three rings bringing Night Sister Bean to the ward before Sharpe and Queen realise what is happening.\n\n'Is it an air raid?' Queen asks anxiously.\n\n'Nurses should know why they ring, Nurse,' Sister Bean says and she makes them take her round to every bed whispering the diagnosis and treatment of every patient. Night Sister Bean rustling and croaking, fidgeting and cursing, disturbs all the men trying to find out who rang three times.\n\n'Someone must be haemorrhaging,' she says, 'find out who it is.'\n\nPeering maliciously into the kitchen, Sister Bean sees me quietly up the step ladder with my little pail of soapy water. The wet walls gleam primrose yellow as if they have been freshly painted. She tells Sharpe and Queen to report to Matron's office nine a.m. for smoking on duty.\n\nOnce again Sharpe is in the letter queue. I take the loaded ash tray from the Porters' Lodge and spill it all over her room.\n\n_Your room is disgusting. Take some hot water and disinfectant and wash down Sister_\n\nThe folded note lies neatly on her dressing table.\n\nI try listening to Beethoven but it reminds me of my loneliness. I wish Corporal Smith would write to me. I wish someone would write to me. Ferguson is going to The Old Green Room for coffee. She is popular, always going out. In my room I have a list.\n\n 1. Listen to Beethoven.\n 2. Keep window wide open. If cold sleep in school jersey.\n 3. Ride bicycle for complexion. (care of)\n 4. Write and Think.\n\n'I can't come out,' I say to Ferguson. 'I'm listening to Beethoven,' I say, ignoring the fact that she has not asked me.\n\n'It's only one record,' she says, 'you've only got one record.'\n\n'It's Beethoven all the same.' I beat time delicately and wear my far away look.\n\nFerguson goes off out and I add number 5 with difficulty to the list. The paper is stuck in at the side of the dressing-table mirror and uneven to write on.\n\n * 5. Divide N.S.B.'s nature and discover exactly the extent of her powers.\n\nI take my white windsor, bath size, to the wash room and fill a basin with hot water to soften the soap. I set to work with my nail file and scissors. I'll take my torch tonight, I'm thinking, a tin of powdered milk would be useful. Whipped up, it makes very good cream; delicious with the baked apples.\n\nThe likeness is surprising. It is the distinction of the shape and the tilt of the cap, the little figure is emerging perfectly. I work patiently for a long time. I am going to split the image in half very carefully and torture one half keeping the other half as a control, as in a scientific experiment, and observe the effect on the living person.\n\nThe idea is so tremendous I feel faint. Already I foresee results, the upright, crisp little blue and white Bean totters in the passage, she wilts and calls for help.\n\n'Nurse Wright! Help me up, dear. What a good child you are, so gentle too. Just help me to that chair, thank you, dear child. Thank you!'\n\nThe Peace corridor is very quiet. Another good thing about the night duty is that we all may sleep in our beds during the day. Every morning I long for this sleep. Up until this time, I, like the others, have had to carry bedclothes down to the basement every night because of the air raids. There are no beds in the basement, only some sack mattresses of straw. There is no air there either.\n\nI love the smell of the clean white windsor. I am sculpting carefully with the file. The likeness is indeed perfect. My hands are slippery and wrinkled and I am unable to stop them from shaking. I feel suddenly that I possess some hitherto unknown but vital power to be able to make this \u2013 this effigy.\n\nAnd then, all at once, Night Sister Bean is there in the doorway of the wash room, peering about to see who it is not in bed yet and it is after twelve noon already. Because I am thinking of the moment when I will split the image and considering which tool will be most suitable for this, the sudden appearance of Sister Bean is, to say the least, confusing.\n\nI plunge my head into the basin together with Her I am so carefully fashioning, saying, 'Oh, I can ever get the soap out of my hair!', delighted at the sound of weariness achieved.\n\nShe says to remember always to have the rinsing water hotter than the washing water. 'Hot as you can bear it,' she says.\n\n'Thank you Sister.'\n\nShe is rustling and cackling, crackling and disturbing, checking every corner of the wash room, quickly looking into all the lavatories, saying as she leaves, 'And it is better to take off your cap first.'\n\nSo there I am with the soaked limp thing, frothed and scummed all over with the white windsor, on my head, still secure with an iron foundry of hair grips and useless for tonight. My work of art too is ruined, the outlines blurred and destroyed before being finished. It is a solemn moment of understanding that from a remote spot, namely the door, she has been able to spoil what I have made and add a further destruction of her own, my cap.\n\nMy back aches with bending over the stupid little sink. These days I am missing too much sleep. In spite of being so tired I go down to the ramp where the milk churns are loaded and unloaded. It is the meeting place of the inside of the hospital with the outside world. The clean laundry boxes are there, neatly stacked. Fortunately Ferguson's box is near the edge. I open it and remove one of her fresh clean caps. My box is there too but I don't want to take one of mine as it will leave me short later in the week.\n\nThe powdered household milk is in the chest as I hoped, tins of it and real coffee too. I find more soup, mushroom, cream of asparagus, cream of chicken, vegetable and minestrone. I am quite reckless with my torch. Christmas is coming, I take a little hoard of interesting tins.\n\nI discover that Night Sister Bean has a weakness for hot broth and I try, every night, to slip a cup along to her office in the early part of the night before I start on anything else.\n\nSeveral things are on my mind, mostly small affairs. For some time I have Corporal Smith's love letter to Ferguson, sixteen pages, in my pocket. It is not sealed and her name does not appear anywhere in the letter. It is too long for one person so I divide the letter in half and address two envelopes in Corporal Smith's handwriting, one to Sharpe and one to Ferguson. Accidentally I drop them, unsealed, one by the desk in Night Sister Bean's office and the other in the little hall outside Matron's room. We are not supposed to be intimate with the male patients and I feel certain too that Corporal Smith is a married man, but there is something else on my mind; it is whether a nurse should send a Christmas card to the Matron. It is something entirely beyond my experience.\n\nIn the end I buy one, a big expensive card, a Dutch Interior. It costs one and ninepence. I sit a whole morning over it trying to think what I should write.\n\n_A very Happy Christmas to Matron from Nurse Wright_\n\nNurse Wright sounds presumptuous. I haven't taken an external exam yet. She may not regard me as nurse.\n\n_A very Happy Event_... that would be quite wrong.\n\n_A very Happy Christmas to You from Guess Who_. She might think that silly.\n\n_Happy Christmas. Vera_. Too familiar. _Veronica_ I have never liked my name.\n\n_A Happy Christmas to Matron from one of her staff_ and in very small writing underneath _N\/V Wright_.\n\nI keep wondering if all the others will send Matron a Christmas card. It is hardly a thing you can ask anyone. Besides I do not want, particularly to give Ferguson the idea. She will never think of it herself. And who can I ask if I don't ask her?\n\nI put the card in Matron's correspondence pigeon hole. The card is so big it has to be bent over at the top to fit in. I am nervous in case someone passing will see me.\n\nAgain I am relieving on Bottom Ward. Always it is this bottom Ward. This time I have to creep round cleaning all the bed wheels.\n\n'And quietly,' Sharpe says, 'Nurse Queen and I don't want everyone waking up!'\n\nThe card worries me. It will take it out in the morning. The message is all wrong.\n\nOne of her staff! I can't bear to think about it.\n\nThe card is still there, bending, apologizing and self conscious in the morning. I want to remove it but there are people about and correspondence must not be tampered with.\n\nTwice during the day I get dressed and creep down from the Peace corridor, pale, hollow-eyed and drab; all night nurses are completely out of place in the afternoons. I feel conspicuous, sick nearly, standing about in the hall waiting to be alone there so that I can remove that vulgar card and its silly message. It is still bending there in the narrow compartment.\n\nEven when the hall is free of people there are two nurses chattering together by the main door. Whyever do they stand in this cold place to talk. I have to give up and go back to bed, much too cold to sleep. Ferguson has my hot-water bottle for her toothache. It seems I can never get even with her. Never ever.\n\nThe card is still there in the evening when we go down to the Maids' Dining Room for breakfast. I can hardly eat as I am thinking of a plot to retrieve the card.\n\nThe register is finished.\n\n'Nurse Wright.'\n\n'Yes Sister?' half rising in my chair as we all do in that cramped place.\n\n'Matron's office nine a.m. tomorrow.'\n\n'Yes Sister,' I sit down again. It can't be to thank me for the card as it hasn't been received yet. A number of reasons come to mind, for one thing there are the two deep caves of dark emptiness; perhaps they have been discovered...\n\nIn spite of a sense of foreboding I go, with my little torch hidden beneath my apron, up the long covered way. I need more powdered milk. The path seems endless. The night sky has the same ominous decoration; throbbing engines alternate with sharp anti-aircraft guns and the air-raid sirens wail up and down, up and down. The soft searchlights move slowly. They make no noise and are helpless. I feel exposed and push my hands round the emptiness of the nearest tea chest. Grabbing a tin of powdered milk I rush back down past the festering bins and on down towards an eternity of the unknown.\n\nI have a corner seat in this train by a mistake which is not entirely my fault. The woman, who is in this seat, asks me if I think she has time to fetch herself a cup of tea. I can see that she badly wants to do this and, in order that she does not have to go without the tea, I agree that, though she will be cutting it fine, there is a chance that she will have time. So she goes and I see her just emerging from the refreshment room with a look on her face which shows how she feels. She has her tea clutched in one hand and I have her reserved seat because it is silly, now that the train has started, to stand in the corridor being crushed by army greatcoats and kitbags and boots, simply looking at the emptiness of this comfortable corner.\n\nI have some household milk for Mother, it is always useful in these days of rationing. I have the tinned chicken also. At the last minute I could not think what to do with it as Night Sister Bean will not be naming the next Night Runner till this evening, and, of course, I shall not be there to know who it is and so am not able to hand on either the milk or the chicken.\n\nThere is too the chance that the new Night Runner might be my friend Ferguson. It would not do to give her these advantages.\n\nThis is my first holiday from St Cuthberts, my nights off and ten days holiday. Thirteen days off.\n\n'Shall I take my tin hat, I mean my helmet, and my gas mask?' I ask Matron.\n\n'By all means if you would like to,' she says and wishes me a pleasant holiday and a happy Christmas.\n\nThe tin hat and the gas mask are tied to my suitcase. My little sister will be interested to see them.\n\nMy father will be pleased with his Christmas card. He has always liked the detail and the warm colours of a Dutch interior. He will not mind the crossing out inside. The card will flatten if I press it tonight in the dictionary.\n\nFor some reason I am thinking about staff nurse Ramsden. Last night, in the doorway of the Maids' Dining Room, I stood aside to let her go in first.\n\n'Thank you,' she said and then she asked me what my first name was.\n\n'First name?'\n\n'Yes, your Christian name, what is it?' her voice, usually low, was even lower. Like a kind of shyness.\n\nI did not have the chance to answer. We had to squeeze through to our different tables quickly as Night Sister Bean was already calling the register.\n\nIf Ramsden could be on the platform to meet my train at the end of this journey I would be able to answer her question. Perhaps I would be able to explain to her about the violin case. I would like to see Ramsden, I would like to be going to her. Thinking about her and seeing her face, in my mind, when she turned to smile at me, the time when she played Mussorgsky on the piano in the nurses' sitting room, makes me think that it is very probable, though no one has ever spoken about it, that Night Sister Bean might very well be missing her life-long friend Night Sister Percy. Missing her intolerably. \n\n# LOIS\n\nThis is a piano concerto, Lois. Lois, listen! Listen to the way the piano rushes in. It's the Emperor Concerto, Lois. It's not really hard to listen to, is it? Is it? But Lois, wait. Listen. All the same. Listen to this.\n\nAshes of Roses, the perfume is called that. No, not perfume really, Lois. It's only scent. Little bottle of scent to take to boarding school. Ashes of Roses to bring to the hospital.\n\nLois, you'll never believe this. I was so unhappy at boarding school to begin with. My mother put scent on my handkerchief for me to take back and hold when I went to sleep.\n\nSilly but it's real. Lois, you like the scent, do you? You did say you liked the scent. You told me you liked the fragrance. You smell nice, you said that to me once. It's Ashes of Roses. I told you, it's the Ashes of Roses.\n\nTango Bolero now. Not the Emperor. The Tango. I'm glad you asked to share with me Lois when we had the chance to change.\n\nFrom this high window the world is out there. The trees. You could paint the trees, Lois. The park is over to the right and on this side there's the railway and the canal. Did you notice this evening, Lois, how the water shines as the rest of the world gets dark? And last week, Lois, did you see that, in the moonlight, the water shines all night? Did you see that? Can't put a black-out curtain over the canal, can you? All those places out there, the buildings, the warehouses and the railway and the dark streets. All dark, in darkness. People inside those houses don't know who can see their upstairs windows and their roof tops.\n\nTango. Tango Bolero. Lois. Listen! Someone's coming!\n\n'What is that noise? Nurse? Whatever is that terrible noise?'\n\n'It's music, Sister. It's the Tango Bolero.'\n\nTango. Fango. Turn it off this instant! I never heard such a noise in all my life. Do you know what time it is?'\n\n'No Sister. Sorry Sister.'\n\n'It's practically midnight! Where is the music? For heavens sake. Where is it coming from?'\n\n'It's in the wardrobe, Sister, I'll turn it off.'\n\n'And Nurse! Where is your nightdress? You've got nothing on! Why haven't you got your nightdress on?'\n\n'I, er, I was too hot Sister.'\n\n'Well child! For heavens sake open the window. And put the black-out back. If you're careful, slip your hand behind the curtain, put a book or something to hold the curtain down.'\n\n'Yes Sister. Thank you Sister.'\n\n'Why aren't you on duty Nurse?'\n\n'We're, I mean, I'm on nights off Sister.'\n\n'I see. Nurse! I never saw, in my life, such an untidy room. Your room is a disgrace and the beds! Is that your pillow? Pull the pillow out and put it back where it belongs. And try to remember that others want and need their sleep. And another thing, Nurse, it is not healthy to sleep without your gown. See that you put it on at once.'\n\n'Yes Sister. Thank you Sister.'\n\n'Has she gone? The old witch?'\n\n'Yes. That was close. Yes, she's gone.'\n\n'I was suffocating under all that heap. Who was it?'\n\n'Home Sister.'\n\n'Yep. I know that. But how? Which witch?'\n\n'Morton.'\n\n'Forget her! Let's put the tango on again. Don't put your nighty on. Here, push the towel in the gramophone and this blanket over the top and close the wardrobe this time.'\n\n'And listen! Let's open the window and take down the black-out so if she comes back she can't switch on the light.'\n\n'Good idea. And put the chair against the door.'\n\nAshes of Roses. Tango Bolero. Like this. Put your arms round me. Like this. Tango.\n\nOf course at a time like this, I know, it is not right to actually think of anyone, I mean to really think of another person just now. But there is just this, that that witch Morton might be on her way back up here. And if I go on thinking of another person the awful thing is that Sister Bean might be coming up with her. \n\n# THE HUNT\n\nThe early morning sunlight filters through the bushes outside my window making tremulous patterns of light and shade on the wall opposite. This partly shaded shadow-moving light makes the room serene and tranquil. I try to prolong the tranquillity by keeping my thoughts as peaceful as possible. Sometimes I have a wish to keep on staring into the leaves and the small branches out there until I disappear into them. Once I saw a hand in the leaves. It seemed to be reaching towards me, it was my own hand. I often hold out my hand now towards the bushes in order to see this enticing reflection. I wish too, often in the evenings, for an elixir, an ancient potion with magic qualities. A provider of energy and enlightenment.\n\n_Os innominatum Ilium Ischium Acetabulum_ and _the Symphysis Pubis_ , the poetry of anatomy. It's like poetry I want to tell them, this anatomy, this usefulness of the pelvis. We are studying together, in the room I share with Lois, for our exams. _The Ilium presents two surfaces, external and internal, a crest, two processes, anterior and posterior and an articulating surface for the sacrum._ I want to tell them, Trent and Ferguson, that I am going to a house party at Dr Metcalf 's. Lois has just come in so I do not say anything. Dr Metcalf gave me the invitation in Magda's purple handwriting this morning on the ward. I have missed the opportunity. I can't tell them now.\n\n'Any cigs?' Lois asks, knowing that none of us smokes and knowing too that I will have a packet of State Express 333 especially for her. State Express is her favourite. Ferguson does not like Lois. Lois does not seem to notice Ferguson.\n\n'The crest of the ilium is curved and surmounts the bone, here it is,' I say quickly, the point of my pencil hovering over the bone on the page. And with the other hand I pull the present for Lois out of my pocket slipping it to her sideways. Trent raises her eyebrows.\n\n'I can read you like a book,' she says to me out of the corner of her mouth. 'Dead Loss,' she says, 'brother to Joe Loss.' She makes me laugh.\n\nI do not say anything about the invitation. I shall be coming in very late. I shall have to sign the book and ask the night porter to unlock for me. I wonder whose name I should sign. Ferguson's or Trent's? If names appear too often in the late pass book it is a question of appearing on Sister Bean's list for Matron's office at nine a.m. I would never use Lois's name. I have some feelings for her which I am not able to define. I feel happy when she comes into the room. Her clothes amuse me. I have a great wish to protect her and to do things for her. I like giving her small presents and seeing her pleasure. I make up my mind, as Lois shrouds us in smoke, to put Helen Ferguson in the book. It is Sunday. It is my day off. I did not go out because of the party tonight and because of the forthcoming exams. I wanted to go on sleeping too, on my bed in this room I have with Lois. We only sleep in the basement now if there is an air-raid warning. There was a prolonged one last night.\n\nThe night porter, because it is Sunday, will be a relieving one. He will not know me. I can be H. Ferguson for him.\n\n'Describe the acetabulum,' Trent says, 'and do it without looking at the book.'\n\n'A deep, cup-shaped cavity, formed by the union of three bones...' Helen Ferguson's voice reminds me of our first days and weeks at the hospital, of the first Sunday here...\n\nOn my first Sunday I had the evening off. I wanted to be on my bed. The bed wasn't even made up. The bedclothes were rolled neatly in readiness for carrying downstairs later on. It was late afternoon towards the end of summer. A narrow shaft of sunshine came through the little space where the black-out curtain was tied up in a loop. It was very quiet and then someone started playing the organ in the chapel below. I liked the music and I tried not to sleep. I wanted to hear the organ but could hardly keep my eyes open. Images, one after the other in that familiar ritual of oncoming sleep, crowded my thoughts. Images from the children's ward, the noise, the big black trays on which we carried little tin plates of mince and potatoes and the baked apples swimming in yellow cream and covered with the shining crystals of brown sugar. 