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 Routledge Studies in Surveillance

GENDER, SURVEILLANCE,
AND LITERATURE IN THE
ROMANTIC PERIOD
1780–1830

Lucy E. Thompson
Gender, Surveillance, and Literature in
the Romantic Period

Romantic-era literature offers a key message: surveillance, in all its forms,

was experienced distinctly and differently by women than men. Gender,
Surveillance, and Literature in the Romantic Period examines how familiar
and neglected texts internalise and interrogate the ways in which targeted,
asymmetric, and often isolating surveillance made women increasingly and
uncomfortably visible in a way that still resonates today.
The book combines the insights of modern surveillance studies with
Romantic scholarship. It provides readers with a new context in which to
understand Romantic-period texts and looks critically at emerging
paradigms of surveillance directed at marginal groups, as well as
resistance to such monitoring. Works by writers such as Jane Austen,
Charlotte Smith, and Joanna Baillie, as well as Lord Byron and Thomas De
Quincey, give a new perspective on the age that produced the Panopticon.
This book is designed to appeal to a wide readership, and is aimed at
students and scholars of surveillance, literature, Romanticism, and gender
politics, as well as those interested in important strands of women’s
experience not only for the additional layers they reveal about the
Romantic era but also for their relevance to current debates around
asymmetries of power within gendered surveillance.

Lucy E. Thompson is a lecturer in the Department of English and Creative

Writing at Aberystwyth University. She works on nineteenth-century lit-
erature and the emotional impacts of surveillance in historical and con-
temporary settings, focused on gender and literary culture.
Routledge Studies in Surveillance
Kirstie Ball, William Webster, Charles Raab, Pete Fusey
Kirstie Ball is Professor in Management at St Andrews University, UK
William Webster is Professor of Public Policy and Management at the
University of Stirling, UK
Charles Raab is Professorial Fellow in Politics and International Relations at the
University of Edinburgh, UK
Pete Fussey is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of
Essex, UK

Surveillance is one of the fundamental sociotechnical processes underpinning the

administration, governance and management of the modern world. It shapes how
the world is experienced and enacted. The much-hyped growth in computing
power and data analytics in public and private life, successive scandals concerning
privacy breaches, national security and human rights have vastly increased its
popularity as a research topic. The centrality of personal data collection to notions
of equality, political participation and the emergence of surveillant authoritarian
and post-authoritarian capitalisms, among other things, ensure that its popularity
will endure within the scholarly community.
A collection of books focusing on surveillance studies, this series aims to help to
overcome some of the disciplinary boundaries that surveillance scholars face by
providing an informative and diverse range of books, with a variety of outputs that
represent the breadth of discussions currently taking place. The series editors are
directors of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy
(CRISP). CRISP is an interdisciplinary research centre whose work focuses on the
political, legal, economic and social dimensions of the surveillance society.

Gender, Surveillance, and Literature in the Romantic Period

1780–1830
Lucy E. Thompson

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Studies-in-Surveillance/book-series/RSSURV
Gender, Surveillance,
and Literature in the
Romantic Period

1780–1830

Lucy E. Thompson
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Lucy E. Thompson
The right of Lucy E. Thompson to be identified as authors of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised 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.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-85676-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-19644-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01428-7 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003014287

Typeset in Times New Roman

by MPS Limited, Dehradun
For Renée and Joan
Contents

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction: ‘every key hole is an informer’: surveil-

lance culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 1

1 The sexual body: slut-shaming and surveillance in

Sophia Lee’s The Chapter of Accidents 19

2 The medically surveilled body: gendered experiences of

the paramedical gaze 54

3 Surveillance and the displaced body: Charlotte Smith’s

What Is She? 82

4 The domiciliary body: archio-surveillance in Joanna

Baillie’s The Alienated Manor and Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park 112

5 The urban body: women, geosurveillance, and the city 138

Conclusion: regimes of hyper-visibility 161

Index 171
Acknowledgements

This book started with my doctoral work, which I would not have
completed without the research funding I received from Aberystwyth
University and their Doctoral Career Development Scholarship. I also
owe particular thanks to Richard Marggraf-Turley for his guidance and
support, as well as for his meticulous comments as my arguments took
shape; our discussions sparked interesting avenues of research, which took
the book in new, more thought-provoking directions. I’m also grateful to
Sarah Wootton and Louise Marshall for their generous feedback on the
research in this book. My colleagues in the English and Creative Writing
Department at Aberystwyth University have also been hugely encouraging
throughout. Many thanks also to Emily Briggs and Lakshita Joshi at
Routledge for their support, for which I am very grateful.
Some of the discussion in Chapter 1 was first published in 2017 as
‘Vermeer’s Curtain: Privacy, Slut-Shaming and Surveillance in “A Girl
Reading a Letter”’, Surveillance & Society, 15(2), pp. 326–341. Many thanks
to the Surveillance Studies Network for their permission to reproduce the
material.
More personal thanks go to my family and my friends, who have advised
and supported me throughout. They have listened to me talk about this
research for the past few years and without them I probably wouldn’t have
started the book, let alone finished it. Special mention goes to Douglas, my
dog, because it seems remiss of me to forget his monumental contributions;
in particular, his diligent efforts to lie across my laptop to ensure I took
necessary breaks, even when I didn’t want to. And to Stanley, my sister’s
whippet, whose cool indifference to the whole project in his tireless pursuit
of food helped keep things in perspective.
Introduction: ‘every key hole is an
informer’: surveillance culture in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Today, many of us keenly publish and publicise our lives on various online
platforms – sharing photos, videos, and statuses, tagging our friends, as well
as creating professional networks. We tacitly agree to share information
about our working habits, our leisure activities, our locations, and even our
health, with a range of actors from friends and family to colleagues, bosses,
tech companies, and beyond. In many ways, this book stems from the
realisation that the people of the Romantic era would probably have been
puzzled by the amount of information that we willingly share about our-
selves and the extent of the surveillance that we are under. The age that
produced the Panopticon saw surveillance in its mass modern manifestation
emerge, as society struggled to deal with a wealth of changes and shifting
mindsets; radicalism and political reform, migration and ever-mobile citi-
zens, developments in medical approaches, and the sex panic of 1790s, all
converged to create a period of uncertainty where the state craved order and
control. The government and the people they led sought to make sense of
and feel safe in the rapidly changing world around them – targeting specific
groups with analogue surveillant mechanisms.
In many respects, we perhaps seem to have come a long way since the
Romantic era, with today’s populations dealing with the undirected, blanket
digital surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. The leaks were a
wake-up call to millions across the globe who had never envisioned that their
electronic devices or their email accounts could be part of a global surveillance
network, as America’s National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) were revealed to be
spying on everything people did on the internet. People suddenly saw how
surveillance had crept into even the most intimate spheres of life – the home, the
workplace, and even the body. After struggling to work out how the revelations
affected them, however, many people gave a collective shrug. But I became
increasingly conscious of – fascinated by – how the Romantic period, the age in
which the term surveillance entered the English language for the first time,1 not
only shaped the culture of surveillance in everyday life that Snowden’s leaks

DOI: 10.4324/9781003014287-101
2 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries

had exposed but also seemed to offer help as we sought to recalibrate our own
experience of sweeping modern-day invigilation. I became particularly inter-
ested in the ways in which the widening network of government spies and in-
formers from the 1780s to the post-Napoleonic Wars era was socialised and
internalised. The way the customs and modes of monitoring were embedded
during this period constitutes an aetiology of surveillance culture that has
continued in a largely unbroken line. The socialisation of surveillance in the
Romantic period, that is, informs how inspection is imagined and experienced
in our own age, and at the accelerated pace enabled by digital technicity.
Now, as I finish the book, the world is in middle of the Covid-19 pan-
demic and people crave more safety and security than ever, while they also
deal with becoming increasingly visible. Digital surveillance has become
even more pervasive – something Martin French and Torin Monahan (2020)
were quick to recognise – with virus ‘track and trace’ apps launching
globally.2 To those in the Romantic era, who lived through the cholera
pandemics of the early nineteenth century (1817–24, 1827–35), it would have
been unthinkable how comparably ‘easily’ scientists have been able to track
the spread of the virus in their efforts to contain it. Our embrace of ‘smart’
technology means that governments across the globe have utilised the cap-
abilities of smart watches and phones, some with particularly intrusive apps
that gather data on people’s identities, locations, and even their online
payments, to allow police to monitor those breaching quarantine restrictions
(O’Neill et al. 2020). Outside of track and trace apps, our increasing
transparency to invigilators, whether governments and their agencies, cor-
porations, or hackers, within a networked infrastructure of surveillance,
means that even before Covid-19, it was almost impossible to make a
journey on foot or by car without our precise coordinates being tracked.
Automatic Numberplate Recognition (ANPR) technology logs vehicle
number plates; faces can be recognised and tracked in and through crowds;
and even without virus tracking apps, our phones, watches, and fitness de-
vices already use geolocation services to record our routes – both habitual
and extraordinary. Privacy activists warn that we have sleepwalked our way
into an age of mass surveillance, where such technology is actively desired by
those who have been encouraged to equate surveillance with security. We
are perfectly willing to bring assistive smart home devices such as the
Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod into our living rooms,
bedrooms, and even bathrooms, without question. Smart speakers, like
smartphones before them, are now so domesticated that it seems reasonable
to claim that we have made surveillance part of our sense of self-worth; such
devices are seen as adding value to our lives.
My surprise at the rapidity with which surveillance practices and techni-
ques are being socialised under the banner of convenience and security, both
post-Snowden and now during the Covid-19 crisis, has led me to investigate
earlier periods of such socialisation. By and through what mechanisms and
 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries 3

