The Scapegoat

I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.

So you see, when war comes to one’s village, one’s doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred. That is why I am not a great patriot.

The quality it had now, in fresh untempered sunlight, was neither faerie nor austere; the changing shadows of dusk and midnight had vanished with the darkness and the rain, and walls and roof and towers were bathed in the radiance that comes only in the first hours of the day, soft, new-washed, the delicate aftermath of dawn. The people who slept within must surely bear some imprint of this radiance in themselves, must turn instinctively to the light seeping through the shutters, while the ghostly dreams and sorrows of the night slipped away, finding sanctuary in the unwakened forest trees the sun had not yet touched.

Do you know so little about children, Monsieur Jean,' she asked, 'that you imagine, because they don't cry, therefore they feel nothing? If so, you're much mistaken.

My realisation that all I had ever done in life, not only in France but in England also, was to watch people, never to partake in their happiness or pain, brought such a sense of overwhelming depression, deepened by the rain stinging the windows of the car, that when I came to Le Mans, although I had not intended to stop there and lunch, I changed my mind, hoping to change my mood.

I have no great opinion of the human race. It is just as well, now and again, that we have wars, so that men know what it is to suffer pain. One day they will exterminate themselves, as they have exterminated the rabbits. So much the better. The world will be peaceful again, with nothing left but the forest over there, and the soil.

I dragged myself to my feet, and with my hellhound in tow started off once more through the fastness of the wood, feeling, as the poet did before me, that my companion would be with me through the nights and through the days and down the arches of the years, and I should never be rid of him.

Death was an executioner, lopping a flower before it bloomed.

Years of study, years of training, the fluency with which I spoke their language, taught their history, described their culture, had never brought me closer to the people themselves.

One had no right to play about with people's lives. One should not interfere with their emotions. A word, a look, a smile, a frown, did something to another human being, waking response or aversion, and a web was woven which had no beginning and no end, spreading outward and inward too, merging, entangling, so that the struggle of one depended upon the struggle of the other.

He settled himself with assurance behind the wheel and I climbed in beside him. As he turned the car away from the cathedral, and so out on to Rue Voltaire, he continued to enthuse in schoolboy fashion, murmuring, "Magnificent, excellent!" under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When we had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man, leaping for his life, and forced a large Buick driven by an infuriated American into the side of the street, he proceeded to circle the town in order, so he explained to try the car's pace. "You know," he said, "it amuses me enormously to use other people's possessions. It is one of life's great pleasures." I closed my eyes as we took another corner like a bob-sleigh.

the rank and melancholy smell of charred wet wood and sodden leaves coming towards me on a wisp of air.

We are every one of us failures. The secret of life is to recognize the fact early on, and become reconciled. Then it no longer matters.

Nothing that was happening had reality & in a state of blurred confusion I asked myself what I was doing here.

The good monks are waiting upon eternity, they can wait a few more hours for you.

A word, a look, a smile, a frown, did something to another human being, waking response or aversion, and a web was woven which had no beginning and no end, spreading outward and inward too, merging, entangling, so that the struggle of one depended upon the struggle of the other.

So you see, when eat comes to one's own village, one's own doorstep, it isn't tragic and impersonal any longer. It's just an excuse to vomit private hatred.

When there’s a sudden silence, and nobody speaks, it means there’s an angel in the room, so

This was a situation that evoked screams of delight in the theatre, and I thought how very close to humour must disgust and horror always be.

I could not be sure if anything good ever came through a lie. I thought not—only trouble, war, disaster—but I did not know.

The château was a tomb, and only the cattle lived, grazing beside me, snuffling the wet grass, and the jackdaws, fluttering to roost, and a dog barking in the village beyond the church.

Were they any more lonely the silken ladies peering through those slits, than the Renée and the Frannçoise of today, with the clammy water damping the mouldering walls, and the forest, thick and shaggy, shrouding the very door ? Did the wild boar, fiery-eyed, come rooting where the cattle wandered now and the thin horn of the huntsman sound in early morning when the mist still clung about the trees ?

towards them came a great hulking fellow with a nut-brown velvet coat, his face purple with good cheer from a near-by bistro, his eyes blurred, his walk unsteady.

Trzeba tylko się rozeznać kto podsuwa nam to, czego chcemy: Bóg czy diabeł. To musi być jeden albo drugi, ale skąd to wiedzieć?

lonely, neglected, sought after solely for her fortune.

an isolated figure clinging to the treasures of the home she had

En ese sitio me conocen y tengo la sensación de que esta noche prefiero no tener identidad. Uno no se encuentra consigo mismo todos los días.

I thought how incongruous it was that the family of de Gué came here to pray and ask forgiveness of their sins, when two members of it had not spoken to each other for fifteen years.