'Good food,' staff nurse Sharpe, who was teaching me, said, 'is essential in their treatment. You must see that every child eats the dinner.' Images from the children's ward, the occupational therapist moving slowly between the beds and the frames like a walking sewing basket. Twice in one morning one of the boys cut her scissors off and she had to find a new piece of string. Staff nurse Sharpe explained that she kept the scissors tied to her overall. She seemed, with her white hair, to be elderly but Sharpe said no it was because all her family were killed when their house was bombed and her hair had gone white overnight. In all the noise of shouting and crying and dropping tin plates or cups and the boys throwing conkers, the therapist played the piano in the middle of the ward and some of the little ones, rolling their heads from side to side, sang.\n\n_The good ship sails on the anny anny O_\n\n_The anny anny O_\n\n_The good ship sails on the anny anny O_...\n\nWe have stopped studying for a few minutes as Trent is making some toast and cocoa in the little kitchen at the end of the passage. Lois says have I still got some cake left.\n\nThe children in the ward, when they sing, can only roll their heads from side to side because of being strapped on to their frames. Mrs Doe, the wardsmaid who is unable to read and write, crashes the tin plates, Sharpe says they are aluminium, into the sink. I envy Mrs Doe. She says she goes to the pictures with her old man Fridays. I envy her because she can go home at night. She cleans the floors and washes up and comes and goes through a back door. She says exactly what she thinks about us. She calls it giving us a piece of her mind.\n\nAnd all the time while the work is being done, all through the terrible noise and rush, Vera Lynn is singing on the wireless. She sings 'There'll always be an England' and something that sounds like 'There'll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover'. I like the therapist but we have no reason to talk to each other and I don't know her name or where she lives.\n\nIt seemed to me during the first few days that there was a smell of disease, of tuberculosis and when I asked staff nurse Sharpe about this, in a moment when she seemed approachable, she said no the disease did not smell. She thought it was the little woollen shawls the children all had, they probably needed washing and it was something I could get done on the first fine day.\n\nWhen I lay on my bed that first Sunday evening someone came along the Peace corridor knocking on all the doors, opening and closing them. Tap tap of heels on the floor-boards, knock knock open door click close door click all the way along.\n\nNow it is my door. I keep my eyes closed. I hope whoever it is will go away. It is my first Sunday in this place and I am tired. I have never been so tired. My hands and arms up to the elbows are all chapped and sore. My feet hurt. I would leave if I knew how to.\n\n'Time for chapel Nurse!' It is Sister Bean. Why isn't she in bed? She is the Night Sister. 'Time for chapel Nurse!' as if she is wound up for these words. She closes the door and I hear her tap tap knock knock to the end of Peace and back tap knock open click close click all along the other side. And then tap tap back to my door knock open click.\n\n'Time for chapel Nurse!'\n\n'I am a Quaker, Sister.'\n\n'Time for chapel Nurse!'\n\nIn candlelight and incense and the music of the organ Father Bailey, the portly one, and Father Reynold who is hungry and red-nosed pass, in their robes, to and fro, up and down the aisles between the rows of pretty nurses. All have on fresh clean caps and aprons. All, with devout expressions, are bending their head down, repeating _I believe_. It is called the creed. I have never heard it before. At the door I was given an unfamiliar little book. It is nicely bound in leather and the pages are edged with gold. I would like to keep it. There is a squat tuffet thing for me to kneel on. We kneel and sit and kneel and stand and sit and when we all move there is a rustling like leaves falling in autumn. There is a chanting and murmuring of believing. I am not sure what I believe and, unless I read in the little book (if I can find the page), I do not know the words. At school prayers were silent in our own words in our hearts. I see two nurses, two of the ones I have been working with, they are very pious.\n\nOn their dressing tables they both have silver-framed photographs and every day their conversations, in well-bred voices, ripple across the Peace corridor.\n\n'Oh Mandy Darling, have you heard from Derek lately?'\n\n'Yes Darling, simply adorable letter this morning.'\n\n'How heavenly Darling! I adore his big ears.'\n\n'Barrington Darling have _you_ heard from Rojji Rog\u00e8re?'\n\n'Mm yes Darling, this morning. He's on a Brenn Gun Carrier.'\n\n'Oh Wizard!'\n\nIt is Nurse Mandy who holds the crying children, the little boys, over the jet of icy water in the sluice room every morning to punish them for wetting their cots. They go on crying and crying, their voices hoarse from crying. She is saying this ' _I believe_ ,' she believes in a whole list of things and I am trying to keep my eyes open...\n\n'What's in the _acetabular fossa?_ ' Ferguson's question \u2013 it's her turn after answering correctly \u2013 is for me.\n\n'Fat,' I say. They laugh but it is correct.\n\n'What and where,' it is my turn to ask Trent, 'what and where is the _ligamentum teres_?'\n\nIt is not possible to compare, to make comparisons, between this room which is Dr Metcalf's and any of my mother's rooms. On the ground floor she has the back room and the front room and the kitchen. In this house, which is the Metcalfs' house, I cannot begin to know how many rooms there are, parts of the house are unknown to me. All the same I am making comparisons. Dr Metcalf has a carpet; at home we have linoleum and a rug, a black rug in case the coal spits and burns. There are some books at home, here the walls are lined with books. This room is Dr Metcalf 's study. It is not very light, there is a shaded reading lamp. The electric light at home hangs in the middle of the room on a flex from the ceiling. My father likes bright light.\n\n'Don't read with a bad light,' he is always saying it, 'you'll spoil your pretty eyes. Don't spoil your pretty eyes.'\n\nThis is a much bigger house, a better house, there are more rooms than we have at home. Perhaps I should have gone home instead of coming here. It is a whole week since the party. Dr Metcalf had to leave in the middle of it as he was wanted at the hospital. I wanted to leave then to go with him but Magda would not hear of it.\n\n'Precious child stay!' she cried all across the room. 'You simply can't go yet. I'll pop you in a taxi.' And then she asked me to come the next free evening I had because she was going to be away, 'and Jonty must, simply must have some good company,' she said. 'He wants to play some music called _The Hunt_ ,' she said. I told her I'd like that very much and all the guests thought this very funny.\n\n'Oh! Isn't she just a pet,' Magda cried then. 'Come here precious pet!' She told me she wanted to hug me and kiss me forever.\n\nOn the way to the Metcalfs' this evening I keep hoping that Dr Metcalf will answer the door. I do not like Mrs Privett, the housekeeper. I think I am afraid of her. Magda calls her Mrs P. Really it is more that Mrs P dislikes me. Magda encourages Mrs P in her disapproval of everything because, she says, when Mrs P is hating she works terribly hard and polishes everything and scours the saucepans, haven't I noticed how shiny they are.\n\nMrs P does let me in and she opens the door only a little way so that I have to step in sideways.\n\n'Dr Metcalf is expecting me,' I say, my voice all silly and shaky with nervousness. It seems a long time that I am waiting for him to come and I worry in case he does not really want me to come or that he has forgotten that I am coming. I try to work out how much in pounds, shillings and pence his curtains and chair covers will have cost. I look up and down the walls and the books and at the furnishings adding value and subtracting.\n\nDr Metcalf, when he comes in, is very nice and gently helps me off with my coat. He winds up the gramophone and puts on the record. But there is something wrong with it. We can hardly hear it. I feel I should say it is nice but we both know something is wrong. He stops the gramophone and takes off the record. He explains it is a quartet by Mozart, it's called _The Hunt_. He says he is sorry it's a flop and I say it doesn't matter. There is a silence between us which I feel I must fill.\n\nI kneel down and look along the book cases hoping to recognize a title and make some intelligent remark but all the books are strange to me. I read aloud some of the titles. Dr Metcalf looks amused.\n\n'Which would you like to read?' he asks after a little silence. I tell him that I'm afraid I don't know. He bends down and takes a book.\n\n'Try this one,' he says, and kneels beside me.\n\nMy clumsy skirt is caught all round my legs as I struggle awkwardly to my feet. The book is _The Voyage Out_ by someone called Virginia Woolf.\n\n'A lady writer,' I say and feel ashamed to have said such a stupid thing. 'Thank you,' I say. I like his hand, the feeling of it, as he gives me the book. I tell him I am afraid it might be too difficult for me.\n\n'Try it,' he says getting up. He says he thinks Mrs P is going out but she has left us some supper and, if I like, we can have it by the fire in his study. Would I like that, he wants to know.\n\n'Yes,' I say, glad that Mrs P is going out,' that would be nice.'\n\nA patient has given Dr Metcalf some rhubarb. He shows it to me in the kitchen and I offer to cook it for him. He sits on the edge of the table while I wash it and cut it up. I try to do this neatly and not to strip it too much. It needs a lot of sugar I tell him. It is a moment of authority which I enjoy. But when we look for the sugar there isn't any. Mrs P must have had it all in her tea he says and I wish I had brought my ration with me but of course I didn't know about the rhubarb.\n\nThe kitchen is transformed, that's how Dr Metcalf puts it, by the fragrance of the stewed rhubarb. He will eat it, he says, for breakfast. He carries our supper through to the study.\n\nWe do not eat much. I am shy sitting there with a tray between us. I hardly notice what there is to eat. Some sort of salad with pears in it. I feel I have said silly things about his books. Because he is quiet I talk, feeling all the time that I am talking too much.\n\n'I suppose it's about six miles, I go there on my bike, I like the ride, it's country there, hawthorn berries and rose hips on both sides of the road, the wild roses when they are out are so pretty. Her house is in the middle of a field. Hens, she keeps hens.' I am telling Dr Metcalf about Gertrude's Place. 'I could,' I tell him, 'bring some eggs, one time, for Magda, perhaps next time,' I say, 'I go there on my days off but if I don't go Mother goes on the bus.'\n\nDr Metcalf is always quiet, I suppose, it does not show, this quietness, so much when Magda and the others are there. In one of the silences we hear Mrs P returning. Dr Metcalf says she has come back earlier than usual. In another of the silences I say that I am thinking it is time for me to go back to the hospital. When I say this Dr Metcalf says he will take me back. And I say oh no I would not dream of him coming out again. He says a walk would be nice. He feels like a walk. Should we walk to the hospital? Or do I prefer to go by bus?\n\n'Oh a walk would be lovely,' I say.\n\nOutside the front door, to our surprise, there is a thick fog. It is impossible to see even one footstep ahead. It is as if a cold damp wall is right up against us. Slowly we go forward. I feel along the wall with both hands. We can follow the wall I say but Dr Metcalf reminds me that the wall does not go beyond the corner of the street. We come to the end of the wall. I feel completely enveloped. My scarf, coat and gloves are wet. I try to go back. I reach for the wall but am not able to find it. I can't breathe. I stumble off the unseen edge of the pavement. There is a silence so terrible it is as if the world has ceased to exist. I feel terrified and try to call out to Dr Metcalf and find he is near me. He puts his arm round me and says it is no good, we'll have to find our way back to the house and it will be best for me to sleep there and go in to the hospital in the morning.\n\nMrs Privett has already gone to bed but Dr Metcalf taps on her door and asks if I can sleep in her sitting room. He explains about the fog and that we have had to leave our wet things in the kitchen. He brings a mattress from one of the spare beds upstairs and puts it on her sitting-room floor. Mrs P, who looks more sour than usual in her dressing gown and curlers, hands me two sheets. Dr Metcalf brings down an armful of blankets. He says goodnight to Mrs P and me in a most formal way. I can hardly bear this and I want to drop the sheets and rush along the passage and into the hall and up the big staircase after him. I want to be upstairs in his part of the house, even though he is alone up there. I don't want to be an unwelcome guest in Mrs Privett's sitting room.\n\n'Can I have a glass of water please,' I ask Mrs P. She brings me half a glass which she holds out to me round the door before closing it. I make up a sort of bed on the floor.\n\nMrs Privett's sitting room is crowded with her things. There is only just room for the mattress between the chairs and the table and the sideboard. There is a dark red plush tablecloth with an immense fringe all round it. She has some china shepherd and shepherdess figures on the mantelpiece and two stuffed birds under glass covers. There is a mirror over the mantel and a great many photographs in bone frames. One forbidding face glares from the cruet on the sideboard. I examine the room to try to overcome my uneasiness and the wishing to be with Dr Metcalf. When we were in the fog he was close to me guiding me with his arm round me and his body close to mine. I try to recapture the feeling of his arm being round me. Does he suddenly not want me? I wonder if he is in bed or whether he will come downstairs again. I open the door a bit but it is dark and quiet. Upstairs in one of the pretty bedrooms I would be near him. The time goes by very slowly. I am cold. I don't want to put out the light. Oh come down again please.\n\nI feel I can't breathe when the light is out. I am too near the floor. Mrs P's horrible face seems to be in the room, disagreeable, when the light is off. I struggle up off the mattress and put on the light again. I check her black-out curtain and knock something over on the other side of the curtain. Perhaps a plant in a pot. I don't dare move the curtain to look. When I try to crawl back into the tunnel of bedclothes I knock over the water and it makes a wet patch on the carpet and soaks into the side of the mattress. The room is getting colder.\n\nI am not asleep and, though I have kept on most of my clothes, I am cold. Right through my whole body I am cold. I wish I was at home and not here. I wish I had gone home. And another thing, I do not know where Mrs P's bathroom is. I want my mother. This is such an unusual wish that I weep a bit in a sort of despair. It is only a quarter to two. A great many hours till the morning. My mother would not like the Metcalfs. I wish I could be warm. Dr Metcalf obviously does not like me much.\n\nThe place where I lived as a child is a place of small mean houses in terraces in mean little streets. All around are pit mounds, some black with fresh slag from the mines and others covered with coarse tufty grass and the yellow weed called coltsfoot. There are small triangles of meadow with partly derelict barns and farm cottages. Sometimes there are a few cows and chickens. The bone and glue factory is not far away and at the end of the street where we once lived there are the brick kilns.\n\nOne night when I am walking home with my mother we hear someone crying in the darkness ahead of us. The lane is shut in by dark slag heaps and there is, as if relieving the endless smell of bone and glue, a sharp fresh fragrance from the elderberry bushes which are, at intervals, along the roadway.\n\n'Who is it?' my mother calls in her soft voice. But no one answers. 'Who is it crying?' my mother calls again, her voice like a flute in the night. 'Who are you? Why are you crying? Don't be afraid. Tell me what is the matter.' My mother, holding my hand, stands still in the middle of the road. After a bit a girl comes out from the black patch of elderberry. She is still crying. She tells my mother she is Sylvia Bradley and her father has turned her out with only a shilling. We walk on together, slowly, while the girl tells my mother. The fragrance of the snapped-off and bruised elderberry is left behind and the smell of bone and glue seems stronger. With a heaving roar the blast furnace on the other side of the town opens and the sky is filled with the familiar red glow. We can hear the wheels at the mine shaft turning as one cage of men comes up and another cage goes down. 'Where will I go,' Sylvia Bradley cries, 'I've got nowhere to go.'\n\nMy mother never lets us play with the Bradley girls. There are nine of them and they do not wear any knickers. Emily Bradley, the next eldest, knows a shop where the woman makes rum and butter toffees. If you eat them they make you drunk, she tells us.\n\nI must have been asleep, or nearly asleep. Sylvia Bradley. She was the one who cried so much that night. All along the road my mother tried to comfort her and to persuade her to go home again. 'When your baby is born,' she said to Sylvia Bradley, 'your mother and father are sure to love your baby. You will see, they will not turn you out. Go back home to them.'\n\nI want my hairbrush. I struggle up from the mattress. It is colder than ever in the room. There is a draught along the floor. My back aches. I want the bathroom. I don't know at all where the bathroom is in Mrs P's part of the house. I go as quietly as I can, feeling my way along the passage to the door which leads into the wide front hall. The black-out curtain for the fan-light window over the front door has not been put up and a faint light comes through. Perhaps it is the fog making a mysterious misty light. It must be getting on for morning. I feel my way to the staircase and go up as quietly as I can. There is a landing where the staircase turns. The lavatory, which has an ornamental stained-glass door, opens off this landing. Magda explained once that it was there because it was added to the house.\n\nWhen I come out, instead of going down, I go on upstairs and along the thickly carpeted passage. I can smell Magda's perfume. It is dark and all the doors are closed. There is no sound from behind the closed door which is Dr Metcalf's. I go to the top of the stairs again and make my way back to the sitting room. It is airless and colder than ever. I don't suppose Mrs P ever uses the room and I'm sure she never has a fire in it. I crawl back into the cold damp bedclothes. The fog must be seeping in through the walls. It is not even three o'clock. My hair needs brushing. I wish I had my hairbrush. I am used to brushing my hair before I go to bed. I have not been able to clean my teeth either. Trying to sleep in my clothes is awful. I'm tired and everything I will have to do tomorrow rushes in on me. I'll never manage. Because it is silly to wish for my hairbrush and for my mother I can't help crying a bit more.\n\nI am afraid to go to sleep. I am frightened of being asleep when Mrs Privett comes in here in the morning. I don't want her to come into her sitting room and find me asleep.\n\nOf all the girls at school, apart from Ferguson of course, Bulge is the one I seem to remember most. It is not that I am always thinking of those times, but when I do, I seem to remember Bulge.\n\nThe first and only nice thing I ever do towards Bulge is when I visit her after her appendix operation in the hospital at Oxford. I have to be taken there to have my ear examined and dressed and bandaged. Bulge is lying back on her pillows with her washing bowl beside her. She is supposed to have washed her face. It is not visiting time but I am allowed in because of being brought to the out-patients department. Bulge is the only schoolgirl in the women's ward. She has her doll and her doll's clothes on the locker by her bed. The other patients seem to like Bulge. Even the nurses seem to like her and they even have little jokes with her. They all call her Muriel. No one except me knows the name Bulge. She does not know it herself.\n\nThe ward is long and narrow and the beds are all stripped on to chairs and the patients are washing themselves in bowls like the one Bulge has. She looks different. Her face seems white and clean, like wax, and she seems to have lost her spots. She looks tired and, without her spectacles, she seems more childish. Her face, I have never noticed before, her face is round. Her hair has been brushed back off her face and this makes her look different. She even seems pretty.