vectors did Romantic-period literature internalise – and yet also process and
resist – this incipient culture? Prime Minister Pitt’s informers and the spy
catchers of Whitehall could hardly have dreamed of electronic devices
capable of tracking and recording a population’s movements, innermost
desires, and political opinions in real time – still less imagined a population
that would eagerly queue up to purchase these devices or consent to
tracking. Equally, they would probably have been bemused by the idea of a
society where people regularly publish minute details of their daily lives,
aspirations, and political affiliations on platforms where anyone can view
them. Nevertheless, the Romantic era witnesses the beginning of, and early
attempts to theorise, the nexus of spy networks, informers, and other in-
vigilation mechanisms that are in operation today. Moreover, it is precisely
at that juncture when the gendered surveillant paradigms – a neglected as-
pect in Romantic studies – first emerge with clarity. Rather than focusing on
the origins or history of surveillance, then, Gender, Surveillance, and
Literature in the Romantic Period: 1780–1830 sets out to explore how the
emotional and psychological impacts of surveillance in society were ex-
perienced and processed in the Romantic period.

Surveillance and the Romantic era

In 1795, alarmed by the increase in numbers of government spies, in-
vestigators, and paid domestic observers, the radical reformer John Thelwall
complained that the home no longer represented private space. ‘Every key
hole is an informer’, he lamented:

Our own houses and our own tables furnish no longer a sanctuary and
an altar where it is safe to offer the free incense of friendly commu-
nication; and the very domestic who eats our bread stands open-
mouthed behind our chairs to catch and betray the conversation of our
unguarded moments. (Thelwall 1795, p. 6)

In similar vein, in public lectures, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1795, p. 49)

denounced the government’s expanding ‘system of spies and informers’ that
in 1797 would notoriously be directed at him and William Wordsworth
during the ‘Spy Nozy’ affair, when Whitehall sent spy-catcher James Walsh
to Devon to investigate accusations by informers that the pair were French
spies.3 Charlotte Smith’s novels also register the pressure of Pitt’s web of
informers. Marchmont (1796), for instance, denounces ‘the whole tribe of
spies and sheriffs’ officers’ operating in the country during Pitt’s time in
office (p. 80). As Harriet Guest (2005) points out in her pioneering chapter
‘Suspicious Minds: Spies and Surveillance in Charlotte Smith’s Novels of the
1790s’, Smith’s narratives are ‘riddled with suspicions (sometimes ground-
less) of spies and informers, covert observers and reporters on the actions of
4 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries

others’ and they reflect ‘a national concern with espionage’ that animated
Romantic society (p. 172). Several critics have drawn attention to the sub-
limation of spying in texts from the late 1700s and early 1800s. Nicholas
Roe, for instance, looks beneath the humour of Coleridge’s account of the
‘Spy Nozy’ affair to acknowledge the incident’s seriousness in Wordsworth
and Coleridge: The Radical Years (1988). Similarly, John Barrell’s The Spirit
of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s (2006) illuminates the various
ways in which Romantic writing bears and registers anxieties about spies
and spying at a time of widespread but generally invisible regimes of gov-
ernmental surveillance. So, too, Lily Gurton-Wachter’s Watchwords:
Romanticism and the Poetics of Attention (2016) examines how state-
sanctioned surveillance of the period increases the prevalence of ‘watching’
in the work of Romantic writers, as well as catalyses new Romantic modes
of attention. Romantic studies, then, recognises that the period and its lit-
erature was conditioned by widening surveillance – it was a time when, as
David Worrall explains in Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and
Surveillance, 1790–1820 (1992), ‘even the surveillers were surveilled’ (p. 7).
But this pioneering and still valuable work, however, does not consider
recent detailed and theorised research in surveillance studies – a discipline
that has received additional impetus in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
This book represents the first sustained application of current surveillance
theory to the literature and political culture of the Romantic era and directs
this body of knowledge towards the recovery and analysis of women’s ex-
perience of inspection. Surveillance is not a Romantic-period invention, of
course, though the Romantic imagination produced the Panopticon. As
Edward Higgs (2001) points out, governments have engaged in minute
record-keeping since at least 1500. But the expansion of bureaucracy – of
administrative surveillance – is a key feature of post-Enlightenment mod-
ernity and signals a societal move in the late eighteenth century towards the
supervision of populations through organised information gathering, as
theorised by Christopher Dandeker (1994). As an important mode of ad-
ministrative power, surveillance has been ‘integral to the development of
disciplinary power, modern subjectivities, and technologies of governance’
(Haggerty and Ericson 2006, p. 4). Indeed, an extensive body of work by
critics who build on Michel Foucault’s seminal Discipline and Punish (1991;
pub. 1975 in French, 1977 in English) has scrutinised the ways in which
surveillance compels obedience through a panoptic power that acts even
when not present to produce submissive, passive subjects, as part of a dis-
ciplinary machine. But criticism from people like Kevin Haggerty (2006)
importantly recognises that surveillance is also more complex than this – it is
woven into everyday life and is not a single omniscient and tyrannical force
but also functions to help people and society. It can be enjoyable and en-
tertaining, it can aid with performance evaluation, medical screening, error
reporting, and productivity. Surveillance offers a sense of safety and security
 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries 5

and is embedded into institutional practice and interpersonal relations

(Locke 2010; van der Meulen and Heynen 2016). As David Lyon’s wealth of
work in the area shows, it operates in contexts as varied as gaming, social
media, and medicine – from monitoring childhood development to cervical
examinations, forensics, zoos, and financial markets (Lyon 2018).
In this book, I examine the emergence of such surveillant regimes as they
affected everyday life in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
and explore how these paradigms of interaction, discipline, and control are
both internalised and interrogated by Romantic-era texts. In the work of
Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, for instance, we gain
insights into how incipient surveillant mechanisms coalesced with en-
tertainment as well as sought to discipline behaviour, especially that of
women and those with bodies deemed ‘abnormal’. By the same token,
writing by women such as Sophia Lee, Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, and
Joanna Baillie often meditates on gendered mechanisms of power and dis-
cipline that operated against women in this period. For example, while we
are used to post-colonial readings of Austen’s Mansfield Park (pub. 1814) –
in the context of important debates around colonialism, race, and Sir
Thomas’s control of his plantations in Antigua (Said 1993; Wiltshire 2003) –
I argue that the novel is equally as preoccupied with the political function of
the layout of the great house, which allows Sir Thomas to control his in-
transigent family.
Artists and writers before the Romantic period were attuned to the
emotional impacts as well as gendered experiences of surveillance culture, as
we will see in a moment, but the Romantic era sees mass, state-sanctioned
surveillance for the first time, which leads to more pernicious surveillance
across the board (Barrell 2006). This book covers the last decades of the
eighteenth century and the first part of the nineteenth century – 1780–1830. I
refer to this as the Romantic period but as with any periodisation, these
dates are not precise, because the start of the Romantic era is often put
closer to 1760 or 1770 with a view to seeing the early years as developmental
and transitional (D’Arcy Wood 2010; Fermanis and Regan 2014). Similar to
Christopher John Murray in his Encyclopedia to the Romantic Era,
1760–1850 (2004), my intention is to focus on a time frame that allows the
inclusion of key texts, changes, and challenges to previous thought, rather
than to enforce a strict chronology for the Romantic period.
Gender, Surveillance, and Literature in the Romantic Period extends the
work of seminal surveillance critics including Zygmunt Bauman and Lyon
(2013) to pre-digital-era surveillance, drawing on the methodology of Rachel
Dubrofsky and Shoshana Magnet (2015), who remind us of the advantages
of cross-historical study: ‘by drawing together disparate fields and placing
the burgeoning field of Surveillance Studies in historical perspective, we find
that surveillance is not a new phenomenon’ (p. 3). Indeed, Andrea Smith’s
(2015) articulation of the way in which state surveillance strategies
6 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries

