Novels, Tales, Journeys

Ibrahim quickly made ready for the journey. On the eve of his departure, he spent the evening, as usual, at the countess D’s. She knew nothing; Ibrahim did not have the courage to be open with her. The countess was calm and cheerful. She called him over several times and joked about his pensiveness. After supper, everybody left. The countess, her husband, and Ibrahim remained in the drawing room. The unfortunate man would have given anything in the world to be left alone with her, but Count D. seemed so calmly settled by the fireplace that there was no hope of getting him to leave the room. The three were silent. “Bonne nuit,”^*2 the countess finally said. Ibrahim’s heart was wrung and suddenly felt all the horror of separation. He stood motionless. “Bonne nuit, messieurs,” the countess repeated. He still did not move…Finally his vision darkened, his head began to spin, and he was barely able to leave the room. On coming home, almost in oblivion, he wrote the following letter:

I am going away, dear Léonore, I am leaving you forever. I write to you, because I do not have the strength to explain it to you otherwise.

My happiness could not continue. I enjoyed it in defiance of fate and nature. You were bound to fall out of love with me; the enchantment was bound to disappear. That thought always pursued me, even in moments when I seemed to forget everything, when at your feet I reveled in your passionate self-abandon, your infinite tenderness…Light-minded society mercilessly persecutes in reality what it allows in theory: sooner or later its cold mockery would have vanquished you, would have subdued your ardent soul, and you would finally have felt ashamed of your passion…What would have become of me then? No! Better to die, better to leave you before that terrible moment…

Your peace is dearest of all for me: you could not enjoy it while the eyes of society were turned on us. Remember all that you endured, all the injured self-esteem, all the torments of fear; remember the terrible birth of our son. Think: Should I subject you longer to the same anxieties and dangers? Why strive to unite the destiny of so delicate, so beautiful a being with the wretched destiny of a Negro, a pitiful creature, barely worthy to be called human?

Farewell, Léonore, farewell, my dear, my only friend. In abandoning you I am abandoning the first and last joys of my life. I have neither fatherland nor family. I am going to sad Russia, where total solitude will be my comfort. Strict labors, to which I shall give myself henceforth, will, if not stifle, at least deflect the tormenting memories of days of rapture and bliss…Farewell, Léonore—I tear myself from this letter as if from your embrace; farewell, be happy—and think sometimes of the poor Negro, your faithful Ibrahim.

That same night he set out for Russia.

The journey did not seem as terrible to him as he had expected. His imagination triumphed over reality. The further he went from Paris, the more vividly, the more closely he pictured to himself the things he had forsaken forever.

Unawares, he found himself on the Russian border. Autumn was already setting in, but the coaches, despite the bad roads, drove like the wind, and on the seventeenth day of his journey, in the morning, he arrived in Krasnoe Selo, which the high road of that time passed through.