\n\n'Have you finished with this?' I indicate the bowl and she says yes and will I put it with the others on that high metal trolley. When I lift the bowl the water splashes up everywhere. I have lifted it too high. I thought it would be a heavy bowl by the look of it but it is light, much lighter than I imagined. I put too much effort into lifting it a nurse says as she goes by. I feel confused and ashamed and the nurse says she had done the same thing years ago, not knowing the bowls were so light.\n\n'I brought this for you to read,' I say to Bulge as I place _Treacle Wins Through_ on the sheet. 'Here,' I say, 'I thought you would like to read this.'\n\n'Oh! I say! Yes rather! What's it like?' Bulge raises herself a little bit. She looks in an eager but short-sighted way at the book.\n\n'Haven't read it yet, not all of it.'\n\n'Oh. You finish it first. After all, Mummy and Chris gave it to you. When they came to school that day, they brought it for you.'\n\n'Yes, well, I know, but they're your parents. And you are in hospital. I'll finish it after you. They are your parents \u2013 it was jolly decent of them to give me a present. They are your parents, after all.'\n\n'Only half. Chris is Mummy's Friend. Remember.'\n\n'Yes I know. But you have it first. Go on.' I push the book with Treacle's boarding-school adventures, which I am longing to read, nearer to her.\n\nI can tell Bulge is pleased. She fingers the book and smiles.\n\nIt's the first and only nice thing I have ever done...\n\nI'm shivering. I fold up my blankets and the sheets. I let myself out of the front door of the Metcalfs' house. It is still dark but the fog has lifted. I set off to walk to the hospital. It is still not light as I climb the hill to the service entrance. The night porter will be somewhere near there. He has the key to the special door in the basement. There is a passage down there through to the part of the hospital where the nurses have their rooms.\n\nThe night porter believes my story about the fog. He says not to bother about signing the book. He says the fog is the best anti-aircraft there is.\n\n'There's been no bombs,' he says. His wife is nervous in the night, in the air raids, but this time she'll have had a good sleep. I have never thought of the night porters, or any of the porters, having wives, and perhaps children, at home. Suddenly I feel ashamed because, before I found him, I was remembering that I had no hair clips, no hair nets and not one apron button. I was thinking that Lois, and even some of the others, Ferguson in particular, must have been helping themselves to my store of these. These shortages, as they are called, seem more important than the progress of the war. Even that phrase, the progress of the war, because people say it all the time, seems to have no meaning. As I follow close behind the night porter I feel ashamed of my own small selfish brain. His wife is probably alone every night scared stiff. And I cried for my hairbrush and then centred my thoughts on a hair clip.\n\nWe go down in the lift to the lower ground floor. As we walk past the glass doors of Lower Ground Radium I catch sight of staff nurse Ramsden. She is sitting in the ward office with a small shaded light beside her. She is bent over the desk, writing, probably some of the night report. She must have been moved there recently. I wish she would look up and see me and smile at me. I have to hurry to keep up with the porter.\n\n'Ramsden,' I could say if I could speak to her just now. 'Ramsden, do you know _The Hunt_?' and Ramsden, her eyes suddenly bright with some memory of the music, would say, 'Ah! Yes. Mozart, the quartet. _The Hunt._ It's K458 in B flat major.'\n\nAs it is a quartet, and, if all four instruments leap in together on the opening notes, it would be too difficult for her to sing the first few bars. From what I managed to hear, when Dr Metcalf tried the record, I feel it would not be possible for the human voice, by itself, to produce the sounds. If I could speak to Ramsden just now I feel sure that is what she would explain. I would like to talk to Ramsden now about the way in which the musicians, in a quartet, play towards each other, leaning forward as if to emphasize something in the music and then, pausing, they lean back allowing the phrases of music to follow one another, to meet and join, to climb and cascade. I would like her to agree with me and to say that she knows about the serious expressions the musicians have while they play and that she has noticed too the way they have of drooping their wrists and showing the vulnerable white backs of their hands.\n\nThe porter, with his key in the lock, is waiting for me. 'You know Roberts,' Lois says at breakfast.\n\n'Roberts? Roberts?' I say putting my plate of fried potatoes on the table. I am hungry.\n\n'Yes Roberts. Roberts \u2013 Nurse Roberts.' Lois lights a cigarette. She never eats breakfast. I move her tea cup nearer to her elbow. 'Well listen!' Lois says. 'Roberts. She's been throwing up all over the place. Can't keep a thing down. Diet kitchen of all places. Can you imagine! It's the powdered egg. Just the sight of the packet is enough to make her throw up. She's fainted during Report too, twice.' Lois, after a deep breath, exhales a cloud of smoke. She nips out her cigarette, squeezing it quickly between her thumb and forefinger, as Sister Bean, clutching the registers to her flat white apron, marches across the dining room.\n\n'Abbott Abrahams Ackerman Allwood...' Nurses in various parts of the large room are answering to the rapid barking of their names. Some half rise from their places at table. 'Arrington and Attwood...'\n\n'Nurse Arrington!'\n\n'Yes Sister.'\n\n'Matron's office nine a.m.'\n\n'Yes Sister.'\n\n'Nurses Baker Barrington Beam Beamish Beckett...'\n\n'Anyway,' Lois says looking at me, 'long time no see, where were you last night?'\n\n'Nurses Birch Bowman D. Bowman E. Broadhurst Brown Burchall...'\n\n# GERTRUDE'S PLACE\n\nWhen I see the visiting nurse cross the lighted verandah of the house opposite I recall without wanting to the navy-blue uniform of the district nurse as she dismounted from her bicycle. Pushing through the long grass and weeds she climbed slowly up to a small house in the middle of a field where scattered hens were industrious and apparently independent.\n\nAt that time I watched from higher up the hill, leaning heavily on my own bicycle, assuring myself that other people, for example, Madame Curie, had safely ridden bicycles right up to the time of confinement. As the nurse made her slow journey I thought of the illness in the house and how I could go down there and tell her that I could do all that had to be done. 'I can stay. Tell me what needs to be done. I will do all that needs doing.' Easily I could do this.\n\nThe nurse did not leave. After a short time I saw smoke rise from the chimney; she would need a fire to have some hot water. I remember that I wondered then whether the nurse would know to shut up the hens for the night. As I watched from high up on the hill I thought of foxes.\n\nI remember now, unwillingly, all kinds of things. One small thing only, the sight of an unknown nurse going in to an unknown patient across the road, is needed to bring back memories mysteriously stored in such a way that all seem fresh and whole as if they belong now at the present time, perhaps yesterday, the day before yesterday or this morning... one of these memories being the schoolgirl game of comparisons which I continued to play, silently watchful, observing my companions noticing the quality of their hair, their complexions, their finger nails, their uniforms especially the condition of the starched caps and collars and all the time secretly placing myself above or below a standard which I regarded as acceptable. When I stood then in the queue for letters I noticed the fat stomachs, the thick waists of some of the nurses and how their aprons were pulled tight across this bulging roundness. My own apron, at that time, was neat and flat and the memory of the sudden realization, one morning that this could not always be so is so intense now that I remember clearly the unfamiliar nausea which accompanied this thought.\n\nOther things come back in quick succession, the wedding ring for sixpence, the way in which I heard what had happened to Dr Metcalf, the attempts I made to retrieve a letter I had written. On that day, in the bleakness, I saw little Nurse Roberts, alone and portly under her winter coat, standing at the bus stop with her suitcase on the pavement beside her. And then there followed the whispered reasons for her running away. Always a great deal of whispering.\n\nThe daylight, that evening when I watched the district nurse pushing her bicycle up the steep lane, faded quickly and quite soon the dusk became night. Across the field I saw the light in the window of the little living room and I wished then for the times when I was in that room beside the hearth. I thought with longing of the times I had spent there and how it was a long time since I l had been there. I remained for some hours in the damp cold, undecided. I did not go down to the place that night and, because of what was happening to me, I never went back there again.\n\nOne evening as the lift goes up and I am waiting, it passes the floor where I am standing and I see through the little glass window staff nurse Ramsden in the lift. Really I see her polished shoes, I know they are hers. Her shoes are of better quality and she has narrow feet, narrow at the heel and the shoes fit perfectly as if made especially for her.\n\nI never hear anyone call staff nurse Ramsden 'Penicillin Peggy' though she is very often the one in charge of the syringes and the needles, cleaning and sterilizing them, and giving the three-hourly injections. Everyone calls Ramsden Miss Ramsden, even some of the patients. Because she understands and speaks other languages, she is often asked in to translate for a prisoner or perhaps a Polish officer who can speak some sort of German. This morning during the surgeon's ward round I can see her laughing with a German P.O.W. He looks at her with admiration in his eyes and he carefully repeats some of the words and she, in her quiet way, laughs softly again and translates for Mr Bowen, the surgeon, and he laughs too. Ramsden is not at all nervous with Mr Bowen, she bends over to unfasten the bandage and to remove the dressing and the prisoner closes his eyes and grips the head rail of the bed till his knuckles shine white.\n\nRamsden reads Rilke in German. I have heard her read. Perhaps it is that which makes me invite her.\n\n'Ramsden,' I say, 'my folks,' this is not my way but I say it, 'my folks would be very happy if you would visit, you know, if you would care to come and stay with us sometime.'\n\nRamsden says she would like that very much and she thanks me.\n\nMy mother would like someone who can read these poems in her language. I am always trying to think of ways to comfort my mother and it seems to me that I can offer Ramsden to her.\n\n'Infection takes the line of least resistance, sing that to la,' Trent says, 'a peptic ulcer is an ulcer which occurs anywhere in the alimentary canal \u2013 repeat after me \u2013 a peptic ulcer is...' This evening we are all trying to revise for our exams. Trent, with her uniform unbuttoned, is on circulation, Ferguson has turned up varicose conditions and Lois wants to go over the preparation of trolleys for mastoid dressings, lumbar puncture and washing a patient's hair in bed. Of course I cannot tell them that I shall be inviting staff nurse Ramsden home later on when we have some holidays. I can't help thinking about my invitation with a mixture of excitement and plain worry. For one thing where could staff nurse Ramsden sleep in my mother's house?\n\n'Now gels, heads up, throw out your chests.' Trent opens the window. 'Mind the black-out,' someone says. It is impossible to study with Trent in the room. She makes a joke out of everything. She sings and dances and dresses up in bath towels. She pretends to give elaborate intimate treatment to imaginary patients. She pretends she has made dreadful mistakes and kneels before an imaginary ward sister...\n\nWe have all started having cold baths every morning. Trent has one too but we have all noticed the steam coming under the partition...\n\nLois says to me later that she has worked with Trent on the wards and that if she, Lois, were ill it would be Trent she would want to have to look after her. This is considered to be the highest praise one nurse can give another nurse.\n\nBecause of the war some wards are badly overcrowded to enable us to prepare others to be quite empty in readiness for the wounded. It is impossible to imagine a life which is not in the war.\n\n'O' course we couldn't go to bed or anythin' \u2013 they had ladders great big long ones up the wall to our winders an' we hid under the bed, we didn't have any candle for fear they would see it and our shadders on the curtings an' all along the mantelpiece we had these big paint tins full of rusty old nails to rattle about and throw should any of 'em come right up and bosst in through the winder.'\n\nI am at Gertrude's Place. Gertrude is telling me about what she calls the raids when she was a girl. She lived then, she tells me, in a Place called Netherton or near there just out of it somewhere where the chain shops were, and the women (her mother was one of them), with great big muscles for swinging a sledge hammer, made chains. Gertrude had to take her little baby brother to be fed, he was on the breast, she says; 'The women all set theirselves comfortable against the wall to feed the babbies and us girls we played skip rope an' hopscotch an' clay allys and such till it was time to take the babbies back home and put the taters on the hob to boil.' The women, she tells me, wore big overall dresses and they did not bother much about any knickers. Her mother, she says, did not know any life except the chain shop. There were different gangs she explains and they were always raiding. She says having to put black stuff over her window now at night because of the air raids even though she is in the country reminds her of when she was a girl and they didn't dare to show any light.' I thought,' she says, 'that bein' here in the fields and with the spinney so close a light would not show but they, the wardens, they keep comin' to say they can see a light from my place. The wardens come here you see... reminds me of them gangs years ago...'\n\nI am at Gertrude's place, it is the country. I came on my bicycle. My day off. I have two days off. 'I'll come again tomorrow,' I say. She is pleased. She is always waiting for me to come. She writes letters in big black handwriting on paper used for wrapping boiling fowls. In places her pen digs up the paper.\n\n... _If you can come Tue or Wed... I shall be home. If too tired for the bicycle you can get the eleven a.m. bus to the Holly Bush and walk down by the spinney it's about a mile but it don't seem that long and you can have a good rest... I'll have some eggs_...\n\nIn the rush of work on the wards I am always thinking of Gertrude's Place and how I will get out there first thing on my day off.\n\nI have been cutting out a frieze of wallpaper with rosebuds on it and we have pasted it round her back kitchen wall. Against the blue distemper the pink and white looks nice. Gertrude says she is pleased. I can see the way her eyes are shining that she is pleased. She is sunburned and seems old and she always looks clean even though she can only wash with a bit of rag wrung out in a basin of hot water. She does not have a bathroom. In one room there is a billiard table and the incubators and a harmonium which she plays while she sings hymns. She and her husband don't go to bed at night she explains on one of my visits. They sit one each side of the fire with the kettle singing. They sit there and sleep the night, she laughs when she tells me, and says that the kettle there on the hob is ready and boiling every morning. A big oil lamp on three chains hangs low over the table in the living room. The table is so littered with things never put away that they have become, as she says, so much rubbish. She clears a space on the corner of the table so that I can eat the egg she has boiled for me. She cuts the loaf on a folded piece of newspaper and hands me slices of white bread spread with real butter.\n\n'It must be all your butter ration,' I say.\n\n'There's plenty where that came from,' she says. And I describe the little string bags which all the nurses carry with them; 'a little jar for sugar, one for butter and one for jam or marmalade.' I tell her about the tin baths of jam made in the hospital and ladled into our jars. She can't imagine, she says, us all lining up once a week. I tell her about the blackout shutters for the tall windows in the ward and how these have to be put up early shutting out the sun and the fresh air. We have exams I tell her in about two weeks time. She says can I eat a second egg if she puts one on and I say yes if she can spare it. This makes her laugh.\n\nI want to tell Gertrude about Lois, my friend, being jealous of my new friendship with Dr Metcalf and his wife. I want to tell her that I bought Lois a pretty nightdress so that she would not mind my going to Magda Metcalf's parties and how Lois never wore the nightdress but gave it to her ugly, stupid mother who is so greedy she would take everything. If I tell Gertrude that I buy cigarettes for Lois and that I minded dreadfully about the nightdress she might think that I am too fond of Lois or something. If I tell her about the games at the Metcalfs' party she might think I am in what she calls bad company. Magda is very generous. She tells everybody that I saved her life and she is always giving me expensive things like the silver bracelets which I can't wear. For some reason bangles look all wrong on my arms and, in any case, people would wonder where I got them from. She has given me some pure silk blouses which don't really suit me. I don't know what to wear them with and then there's other things like chiffon scarves and lace-edged hankies and a jewelled comb. As well as all this she is giving me something else which I can't explain about to Gertrude. Magda tells me to come round whenever I'm free because they love having me there.\n\nI can't exactly explain to Gertrude how they show me off to their friends in the strange way that they do. Magda calls me Darling in front of everyone and Dr Metcalf actually called me by my first name on the ward the other day. How can I tell Gertrude about these people; they are very nice and they want me to be with them. Of course I didn't save Magda's life. She was admitted to Casualty one night while I was relief nurse there. She was in an attack of asthma, it looked pretty fearful and because I didn't know what to do till the R.M.O. came I dragged in the big oxygen cylinder and Magda got better straight away at the sight of it.\n\n'Since when,' the Night Superintendent said later, 'since when, Nurse, has oxygen been the remedy for asthma? And by what miracle, Nurse, can an empty cylinder be of use to anyone?' How can I tell anyone that? And Lois says do I realize that Dr Metcalf has made eleven nurses pregnant and don't I know what it was that caused Sister Green on chests to suicide.\n\nI think I love Dr Metcalf. Certainly I love Magda, she is kind and full of ideas. All her friends love her and they dress up and cook wild meals and dance and, though I mostly watch, I love being at their house especially when Dr Metcalf lends me books or suggests that we listen to music. Sometimes he looks very tired and one night I thought he was looking at me as if he loved me and when he walked to the bus with me he caught my hand quickly as the bus came and quickly kissed my fingers...\n\nGertrude brings me my second egg and watches me eat it. Perhaps I will tell her next time and then give up all that she thinks is bad company. I think from what little she says that she does not much care for Lois. Lois smokes all the time and never has any money. Once when I mention the money side of things Gertrude says that she must have some because if the hospital is paying me twenty-eight shillings a month they must be paying her too.\n\n'They wouldn't give to one and not to another,' Gertrude says. Which is, of course, perfectly true.\n\nThe sky always seems nearer at Gertrude's Place. It seems to come down, rain soft and swollen, the clouds rosy at the edges and shining as if pearls are sewn into their linings, to the top of the grassy slope which goes straight up from the windows of the living room. The feeling I have of being able to reach out to take the sky in both hands is one of the most restful things I have ever known. I sit there knowing about the nearness of the sky, not reaching out but, at the same time, pleased about the possibilities. These possibilities are connected in an undefined way with Dr Metcalf and how I feel towards him, and then there is Gertrude sitting across on the other side of the table. Two separate people but joined together because of how I feel about them.