throughout colonial history policed race, gender, and sex boundaries cru-
cially recognises that the focus of surveillance studies should not be limited
to examining the modern, organised state. Inflecting Smith’s critique, I would
add that part of developing our understanding of historical gendered surveil-
lance requires that we take account of historical texts. For instance, as we
observe in Romantic-era dramas such as Sophia Lee’s The Chapter of
Accidents (pub. 1780), voyeuristic intrusions into private space, although often
presented as humorous expressions of curiosity, also represent an authorised,
almost expected mode of scrutiny – modes against which woman have learned
to defend themselves. Peer-to-peer monitoring in the form of lateral surveil-
lance and ‘coveillance’ (typically between neighbours), as theorised by Mark
Andrejevic (2005) and Steve Mann et al. (2003), respectively, have become
normal forms of (covert) interaction in the community described in Charlotte
Smith’s What Is She? (pub. 1799), where the focus of the drama is the emigrant
protagonist’s availability to the scrutiny of her neighbours.
Surprisingly, while Victorian-era surveillance has been studied extensively
by critics such as David Vincent (2013) and Alistair Black (2001), except for
important publications by Worrall (1992), Barrell (2006), Jon Mee (2005),
and David Simpson (2013), relatively little work has been done in the
Romantic period. Further, most of the interest in privacy and spying has
been directed at male writers from the Romantic era, bar Guest’s vital
chapter on Smith. Under the umbrella of conceptual rubrics developed in
modern surveillance studies, I attend instead to women’s experiences, re-
sponding to petitions from Hille Koskela (2014), Yasmeen Abu-Laban
(2015), and Kirstie Ball et al. (2009) for a gendered approach to surveillance.
These pioneering theorists have been instrumental in alerting us to some of
the ways in which women have historically sought to resist the strictures of
social and moral norms – norms imposed by and through mechanisms of
inspection that preceded modern surveillance but that are analogous to it as
‘forms of interpersonal monitoring’ (Koskela 2014, p. 49). As Magnet (2016)
and Simone Browne (2015) point out, the specific implications of long-
standing surveillance practices vis-à-vis gendered bodies have often been
overlooked in surveillance discourse. My own approach builds on the in-
sights of these theorists to explore in precise terms how Romantic-period
surveillance was experienced differently by women. My work proceeds from
the understanding that, in Andrea Brighenti’s (2007) words, ‘it is no mystery
that the asymmetry between seeing and being seen is a deeply gendered one –
often, a sexualised one’ (p. 330). At a juncture today when women are
routinely pushed above the ‘fair threshold of visibility’ (Steeves and Bailey
2016, p. 76), and in increasingly complex ways, I believe it is vital that we
re-examine how women historically have dealt with over-exposure and un-
welcome transparency.
The gendered experiences of surveillance discussed in this book refer
predominantly to white women’s over-exposure in the Romantic period.
 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries 7

There are unfortunately extremely few texts by Black women published in

Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Paul Edwards and
David Dabydeen explain in their indispensable book Black Writers in
Britain 1760–1890 (1991): ‘Unlike [Olaudah] Equiano and [Ignatius] Sancho,
they [women] left no written record of their life’s experiences, women in
general at this time having less access than men to literacy, let alone a lit-
erary education’ (p. 165). While in the United States, several African
American women published during the nineteenth century, in the UK only
Mary Prince and Mary Seacole are published, with The History of Mary
Prince, A West Indian Slave (pub. 1831) and The Wonderful Adventures of
Mary Seacole in Many Lands (pub. 1857), respectively. Much more work is
needed to assess the nuances of Black women’s experiences of surveillance at
the time, which will no doubt diverge from those of the white women dis-
cussed in this volume.
Today’s critical discussions importantly recognise the ways in which in-
tersectional identity markers – including gender, class, and sexuality –
compound experiences of discrimination, and Gender, Surveillance, and
Literature in the Romantic Period explores how many of these overlap in a
variety of works. As such, the study expands the range of texts we usually
think of as amenable to a methodology aimed at discerning and dissecting
different modes of inspective force in the Romantic period. It covers writers
and texts from pioneering playwright Lee’s The Chapter of Accidents (1782)
and Joanna Baillie’s The Alienated Manor (pub. 1836), through the period’s
complex and self-complicating views on intersex individuals, to Thomas De
Quincey’s representations of London’s prostitutes, and Austen’s fascination
with architecturally enabled monitoring of women. It also focuses new at-
tention on the neglected work of authors like Charlotte Smith such as What
Is She?. This study, then, is a work of retrieval and rehabilitation, and sets
out to evaluate the ways in which important strands of women’s experience
are not only interesting in themselves for the additional layers they reveal
about the Romantic era but are also relevant to current debates around
asymmetries of power within gendered surveillance.

Peeping places: spectatorship and surveillance in the

eighteenth century
Often when you mention the concept of historic surveillance in literary circles,
people’s immediate thought is understandably of spectatorship. There is an
implicit connection and overlap between the two concepts, both of which are
obviously concerned with watching. They are, however, distinct categories, as
John Huxford suggests in ‘Surveillance, Witnessing and Spectatorship’ (2004)
and as Ronald Huebert and David McNeil argue in Early Modern
Spectatorship (2019). ‘Spectator’ and ‘spectatorship’ themselves are slippery
concepts, the ‘intellectual quicksand’ of which Dennis Kennedy explains
8 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries

brilliantly in The Spectator and the Spectacle (2009, p. 3). For my part, I have
adopted with James Harding’s (2018, p. 90) definition, which posits that while
spectatorship focuses on ‘observation and intelligence gathering’, surveillance
goes further and is also ‘a mode of directing’ concerned with ‘influence,
persuasion, control, containment, and coercion’. These disciplinary mechan-
isms are what mark the difference between passive spectatorship and active
watching (surveillance). Spectatorship is ‘(merely) looking on’ in the Oxford
English Dictionary’s view (Oxford University Press 2020a), a meaning it gains
when Joseph Addison and Richard Steele give readers ‘Mr Spectator’ in 1711,
while surveillance is more complex because it also encompasses ‘supervision
for the purpose of direction or control, superintendence’ (Oxford University
Press 2020b). However, what complicates matters is that even at its origins,
spectatorship flirted with disciplinary mechanisms, ‘anticipat[ing] precisely …
the voyeuristic gaze which disciplines subjects by observing them’ (Gordon
1995, p. 3). As a result, spectatorship informs key aspects of debates around
emerging surveillance culture in the Romantic period. For instance, period-
icals such as Addison and Steele’s The Spectator (pub. 1711–12) and Eliza
Haywood’s The Female Spectator (pub. 1744–46) subtly code many issues of
gendered surveillance that detain and animate Romantic writers like Thomas
De Quincey, Joanna Baillie, and Sophia Lee. Through their explorations of
spectatorship, Haywood’s and Addison and Steele’s texts anticipate the for-
ensic processing of gendered surveillance that we will see in, for instance, Lee’s
The Chapter of Accidents. Moreover, they raise related questions about the
lateral gaze that are placed at issue in Charlotte Smith’s What Is She?, as well
as highlight the disciplinary mechanisms that prostitutes in cities, bodies
deemed ‘abnormal’, and women in the home faced.
The brainchild of Addison and Steele in the early seventeenth century,
‘Mr Spectator’ was an anonymous, all-seeing watcher in the corner, who
condemned lapses in taste, and whose repeated claims to ubiquity throw
light on the overlap of spectatorship and surveillance. He is faceless and
nameless, an unknowable ‘looker on’ who watches everyone in London
society, whether they are landlords, merchants, bachelors, clergyman, law-
yers, or country squires (Addison and Steele 1907, p. 5). The Spectator
provides an early model for visible, continuous observation (Gordon 1995).
Mr Spectator convinced his readers that cities such as London were filled
with informers waiting to report misdeeds, the likes of which became a
threatening reality to Thelwall’s and Smith’s generation in the 1790s (Barrell
2006; Guest 2005). He also encourages self-discipline – subtly reminding the
watched of the watchers in the hope that they would regulate their beha-
viour, after all, they wouldn’t want their private, sordid affairs to end up in
the next edition of The Spectator. In short, he predicts many of the dis-
ciplinary, controlling mechanisms of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon (1791).
Perhaps more importantly for this book, women, too, engaged with
spectatorship and mechanisms of control prior to the Romantic period.
 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries 9