\n\nThe fowls are dotted white and brown all over the slope of the field. Gertrude has an old bucket on its side out there on the grass. She can tell at once when it starts to rain because of the splash marks the first drops make on it. A rooster struts by and Gertrude, with her little laugh, says to always watch that one. 'Keep a eye on him,' she says, 'don't trust him, not a inch, he'll be into you where you least expect it.' She laughs again. 'Roosters!' she says, 'they can be something wicked!' Afterwards we put the eggs ready for me to take home. Lovely smooth large eggs, their shells glowing a cream apricot colour or pure white with a translucence which makes them seem frail. We wrap the eggs in threes in torn-off pieces of a magazine. They are black-market eggs and my mother, anxious always about provisions, has said to me to buy as many as Gertrude can spare. She lets me have three dozen. She has two dressed fowls for my mother too, one of them she explains has had a fox get to her but not much taken, just a wing and a bit of breast. She has neatened the fowl, she says, with her dress-making scissors. 'Tell mother,' she says, 'I'm sorry about that old red fox.'\n\nAs we work I have a great wish to talk about Dr Metcalf, to tell Gertrude about his quiet gentleness and about his brown eyes. I want to tell her about Magda and how fond she is of her beautiful dog, how the dog lies in bed beside her, a Red Setter, and how Magda talks to him and fondles him. I could tell Gertrude I feel sorry for Dr Metcalf, that I want... Gertrude says what about a game of billiards or cards. Games bore me but I play because I know Gertrude likes to play. We play racing patience, Gertrude calls it 'pounce', it is her favourite. We play three games and she wins them all.\n\nThe long summer evening is beginning to get dark and Gertrude comes down through the damp grass and nettles and cow parsley to the road with me. I walk with my bicycle. I tell her I will come back in the morning to scrape and clean out the hen houses as usual. I almost say, 'I'll have to leave early because I'm going to a party,' but I can't say the words.\n\n'Two nights off,' she says, 'Eh? But that's nice!'\n\nI turn round as I coast down the long hill just before the road bends round and I see her standing alone and waving. I wave and switch on the bicycle lamp grateful that my father insisted on lending it to me.\n\nWhen I come home there is a telegram for me from the hospital telling me to return at once. The nurses' hours are being rearranged.\n\n'I suppose it's wounded men,' I say to my mother, 'a convoy.' My face is burning pleasantly with the fresh air. She is upset and makes a parcel with a fruit cake and some hard-boiled eggs for me to take back.\n\n'There's a train at nine-twenty,' my father says, and he says he will come to the station.\n\nIn the grey half light I walk up and down the platform with my father. He always comes to the train if he can. He tells me, 'You are doing God's work.' He tells me to remember:\n\n' _Der Herr ist mein Hirte, mir wird nichts mangeln_... \u2013Remember,' he says; ' _The Lord is my Shepherd... und ob ich schon wanderte im finstern Tal, f\u00fcrchte ich kein Ungl\u00fcck; denn du bist bei mir, dein Stecken und Stab tr\u00f6sten mich_... verse four,' he says and he holds my hand.\n\n'Not in German,' I say in a low voice, glancing quickly to see if the other people waiting for the train have noticed. For my father it is not the language of the enemy but is the language for cherishing. I feel his hand holding mine and I want to cry and go back home with him. I am afraid.\n\n'I don't want to go,' I tell him.\n\n'It's God's work,' he says again.\n\nThe notice board in the deserted front hall of the Nurses' Home is covered with neatly written timetables. I am on duty at four a.m. I go up to the room which I share with Lois. I go in very quietly as she will be asleep. But her bed is empty. The black-out curtains are not drawn and the window is open. From this window, high up, I can lean, it seems, right into the black darkness which is the world. There is a sweetness, a faint fragrance of crushed grass as if it has come with me from Gertrude's Place. It is probably from the park. When I try to breathe it in once more it is not there. There are no lights anywhere only the canal shines in the light of the rising moon. The moon and the moonlit water are inextinguishable. Two tiny points of yellow light far below are moving and stopping and moving on again slowly. It is a bus. A faint roar, as of breathing, comes to me across the black shadowed roof-tops. I close the window and fix the curtain.\n\nTrying to sleep I think of the tranquillity of Gertrude's field scattered with hens.\n\n'Darling, you are such a pet!' Magda said the other evening when I arrived late (after evening duty) at her birthday party. 'Isn't she just a pet,' she called out, turning me round and round in front of her roomful of guests. 'Isn't she sweet to come after work. You Darling!' she kissed me. 'And you still wear your school coat. I love it! I wish I had it.' She buried her face in the dark-green nap. I was not sure whether she was laughing or crying.\n\n'You could have it,' I said, 'but I seem to need it!'\n\n'She seems to need it,' Magda cried. 'Oh isn't she just perfect. A natural perfect! Jonty,' she called Dr Metcalf, 'take this dear child somewhere and undress her. Help her out of this coat.' They were all laughing.\n\nIf I tell Gertrude she will see how generous and kind Magda is. But Gertrude might think she is being generous with the wrong things. I do not want to give back the special thing I am being given. Gertrude I feel sure will tell me not to take.\n\nI turn over. I am afraid because I can't sleep. Then the rumbling starts. I have heard this noise before. I know what it is. I watched one morning with Lois. From our high-up window we could see a long train of mysterious carriages and wagons winding across to the station nearest the hospital. This is what I can hear now. The wagons, some of them will be marked with a red cross, are bringing wounded soldiers. I can hear the brakes squealing as the train draws up and stops and then, jolting, pulls along a bit more to stop again to allow the stretchers to be unloaded into the waiting ambulances. Quite soon I hear the first of these ambulances, like on that other morning, come slowly up to the hospital. They come steadily one after the other. The empty beds we have prepared will fill again with men who have fear and pain in their eyes. They do not really sleep but lie with their teeth clenched and their hands clenched and their eyes half open. Some of them are not able to close their eyes in sleep.\n\nI do not see Lois at all or Trent. We leave little notes for each other. We are working an eight-hour shift, eight hours on and eight hours off. There is no time off. We eat and sleep and work and eat and sleep and work. Some of the nurses get ill and we are short of staff. The ward where I am is all split beds for amputations. Every bed has its own electric bell and its own tourniquet, some beds have two.\n\nGertrude, waiting for me to come, writes to me. I queue for letters and am pleased when I see her black handwriting;\n\n_Queenie has her pups you'll be pleased to know little balls of fat tumbling about you'll love 'em. If you miss the eleven am bus there's another at one. We would have a bit less time that's all_ \\-\n\nand\n\n_Have you ever seen the pig's meat salted down you'll see it up at Violet's when you come they've killed a pig up there you should taste the pork pies. I'll have one ready all wrapped for you_...\n\nOne of the men, he is only a boy really, as well as having both legs amputated above the knee, has a terrible wound in his stomach. I try, while I am dressing it, not to show that I can't bear it. One day he asks me to put the gold cross from round his neck into the wound but I tell him I can't do this. He begs me and I say no I can't because it isn't sterile. He has tears on his face and my own eyes fill with tears so that it is hard to see what I am doing. I brush something small and white out of his bed. It seems to roll up like a soft bread crumb. As I swab the wound it seems something is moving in it. It is a maggot. I pick it out quickly with the forceps trying not to show my shock. Suddenly I see there are maggots everywhere. It's as though he is being eaten alive. They are crawling from under his other bandages and in and out of his shirt and the sheets. I lean over him to try to stop him seeing and I ring the bell, the three rings for emergency. I have never done this before. I try to cover him but the maggots have spilled on the floor and he has seen them. I see the horror of it in his eyes.\n\nThe charge nurse comes round the screens straight away. 'Fetch a dustpan and brush nurse,' she says to me 'and ring for the R.S.O.' As I go I hear her raised voice as she tries to restrain him and to say words of comfort \u2013 that the maggots have been put there on purpose, that they have cleaned his wounds and yes of course she'll put the gold cross wherever he wants it \u2013 yes, she'll put it there now -\n\nMagda, who has a bad toothache, telephones me on the ward. Her face is horrible, all swollen, she says. She wants me to go with them to their little shack on the river. An easy journey she explains, a bus every hour on the hour. It is awkward taking the phone call in the ward office. I tell her I am not free. 'Well Darling,' she says, 'next week then, as soon as you can manage. We'll be there. Just shout from the bank and we'll bring the punt to get you.'\n\n'Oh lovely!' I say, trying to get my voice as like Magda's as I can so that Ferguson, who has come into the office in a hurry for the thermometers, can hear, 'Oh lovely!'\n\nAll evening while I am cleaning locker tops and making beds and giving out the soup and bread the men have for their supper I think about the river shack, a holiday bungalow which is a part of a rich person's life. I can imagine it clearly, low on the bank close to the quiet water. It will be painted white and there will be a small landing, a wooden jetty, belonging just to that cottage. I have seen these places, very private with grass coming right up to the walls. And all night it will be possible to smell the river water and to hear the soft sounds of it. I can imagine too the pleasure of being on the private jetty, of sitting there with my feet in the water as rich people sit looking as if they own that particular part of the river while ordinary people can only go by during an hour's paid-for pleasure trip in a boat owned and hired out by someone else...\n\nGertrude writes to say she is renting the field next to her place and it is for me. I can have some fowls of my own there and she'll look after them while I am at the hospital. She is buying some bricks too. She adds a p.s., 'p'raps we could build us a pig pen and have a pig between us, a sow, we'd make a lot from the litter. I've always wanted to keep a pig.'\n\nI can't sleep and I try to read and I find a passage written by George Eliot to Caroline Bray after she has started her life with George Lewes. She writes:\n\n_I should like never to write about myself again; it is not healthy to dwell on one's own feelings and conduct, but only to try and live more faithfully and lovingly every fresh day_...\n\nI like this very much and I sit on the edge of my bed and write a letter to Gertrude. I tell her that I like the idea of the field and the pig sty very much. I want to write to her about the maggots, I keep seeing them in my mind, but I write about Magda, all about her, about her face swollen with the bad tooth and how she says she is such a cold person and when you go to see her she is all crouched over a fire with little heaps of underclothes arranged all round the hearth to warm. I write some pages about the excitement of being invited to a doctor's house and how Magda is the daughter of a leading surgeon and that this is a good thing for Dr Metcalf \u2013 everyone says so. I tell her about the all-night parties and how Magda and her friends call me 'darling'. And then I write about Dr Metcalf and tell her that I think I love him. I end the letter telling her that I'm coming over to her place on my next day off to clean out the hen houses and to see my field and I tell her that I want to see her more than I want to see anyone else. I try to end my letter with a sentence from the quotation from George Eliot but do not know which part of it to include.\n\nThe next morning I address the letter and post it.\n\nTetanus typhoid diphtheria and gas gangrene. Relatives, mothers and fathers travelling the length and breadth of England arrive at the hospital too late. They sit in corridors waiting for the first light of the morning and for the first trams...\n\nOur examinations are postponed indefinitely.\n\nI have a day off at last and I sleep all night and, because no one wakes me, I sleep all day as well. Unable to have these hours again I feel as if I am wasting the whole of my life.\n\nI wait in the queue for letters. There is one for me from Gertrude, it is the longest letter I have ever had from anyone. I read it quickly \u2013 wondering what she will say in answer to mine.\n\n_I am ever so grateful,_ she writes, _for the fowl pen cleaning out but I feel very guilty as well. I am very concerned about your health, I will own up, I know you are a lot thinner than you should be it gives you a Ethereal Look and you should have the Perfect Health Look and not be overburdened with life. I should like you to have a few weeks out at grass_...\n\nAs I read it seems I can smell the potatoes boiling on the hob at Gertrude's Place and it is as if her voice is speaking telling me how a horse when he is overworked is put in a good meadow field, in good green pasture, where he can rest and eat and wander with other horses in safety and complete freedom. She writes:\n\n_I should like you to have a time of no worry and no burden. I am thinking such a lot about you and want you here so I can get you better. I could clear out the other room and make a nice bed where you could sleep quiet and comfortable. Of course I know I can want this for you and you might not want_...\n\nThe slope of grass outside the window seems very close as I read on; it is as if she is speaking;\n\n_I will say that you occupy a place in my thoughts and in my Heart and life no one else will ever fill. Chiefly I am so grateful it will always seem so good of you, a person like yourself, to be friends with someone like me. I know I have to finish in this page and not be saying more in this letter it's nearly like saying Goodbye when I don't want you to go. I just want one more word. I don't know if you know it or not but there is something about you so refined and nice. Pure Gold or should it be Diamonds._\n\n_It is lovely to know one is loved and treasured and I want to say I am so Happy to think of you being so kind and willing to know me and to come and see me and write to me. I want nothing but love and happiness for you and complete Reliance in the spirit of one who loves you from your loving friend_\n\nGertrude\n\nThough I am reading the letter in the hospital dining room it seems as if I am in the twilight in the living room at Gertrude's Place with her sitting across the table from me \u2013 the packs of old cards ready for our game. I seem to be in the silence of the late afternoon at her place. I am wishing to be there and I think how I will go on Sunday, my next day off. I will get up early and be there the whole day and examine the rented field and decide where the pig pen should be. Gertrude, in her answer to my letter, has not said anything about Magda or Dr Metcalf. It is as though they no longer exist.\n\n'Long time no see.' Lois has plonked herself in the chair opposite mine. She has spilled her tea in her saucer. 'How's tricks?' she says lighting a cigarette and squinting at me through the smoke.\n\nEvery day I re-read Gertrude's letter. I carry it with me in the pocket of my uniform and while I am working I can feel its bulkiness. Perhaps when Ramsden comes to stay she will like to come out to Gertrude's Place, not on a bicycle of course, we can take the eleven a.m. bus to Holly Bush and walk down by the spinney, it's about a mile across the fields. Ramsden will not be coming for a while. By the time she comes we might have the pig and if you have something like a pig it is nice to be able to show it to someone.\n\nAt last it is Saturday and I have the evening off before the Sunday which is my day off. When I leave the ward Dr Metcalf is waiting by the lift. He tells me that Magda has had to go off to visit her mother but the invitation to the cottage on the river still holds.\n\n'What about tonight?' he asks. 'I'll meet you at the bus stop in about half an hour. A lazy day,' he says, 'on the water tomorrow. Magda will be coming later on,' he says. 'Yes,' I tell him. 'Yes, thank you, that will be lovely.' Up in the room I share with Lois she is there, half dressed, smoking and flipping the pages of a magazine. I change and tie my hair in two bunches.\n\n'How come,' Lois asks, 'how come the red ribbons?' 'My better-half,' I say, 'my better-half likes my hair this way.'\n\n# RAMSDEN\n\nIt is just like Ramsden, I mean, it is just the kind of thing Ramsden would say. She isn't saying it to me. She is saying that Bach must have written one of the Brandenburg Concertos in such a way that when a school orchestra drags through it it does not matter.\n\nWhich Brandenburg Concerto, I want to ask. But I am not in the conversation. Staff nurse Ramsden is talking to staff nurse Pusey-Hall. From the few paces behind them I can hear and listen to their words. It is clear that they have been to a concert together. A recital or a concert.\n\nBach dragged his violins as if on purpose. Only Ramsden could say something like this. So that, however badly the school orchestra played, it would not show. Ramsden and Pusey-Hall laugh in their well-bred way along the corridor. Like me, both of them are, in fresh white aprons, going on duty. Their long lacy caps seem to me to be exceptionally delicate, white and beautiful. We are all going to different places but this first part of the corridor we all share. Their voices are rich with amusement and tender at times as if intimate. I like the idea of the tender intimacy of their voices. I quicken my pace to keep up with theirs.\n\nRamsden is on the lower ground floor, a men's surgical ward down there, officers and men, men in the main ward and officers in the small wards. She kneels, at night, in the main ward to say the Lord's Prayer and the men, for those few minutes, hold up their housey-housey and wait in silence while Ramsden says the prayer and then they go on calling the numbers of the game. I have never actually seen Ramsden kneel down in the middle of the ward. I have only heard about it but can picture it well to myself. We are all meant to do this but not many staff nurses do. So far I have never been in charge at night but I try to memorize the Lord's Prayer. _Our Father which art in Heaven_ , so that when the time comes I will be able to kneel and pray for the men.\n\nPerhaps Ramsden and Pusey-Hall have been to something in the Town Hall. Perhaps the Sunday afternoon concert. Something quite beyond my reach. What did I do on Sunday? Of course, I remember, I went to sleep. More often than not it seems that I am sleeping away my whole life.\n\n'An exploration of the twentieth-century religious belief and conviction...' Snatches of their conversation reach me still. 'A need for the heroic response...' I miss the next bit, 'the eternal suffering of...' Whose suffering? Did Ramsden say Christ?\n\nI am not at all on the same intellectual level. I think Ramsden and Pusey-Hall read widely, especially the work of philosophers, and they have been to a concert.\n\nMiss Robson, at school, had damp dark patches under her arms when she was conducting. There was one boy, the leading violin, the only one of us who could really play. White-faced, I think his name was Mottram, something like that. It does not matter.\n\nI think I know what Ramsden means about the Brandenburg Concerto. Everyone playing at their own pace, some ahead of others. It is nice to know what Ramsden means. I can imagine her at the concert. She will have seen the gleaming black piano keys thin and sleek on the white ones, and she will have seen the pianist's surprisingly short fingers. The hands dimpled and like frogs falling above and below each other along the keyboard. She will have seen his serious pouting mouth and her head will have moved slightly in time with his head movements. Perhaps it was a quartet or a trio, the players leaning towards and away from each other, the pianist breathing lightly with the sound of the cello. Then there will have been the repeats with changes from a major key to the minor and then back to the expected and hoped for major. The pianist will have flipped the pages, before the page-turner could lean forward to do it, to glance quickly at the bottom of an earlier page before bowing his head and playing softly, this time without needing to look at the music. And all the time the ardent violinist climbs with feathery notes and the cellist plucks his strings.