Although her periodical The Female Spectator was often dismissed as in-
ferior in comparison to Addison and Steele’s earlier work (Dowd 2010),
Haywood’s publication gives us a glimpse into women’s increasing experi-
ences of and responses to surveillance culture in the decades just before the
1780s. In one tale, for instance, Mrs Spectator’s ‘two spies’ (Zimene and
Ariana) occupy a ‘peeping-place’ and bear witness through a keyhole to
Sophronia’s tryst with a married man who turns out to be none other than
Zimene’s husband, Philamour (Haywood 1755b, p. 18). On the one hand,
Mrs Spectator herself is just that, a spectator, reporting enticing scenes to
readers – an outsider looking on without intervening. However, on the other
hand, The Female Spectator already hints at women’s experience of, and
participation in, lateral surveillance (Andrejevic 2005): a mode of surveil-
lance further internalised in the Romantic era and borne out in works such
as Charlotte Smith’s What Is She?. Mrs Spectator’s tale shows two women
engaging in peer-to-peer surveillance of friends and spouses.
Moreover, if we look past Haywood’s curious character names, this scene
may appear familiar to those who have encountered the text we will focus on
in the first chapter – Lee’s The Chapter of Accidents, which rehearses a si-
milar piece almost three decades after Haywood; Lee’s hero, Woodville,
sends servant Jacob to spy through a keyhole on the unmarried Cecilia to
catch her in the act of an illicit rendezvous. In both Lee’s play and
Haywood’s tale, watchers are positioned to ‘peep’ at private scenes in order
to prove female wrongdoing. We, the reader, are invited to scrutinise
Sophronia’s private conduct precisely because she is a ‘great pretender to
virtue’ (Haywood 1755b, p. 16), just as audiences are invited to inspect
Cecilia because she is only pretending to be chaste. We see this invitation to
scrutinise ‘transgressive’ women depicted, and critiqued, not only in
Byron’s, Shelley’s, and Coleridge’s delineations of ‘abnormal’ bodies, but
also more unexpectedly in Romantic maps of London. Just as Haywood
makes her subjects accessible, John Badcock’s The London Guide (1818)
encourages its readers to know the areas where prostitutes were most pre-
valent in order to understand ‘the dangers to be apprehended from the loose
women’ (p. 120), disclosing and advertising their locations with linear-
precision; it makes them available.
I would argue that in Female Spectator, then, we begin to see a culture
that paves the way for the ‘moralised regimes’ of inspection that widen
significantly in the Romantic period (Hier 2003, p. 406). Periodicals such as
Haywood’s served to remind readers they may always be being watched – to
make them conscious of a societal ‘gaze’. However, since the gaze itself has
become a somewhat contentious concept, it deserves further interrogation
before continuing. For Judith Butler (1990) and Laura Mulvey (1989), the
term ‘gaze’ is suggestive of the long-established dynamics pertaining to the
‘male gaze’ and the existence of a ‘female target’. The use of ‘gaze’ in sur-
veillance discourse is, however, much broader and Foucault’s work in
10 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries

Discipline and Punish (1991) on the gaze as part of the overall functioning of
power provides the foundation of several theorists’ understanding of the
gaze today. In Practices of Looking, for instance, Marita Sturken and Lisa
Cartwright (2009) recognise the gaze as an exchange that is ‘integral to
systems of power and ideas about knowledge’ (p. 96). Power becomes
manifest in the gaze. The gaze operates when people are being watched, just
as it does when they merely believe they are being watched: whether actual
or perceived, the gaze has self-regulating effects. So, too, Lyon (2006) and
Thomas Mathieson (1997) acknowledge the continued role of the panoptic
gaze in normalising and producing self-controlled subjects. Gender,
Surveillance, and Literature in the Romantic Period takes account of recent
discourse on surveillance as control, as well as Mulvey’s work on gender
dynamics, and takes ‘gaze’ to mean a way of regarding people that is
‘considered to embody certain aspects of the relationship between the ob-
server and the observed’, and which infers associated connections to systems
of power (Oxford University Press, 2017). The Female Spectator, then, the
first periodical written by women and for women, seems almost to invite its
female readers to be aware of the gaze – a gaze that continued to trouble
women in the Romantic period.

Disciplining bodies
What we see in The Female Spectator are gendered modes of discipline
waiting for transgressive women. Haywood, like Addison and Steele, creates
an environment where the gaze is inescapable and it seems that there are eyes
everywhere, waiting to catch and expose any wrongdoing. In her own words,
Mrs Spectator is the mouth of a network of women4 that constitutes an all-
seeing eye over the population, with inspection functioning continuously –
again, in a manner that apprehends Bentham’s later Panopticon. Haywood
ensures that people feel as though they are always subject to the gaze and
under inspection. She encourages her female readers to monitor and adjust
their behaviour out of their fear of retribution, to engage in self-surveillance
to avoid an embarrassing spectacle (Vaz and Bruno 2003). She makes visible
Sophronia’s indiscretions as a cautionary tale to help others liable to ‘fall’
into similar behaviour – a subtle reminder for women to avoid the fate of
their ‘fallen’ counterparts, whose sexual activity outside of marriage led
them to ruin (Nochlin 1978). As such, Mrs Spectator’s revelations anticipate
the print culture waiting for women such as Chapter 1’s Lady Worsley in the
later eighteenth century, which aimed to regulate women’s behaviour by
making visible private transgressions.
All of which is not to say that women blindly committed to spectatorship
and its incursions into discipline until the Romantic period. As Juliette
Merritt (2004) compellingly suggests, Haywood’s writing warns women of
the presence of the gaze as a means of helping them to evade it. The various
 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries 11

‘spectator’ publications existed at a time when women could not return the
gaze. They had to ‘suffer’ being ‘impudently attacked’ by ‘starers’, while
they could do nothing in return bar ‘cast yielding Glances’ back (Addison
and Steele 1907, p. 76). Women were targeted by an asymmetric viewing
paradigm that made them available in a distinct, and distinctly gendered, way
– a viewing paradigm that persists not only in works such as Badcock’s The
London Guide and De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (pub.
1821) but also into our own twenty-first-century society. As a result, perhaps
we could read Haywood’s work as a subtle warning to women of how to
cope with such oppressive scopic regimes. In Marilyn Williamson’s words,
Haywood’s work ‘aid[s] women in their struggle for survival within existing
social structures’ (Williamson 1990, p. 239). While Haywood does not de-
mand the destruction of the various spectatorial structures curtailing women’s
freedoms, she does caution women against their participation in them. She
also seems to offer a subtle heads-up to unsuspecting women, encouraging
them to self-regulate to avoid attracting the gaze in the first place.
What we begin to see in The Female Spectator is women’s awareness of a
politics that sought to regulate and constrain female agency – gendered
surveillant frameworks which are further developed in the Romantic period.
We could of course continue to look back, beyond Haywood’s, Addison and
Steele’s publications, to even earlier instances of such practices. This is be-
cause social monitoring has always formed part of our social interactions; as
John L. Locke (2010) points out, ‘The drive to monitor the behaviors of
others is built into the human psyche’ (p. 31). Small communities, for ex-
ample, have historically always monitored one another for anything that
appears out of the ordinary, as Mrs Derville’s does in What Is She?. But
what we see in the Romantic period is more organised and more perni-
cious, led, in part, by government rhetoric and legislation such as the Alien
Act. We do not just see the continuation of spectatorship in the latter part
of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century,
rather we see how the emotional and gendered pressures of surveillance
resonate anew, and more urgently still, in the Romantic era. In the act of
examining historic texts, we further recognise troubling aspects of the
disciplinary gaze. Women who transgressed societal norms are situated
within a frame that posits them as subversive elements to be contained and
controlled. This disciplining mechanism persists through to Lee’s play, into
Badcock’s descriptions of prostitutes and beyond into literature of the
Romantic era more broadly. We can see communities take responsibility for
normative conventions, scrutinising and monitoring each other’s behaviour,
with especially pernicious outcomes for women. In her presentation of the
female subject as ‘slut’, for instance, Lee preserves what Anne Burns (2015)
refers to as ‘gendered power relations’ as she maintains a negative stereotype
of women, which validates the need to discipline their behaviour and control
their identity.
12 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries

As we will see across the texts explored in this book, surveillance has a
narrative ready and waiting for women in each ontology – from adolescents
to those forming relationships, to married women, and to those of age but
outside of marriage, such as prostitutes. Individual chapters examine re-
presentations of women in literature in several circumstances, as well as
reflect on a range of women writers and their works, including letters;
newspaper adverts; plays; novels; poems; medical treatises; satirical culture;
cartoons; government reports; Old Bailey transcripts; and architectural
plans. Chapter 1 considers Sophia Lee’s comedy, The Chapter of Accidents
(pub. 1780), rarely cited in Romantic studies, to explore how gendered de-
rogative words and phrases like ‘slut’ and ‘artful jezebel’ were used to draw
women into various modes of surveillance (Lee 1782, III. i: 47; IV. i: 69).
This opening chapter addresses the complex ways in which sexually active
women were demonised, scrutinised, and rendered transgressive by late-
eighteenth-century communities. In the period’s criminal conversation trials,
we can further recognise the environment that sanctioned the public hu-
miliation of women, as well as the way in which The Chapter of Accidents
processed this societal issue. At the same time, although Lee knowingly
publicises her protagonists’ infidelity, she projects an awareness of the risks
of being designated ‘slut’ and allows her sexually confident characters to
sidestep their hymen loss. Aware of how late-eighteenth-century print cul-
ture controlled the narrative of women’s public image, she enables her
heroines to manipulate their public identity – to fable chastity.
The second chapter develops the concept of gendered surveillance in-
troduced in the previous chapter to examine how a medical surveillance
extended to the wider population by writers, rather than by doctors and
surgeons, configured and codified bodies that did not fit the inherited man/
woman binary as ‘abnormal’ and thus legitimate subjects to stare at and
examine. It recovers the epistemologies of societal fascination with intersex
bodies and considers work by Romantic-era writers far more familiar than
Lee, including Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge. As we see, surveillant para-
digms in Shelley’s 1824 poem The Witch of Atlas (1870) and Byron’s
Sardanapalus (1823) converge and code Coleridge’s work and allow us to
recognise how ‘hermaphrodite’ became a Romantic holding category for
women who did not fit with societal norms. Coleridge’s Geraldine in
‘Christabel’ (1816), in particular, activated Romantic anxieties related to the
fluid body; her representation in Coleridge’s poem, along with readers’ ex-
treme reactions to her, draws together the issues of erotics, surveillance,
voyeurism, sexual fascination, and control that are put at question when we
are invited to view anatomy deemed ‘abnormal’.
Chapter 3 focuses on Charlotte Smith’s little-discussed comedy What Is She?
for the way the play performs an acute and complex awareness of the white
displaced body’s experience of surveillance. Although Smith herself is not
obscure, her comedy arguably is. In much the same way as the behavioural
 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries 13

transgressions of Chapter 1’s sexually active women attracted a communal,

surveillant gaze, and the intersex individuals of Chapter 2 became both subject
and object of surveillance machinery because of perceived abnormality, so
Smith’s protagonist Mrs Derville suffers intrusive, asymmetric scrutiny because
of her refusal to explain ‘the mystery which hangs about’ her when she settles in a
remote part of Caernarfonshire, Wales (Smith 1799, I. i: 11). Smith wrote about
surveillance and women’s distinctive experience of it in ways we can recognise
as pioneering, meditating on how mobile individuals such as displaced bodies
summoned the attention of locals because they posed a threat to the social
order of previously stable and undisturbed communities. This chapter further
explores the resilience and resistance techniques employed in Lee’s The
Chapter of Accidents and examines how, like Lee, Smith articulates women’s
interest in fabling a new public persona. Part of my aim, indeed, is to identify
the ways in which we have moved from Smith’s own explorations of how
women emigrants were targeted by surveillance structures to work towards
strategies of resilience today.
This sense of women’s resistance and resilience to surveillance becomes
still more apparent in the remaining chapters, where contemporary sur-
veillance theory throws further light on attempts by women to defy regimes
of enforced transparency and resist gendered surveillant mechanisms.
Chapter 4 investigates archio-disciplinary surveillance in the insular
household sphere through Austen’s well-known Mansfield Park (1816) and
Baillie’s never performed (and now rarely read) play The Alienated Manor
(1836). It develops the concept of ‘disciplinary architecture’ and ‘scripted
spaces’ – where the layout and structure of buildings play a part in con-
trolling and determining movements and actions – through a discussion of
the Panopticon, a structure that was designed by Baillie’s friend Bentham.
Bearing the imaginative imprint of that friendship, Baillie’s comedy explores
the surveillance that awaited women in the home in the early nineteenth
century. The chapter also considers how the interrelation of power and
architecture in The Alienated Manor offer new ways to understand Mansfield
Park. While valuable comparative criticism has been directed at the work of
contemporaries Austen and Baillie, notably by Christine A. Colón (2009)
and Catherine Burroughs (2004), the hitherto undiscussed pairing of
Austen’s Mansfield Park and Baillie’s The Alienated Manor offers a more
productive frame of comparison since in both narratives male domains and
authority are challenged by women who are actively engaged in re-
configuring spaces. The chapter explores the distinct mindset that emerged
at the end of the eighteenth century, to which both Austen and Baillie be-
long, that began to reflect in a concerted manner on the ways in which
architecture assisted the social governance of women.
Chapter 5 turns to surveillance in the city, identifying and calibrating the
gendered geosurveillance – surveillance of geographical activities – of
women in urban space. I draw into dual focus, Harris’s List (pub. 1793) and
14 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries

John Badcock’s The London Guide (pub. 1818) – which provide the ad-
dresses of London prostitutes – to show how popular guides to the capital
brought together the Romantic era’s obsession with cartography and
walking tours and its fascination with transgressive women. To this end, this
chapter considers recent research by Jeremy Crampton (2010) into geo-
surveillance in terms of social regulation in late-eighteenth- and early-
nineteenth-century handbooks to London, such as Harris’s List and
‘stranger’s guides’ to the city. As we will see, fictional accounts of London’s
‘low life’, notably Pierce Egan’s Life in London (pub. 1822), were influenced
by these indexes, and correspondingly invited readers to keep track of the
city’s ‘risky’ female bodies. In a similar way, I will suggest, Thomas De
Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1823) is preoccupied with
mapping women – particularly the young prostitute Ann, who successfully
evades the narrator – but the text hints at strategies urban women deployed
aimed at resisting such mapping.
Collectively, the chapters in this book move to explore the historic in-
tersections of surveillance with more familiar Romantic issues – gender,
sexuality, urbanity, medicine – that remain under-theorised, as Magnet
(2016) compellingly points out. The hybrid methodology I have outlined
demonstrates how historical texts provide a valuable lens into the varied
epistemology of surveillance and it works to correct what Emily van der
Meulen and Robert Heynen (2016) identify as society’s more ‘present-centric
tendencies that see surveillance as dramatically new’ (p. 5). Moreover, sur-
veillance discourse affords an opportunity to sharpen our collective
awareness of historical gendered experiences of the asymmetric gaze. In
literature of the Romantic period, we can see how gendered surveillance was
overwhelmingly deployed against individuals who were perceived to disrupt
the ‘norm’. Each text reflects concerns and anxieties about various modes of
surveillance, from slut-shaming, lateral surveillance, and coveillance to
medical surveillance, archio-surveillance, and geosurveillance. With the help
of feminist and Foucauldian theoretical tools, we can recognise more fully
the means by which Romantic-period literature helps to expose gendered
surveillance, while also revealing strategies through which women found
ways to resist surveillant control.

Notes
1 ‘Surveillance’ features in Charles James’s dictionary in 1802 defined as ‘inspection;
superintendence; the act of watching. The substantive is new among the French,
and comes from Surveiller, to watch’ (James 1802).
2 Track and trace apps include: COVIDSafe (Australia), CovTracer (Cyprus), GH
COVID-19 Tracker (Ghana), Aarogya Setu (India), MyTrace (Malaysia),
Smittestopp (Norway), and NHS Covid-19 App (UK), among many others
(O’Neill et al. 2020).
3 Coleridge relates the incident with humour in Biographia Literaria in 1817.
 Surveillance culture in earlier centuries 15

4 Mrs Spectator lists her primary assistants as Mira – an ‘excellent wife’; a nameless
‘widow of quality’; and finally, Euphrosine, who is the ‘daughter of a wealthy
merchant’ (Haywood 1755a, p. 10).

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Chapter 1

The sexual body: slut-shaming

and surveillance in Sophia Lee’s
The Chapter of Accidents

Bridget is a ‘Slut!’, proclaims Governor Harcourt in Sophia Lee’s The Chapter

of Accidents (1782, V. i: 81). In one sense, such phraseology belongs to the
‘banter and raillery’ (Campbell 1776, p. 81) of a rhetoric that was simply the
knockabout currency of the late-eighteenth century (Dickie 2005). But just as
‘slut’ is a pejorative term today, in Lee’s age, it also formed part of a deep
epistemology that constructed women as inherently untrustworthy creatures,
governed by their sexual urges. This chapter explores the representation of
sexually active women in plays and visual culture of the late-eighteenth cen-
tury, focusing particularly on Lee’s play The Chapter of Accidents as an early
dramatisation of the phenomenon now known as ‘slut-shaming’. As we will
see, Lee’s play is acutely aware of the dangers faced by women who were
labelled ‘sluts’. Scoring an instant hit at the Haymarket Theatre in August
1780, Lee’s serio-comic work is largely neglected today. Those critics who
consider Lee at all, notably Janina Nordius (2002) and April Alliston (2000),
focus overwhelmingly on her novel, The Recess (1783), for its contribution to
the Gothic. In many ways, however, Lee’s play is more engagingly complex –
and self-complicating – in the relationship it develops with its own keyword
‘slut’. Modern critics, by dismissing the play, have missed its most urgent
provocation: namely, its engagement with the way in which words and ideas
like ‘slut’ are used to draw women into various modalities of surveillance.
On the one hand, The Chapter of Accidents makes ‘sluts’ of its characters to
expose them to the misogynistic scrutiny and surveillance of the play’s pa-
triarchs. On the other, Lee problematises the public pillorying and con-
demnation of women who were considered transgressive at the time – and yet
only redeems certain sexually active characters and not others. The play’s
engagement with ‘slut’ culture is further complicated by the dilemma of its
author herself, whose anxieties about being made a public figure, an operator
in the literary marketplace, is rehearsed in the Preface. The play, then, I argue,
offers fascinating insights into women’s attempts to develop resilience in the
face of rigid and pernicious forms of social discipline and surveillance.
We tend to think of slut-shaming as a recent phenomenon, a neologism
strongly associated with online culture. But as Lewis Mark Webb (2015) has
DOI: 10.4324/9781003014287-1
20 The sexual body