\n\nMiss Robson, at school, had a little rod, a b\u00e2ton. She tapped it to start and to stop the orchestra. She used it to make us lift our wrists at the piano.\n\nThe pianist on the concert platform can let his wrists drop. His galloping fingers can be flat, splayed out, or arched. He can choose.\n\nRamsden and Pusey-Hall will know all this. Close behind the rustle of their uniforms my own uniform makes its little starched sounds. They have been to a concert, probably on Sunday afternoon. \n\n# RIVER SHACK\n\nI have never wanted to spread out my pages to show to anyone, not even when I have been asked to. I have never told anyone about the little mark, the little cross, at the top left of every page. I never write a page of anything without first putting this little mark, without first asking a Blessing. How can I tell anyone this?\n\n'I'll ask a Blessing,' my father always said before a meal. Because he was hungry he was always sitting down first. And, with his hand shading his eyes, he would bend his head down as if ashamed that he had started to eat before anyone else and before praying.\n\n'Always ask a Blessing,' he said, 'before you do anything, before you undertake anything and then remember, always, to pray again and offer thanks.\n\nThe little mark which is a tiny cross is on everything I write. I do not want to tell people about the little cross. People are suspicious. They suspect. They are superstitious too. They might be afraid of what they think of as the sentimental or the religious. This makes it harder to explain things. I have put the cross there for years. I never spoke of it, even in an imaginary conversation, with Ramsden. Perhaps one day it will be the right time to try to explain and, at the same time, to give up the secret of the harbour. The sky harbour, the exact place in the Brahms where the soprano sings with sustained serenity, her voice rising above a particular group of trees on a certain road known only in this pattern of events to me.\n\nIf I think now about the fowls at Gertrude's Place and if the nurse did, in fact, shut them up early that afternoon when I watched from higher up the hill leaning on my bicycle, unable to make up my mind to go down to the place where Gertrude was lying ill \u2013 if I think now about them, it is clear that, shut up early and left, it would be some time before they were let out. They would be like the prisoners in _Fidelio_ when they are brought out suddenly from the darkness into daylight, let out from the dungeon, at Leonora's request, half blind in the sunlight, groping for each other's shoulders as they try to walk round in a circle. It will be all that the hens can do if, like the prisoners, they have been confined in the dark for too long \u2013 just stumble about the field falling over each other...\n\nIf I think now of foxes it is to think more of their colouring than of their habits. Magda's hair is often the colour of fox, the golden red fox. A vixen. Gertrude would think of her as a vixen but not the vixen prowling for food for her partly weaned cubs or lying in a half circle of dust sunning herself and her offspring. Gertrude would see Magda as a huntress, perhaps hunting for herself, something stealthy and, though surrounded by people, alone.\n\nWhen I hear about Dr Metcalf's death, a death without any sense I cannot believe it but I have to. The whole hospital is talking about it. He never even got to the front. That is what they are all saying...\n\nI always lift lavatory seats and peer under them. It was Bulge, at school, who said to do this. It was when we were in the school sanatorium together, isolated with German measles. She said it was because there might be a snake under it. She said in Madagascar, when she was a little girl, her nurse there was very careful to make sure there was no snake under the seat. Bulge's real father was dead, she explained. He had been a missionary.\n\nSo now I lift the wooden seat in the lavatory behind the river shack. There is no snake. The door does not close properly so I keep my foot against it, but no one comes. It is possible to sit here and look out across the meadows. The early morning mist takes a long time to lift and disperse. And, in the evenings, long shadows lie along the grass.\n\nI was not kind to Bulge when we had German measles. When she talked to me I did not answer and I lay down with the bedclothes pulled up to my head. She was sorry for me and thought my ear ache must be bad. It was embarrassing to be ill just with Bulge.\n\nMatron seemed to like Bulge. Bulge did not seem to be getting better. She had pains in her stomach. The pains made her cry out aloud. She wanted me to call Matron...\n\nMagda's body is beautiful.\n\n'You are beautiful,' I tell Magda. She is standing naked on the river bank and Dr Metcalf is pouring buckets of water over her. She seems taller without her clothes and I am surprised at her hips. I am surprised too about the size of her breasts. She is sunburned, a lovely golden brown, all over. The bodies of rich people are always suntanned and handsome. Dr Metcalf is brown too. It is because they can be in places where they can take off all their clothes. They do not have to look out of tall windows and see the sun and not be out in it because they have to work. The black-out shutters at the hospital are put up at five o'clock blocking out the daylight and the sun. People like me are always white. Even if there is a sunny day and I can lie in the sun I simply get hot and I stay white. My face is gaunt with the dark circles of night duty for ever round my eyes.\n\nFerguson and Trent go up on the hospital roof, the flat part, one day. They do not mean to sleep but just to have an hour of summer sun up there. They do sleep and both are still red. Ferguson's blisters are only now beginning to be less painful and Trent is peeling horribly.\n\n'Nurse Ferguson and Nurse Trent,' Sister Bean said at breakfast. They both half rose from their chairs.\n\n'Yes Sister?' as if in one voice.\n\n'Matron's office nine a.m.,' Sister Bean said.\n\nWhen I tell Magda she is beautiful she laughs and says, 'Isn't she sweet, Jonty, to tell me that? I'm old Veronica dear,' she says to me, 'can't you see how I _sag_ everywhere. Look at all my saggings darling! Oh! _Quelle horreur!_ '\n\nWhen she describes her saggings she makes them sound desirable. Next to these magnificent people, when I make my comparisons, I seem to be badly made. These other people look as if they are the result of years of fine breeding. They are well-bred not only in their manners but in their bones and in their skin.\n\nDr Metcalf has his shorts on. He is bigger in his partial nakedness than in his white coat on the wards.\n\n'Strip orf darling!' Magda yells at me. 'Let Jonty shower you.' We are washing ourselves with white windsor soap at the edge of the river. The smell of the soap out of doors has a curious effect and, if I close my eyes, it is as if I am in the night nurses' bathroom at the row of small basins, fashioning Sister Bean in white windsor...\n\n'Oh isn't she shy and sweet, closing her eyes!' Magda cries. 'Take everything off Darling! Come on Jonty! Buckets for us both.'\n\nThe quiet water is disturbed momentarily by Dr Metcalf as he dives off the jetty and swims a few strokes round the slow curve of the river.\n\n'Come on!' Magda says to me. 'You have this towel. I'm ravenous. I didn't have any breakfast before I left. Let's fry up the bacon I've brought.'\n\nMagda's father and Marigold, an actress, come later in the day. Magda's father parks his car in the field opposite and blows the horn for Dr Metcalf to go for them with the boat. Magda's mother does not come. Magda was staying with her the previous night after having her tooth out.\n\nDr Metcalf and I have been in the river shack alone together all night. On the bus journey we were both so tired we hardly spoke to each other. He sat with his arm along the back of the seat. It was as if his arm was round me though I knew really it was not. I liked this very much. I keep thinking of the journey now during this quiet day on the water. 'A lazy day,' he said when he invited me, 'on the water.'\n\nThe day is anything but quiet. Magda arrives in the mist. Her taxi driver gives a shout from the towing path and Dr Metcalf rows across the secret water of the river to fetch her. I only wake up when the driver shouts. I feel all big and white-faced and puffy and ugly. I help them carry all the packages and parcels into the cottage. If only I could be a bit suntanned or else wake up pretty or dainty and not as I am in my slept-in clothes.\n\nSome of the young men, Magda announces, are coming in a car later. She has masses of food she says. She has managed to get butter and cheese and real coffee and champagne and dried bananas. I am ashamed to be hungry. We sit on the jetty to eat our breakfast. I tell Magda I might be able to get her some eggs.\n\n'There's a path up from the road but it's hidden in the long grass,' I start to tell Magda about Gertrude's Place.\n\n'But Darling,' she cries, 'how divine! Yo u must tell me how to get there.'\n\nMy evening with Dr Metcalf was over very quickly. During the walk from the bus stop, across the river meadows, to where the boat was moored under the bank Dr Metcalf was very courteous. He guided me from one firm patch of grass to the next. Enormous cream-coloured cows, their moist breath sweet with chewed grass, gathered near the path waiting to be herded for milking. He showed me the room in the river shack where I would sleep. Because the small house seemed to sit in a bed of grass, and because it was so quiet, I was reminded of Gertrude's Place. The house, like her place, seemed to be asleep.\n\n'I never heard the river in the night,' I say. 'I had hoped,' I tell Magda, 'to hear the water slapping against the jetty boards, but I must have gone to sleep without hearing anything.' While we sit there, with our feet in the brown water, I think of the evening and of the way in which Dr Metcalf sat close to me on an old sofa covered with an unhemmed cloth. He said that he was older than I was and that I had all my life before me. He said he knew this but all the same he wanted to kiss me. Could he kiss me, he asked. I said I thought people kissed each other without asking. This seemed to please him and he kissed me very long and very sweet kisses. I think of these kisses all the time now and I wonder if Magda guesses and, if she does, whether she minds.\n\nDr Metcalf, after a bit, took me to the small bedroom which he said was mine. The bed was very low, he sat on the edge of the bed and held out his arms. I remember his kisses and I remember how he held me and covered me up. I must have gone to sleep without undressing properly.\n\n'I never heard the river in the night,' I say, 'and I never saw the sunrise.' Once again I feel that, because of my work, I am wasting my whole life sleeping it all away, waking up all pale and ugly and not able to have those hours back. Dr Metcalf says it was a lovely sunrise and if I missed it, never mind, there will be plenty of other sun risings in my life. He smiles at me and my mouth longs for his.\n\nMagda looks at me seriously and tells me that Jonty is right of course.\n\nMagda's father and his actress arrive early. Even though not one of these people is in any way like Bulge and her mother I am suddenly remembering Bulge. Perhaps it is the outside lavatory, the earth closet with the wooden seat which I feel I must raise to make sure there is no snake.\n\nWhen we were ill together, and isolated, Bulge showed me a picnic photograph of her mother and this person she called Chris.\n\n'Is he your father?' I asked and Bulge explained that Chris was like a father but he was her mother's Friend. Her father died, she reminded me, while he was looking after sick people in an African village. Because of the boredom of being ill with only Bulge for company, and a few damp old books we found in the chimney cupboard, I stared for a long time at the picnic photograph. I tried, in the presence of _Clive of India_ , _Bevis_ and _Nineteenth Century English Gardens_ to make a book out of the photograph. I peered at every detail, the tartan travelling rug on which Bulge's mother was sitting and the kind of cake she had in an open tin on her lap. She was handing cake to Chris. The idea of cake made me hungry.\n\n'What sort of cake was it?' I asked Bulge.\n\n'I can't remember,' she said. 'Perhaps Madeira,' she said. 'Chris likes that.' We were hungry all the time, both of us Bulge and me. In the photo Chris looked tall. He wore plus fours. He was crouching fondling a little white dog. Bulge explained it was a Sealyham. Her mother always had a dog and it was always that sort.\n\nPerhaps it is this picnic lunch which reminds me. If I compare my mother with Bulge's mother it is clear that my mother is below Bulge's mother in the comparison. My mother has never had a pet of any kind. When I consider this I have to realize that she does not like dogs at all and would be disgusted if she knew of Magda's habit of having the Red Setter in bed with her.\n\nPerhaps it is the tartan rug which reminds me so unexpectedly of Bulge's picnic photograph. Because of being above Bulge in my comparisons at school, her hair, her cracked spectacles, her complexion and the way in which she stood, bulging and biting her nails, everything being worse, I do not especially like thinking about her. This thinking puts us on the same level. I try not to think about her. Magda's father is very fond of his actress and touches her often. He is fond of Magda too and strokes her arms and gives her little hugs. For a long time he does not seem to notice me at all and then says he has heard that I am a Quaker and I say not a very good one I'm afraid and he laughs, throwing his head back, as he does in Theatre when someone makes a joke during a partial gastrectomy, saying that's the best answer he ever heard and then goes back to not noticing me. I can't help dwelling on my good answer and I wish I could say something else which would be a good answer. No one really addresses any other remarks to me and, as I am hungry, as I always am, I eat a lot of the ham and the butter and the dried bananas. Food rationing does not affect Magda and the food she has brought is quite unlike what we are able to have at home or in the hospital. Magda's father has brought a paper bag full of peaches. He has them sent from London. I have never eaten a peach and concentrate my thoughts on hoping there will be enough in the bag for us all to have one.\n\nMagda's three expected guests, the young men who come to her house parties, do not come and she is disappointed but thinks they might come the next day.\n\nCows have trodden down the river bank but Magda thinks it would be heavenly to sleep out on the grass. Her father and Goldy can have the bedroom in the shack. Magda arranges everything.\n\n'There'll be a huge moon,' she promises me, 'and Jonty will find us a clean patch of grass.' We carry our bedclothes out to the edge of the river.\n\nI feel I should be happy listening to the river slapping gently underneath the weathered boards of the jetty. I am, at last, where I have wished to be. I breathe the river water and river mud smell and the fragrance of the crushed grass but it does not take away the unexpected sadness. For a time the moon is bright and the water, not shadowed by the banks and the trees, shines. From time to time something plops, with a small splash, into the water. I suppose it is a water rat. I am wishing for Dr Metcalf, to be alone with him, in his arms, inside the blankets which are, like mine, rolled all round him. We are, all three, rolled-up bundles in a row, our feet down towards the water and our faces up to the moon. This is the same moon my father can see. In my loneliness now I try to think of my father and his moon but it is Dr Metcalf I want. I am thinking of him and wishing for his arms and his kisses. I want to feel him close to me again as he was last night. I wish I had not slept last night.\n\nSometimes a solitary boat drifts by. Though I can't see them I know there are two people in each boat, unwilling to stop being together and not wanting the night to end. The moon has a ring of light around it. Dark clouds hurry across the bright face of the moon. Magda and Dr Metcalf who were saying soft words, now and then to each other (they thought I was asleep), are quiet now. Perhaps I am the only person in all the miles of country not asleep. The cows, dark shapes on the other bank, move together. I can smell their grassy breath and hear when one of them lowers herself or gets up. I am glad they are not asleep.\n\nThere is a distant sound of aeroplanes. The engines throb as they come nearer. Like a heartbeat, on and on, coming nearer. They are German planes. I know this because of the throbbing sound of the engines. Far away across the water meadows pale search lights send their thin fingers, like long petals, across the sky. Magda says should we go inside and Dr Metcalf says no, what difference would it make.\n\nBulge, when we were in isolation together, said that the Germans, if they came with the aeroplanes, if it came to a war between us and the Germans, the Germans could wipe out Britain with one raid. At the time I thought that the Chris gentleman must have told her that. I believed it. Later we all said it at school. 'One raid and we'll all be wiped out. Really! The war, if it comes to that!' The Germans are not all that bad I wanted to say then. Not all Germans are bad. There did not seem, then, the words for this to be said.\n\nBulge's mother and Chris visited Bulge during our illness. They were so nice to me. Friendly and sitting on my bed and talking to me as if I had never been unkind to Bulge, ever. Bulge of course could have been as homesick as I was. Muriel, they called her Muriel, could have longed for her mother and this Chris. Her mother told me, 'Muriel has some rabbits at home too,' when I told her about our rabbits at home. Bulge was so nice to me. She never said one word about my not speaking to her. And she obviously had not said anything about the raggings she had from everyone. On the afternoon when her people came I hadn't got my spectacles on and, when her mother put her head round the door, I thought, for a moment, that my mother had come. I hid under the bedclothes when I realized my mistake. It was hard not to cry. It was then that this Chris gentleman sat on my bed asking me about my bandage while Bulge and her mother had their first hugs. I told him, 'It's a middle-ear abscess,' and he said he was sorry.\n\nThat night Bulge called out to me to fetch Matron because her pain was bad. 'I think it's my appendix,' she said, and was sick over her bedspread and the floor. I went down quickly, in the dark, to Matron's cottage. She came at once.\n\nIn my secret game of comparisons Bulge was placed high up, far higher than anyone else, for she had the school doctor at her bed in the night. I was envious and felt ashamed of being envious and tried to be helpful. Bulge was trying not to cry but her pain was too bad. Matron said to me to lie down and to try to go to sleep. She said they would have to take Bulge to hospital. They wrapped her in a blanket and took her in the doctor's car to Oxford to the hospital before it was too late. The tall grasses and the cow parsley along the lanes, I thought, would look like lace in the moonlight.\n\nMatron, in her haste, left the light on and I tried to read the book Bulge's mother gave me, as a present, before she left. It was a school story about a girl called Treacle. The book was called _Treacle Wins Through_. I wanted to enjoy the book but I could not help thinking about Bulge crying and drawing up her legs because of her pain.\n\nMagda's young men, the three expected guests, do not come on the next day either.\n\nDr Metcalf and I go for a short walk to the farm nearby for some fresh milk. We do not have to cross the river.\n\n'I was hoping to take you upstream,' he says to me, 'in the boat. There are wild swans there, further up...' I thank him and say in a small voice that it doesn't matter. On the way back he sets down the milk can and draws me to the shelter of a hedge. Quickly he holds me close and kisses me and then holds me away from himself.\n\n'I can't give you all the love you ought to have,' he says and he kisses my fingers, very lightly, brushing them with his lips.\n\n'That's all right Dr Metcalf,' I say, hearing my own voice and words with surprise. I tell him that it's all right, that I've got a boy friend in the forces. In the air force to be exact. We walk on back to the river shack.