shown in related contexts, the practice can in fact be located to earlier eras.
Webb historicises slut-shaming to argue that it should be recognised as ‘a
form of cultural suppression of female sexuality’ practised since the Roman
Republic. My concern here is not only to examine slut-shaming in the
Romantic period but also to offer a new hybrid methodology for under-
standing the phenomenon.1 In what follows, I explore connections between
shame and shaming culture, and surveillance discourse. Moreover, re-
sponding to Hille Koskela’s (2014), Yasmeen Abu-Laban’s (2015), Rachel
E. Dubrofsky and Shoshana Magnet’s (2015) appeals for surveillance stu-
dies to attend to gender and feminist methodologies, I propose an approach
that is more closely calibrated to recognise and situate slut-shaming as a
gendered form of surveillance, one that is disproportionately applied to
women. I want to emphasise how various modalities of shame induce similar
processes to panopticism (subjection and normalisation) since shame, like
surveillance, engenders an internalisation of the gaze (Graham Davies 2015).
Collectively, the following sections in this chapter elaborate a hybrid
analysis that works to bring the thematic concerns of Sophia Lee’s The
Chapter of Accidents into contact with a new critical terminology that allows
us to attend to aspects of the play that have not been visible to feminist
readings up until now. The first section presents an overview of the cultural
resonances of ‘slut’ and posits an epistemology of the term in relation to the
play’s critical background. It contends that critics have often oversimplified
the play’s concerns, or else measured its success against the sophistication
(or otherwise) of its adaptation of its French source in Denis Diderot’s La
Père de Famille (pub. 1758). The chapter then responds to critic Peter Hynes
(2010), among others, and considers the caricature of The Chapter of
Accidents as ‘merely’ a comedy that laughs at women as inadequate given
the play’s sophisticated exploration of more serious issues. As Catherine
Burroughs (2001) – one of Lee’s more sensitive critics – suggests, the play
both ‘demonize[s] premarital defloration’ and ‘implicitly explores the cul-
ture’s fascination with the act of defloration’ (paras. 18, 24). Responding to
Burroughs’ provocations, I argue that the play has a complex relationship
with the concept of a ‘slut’. Lee’s heroines are situated within a framework
that posits them as individuals who need to be controlled and scrutinised –
surveilled – while at the same time problematises this categorisation.
The Chapter of Accidents is then a composition that resonates newly in
our contemporary culture for the way in which it situates sexually active
women as ‘sluts’. As such, the chapter consequently engages with the work
of Sharyn Graham Davies (2015), Leora Tanenbaum (2015), and Koskela
(2014) to examine slut-shaming as a perniciously gendered form of surveil-
lance that creates pressures for self-regulation and in doing so affirms sexual
‘norms’. It recognises that the role of the popular press in slut-shaming and
exposure is long-standing, and I analyse how the shaming of women in the
press was particularly prevalent around the years in which The Chapter of
Another random document with
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sœur, j’ai souvent entendu dire que si elle manquait d’expression,
elle avait un brillant doigté.
Hervé pensa, à part soi, que reprocher à Mlle de Trivières de
manquer de sentiment musical était une grande injustice, et il écouta
de nouveau.
Cette fois, le chant d’une belle voix de contralto se mariait aux
sons du piano.
Il reconnut la plainte désolée de Fortunio :

Si vous croyez que je vais dire

Qui j’ose aimer…

Au milieu du silence de la nuit, les paroles arrivaient, distinctes.

De sa voix richement timbrée, la jeune fille chanta les trois
couplets, d’une si fine sensibilité. Après qu’elle eut laissé tomber
lentement les dernières paroles :

Et je veux mourir pour ma mie

Sans la nommer…

Hervé de Kéravan poussa un profond soupir.

Jacques lui dit :
— Ma sœur a une belle voix. Diane est en veine, ce soir ; il y a
longtemps qu’elle n’avait chanté comme cela.
Hervé ne répondit pas.
Les yeux fixes, dans la nuit, il songeait.
Une voix qui parlait au-dessus d’eux les fit tressaillir :
— Tu es là, Jacques ? Tu vas t’enrhumer. On vient de porter le
thé, rentre donc !
— Encore un petit moment ! On est si bien dehors.
— Tu attendais ton sauvage, tu vois qu’il n’est pas venu !
 Un éclat de rire de Jacques répondit, en même temps qu’une
forme sombre se dessinait au bas du balcon, et qu’une voix grave
disait :
— Le sauvage est ici, mademoiselle, depuis assez longtemps. Il
tient à déclarer qu’il est assez civilisé pour apprécier le talent d’une
musicienne telle que vous et il vous est reconnaissant du plaisir que
vous lui avez donné.
Le sauvage ne s’exprimait pas trop mal. C’était le discours le plus
long qu’Hervé eût encore adressé à Mlle de Trivières. Il est vrai que
l’obscurité favorise les timides.
Confuse d’abord, Diane avait rougi dans l’ombre.
Puis, elle prit le parti de rire et dit plaisamment :
— Je suis enchantée de vous avoir fait plaisir… sans le savoir.
Monsieur le sauvage, vous seriez bien aimable de dire à mon
imprudent de frère qu’il va prendre un rhume sous ce balcon
humide, et vous viendrez avec lui prendre une tasse de thé qui vous
attend ici. Mlle Guiraud va se réveiller tout exprès pour vous en faire
les honneurs.
— Ne la dérange pas, s’écria Jacques, ce serait un meurtre !
Laisse-la dormir. Je sais un moyen d’éviter de la réveiller. Allons,
mon lieutenant, un peu de gymnastique !
Ce disant, le jeune garçon avait saisi le tronc noueux du lilas,
dont les branches montaient à hauteur du balcon. De la plus haute, il
s’agrippa au rebord ajouré des pierres formant saillie et fit un saut
jusqu’auprès de sa sœur.
Hervé de Kéravan l’imita et arriva au balcon presque en même
temps et se trouva devant Mlle de Trivières qu’il salua
respectueusement.
— Mademoiselle, dit-il de sa voix profonde, voyez combien vous
aviez raison, tout à l’heure, en me traitant de sauvage : voici la
première fois que j’entre chez vous et il faut que ce soit par la
fenêtre ! Le sauvage s’en excuse et l’homme civilisé dépose à vos
pieds ses respectueux hommages.
 Diane tendit la main avec un sourire.
— C’est à moi de m’excuser, monsieur. J’ai parlé de vous un
peu… cavalièrement ! Si j’avais pu me douter que vous étiez ici…
Il répondit, toujours sérieux :
— Vous n’avez rien dit d’autre que la vérité, mademoiselle, j’en ai
bien peur…
Ils rentrèrent dans le salon où Mlle Guiraud, n’entendant plus de
musique, venait de secouer sa somnolence. Jacques présenta son
grand ami.
Diane servit le thé.
Elle était animée, en train, très en beauté. Sa taille haute et
gracieuse mettait une note de clarté dans tous les endroits du salon
où l’officier suivait du regard le sillage de sa robe blanche.
C’était la première fois qu’il la voyait dans son cadre habituel, et
en vêtements d’intérieur ; il s’étonnait de la trouver très féminine de
gestes et d’allure et reconnaissait à peine l’amazone des bois à la
fière tournure qui lui avait paru si distante.
Celle-ci était plus accessible… Sa parole simple, presque
familière, le charmait. Elle le traitait non seulement en invité, mais en
ami déjà ancien… Le mot qu’elle venait de jeter du haut du balcon,
ce mot de sauvage qui se rapportait à leur première rencontre, avait
rompu la glace.
Hervé eut l’impression qu’à partir de cette soirée, leurs relations
étaient changées.
Désormais il la retrouverait dans son souvenir non plus en
amazone hardie, mais en femme délicieusement gracieuse et
belle… Il comprit que sa destinée était fixée, que l’amour impossible
entré dans son cœur n’en sortirait plus, mais de même que Fortunio
il se sentait de force à

Mourir pour sa mie

Sans la nommer !
 Mlle de Trivières, lui ayant arraché l’aveu qu’il était « un peu »
musicien, le força de se mettre au piano pour lui accompagner l’air
de Dalila : « Réponds à ma tendresse », réclamé par son frère.
Hervé avait parlé trop modestement de ses talents de musicien.
A la vérité, l’aînée de ses sœurs, artiste supérieure et professeur
consciencieux, s’était appliquée à lui communiquer une partie de son
talent.
Il était devenu par ses soins, secondés par de grandes aptitudes
naturelles, un excellent musicien, ce dont Mlle de Trivières s’aperçut
très vite.
Quand il eut fini, elle lui dit, avec cet air d’accorder une faveur
qu’avaient ses moindres paroles :
— Nous ferons encore de la musique avant votre départ. Je n’ai
jamais trouvé personne qui m’accompagnât comme vous… Il faudra
revenir.
Le jeune officier devait se souvenir longtemps de cette soirée et y
repenser plus tard pendant les mortelles heures d’attente dans les
tranchées.
Il devait revoir souvent les yeux admirables, la taille flexible, le
teint nacré, brillant sous les cheveux bruns comme un reflet de lune
dans une nuit obscure, et ce sourire indéfinissable des lèvres qui
disaient :
« Il faudra revenir. » Oui, souvent, souvent, il devait y penser !
Le lendemain et les jours qui suivirent, le temps permit aux
jeunes gens de reprendre leurs excursions, non seulement au bois,
mais dans les environs de Paris.
Diane était devenue matinale et ne se faisait jamais attendre.
Ils partaient de bonne heure, et, d’un galop, gagnaient les portes
des fortifications.
Ces excursions, qui les ramenaient souvent très tard, étaient un
grand plaisir pour l’étudiant. Jacques s’était pris d’une grande
affection pour le Breton, dont l’esprit sérieux savait se mettre à la
portée de son âge.
 Bien que toujours réservé avec Diane, le lieutenant avait
désormais avec elle de longues causeries animées. Il se laissait aller
au plaisir de la voir chaque jour, de jouir de sa présence pendant le
peu de temps qui lui restait à dépenser. Plus tard… c’était le grand
aléa, l’inconnu mystérieux qui, peut-être, l’éloignerait d’elle à jamais !
En attendant, il jouissait pleinement du présent.
La jeune fille, de son côté, paraissait de jour en jour goûter
davantage sa société ; c’était elle maintenant qui rappelait à Jacques
leurs rendez-vous.
Auprès d’Hervé, elle se donnait le plaisir rare d’être franche,
naturelle, délivrée enfin de la crainte qui l’avait poursuivie si
longtemps.
Le caractère d’Hervé de Kéravan le mettait au-dessus des
calculs intéressés ; il avait si peu des allures de prétendant ! Ainsi
que Diane l’avait dit à son frère, au début de leurs relations, « celui-
là ne ressemblait pas aux autres, et il ne saurait jamais lui faire la
cour… »
Quand cette pensée lui revenait à la mémoire, c’était comme un
hommage rendu à l’élévation d’esprit de l’officier et comme une
marque de confiance qu’elle lui accordait.
Au cours de leurs longues chevauchées, l’éducation morale de
Diane faisait aussi un rapide chemin. Auprès de ce soldat, à qui son
passé d’héroïsme donnait une singulière autorité, Mlle de Trivières
se sentait parfois très petite fille… Il lui arrivait de souhaiter une
approbation, une marque d’estime venant de ce héros et, sentant
confusément combien sa vie frivole de naguère devait déplaire à sa
tournure d’esprit, elle évitait d’en parler.
Un jour, en rentrant à l’hôtel, le lieutenant prévint ses amis qu’il
serait privé de les voir le lendemain. Il avait promis de visiter un de
ses camarades blessés, en traitement au Val-de-Grâce.
— Je regrette de ne pouvoir aller avec vous, dit Diane. J’aurais
aimé visiter un hôpital.
 — Il me sera très facile de vous faire pénétrer au Val-de-Grâce,
répondit de Kéravan, si vous le désirez. C’est là que j’ai été soigné
lors de ma première blessure, et j’ai gardé d’excellentes relations
avec un major en chef… En m’adressant à lui, j’obtiendrai aisément,
je crois, votre introduction.
— Cela nous sera très agréable, dit Jacques, mais nous ne
voudrions pas vous gêner…
— Nullement. Venez demain vers dix heures dans la cour du Val-
de-Grâce, je m’y trouverai et j’aurai obtenu d’avance les
autorisations nécessaires. Vous pourrez visiter certaines salles
pendant que je me rendrai auprès de mon malheureux camarade.
 CHAPITRE III