\n\nAll day I am wishing that I had gone home and gone to Gertrude's Place. There was no way in which I could let her know I was not coming. She is probably walking down through the long grass to look down the long hill, as far as the bend, to see if I am coming up, walking, leaning on my bicycle. Two whole days off wasted. I thought I could be happy just being near Dr Metcalf but it is not like that. I can't even look at him as I want to when other people are there. And he can't look at me, not into my eyes and my thoughts like the evening when we were down here alone. I want to be with him by myself. My mother, it consoles me to think this, might have gone on the bus to fetch the eggs and will have told Gertrude I am not coming.\n\nDr Metcalf does not eat lunch. He seems thoughtful. I am afraid he might be depressed and sad and I try not to show that I am. Magda is decidedly peeved. She says so herself. 'God I'm peeved!' she keeps saying it. The river is crowded with Sunday train-excursion visitors. Trippers, Magda calls them. She is obliged to put on clothes as so many boats are passing the little jetty. Young men, performing antics with punt poles, whistle and call out as they pass. Magda says she's had enough of the shack and we'll all go back to town and do I want to visit my parents because if so Daddy, as soon as he and Marigold are up and dressed, is going back to town and will give us all a lift and can drop me off at the bus station.\n\nIt is late when I get home after waiting hours for a bus and a train. As soon as I open the kitchen door my mother hands me a telegram. I have to return to the hospital at once.\n\n'The telegram came yesterday,' she tells me.\n\n'I would only have been able to stay for the evening,' I tell her. \"I've had my days off.'\n\nMy father says he will come to the station with me. We have to leave at once to be sure to get the train. He carries the small parcel my mother has made. It is a fruitcake she has packed and some hard-boiled eggs.\n\n'The eggs are from Gertrude,' she tells me.\n\nLois has washed her hair. It amuses me to see the turban she has made with the towel. I tell her that her turban is delightful and that I have brought some cake.\n\n'We're on at midnight,' she says, 'a special shift.' She does not explain further. 'You're daft!' she says suddenly, 'going with Them! She's as bad as he is. Can't you see? Those Metcalfs! No I don't want any cake.'\n\n'But you don't know them. They're sweet, both of them and very kind.' I eat a piece of the cake.\n\n'Oh yes!' Lois says, and then with an accent, 'Oh! Yeah?'\n\n'They're my friends,' I say.\n\n'Some friends!' She lights a cigarette from the new packet I have brought for her. 'He's the reason for Smithers suiciding,' she says, 'it was because of Dr Metcalf.'\n\nSmithers, the theatre orderly, I remember him reading a poem he'd written. He asked me if he could read it. And then he asked me what I thought about it. He was very tall and pale because of always being indoors and in the artificial light of the theatres.\n\nBecause of the charge nurse coming in just then I was not able to listen properly. Smithers went on putting drums of sterile gauze on to the shelves and I went on handing them to him. I had not been able to understand the poem and, because the charge nurse did not leave, Smithers was not able to repeat his question.\n\nI remember the poem and I remember his suicide.\n\n'But Smithers!' I say.\n\n'Exactly,' Lois says.\n\n# SINGLE MALT\n\nSuddenly I am reminded of my mother. Perhaps it is because today, in the distance, I saw a woman with her hair curled as my mother's used to be. This woman was standing with some other people further along the street. Because I knew it could not be her I did not go up there. However much a person resembles another person, and it is not that person, it is not of any use.\n\nPerhaps I should, at some time, write down every single thing which I remember about my mother. Perhaps that is something I could do.\n\nMy mother, who always needed someone to tell things to, suddenly, after the death of my father, had no one. After three stormy weeks in a private nursing home she returned home to an empty house and had no one to tell her dreadful experience to.\n\nShe had to live several years alone.\n\n... _as he is now made partaker of the death of thy Son, so he may be also of his resurrection_...\n\nIt is my evening off but I am not going out anywhere. A baby died today.\n\nA baby died in my arms today.\n\nThe book I choose when staff nurse Ramsden says to me to choose any book I would like to have from her shelves is a foolish choice for me. I can never say this to anyone. My mother is fond of embroidery and would understand all the diagrams and the pictures in the book. She would understand the step-by-step instructions and descriptions; mount mellick, crewel work, Berlin embroidery, tapestry, gros point, petit point, ribbon work and needle painting, bead work, black work and all the stitches and techniques from the elegant oriental Tambour... I like the idea of the needle painting. Of course I can't give the book to my mother. It is a present from Ramsden and it is my fault that I chose it instead of some other book. I mean she had Wordsworth there and Keats, Goethe, Rilke and ee cummings and Dickens and others. That is the worst of being asked to choose.\n\nIt does not seem possible really, this evening, to go and see Magda. During the car ride after being at the river shack they all seemed to argue, in fun but not quite in fun. Dr Metcalf laughed about Magda's single-malt gentlemen not turning up. 'They knew all the single malt was gone,' he teased her.\n\n'They never drink all the single malt,' Magda said. 'You,' she said to Dr Metcalf, 'you always have your tots and so does Daddy. Don't you Daddy?' I thought Magda might be going to cry but Dr Metcalf was stroking her arm and I saw all the little lines and frowns disappear from her forehead and round her eyes.\n\nI watched the hedges slipping by, the cow parsley tall and lacy all along the lanes. I kept wishing the bus station was not so far away.\n\nMagda was sitting between us. Dr Metcalf's arm was round the back of Magda and his hand, stroking her soft sun-burned arm, was very close to my arm. The back of his hand was against my arm. I told myself to bury myself then in the beauties of nature for ever. But then, like now, the phrase, the beauties of nature, had no meaning.\n\nMagda's father, driving with a well-bred ease, had one arm round Marigold.\n\nThis evening I am putting my stamp collection in order, at least I am trying to. Some of them have come loose and have fallen out. I am unable to be interested enough to sort and arrange them properly. My head itches. I would like to brush my hair but Lois, who has gone home for her day off, has borrowed my hairbrush. I open my exercise books of pressed wildflowers, meadow sweet, saxifrage, coltsfoot, lady's slipper and star of Bethlehem. There is nothing I can do with them and, somehow, thinking about the grassy places where they grew makes me sad.\n\nIt does not seem possible to go and see Magda today, this evening. Not after the river shack. I wonder what they are doing tonight, Magda and all of them and Dr Metcalf.\n\nI put my clothes drawer straight, fold and tidy everything very neatly, and make up my mind to always keep my white blouse and my good pair of stockings clean, in readiness, in case I get invited somewhere. That is the kind of person I am.\n\nMagda has not left a message telling me to come, as she usually does. Perhaps something has happened over there, at their place, since the river shack. She did have a tooth out. Perhaps an infection?\n\nMy stockings, my good pair, are really quite nice. It must be really special to have a man roll your stockings with nimble fingers so that when he puts them on your feet they unroll delicately and smoothly all the way up your legs. Once, in a film, I saw a handsome man kneeling in front of a very pretty woman and, this man, he could do stockings like this. I don't know many men and those I do know, for example, my father and Dr Metcalf, I don't think they would ever do stockings. Though, perhaps Dr Metcalf might.\n\nThe baby, the smallest baby I have ever seen, is called Roger Keith. He died in my arms. This morning.\n\n'Nurse!' the charge nurse calls to me as I pass the end of Obstetrics. Ward 4. I am only on that corridor because the lift isn't working. 'Have you got a clean apron on?' she bawls. I shout back that it isn't very clean and that I'm on my way to Pharmacy.\n\n'Is there something you need from Pharmacy?' I go towards her. 'They forgot our carbolic.'\n\n'Take it off,' the charge nurse says, 'your apron, take it off and put it on inside out. And be quick and come along in here. Put your ration jars down there, yes, just down there by the door. That's it, turn your apron, quick as you can. Look sharp!'\n\nThe charge nurse is not one that I know. I don't even know her name.\n\n'I'm not on this ward,' I begin to tell her.\n\n'I know. I know that,' she says. 'It's an emergency,' she tells me. 'I haven't a single nurse free, we're flat out, three heads showing and five just post-natal and now this. Only keep you a minute. Quick as you can nurse, there's a good girl, you've got your sleeves down and your cuffs. Good!'\n\nPropped up in the bed in the screened-off corner of the ward is a woman. Her hair is brushed back and tied up neatly with a piece of cotton bandage. She is very pale and she is weeping. She is crying without any sound, her tears are overflowing as if straight from her heart. She is weeping as if she will never be able to stop. The charge nurse goes over to her at once.\n\n'The chaplain is coming at once,' she says in a low voice. The woman nods and still her tears pour down her cheeks.\n\nAt the side of the bed is a hospital cot, a little wire basket, covered with some folded pieces of flannel. The charge nurse picks up the quiet baby.\n\n'Caesarean,' she says to me out of the side of her mouth. 'Nurse here,' she turns to the woman in the bed, 'nurse will be Godmother.'\n\n'But,' I say, 'but I'm not a... I'm a... we don't...'\n\n'Never mind, nurse, whatever you are or whatever you do or don't do. Here's the Reverend himself.' Swiftly she wraps the baby in a white cloth and gives him to me.\n\nThe tiny bundle is light in my arms. His eyes are closed and his little mouth is puckered. Already the finely made delicate lips are blue. As I hold him close I feel his tiny body make a feeble movement.\n\nThe chaplain bends his white head over his book. He moves closer as he reads. He asks me to name the baby. I glance at the woman. 'Roger Keith,' she hardly moves her lips.\n\n'Roger Keith,' I say, holding the baby towards the drops of water which fall like cold tears from the chaplain's fingers.\n\nRoger Keith.\n\n' _I baptize thee in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost._ '\n\n'Amen,' the charge nurse kneels, so I kneel with the baby. The chaplain's words rush on:\n\n'... _And we humbly beseech thee to grant, that as he is now made partaker of the death of thy Son, so he may be also of his resurrection_...'\n\nThe small rustling sigh which was Roger Keith's breathing has stopped. The charge nurse takes him from me and replaces him gently in his cot. The woman in the bed holds out her hands to me and I feel their hot dryness. Her tears, like shining beads, force their way still from under her closed eyelids.\n\n'Thank you nurse,' the charge nurse has escorted the chaplain to the ward doors. 'Whyever,' she asks, 'whyever are you taking your butter and jam and sugar down to the Pharmacy?'\n\n'It's my morning-tea break,' I say. 'I'm to go to Pharmacy on the way back.'\n\nThe lift is working now and I go down to the basement in the company of a long trolley rattling a dozen chipped enamelled cans. The cans all have lids and they are all marked with numbers to show which wards they belong to.\n\n'Sweet pees,' the porter says to me. He lights a cigarette. Porters, with trolleys and dustbins and theatre bins and laundry and these smaller cans, often smoke. They say they are allowed to because of the nature of their work. He is taking the urine from patients, soldiers, who have been having penicillin, to the lab. The penicillin will be extracted and used again. He tells me this and I let him even though I already know it.\n\n'It's a miracle,' the porter says.\n\n'Yes, it is,' I say and I almost ask him what kind of God there could be who would receive a child over whom the right words had been said and whether this same God would reject, really refuse, one who lacked this charm.\n\n'Ladies hats underwear and dresses,' the porter opens the lift to a row of bins. Pharmacy is just to the right and the Laboratory a bit further on. We go along the corridor unable to speak because of the rattling of the cans.\n\nI suppose they will be having dinner now at Magda's, perhaps something which can be eaten on cushions on the floor.\n\n'Hobbling along supported by acadeemia.' Magda, frowning and weary, once more, in the car during the drive from the river shack, accused Dr Metcalf, talking about someone, a friend of his, a one-time friend of his, someone I have never met. 'She's done enough,' Magda said, 'to make herself a footnote in the literary history of this country.'\n\nDr Metcalf laughed at this, at Magda's supposed anger. He raised his eyebrows in an amused look at me across the back of Magda's head. He pursed his lips at me as if to blow a little kiss in my direction.\n\n'That's not true, is it?' His tone to me was playful.\n\n'I'm afraid I don't know her,' I said and I turned to stare harder into the hedges. Wild roses I wanted to say to them. Look you, dog roses, hundreds of little wild roses all along the hedges.\n\n'Darling!' Magda said then. 'Of course you don't know. Jonty had a Friend, with a capital F, who used to come. She said she actually thought our house was a sort of religious retreat. Can you imagine! A past pillar of the Ballet Rambert she wasn't slow on the single malt either. She ended up, my deah, in the school of stitchery and lace, an adventitious ornament, no doubt, with her big hands and feet.'\n\nThey all laughed then. I couldn't ask what single malt meant. What it was. Something hard to get, I supposed, even for Magda for whom rationing did not seem to exist. Something hard to get so that it mattered if their friends were not slow on it.\n\nBecause I could not understand and because I did not understand the metaphor, if it was a metaphor, the school of stitchery and lace, I turned away to stare once more at the roadside and at the trees in the hedgerows.\n\n'Darling Child!' Magda cried. 'Jonty!' she said, 'I do believe our Precious Child is jealous. Oh you sweet Darling!' She broke loose from Dr Metcalf's arm and drew me to her sweet-smelling soft breasts and kissed me hard on the mouth.\n\n'You are so sweet,' she purred and continued to hug me and call me sweet for the rest of the journey. So it is strange, very strange, that I have not heard from her. \n\n# DIET KITCHEN\n\n'He didn't go, he didn't really go to the Front at all he shot his knee caps off and bled to death at his mother's place.'\n\n'Disgusting.'\n\n'I didn't know he had a mother.'\n\n'Yes, the poor thing \u2013 even though she's a prostitute.'\n\n'She must be quite old, I mean, if she's his mother.'\n\n'She is. But some men, they like Experience. Experience counts.'\n\n'That's right. Doesn't matter what sort of old bag. I mean looks just aren't in it. A man who's never done it doesn't go for looks, all he wants is a friendly vagina.'\n\n'I suppose he was illegitimate. Anyone got any butter left?'\n\n'A bastard. Hm!'\n\n'Yes a bass-tarrdd.'\n\n'Anybody got a ciggy?' Lois brings her coffee to the table. She is on night duty too. I slip the new packet from my pocket on to her lap. We always seem to be having our meal times at the same time. Without seeming to notice the _State Express_ Lois does notice. She clears a corner of the table for herself and opens the packet.\n\n'How clean you are like a spring flower, a snowdrop,' Lois said to me once. It was as if we were in another world then. We were walking in the rain and we stopped suddenly, looking at each other laughing.\n\n'Your hair!' she said then, 'it's soaked but you look so nice, clean, green and white, they're your colours, a snowdrop. I'd like to paint you. Lois painted, water colours, in the room we shared. We pinned up the paintings even after the Home Sister left a note telling us to take them down.\n\n'Your tartan dress,' I said, 'it's so funny. I like your clothes, they make me laugh. Your hair,' I said, 'your hair's wet too. This rain!' The unexpected rain made the tartan wet so that it was smooth round her breasts. 'Very sweet you are. Did you know you are very sweet!' I said then.\n\n'Well of course if it's Dr Metcalf you're talking about.' Lois sends a cloud of smoke across the shepherd's pie and the baked apples.\n\nIt is Dr Metcalf. Everyone's talking about him, everyone, that is, except me.\n\n'They say he never got to the Front. He was crushed behind a lorry, an army lorry reversing. And the war practically over too.'\n\n'They say he was at the camp near Swindon. Ever heard Of Swindon? Whatever made him join up now. Never got to any action. I mean if there is any now. It's too late. I suppose that's why. Pass the salt please.'\n\n'Did you know he was on morphia? Used to come to Lower Ground Radium for it and whatsaname, heroin. We used to hide the keys. On nights, you know, we hid the keys.'\n\n'Remember Foss? Wasn't Foss on Lower Ground Radium?'\n\n'Yes, Foss was on there then. Charge on nights. Used to hide the keys in her bra. Ugh! This apple's sour! He got them, the keys, one night. When she was doing the linen cupboard. Put his hand right down her bra. Disgusting!'\n\n'He didn't need to go. Have some of my sugar, I don't use it all. He only joined up to get away from his wife.'\n\n'And other people. Thanks, anyone else going to borrow some sugar? And other people. He's made eleven nurses pregnant.'\n\n'Could be twelve.' Lois hardly looks up as she speaks.\n\n'His wife's twenty years older than him. Or is it thirty?'\n\n'He's got nine children all with different mothers.'\n\n'No wonder he wanted to get right away.'\n\n'And some there be who've got VD!'\n\n'He did have VD, you know, and must've passed it on to goodness knows how many people.'\n\n'Should have gone to the clinic.'\n\n'He did under an assumed name but quite a few people recognized him of course.'\n\n'His wife's riddled with it.'\n\n'Not surprising.'\n\n'He wasn't a qualified doctor at all they've found out. He was just one big fraud. He was a greengrocer really with this prostitute of a mother. She worked in the shop and took the men upstairs.'\n\n'That's right! No papers.'\n\n'They found papers on him but they must've been stolen. He had Chatwyn Brown's papers.'\n\n'Chatters Brown? But he was reported missing ages ago! Poor old Chatters!'\n\n'Yes. Well, Metcalf had _his_ papers \u2013 on him!'\n\n'They found a dead German's finger in his pocket, too, with a big gold ring on it. Couldn't get the ring off.'\n\n'I thought he didn't get to the Front.'\n\n'He didn't. Probably stole the finger from someone. Had to take the whole finger to get the ring.'\n\n'Disgusting!'\n\n'Yes, disgusting.'\n\n'What d'you expect!'\n\n'Sister Whatsaname on chests suicided because of him.'\n\n'Yes, and that's why Roberts ran away. Remember little Nurse Roberts? Ever such a quiet little person. Probably dropped her bundle by now. Anyone know what she got?'\n\n'Twins. Could be twins, you know.'\n\n'Could be infected too.'\n\n'Yes could be. Would be tertiary, don't you see.'\n\n'Roberts hasn't gone yet. She's cutting it a bit fine. I mean it's obvious isn't it. I mean she's _showing_.'\n\n'And Smithers. Remember Smithers?' Lois looks for matches for her second cigarette. She glances at me through her cloud of smoke. Her eyes glitter beneath partly lowered lids. She looks away quickly.\n\n'Smithers,' she says, 'on theatre, he suicided. Remember? Lemmington Frazier's rectal orderly. He suicided because of Metcalf.'\n\n'Lemmington Frazier! That's Metcalf 's father-in-law surely.'\n\n'Yes, he's on his tenth actress. Marigold Bray.'\n\n'You nursed her mother on Women's Surgical didn't you?' Lois inhales deeply, holds the smoke and lets it out across the table. 'Didn't you?' she says to me.\n\n'Yes,' I say. 'I did, Mrs Bray, a hernia.'\n\nI often think of Mrs Bray. I remember her telling me that she worked at the public baths. I remember all too clearly that I cried by her bed, behind the screens, the day Dr Metcalf told me he was leaving for the Front.\n\n'I don't want to lose you, I told him when he said he had to go. 'I'm frightened,' I said.\n\n'Don't cry, please don't cry,' he said.\n\n'Don't you cry, dear,' Mrs Bray said, 'he'll come back. Your boy'll come back.' Mrs Bray said something else too that day. She said a person has to love work. You have to love your work. She loved hers, she said, at the public baths.\n\nI told her I had met Marigold at the river shack. 'You know,' I said to her, 'Dr Metcalf's place on the river.'\n\n'Oh yes, Edna, my daughter,' she said, 'only she don't call herself Edna any more. I'm hoping,' she said, 'as she'll come back and see me one of these days. I just have the one girl. That's what I mean about work. See? Enjoying your work makes you enjoy your life. Helps you to forget things as go wrong.'\n\nI am thinking now about Mrs Bray's thin, sad face and how her eyes brightened when she talked about Marigold. I would like to talk to someone about Dr Metcalf.\n\n'Mrs Lemmington Frazier,' Lois stabs out her third cigarette. 'Sweet. She's really sweet. Nursed her hysterectomy.'\n\n'Lemmington Frazier! Gives me the shivers. Dirty old man!'\n\n'She had her veins done too. Mrs Lemmington Frazier.'\n\n'Yes that's right, she did.'\n\n'Mrs Lemmington Frazier used to come round the wards with that Red Cross trolley. Remember? Library books and magazines and writing paper.'\n\n'Yes and home-made face flannels and jam.'\n\n'She used to get chocolate and cigarettes for the men.'\n\n'The officers you mean.'\n\n'No, the men. She went round them all.'\n\n'Her daughter, Mrs Metcalf, used to go too.'\n\n'Never!'\n\n'Yes she did, all tarted up to kill. You can just see it next to the Lemmington Frazier tweeds! A sort of heather mixture.'\n\n'And the lilac twin set.'\n\n'And the pearls.'\n\n'And the lisle stockings.'\n\n'But really Mrs Lemmington Frazier has very good taste!'\n\n'Yes, if you like Henry Heath hats.'\n\n'It's supposed to be good for a doctor's career if he can get married to a surgeon's daughter. Specially an only one. Promotion eh? Luxurious! Straight to the top!'\n\n'That's right.'\n\n'Wasn't Metcalf Lemmington Frazier's dresser?'\n\n'Yes he was, that's right.'\n\n'Lemmington Frazier's daughter! She used to call him Daddy and there she was in theatre, all gowned up, holding the artery forceps or a retractor. Supposed to be studying. I ask you! And nothing on under her gown. You could see _everything_.'\n\n'Yes. She used to leave when Daddy did when the dresser was sewing up. Other students had to stay.'\n\n'Must've waited somewhere for Metcalf, then.'\n\n'He probably ran out after her.'\n\n'But what about Smithers? Haven't seen him for a while, come to think of it.'\n\n'Yes, Smithers.'\n\n'Smithers? Smithers? Was he that tall one? The thin pale willowy one? Used to be the shave orderly?'\n\n'You remember. Looked like he'd been in the sterilizer all his life. Steamed. That awful white skin!'\n\n'Yes, of course, Smithers. Suicided because of Metcalf? But he was a _man_.'\n\n'Exactly.' Lois says. 'That's exactly it. He was a man.'\n\nThe cigarette smoke is worse as some of the others are smoking now. I feel sick and am glad that the meal time is over.\n\n'Lois,' I said once, 'Ferguson doesn't seem to like our being together so much. I think she feels left out. Could we?'\n\n'Ferguson? Ferguson? Who is Ferguson?'\n\n'You know Ferguson,' I said. 'I was sharing a room with her till we requested the swap. I think it hurt her that I wanted to share with you. It would have been easier for her if I'd asked to go back to having a single room. I was at school. We were at school together. You see? Could we include her...?'\n\n'Well, you're not at school now,' Lois said. Trent heaved herself off my bed then and walked, half dressed, round the room on flat feet.\n\n'Quack Quack and Quack. Quackitty Quackitty Quack Quack.' We fell in a heap on Lois's bed.\n\n'Your breasts,' I said to Lois later when Trent had gone, 'are indescribably soft.'\n\n'I know,' Lois said, 'Matron says I must get something done about them.'\n\n'Trent really can do ducks,' I said, 'she really can do ducks.'\n\n'She really can,' Lois said.\n\n'Ramsden,' I say making an effort to keep my voice level, 'my folks would be very happy if you would visit. Ramsden,' I say, 'when you have been to London, I mean, when you have had your holiday, I mean, I shall have my holidays then.'\n\nI renew my invitation to Ramsden to come and stay for a few days. Staff nurse Ramsden. We are in the lower ground corridor going in opposite directions. I have had my meal and she is going to hers. I have never worked with Ramsden. The others say she is very nice to work with. She is on Lower Ground Radium.\n\nRamsden says thank you and accepts. She seems shy. She often seems shy. It is then that she gives me the poems.\n\n'I have no right to give you these,' she says,' but here they are anyway.'\n\n'Thank you,' I say, 'thank you very much.' I hold the little book carefully in both hands, with both hands together as if for a prayer.\n\n'Look at them, if you care to, some time,' Ramsden says, her eyes darker because she is shy. 'When you have a minute. No!' she puts her hands over mine, 'there isn't time now. Put them in your pocket. Put them away.'\n\nWe both have to hurry.\n\n'There is never time,' she says. She explains that she has had to leave the Junior in charge as her second-year nurse had to go off. 'She was really not well enough to be on duty.' Ramsden has a reputation for thoughtfulness.\n\nWherever in my mother's house can staff nurse Ramsden sleep?\n\n_The feathers of the willow_\n\n_Are half of them grown yellow_\n\n_Above the swelling stream;_\n\nI do look quickly into Ramsden's little book. It is all written in her neat small handwriting. Some of the poems are her own and some she has chosen.\n\nThe wireless is still on in the Lower Ground Men's Surgical. It is an offcers' ward and the ordinary hospital rules do not apply. The lights are all on still and the officers are not even in their pyjamas yet. Some are playing cards and others are sitting in the ward office with the Charge Nurse and her Junior. All very casual. They seem to be mostly convalescents. The wireless is loud, 'In the Mood' is on. The lines of the poem seem to fit this music as it goes on and on;\n\n_And ragged are the bushes,_\n\n_and rusty now the rushes,_\n\n_and wild the clouded gleam._\n\nThe words in my head are in time to the music. I even seem to walk in time to it. This music 'In the Mood' is incredibly vulgar accepting, as it seems to do, entirely unacceptable vulgarity. I wish the poem did not fit and that I could walk to a different rhythm.\n\nI wonder what other poems Ramsden has chosen. The Lower Grounds corridor is dark beyond the ward. The poem is about the autumn. It's the beginning of the autumn.\n\nThis summer belongs to us you said. You told me not to call you Dr Metcalf. 'Jonathon,' you said. I was to call you Jonathon. It was hard for me to change. Dr Metcalf I called your name and you said, 'Jonathon, remember? Especially when we are loving each other. How can I be doctor?' you said. 'Jonathon,' I said.\n\nFor a few minutes just now in the corridor while I looked at Ramsden's poems I forgot, for just those few minutes what has happened to Dr Metcalf.\n\nThe diet kitchen is awful. I can't stand the diet kitchen. It is on the Lower Ground corridor further on from Radium Therapy and the Offcers' Ward. It is a basement really and is vaulted. It is not well lit at night. I suppose to save electricity.\n\nI am in the diet kitchen. All round me are the horrible little trays and their food labels. I hate cutting and weighing pieces of bread. I can't stand the smell of the vitamin B extract. The smell of tripe stewing is as bad as the smell of boiling beetroot.\n\nI am in the diet kitchen all alone. This is the place where Nurse Roberts, on day duty, can't stand the sight of the dried egg powder, not even the packets of it. A kitchen boy comes in with fuel for the boiler and the stove. He comes twice during the night. He works in the main kitchens where there are quite a few people including a crippled cook who can't talk. Trent told me once that she has to work at night and that she hides during the day because people are afraid when they see her. At least there is company in the main kitchens but nurses do not work there.\n\nThe kitchen boy is waiting. He stands very close. I can see his ginger eyelashes, each one individually.\n\n'Well?' I say sharply.' What d'you want? You've stoked the boiler.'\n\n'Is it God's honour truth,' he asks me, moving closer so that I can smell hard-boiled eggs on his breath. 'Is it true,' he grins, shaking his head and showing gap teeth, 'that Sister Whatsit up on chests and Dr Metcalf had to have an operation to get separated? Was they really stuck together like them,' he jerks his head in the direction of the main kitchen, 'like them in there says they was?'\n\n'Of course not,' I say, 'don't be so silly! Here give me that!' I take the hod of coke and let it fall on his feet. His boots are thick and he does not seem to feel any pain. Either it's his boots or his stupidity. He stares at my tears. 'Whats up? What's the marrer?' He peers up into my face.\n\n'Oh, go away!'\n\n'Orright, then I'm goin'. Orright. Orright I'm a goin'.'\n\n'Don't cry nurse! There's nothing to cry about, now is there.'\n\nIt's one of those Matron's office nine a.m. Things. I am here in front of Matron's desk. She is sitting on the other side moving her freshly sharpened pencil to and fro above a timetable which looks like a checked tablecloth in front of her. She talks softly to herself as her pencil pauses. She frowns, shakes her head and moves her pencil on, an inch or two, above the neatly ruled pattern.\n\nWeekends have been the worst. Magda suddenly wants a garden Dr Metcalf tells me. She wants all the rough grass at the back of the house cut and then mown into smooth lawns. She wants roses and fruit trees and vegetables. Weekends I have not been able to stop thinking about them doing the garden together. Magda wants home-grown salads Dr Metcalf explains. 'Come round,' he says in his most gentle voice. 'She wants you to come,' he says. He wants me near him.\n\n'All right,' I say. I walk by their house several times but I don't go up to the door.\n\n'The weekends,' Dr Metcalf says when we have a few minutes alone, 'the weekends are full of planting Magda. Don't cry,' he says, his voice very soft, his lips near my ear. 'Don't cry. Please, please don't cry.'\n\nMatron says, 'The diet kitchen and, let me see, night duty I think.' She looks up from the big timetable which has, I know, because she has said so before, over four hundred nurses on it. 'Plenty of fresh air every day before you go to bed.' She smiles at me and tells me I am very pale. She likes her nurses, she says, to keep well.\n\nI have never thought that I belonged to her. One of her four hundred nurses. My eyes fill with tears again.\n\n'There is absolutely no need for these tears,' Matron says, 'come along nurse, dry your eyes. There is nothing to cry about. You know as well as I do that the rule about the doctor's corridor applies for the benefit of the nurses. Bomb damage aside, it is no place for my nurses. It has been brought to my notice that you have been seen there occasionally. No doubt you will have had your reasons and I am not going to question them. The corridor is absolutely out of bounds. The rule exists, nurse, because of those in our profession who are weaker.' She smiles again. 'I do not, for one moment, nurse, want to consider you to be one of them.' She has made up her mind, she says, that I am to be a gold medallist. 'You can do it! It's hard work but you can do it.'\n\nI watch her pencil write my name in one of the squares.\n\n'The diet kitchen,' she says, 'is not a place of punishment. It is valuable experience.' And working on my own, she tells me, is an excellent way of having a much-needed rest from patients and other staff. She smiles again. 'We simply cannot have tearful nurses at the bedside you know.'\n\n'Yes, I know. Thank you Matron.'\n\n'I think that is all nurse. You will of course be, as part of your duties, dusting this office. I suggest you come in here either immediately before your meal time or immediately after it, between midnight and one.'\n\n'Yes, I know, between twelve and one, thank you Matron.'\n\n'You appreciate that this is considered a privilege. The dark polish is in this little drawer.'\n\n'Yes, thank you, Matron.'\n\n'You have weekends off. Also a privilege.'\n\n'Thank you Matron.'\n\nI must go round to Magda. I must go to the house and get my letter back.\n\nAn accident. The whole hospital is talking about an accident. About Dr Metcalf's unexpected death. The diet kitchen, because of its dark emptiness at night, is worse than any other place. I have to understand that I shall never see him again or hear his voice.\n\nThere was, this afternoon, a memorial service for him in the hospital chapel. I meant to go but did not wake up in time. Lois also did not wake up for it.\n\n'I do have my principles,' she said. And how about we go to the pictures, Saturday. She's having the weekend off, for once, she said.\n\nIf Magda sees my letter she will be so terribly hurt. I must get it back. She must not see what I wrote.\n\nI wrote everything to you Dr Metcalf, Jonathon. I wrote everything about us both that is why she must not see what I wrote. They will send your things to her in brown envelopes. Everything found in your pockets will be sent to her sealed in these special envelopes. I have seen rings and photographs and money and letters put into these special envelopes. The things are sent to mothers and wives, to the next of kin as they are called.\n\nMy letter to you will hurt Magda.\n\nI love you I told you in my letter. I want you to come back now. That's what I wrote to you. I told you I was crying while I wrote the letter. Why have you gone away? I wrote that too. Come back please. Come back now this minute. I've been up to your room. I keep on going up there in case you've come back. Your name's still on the door. It's locked. Come back before someone else has your room.\n\nI am sick, I told you. Every morning since you left I am sick. Remember I was sick? I told you I was being sick when you said you had to go and you said you would come back soon. And we would be together. You said you would find a way for us to be together. I wrote about that to you too in my letter. You told me. Remember? You told me to wait and to be happy knowing you would come back to me. Remember? You promised me. You said, 'Wait for me.'\n\nMagda must not see my letter. I never thought anything could happen. I never thought you would not come back. Oh why did you go? I never thought that you would not get my letter.\n\nIn the middle of the afternoon I wake up. It is only three o'clock. All at once I remember. You see, while I was asleep I had forgotten. Outside it is bright sunshine. A bit cold. I remember you like it to be cold and sunny. I'll talk to you while I get dressed. You like it sunny and cold don't you. I'm going to get the letter now. In a minute. But first I'll go once along the doctors' corridor in case you have come back. Are you waiting in your room for me? Sometimes when I was on the ward, you know, making beds or taking round the trays at tea time, I'd suddenly think you are waiting for me and I'd leave quickly. I'd take the lift and do you remember how sweet it was when you were there in your room? Sometimes I could only stay five minutes.\n\nI'll always remember the time I stayed all night with you. You said there was plenty of room for us both on that narrow little bed. Please be in your room for me when I come now. Be waiting for me and smiling when you open the door. Please.\n\nI have to go to Magda to get my letter back. You weren't in your room just now. I have to understand this. You aren't at the camp at Swindon, writing to me, either. There is a chance that you will come back wounded. You could be brought back, crushed with some bones broken, but not all that bad. Perhaps you are on the way back. Oh please be on the way back. Please.\n\nWhat's the use? I must stop hoping.\n\nDo you remember when you explained? It was such a sweet time for me, when you explained how you didn't sleep all night, that night of the fog, when you thought I should not sleep alone in the house with you, and you put the mattress down in Mrs P's sitting room. She was so sour that night. I hated her and her room! As if it mattered what Mrs P thought about us. But it was hurting Magda you were really afraid of and it was sweet when you said you wanted to protect me from your own feelings. Behaviour, you said. When we talk about Magda you explain so well that if Magda was a perfectly horrible person it would be easier. I understand because I love Magda too but it is you I want to be with for ever. You wanted me and you thought you should not. I feel very happy knowing how much you wanted me.\n\nMagda needs you, you explained. I understand that too.\n\nBut the night at the river shack, I reminded you. You were lovely and smooth and sunburned and your kisses very sweet. You said we should have made love that night. I went to sleep, I told you. And you said yes perhaps that was a good thing. Sleep is a protection you said.\n\nI am almost at your house. The bright afternoon makes me look pale and hollow eyed. Ugly. I feel hungry but don't know what to eat. If you were with me we could go in to some place and have hot toast and tea. Perhaps they would let us have real butter and some jam.\n\nIt is awful to go towards that house and to know you will not be there. I wish you could be there to open the door instead of Mrs P. When Mrs P opens the door I hope she will let me in to the hall. Perhaps the brown envelope will be on the hall table. Perhaps I'll be able to take it quickly.\n\nWhy do you feel you have to go I asked you. The war is practically over. The war is everywhere, I know, but it is over. That's what people are saying. You are more use, you are really needed here in the hospital. The war doesn't need you now like the hospital does. Not like I do. I need you.\n\nThis is a terrible thing to say but how can I have proof that you are dead? Who can I ask?\n\nI ring the bell and wait. On both sides of the front door the large clean windows are heavily curtained inside. The curtains are drawn. I ring the bell once more and wait.\n\nPlease, don't ever say that you can't forgive yourself. There is nothing to forgive. When I said that, 'There is nothing to forgive,' you looked relaxed and pleased. I loved you more than ever then. You said the hard little bed in your room on the doctors' corridor was now an idyllic place, that was the word you used, idyllic. You said that when two people loved as we have then it is as if that love is for ever. You told me to remember that.\n\nNo one is going to answer this door. It's no use standing out here. The afternoon is getting much colder. It's getting dark earlier now.\n\nThere is a queue at the greengrocer's shop. I join it to buy some Worcester Pearmains. One half of the shop is boarded up and an A.R.P. depot is in the boarded place. The boards are painted A.R.P. in red. The shop has looked like this for a long time. Today I seem to notice the boards and the red paint for the first time.\n\nFor a few minutes I forgot. It was biting the apple. Eating the apple I just thought about that.\n\nIt seems a long way back to the hospital. These mean little streets where we used to walk, hidden, because people we knew did not walk here, seem dirty and poor. I never noticed before though you once said they depressed you. You should see this street today. It is full of people, a long line of men and women, linked together arm in arm, dancing. Every day now there are street parties like this. They are like children in a school playground. Long rows of people dancing and singing. You know, the songs, 'The Lambeth Walk', 'Run Rabbit Run' and now it's 'Knees Up Mother Brown'. The women have got curlers in their hair and the men are in their shirtsleeves.\n\nIf you could see this dancing and rejoicing!\n\nYou said once how easily we accepted heaps of rubble. People, you said, got used to all kinds of things. It amazed you, you said, that this mess was all round people now and they did not seem to notice it. It's true what you said. There are heaps of broken bricks and slates everywhere and, at the end of this street, there is an old bomb crater which is not even fenced off. The people dancing don't seem to notice that some houses have whole fronts and sides missing. Some are tarpaulined and boarded up but others are showing pink and blue wallpaper, torn and discoloured. Sinister really, but no one notices. You could say a house looked like a doll's house, opened, without the magic. They have been like this for a long time. Part of the hospital is still covered with tarpaulin. Remember? The far end of the doctors' corridor does not lead anywhere. The stairs and lift shaft at that end have all gone.\n\nThis dancing in the street is how the war has been ending these days. Did you know, Dr Metcalf, Jonathon? Did I ever tell you how the war started for me? I mean really started. Not the declaration of the war. That was the terrible beginning. Terrible because my father could not and would not believe something which he had to believe. The war started one night with the post mistress and her son out in the village street outside my school. They were banging tin cans together and blowing whistles. It was the first air-raid warning. We all had to get up and sit under the tables downstairs in the dining hall. And, because the post mistress had no other noise she could make, there was no All Clear and we stayed under the tables all night. Yo u have never told me Dr Metcalf, Jonathon, where you were when the war started. Where were you? Were you married to Magda? I haven't had time to know enough.\n\nThey say it's an advantage for a doctor to marry the daughter of a well-known physician or surgeon. How did you meet Magda? I never asked you that either. There is a skinny black cat here. It's ugly because it's poor and alone. It's at the edge of these dancing people and it's trying to vomit.\n\nWhatever shall I do with my life without you.\n\nIt is the weekend and I'm free. I have the weekends off now, remember?\n\nI am at Gertrude's Place. Well not quite. The hens, I can see them plainly from here, are dotted all over the field.\n\n'Gertrude is very ill,' my mother said last night.\n\n'I know, you told me.'\n\n'You haven't seen her for all these weeks, months. You've not been home to see us.'\n\n'I know, I'm sorry.'\n\n'You could go in the morning,' she says, 'frst thing. You have to collect the eggs yourself and leave the money on the kitchen table. I'll give you change. Gertrude never has any.'\n\n'Yes, I'll go in the morning, first thing.'\n\nI am up the hill a bit from Gertrude's Place and I'm leaning on my bicycle. I wondered if I should ride it but it was all right.\n\nThe district nurse is pushing her bicycle up the field path. I ought to go down there. Perhaps I'll go back down in a minute. I have been up here at the edge of the spinny, for hours. Is it hours? It seems like a long time. It is all so quiet here. The nurse in her blue uniform looks small from this distance. I can watch I can watch her disappear into the house.\n\nI have been several times to Magda's, missing my sleep, to try to get my letter back. But no one is there. No one answers the door and the curtains are always drawn. I suppose Magda is with her mother and father. Perhaps she is at the river shack.\n\nI keep thinking about my letter and all the things I wrote in it. There has been no message for me from Magda. She must know about the letter, and about me, about us.\n\nGertrude is all small and shrivelled yellow in a bed which was never used. She wanted me to have it once. I was early at her place. The fowls must have been out all night. I wondered about the fox. Fowls would have to be either out all the time or shut up all the time. It is something they can't do for themselves.\n\nI watched Gertrude through the window. Her eyes were closed under a frown of pain. I watched and then I came up here.\n\nI want to go back down there. I want to have Gertrude comfort me but how can I tell her everything when she is so ill. It should be me comforting her.\n\nI think Gertrude is dying.\n\n'I can wash Gertrude,' I could say this to the nurse. But I can't say to Gertrude what I want to say. How can I go back over the summer and leave everything unexplained?\n\nIn the evening I can't stop crying. I can't tell my mother. It is only a simple thing I have to tell her but I am not able to.\n\n'You must not be so upset over poor Gertrude,' my mother says. 'She is very fond of you and she would not want you to be upset like this. Try not to cry.'\n\n'It's not only that, not only poor Gertrude,' I say. 'It's because oh it's because I've been trying to write and I can't, it's just stupid, it's nothing.'\n\nMy mother is knitting very fast. She started knitting at the beginning of the war and now she is always knitting. 'No one,' she says, 'can write anything till they've had experience. Later on perhaps. You will write later on.'\n\n'Yes, of course,' I say.\n\n'You never play the piano now,' my mother says. 'Why don't you go now and practise something and leave the front-room door open. I like to listen.'\n\n'I haven't been able to sleep either,' I say instead of saying the words I mean to say.\n\n'You must have some of my tablets,' my mother says, 'they are yeast tablets and are very good.'\n\n'Thanks,' I say and I put my hands up to my face because of more tears.\n\n'You promised to play Halma,' my sister says.\n\n'Oh, shut up!' Immediately I regret my reply. I know she is trying to comfort me.\n\nDuring the night there is a full moon, it makes a trellis of shadow and light on the opposite wall. It seems as if, instead of a corridor up here, there is another room.. A room I have never seen before. L-shaped with a long passage leading to a place which shines as a river shines when moonlight lies across undisturbed water.\n\nThe tarpaulins have been taken off the bomb-damaged part of the hospital. This wing, at the end of the doctors' corridor, has to be rebuilt. There is no strange room there. Beyond some wooden barriers the hospital up here is wide open to the night. The corridor ends abruptly in space. The moonlight is on the wall of the huge clock tower which is a water tower. It is a reservoir for the water from an artesian well under the hospital. I feel afraid of the power and the force of the water in the tower. I can imagine, all too easily, the depths of the precipice in front of me. It is as though a neglected wound, which I already know about, has been uncovered.\n\nAll the doctors' rooms are locked and uninhabited. There are warning notices and barriers all along the passage. I have come up here one last time. The building work has started. Somewhere there'll be a watchman. Someone to keep people away at night.\n\nThe moon is wonderfully close to this ragged broken end of the corridor. I could step easily across this gulf straight on to the clean white moon.\n\nThe moon belongs to my father. He has always said it was his. If I was over there he would know without my telling him. It is only such a small thing I have to tell. Perhaps it is the small things which are the hardest to tell. They are the things which make all the difference.\n\nIt is because it will be so unexpected for him. What I need to tell him will be unexpected.\n\nMy father, when he comes to the station with me after my weekend at home, talks softly to me as we wait to cross the road. He admires the Clydesdale horses as a brewer's dray rumbles over the cobbles. He doesn't seem to notice the dried horse dung and straw blowing in our faces. The horses are fine he says and have I noticed how well cared for they are?\n\n'How they shine!' he says, he can imagine the daily curry combing and the polishing of the brasses. The dray is loaded but the horses, moving all together, are very powerful. 'Look at their muscles,' he says, 'their muscles ripple under their skin.'\n\nAs we walk to and fro on the platform, he says even if we are not seeing each other very often he is always thinking of me. They would, he says, like me to come home more often. He is going out to Gertrude's Place tomorrow, he says, he is going to do a few things for her.\n\n'That's good,' I say, 'thank you.'\n\n'Is there anything in particular?' he asks.\n\n'What d'you mean?'\n\n'Are you worrying about something in particular?' His face is white in the autumn dusk.\n\n'Oh no!' I say. 'Not really. It's just that I don't like the diet kitchen.'\n\n'Quite a lot of life,' he says, 'is doing what we don't like very much.'\n\n'Yes, I know,' I say. 'I know.'\n\nThere is a small sound behind me. I turn quickly. Perhaps it is the night watchman. There is someone in the corridor. A dark shape is coming towards me, a shadow in the red light of the little lamps.\n\n'It's only me,' Trent says. 'I saw you pass the end of the ward.' She's got night nurses' paralysis she tells me. She has long woollen operation stockings on over her shoes and an army blanket round her shoulders. She tells me it's freezing on Women's Medical. 'It's that quiet,' she says. 'Kidneys. They're all on parsley tea,' she gives a fat giggle. 'They're your mob,' she says, 'you been fixing them lettuce again?' She takes my arm drawing me back from the edge.\n\n'You lead,' she says. 'By the way,' she croons, 'has anyone ever told you, you're not cut out to be a corpse? No sex appeal!'\n\nWe waltz slowly back along the brick-dusty corridor.\n\n'Do you come here often?' Trent, purring close to my ear, trips over the end of the army blanket.\n\n'Goin' down!' Trent says in the lift. 'A-wun-a-tew-a-tree-a-fower-a-faive-Tung Tung Tung Tung Tung Tung.' She can make a noise, with her tongue and voice, sounding like the plucking of a double-bass string. While clapping in a slow beat she taps her foot in a rapid rhythm. 'A-wun-a-tew-a tree a wun a woman band! Listen,' she says. 'Counter irritant,' she says, 'if things are bad make some other thing worse. Ching chang Chinaman givee good advice, don't pee until you have to. Busting! And that'll be all you can think about. Get me? And, just this, there's more than one pebble on the beach.'\n\nI shall go to Magda's once more. One last time and then not any more.\n\nI can't stop thinking about you. I think about you all the time.\n\nToday I found out just what sort of person Magda really is. I said, didn't I, that I would go once more to see if I could get my letter back, the one I wrote to you. I was so sure, you see, that it would be returned with your things, the things they call personal things. I have seen Magda now. It's like this.\n\n'Mrs Lemmington Frazier Metcalf does not wish to see anyone. She is not at home,' Mrs P says through the tiny space. She opens the door grudgingly so that I feel she is going to close it before I can say anything.\n\n'It's only me,' I say quickly, putting one hand on the door to prevent it from being slammed.\n\n'You nor no one,' Mrs P says. 'She's not in!'\n\n'Oh please, please let me come in.' I am surprised at my own voice.\n\n'Who is it Mrs P? Who's there?' I can hear Magda's voice from somewhere quite close. Perhaps from the stairs. She has a way of hanging over the bannister. Remember?\n\n'It's me,' I shout. 'Can I come in?'\n\n'Of course. Precious child, of course you must come in!' Magda is dressed in that dressing gown made of bath-towel stuff. She wears this only when she is quite by herself or when she is ill, she once explained to me. You will know the dressing gown, she said it was yours once. Her hair, unbrushed, is loose, all tangled and messy. Her face seems swollen and when I look at her my own eyes fill with tears.\n\n'Why haven't you come before?' she asks.\n\n'But I have. Several times,' I say.\n\n'Mrs P Darling! Will you be awfully sweet and bring us up some tea?' Magda puts an arm round me and guides me, hugging me, to the stairs. We go up together. Her action reminds me of you, Dr Metcalf, holding me the night of the fog. Remember? I can't help thinking that she must have my letter hidden somewhere.\n\n'Of course,' Magda says, 'I've been at Mummy's and Mrs P's been away too.'\n\nThere were no letters on the hall table, only the polished tray and other ornaments, all polished and cared for. No little heap of brown envelopes as I imagined there would be. She must have put the letter somewhere.\n\n'I feel such a frightful mess,' Magda says. 'As you can see I've just let myself go. Awful!' She sinks down on the sofa and pats the cushions.\n\n'Sit down,' she says. Her eyes are full of tears.\n\n'It's so awful, you see, he went orf with such a cheap and horrid person. That's what I can't bear and Mummy, of course, can't bear it either. It's hardest for her. Mummy's really quite ill over it.'\n\nSo Magda does know, and her mother knows, and they think I'm cheap.\n\n'I feel more awful than I know how to say, I...' The words are too difficult. Magda interrupts me with another hug.\n\n'You see,' she says, 'this person is really awful, cheap and I mean really cheap and vulgar. And, you see Daddy's so clever, a brilliant surgeon, everyone says so but he's stupid too. He's made a lot of money. Mummy's used to being comfortable. Mummy and I try to protect him. What I'm trying to say is that this cheap little person is a gold digger. Like all the others,' she searches for her handkerchief. 'But you, not having the experience of people like that, won't know what I mean. He is already, in a sense, at the mercy of perfectly dreadful people who are waiting to get everything from him.'\n\n'You mean,' I try to say something.\n\n'You see,' Magda says, 'he keeps making an awful fool of himself. Didn't you think she was perfectly dreadful? The last one? You saw her that day on the river. Gloria or whatever her name was.'\n\n'You mean Marigold?'\n\n'Yes, that's the one. It devastates Mummy every time \u2013 that's why I go over and stay the night with her every so often. She's dreadfully lonely.'\n\n'Oh I see,' I am taking care not to look up.\n\n'So incredibly vulgar and so grasping,' Magda says wiping her eyes with both hands like a child. 'They, those sorts of women and their relations would take everything, absolutely everything. The relations in particular hound Daddy. And where would Mummy be? She dreads a court case and she's terrified of the workhouse. Daddy's compromised himself more than once d'you see \u2013 and now this Marigold! It's all so ghastly!'\n\nWe are both quiet while Mrs P sets the tray with the teapot and cups on a little table in front of us.\n\n'Oh Mrs P, toast! You are a dear!' Magda can manage an entirely different voice. She pours out. 'You needn't wait Mrs P thank you.'\n\n'Marigold's mother,' I say in a timid voice, 'is quite nice. I am sure she wouldn't, I don't think she is like that. I nursed her. Marigold's real name is Edna, her mother is Mrs Bray. She is a nice person, very good and kind. Couldn't you go and see her?'\n\n'Oh mothers can't stop their daughters!' Magda laughs. 'You are so innocent and good,' she says, 'don't ever change!'\n\nWe drink our tea and share out the toast.\n\n'Oh, I nearly forgot,' Magda says, 'you are perfectly sweet to write to Jonty. Poor darling Jonty!' Her eyes fill with tears. 'It's awful I can't stop this weeping,' she says. 'I see you can't either. They've returned all letters. I guessed you would've written. I've got your letter here,' she leans back and stretches her arm across to her little writing desk. In here,' she says, pulling open the little drawer. 'Here it is, this is yours.' She hands me my letter.\n\n'You never put your name and address on the back,' she says, 'but I recognized your handwriting. Everything has been sent back to me.'\n\nI turn the letter over in my hands, almost stroking it, feeling the firmly closed-down envelope.\n\n'Thank you,' I say in a small voice, 'yes I did write.' My hands caress the thick secret letter.\n\n'He would have loved having a letter from you,' Magda says, 'poor Darling Jonty. But as you see it never reached him. That perfectly dreadful place! It must have been awful for him and then no one being quite sure. It's all so stupid. Conflicting. A head-on crash?' She shivered. 'Dead or believed missing. I can't bear it. Really I can't. I've been waiting at Mummy's and now here.'\n\n'Don't cry,' I say, 'please, Magda, don't cry!' The envelope is wonderfully smooth and unopened. Magda has given me back my letter. She has not torn it open to read it. She has not looked at it.\n\n'There's some confusion. Where and which camp,' Magda says, 'everything's so confused. It's victory, I suppose.' And she sobs aloud and feels around for her handkerchief. 'In the front of that shelf,' she says, 'there should be some clean ones. Thanks Darling!' Magda puts her hand on my arm. 'You see, Darling,' she says, 'I keep hoping he will come back. That it's all a mistake. I haven't given up hope. I suppose you realize that I'm heaps older than Jonty. That sort of thing makes people talk, d'you see, they say cruel things especially about women who are older. Jonathon -' she starts to cry again, 'Jonathon, you see, I need him so much.' I watch her shoulders shaking and I can see the dark-grey dirty-looking parting in her bronzed hair. I know I ought to help her.\n\n'Shall I find your hairbrush?' I ought to look for her brush. 'Shall I help you wash and do your hair? Let me brush your hair, Magda,' I ought to comfort her. 'Let me help you,' all this I should say. Magda would comfort me, if she knew.\n\nShe sits crouched on the sofa with her face hidden in her hands. 'You see, Darling,' she says, 'he wanted to be with Mr Smithers. Smithers went about twelve months ago to a field hospital and Jonty felt he should go. But you see, Darling, it's not so simple. People, men and women, will travel the length and breadth of a country, at times, to be together. In one way it's as simple as that.'\n\n'But I thought, Smithers...'\n\n'They worked together,' Magda seems to have a note of defiance in her voice. 'I'm waiting,' she says. 'One thing I'm certain of. When he comes back, _if_ he comes back, I'm never going to let him go ever again. I simply can't live without him.\n\nHer long tangled hair falls over her endlessly shaking shoulders. In a blind dazed sort of way I get up and stand for a moment in front of her. I can't see her face, only her shoulders without an arm round them. The bunched chintzy curtains and the cushion covers, with their crowded little flowers and acorns, and the hovering perfume all seem too much. I move silently towards the curtained door and open it and, with light little steps, make for the stairs and the front door.\n\n'How much are the rings please?'\n\n'Them's sixpence. All of them. There's nothing over sixpence.'\n\n'Oh yes, of course, it's Woolworths. I'd like a ring please. It's er, it's for drama, a drama, for a play in a dramatic society. I'm in a play, er, Shakespeare.'\n\n'Choose your pick. Them's all the same price, like I said, sixpence.'\n\n'I think I'll have this one. It's quite pretty isn't it?'\n\n'If you say so.'\n\nAll the lights are on in Woolworths and I move with the throng of people. It is slow, this getting to the doors, and more crowded because, near the doors, there are counters with a few sweets and people are still coming in as the store is emptying for closing time. Out in the street there is an eeriness in the sad twilight. The hospital, with lights showing, seems like a huge ship for ever in harbour.\n\nNurse Roberts, little Nurse Roberts, stout in her winter coat, was down by the bus stop alone. I saw her there in the morning. Her big case on the pavement beside her. She was waiting for the early bus, the one we call the workmen's. It was raining, a light rain. When I saw her there I never thought then that she might have nowhere to go. I was high up closing the window because of the rain. Now I think, where could she go? Where can anyone go?\n\nThe wireless is on in the night nurses' dining room. This inescapable 'In The Mood' music. It keeps on and on. Without wanting to I walk in time to this barrel-organ rhythm. Without wanting to I'm humming, without tune to this music. My voice in my head is an ugly croaking.\n\nLois is late. She comes in and sits down opposite me with her cup of tea.\n\n_Potatoes onions carrots_ , my ring fashes as my pencil pretends to scribble a shopping list.\n\n'Night Fanny here yet?' Lois glances round quickly and lights a cigarette. She inhales deeply.\n\nSomeone turns off the wireless. Sister Bean, with the registers held to her heart, marches across between the tables. Her voice barks into the silence.\n\n'Abbott Abrahams Ackerman Allwood...'\n\nLois, in her cloud of smoke, extinguishes her cigarette. 'Whoever,' she says, leaning low across the table, 'whoever would ever have married you?'\n\n'Arrington and Attwood. Nurses Baker Barrington Beam Beamish Beckett Birch Bowman D Bowman E Broadhurst Brown Burchall...'\n\n'Nurse Burchall?'\n\n'Yes Sister?'\n\n'Nurse Burchall, Matron's office nine a.m.'\n\n'Yes Sister.'\n\n'Nurses Cann Carruthers Cornwall Cupwell...'\n\nThe Easter moon is racing up the sky. The stunted ornamental bushes look as if torn white tablecloths have been thrown over them and the buildings are like cakes which, having taken three days to ice, are now finished.\n\nTomorrow is Good Friday.\n\nNext week I shall take the earlier train again and, before the journey is over, I shall speak to the woman.\n\nIt is more than likely that Ramsden would have white hair. Her hair was the sort of hair which goes white all over, all at once. Keats says, _to know the change and feel it_ , I thought of sudden white hair when I read that.\n\nThe cardboard cover of the little book of poems which Ramsden gave me once, during the night on the Lower Ground corridor, is decorated with edelweiss and gentian, a circle of neat pen-and-ink flowers. Inside she has written in her neat small handwriting,\n\n_The best is not too good for you_\n\n_Und Ihrer Weise Wohlzutun._\n\n_Ramsden_ , I shall say, _is it you? Much water has gone under the bridge_ \u2013 this is not my way \u2013 but I shall say it carelessly like this \u2013 _much water has gone under the bridge and I never answered your letters but is it you, Ramsden, after all these years is it?_\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}