A l’heure convenue, Mlle de Trivières et son frère descendaient

d’auto devant la grille de l’hôpital.
Ils aperçurent le lieutenant qui causait avec un médecin militaire
dans un angle de la cour.
Il vint à leur rencontre et présenta le major, qui se mit à la
disposition des jeunes gens pour les conduire à travers le dédale
des couloirs vers les salles de blessés.
Pendant que Diane et Jacques de Trivières partaient,
accompagnés du major, Kéravan allait de suite rejoindre son
malade, le sous-lieutenant Jacquet, qui l’attendait.
Diane n’avait jamais pénétré dans une salle d’hôpital ; elle
éprouvait en ce moment même une vague répugnance, mais
intérieurement elle se reprocha cette mauvaise disposition et
dompta, par un effort de volonté, la légère hésitation qui l’arrêta sur
le seuil.
Qu’était-ce que la vue pénible des pansements tachés de sang ?
Qu’était-ce que l’odeur fade qui lui fit porter à son visage son petit
mouchoir parfumé, auprès des trésors d’héroïsme dépensés par ces
hommes, leurs longues souffrances, leurs sacrifices sans nombre ?
Diane pensa à ces choses d’une façon confuse en s’avançant aux
côtés du major, entre les rangées de lits.
Ce n’était pas l’heure habituelle des visites. Aussi l’entrée
d’étrangers provoqua-t-elle une petite sensation parmi les malades.
Appuyés sur leur coude, ceux qui pouvaient remuer suivaient des
yeux la jeune fille dont la radieuse beauté leur faisait l’effet d’une
vision de rêve.
 Diane avait apporté des boîtes de cigarettes. De place en place
le major lui désignait les blessés auxquels il était permis de fumer.
Elle présenta d’abord la boîte de loin, sans se courber, avec son
grand air de condescendance qui n’empêchait pas les regards
d’admiration de se porter sur elle…
Ce lui était une gêne…
Au fond de la première salle, un soldat barbu dont un énorme
pansement entourait l’épaule veuve de son bras, laissa échapper :
— Mazette ! la belle fille !
Au froncement de sourcils du major, il comprit qu’il avait dit une
sottise et se cacha la tête sous sa couverture.
Mais Diane, choquée d’abord, se pencha bientôt avec plus de
grâce au-dessus des lits de souffrance. L’exclamation brutale venait
de lui faire comprendre quelle joie était la vue de sa beauté aux yeux
de ces malheureux, repus de spectacles d’horreur.
Ainsi qu’elle le faisait naguère au temps de sa vie mondaine,
mais d’une autre manière, avec une nuance de pitié tendre, elle se
mit en frais de coquetterie pour eux.
Tout à fait humanisée, réconciliée avec leur souffrance, elle
abaissa sur les visages ravagés de fièvre son rayonnant sourire.
Elle semblait demander pardon aux pauvres êtres mutilés de se
montrer à eux telle qu’elle était : toute épanouie de grâce et de
santé.
Une douce expression atténua l’éclat de ses yeux.
Elle n’eut plus l’air de porter son offrande comme une aumône,
mais elle trouva un mot aimable pour chacun ; son pas souple
s’attardait devant les plus malades, et elle leur réservait ses plus
doux sourires.
Au moment d’entrer dans la salle où ils devaient retrouver de
Kéravan, le major s’arrêta, la main posée sur le bouton de la porte.
— Mademoiselle, dit-il en baissant la voix, je vous préviens que si
vous n’êtes pas habituée à la vue des plus affreuses blessures, ou si
vous ne pouvez compter absolument sur vos nerfs, il vaudrait mieux
vous arrêter ici… C’est dans cette salle que nous traitons les
blessures de la face…
Diane jeta un coup d’œil à son frère, qui paraissait décidé. Elle
répondit sans hésiter :
— Je préfère entrer.
Mais, malgré sa résolution de bravoure, le premier regard que
jeta la jeune fille sur le lit placé à sa droite lui révéla d’un coup toute
la souffrance humaine.
Elle ne put retenir une exclamation de pitié ou d’horreur à la vue
du visage, ou plutôt d’une moitié de visage tuméfié… Une énorme
balafre le coupait, laissant une orbite vide, que la cicatrice non
complètement fermée tirait sur la joue, de côté. La bouche n’avait
plus qu’une lèvre pendante, l’autre, fendue par le milieu, laissait à
découvert des dents cassées, un trou béant !
C’était affreux… pitoyable !
Diane frissonna, pendant que le major lui disait tout bas :
— Je vous avais prévenue, mademoiselle.
De loin, elle vit le lieutenant de Kéravan qui s’avançait à sa
rencontre ; elle se raidit et, se dominant par un violent effort, elle
s’approcha tout près du blessé puis, avec un sourire très doux, les
yeux sur l’atroce blessure, elle dit gracieusement, comme dans un
salon :
— Voulez-vous me faire le plaisir, monsieur, d’accepter une
cigarette ?
C’était un officier. Un sous-lieutenant tout jeune, blessé à sa
première rencontre.
Il saisit le mouvement de sublime pitié qui se penchait vers lui, et
Diane vit passer sur ce chaos de débris qui avait été beau visage
d’homme, une reconnaissance éperdue.
Quand elle releva la tête, ses yeux rencontrèrent ceux de
Kéravan fixés sur elle et son regard profond rempli d’une muette
admiration.
 Il vint à elle et la voyant très pâle :
— Voulez-vous, dit-il, que nous passions rapidement et que je
vous fasse sortir par l’autre porte ?
— Non, dit-elle avec calme, je n’ai pas fini ma distribution, il y
aurait des jaloux.
Elle continua d’aller de lit en lit, passant seulement sans s’arrêter
lorsqu’une tête détournée à dessein l’avertissait que le blessé avait
la pudeur de sa laideur.
En approchant de l’extrémité de la salle, Mlle de Trivières
reconnut le malade auprès de qui se tenait le lieutenant de Kéravan
quand ils étaient entrés.
Elle allait à lui.
Hervé lui dit, très vite :
— Non, mademoiselle, je crois qu’il préfère… que vous ne le
voyiez pas… Il est honteux, le pauvre garçon.
Diane répondit doucement en baissant les yeux :
— Je vais passer sans le regarder… voici la boîte, donnez-lui
tout ce qui reste et dites-lui… dites-lui qu’il a grand tort d’être
honteux… Plus leurs blessures sont hideuses, plus elles sont belles,
et plus ils ont le droit d’en être fiers…
Hervé sourit pour toute réponse et se dirigea vers le lit de son
camarade.
Lorsqu’il rejoignit la jeune fille un moment après, il lui dit d’un ton
d’émotion contenue :
— Il vous est très reconnaissant, mademoiselle ; il vous
remercie : il est très ému… très touché…
Et elle comprit, au regard qui accompagnait ces paroles, que le
lieutenant se les appropriait et que c’était lui qui venait de dire :
« Je suis très ému… très touché !… »
Elle rougit en détournant la tête et s’empressa de se joindre à
son frère qui remerciait le major de son aimable accueil.
 Ils remontèrent tous ensemble dans l’auto qui les ramena avenue
Malakoff.
Mais Jacques alimenta presque à lui seul la conversation ; ses
compagnons de route, et surtout Diane, paraissaient absorbés par
leurs réflexions.
— Eh bien, Diane, fit-il enfin, à quoi penses-tu ? Tu gardes pour
toi seule tes impressions. Tu sais que je t’ai trouvée rudement
« chic » tout à l’heure dans la dernière salle. Demande à M. de
Kéravan. J’ai vu que le major s’attendait à te voir piquer une crise de
nerfs comme l’auraient fait neuf femmes sur dix.
— Je crois que tu te trompes, répondit-elle. Si les femmes
n’apprennent pas pendant cette guerre à dompter leurs nerfs, quand
le feront-elles ?
Si Mme de Trivières avait entendu la réponse de sa fille, elle se
serait demandé avec stupeur comment Diane avait pu changer à ce
point…
Cette dernière ajouta comme pour mieux faire saisir sa pensée
sous la forme d’une comparaison :
— Tu te souviens lorsque mon amie Lucie est partie à Salonique
pour soigner les blessés ? J’ai dit — et nous étions tous du même
avis — j’ai dit que c’était une folie, un suicide !
— Oui, je me souviens.
— Eh bien ! aujourd’hui, je comprends son héroïsme et je
l’approuve ! Tant que l’on n’a pas tout donné, on n’a rien donné.
— Bon, s’écria Jacques, stupéfait. Tu ne vas pas nous faire le
tour de t’enrôler pour Salonique ! Mon cher lieutenant, vous avez
bien réussi en menant ma sœur voir des blessés !
Diane reprit en souriant :
— Je remercie M. de Kéravan qui m’a procuré ce matin l’une des
meilleures émotions que j’aie ressenties de ma vie… et des plus
douces.
Hervé salua en balbutiant quelques mots, et Diane reporta son
regard sur le paysage mouvant qui filait à la portière.
 Elle continuait de poursuivre sa pensée intérieure.
Le lieutenant, assis auprès de la jeune fille, ne voyait d’elle que
son profil perdu, nettement découpé sur la glace.
Il lui parut que le beau sphinx venait de soulever les voiles qui
dérobaient à la vue ses secrètes pensées et qu’il les refermait à
nouveau.
Au moment de la séparation, au seuil de la maison, Jacques pria
son ami de venir encore passer quelques soirées avec eux avant
son départ.
Mais Kéravan, alléguant son désir de passer auprès de son
aïeule les dernières soirées, s’excusa.
Du reste, il allait être obligé de retourner en Bretagne, où il irait
ramener son cheval, et il profiterait de cette circonstance pour jeter
sur son domaine le coup d’œil du propriétaire.
— Lieutenant, s’écria Jacques de Trivières, désolé, vous n’allez
pas partir comme cela, sans nous donner encore un jour ! Faisons
demain la grande promenade dont nous avions parlé, dans la vallée
de Chevreuse. Ma sœur et moi ne la connaissons pas et nous
aurons bien plus de plaisir à y aller avec vous.
Hervé hésitait.
Il attendait un mot de la jeune fille avant d’accepter.
— Je désire beaucoup, dit Diane, connaître cet endroit que vous
dites si joli. S’il fait beau demain, voulez-vous pour la dernière fois
nous servir de guide ?
Il s’inclina.
— Je serai trop heureux, mademoiselle, de vous satisfaire. Mais
vous ne pouvez entreprendre une excursion aussi longue en un seul
jour. Si vous voulez bien me confier vos chevaux avec votre jeune
domestique, je les conduirai à Versailles où ils passeront la nuit, et
vous les y trouverez demain. Nous pourrons prendre un train de
bonne heure pour Versailles, cela raccourcira de beaucoup la
distance.
 — C’est une excellente idée, approuva Jacques, demain soir,
nous dînerons aux Réservoirs et nous pourrons prendre encore le
chemin de fer pour rentrer… Qu’en pensez-vous ?
Firmin ramènera nos chevaux après-demain.
— Mais, objecta Diane en regardant l’officier, cela vous privera
d’une des soirées que vous vouliez réserver à madame votre
grand’mère.
— Le sacrifice sera compensé par le plaisir de la passer avec
vous.
La matinée du lendemain se leva dans un réseau de brumes
bleuâtres qui promettaient une éclatante journée de printemps.
En débarquant à la gare des Chantiers vers neuf heures, la
première personne que virent les jeunes de Trivières fut le
lieutenant, leur ami, qui les avait précédés.
Leur domestique tenait les chevaux en main à l’extérieur des
grilles.
Diane avait passé un long cache-poussière par-dessus son
costume de cheval, elle s’en débarrassa et sauta en selle à la porte
de la gare.
Sous les allées ombreuses et ensuite à travers bois, ils prirent la
route des Vaux de Cernay.
Tous trois, enchantés de la lumineuse journée de printemps, de
leur jeunesse, de leur sympathie réciproque, bavardaient et riaient à
qui mieux mieux.
Pour l’officier, c’étaient les dernières heures de répit avant la
séparation définitive…
Il ne se lassait pas d’entendre la jeune fille.
Heureuse comme une pensionnaire à qui on a mis la bride sur le
cou, celle-ci montrait une animation inusitée. Les cheveux au vent,
les yeux brillants, Hervé lui répondait avec le même entrain décidé à
jouir de l’heureux temps, si court, qu’il ne retrouverait sans doute
jamais.
 Vers onze heures, ils arrivaient en vue du petit restaurant de la
mère Hippolyte où M. de Kéravan avait promis qu’on trouverait un
bon déjeuner.
— Le service ne ressemblera guère à celui des Réservoirs, mais
la cuisine vous dédommagera.
Cette brave femme vous aura bientôt confectionné une gibelotte
de lapin exquise et une fricassée de poulet dont elle a la réputation.
Mlle de Trivières était décidée à trouver tout bon et agréable,
même la serviette de grosse toile qui remplaçait la nappe, les
assiettes de faïence blanches et bleues enluminées de naïfs
personnages, les couverts d’étain frottés et reluisants, et les deux
roses trempées dans un verre, au milieu de la table étroite ; tout,
jusqu’à la petite servante aux joues rubicondes et aux mains
maladroites qui tournait autour d’eux.
Ils déjeunèrent devant une fenêtre large ouverte sur le jardinet
qui rappelait la guinguette des environs de Paris avec sa tonnelle
ronde au fond et ses berceaux de verdure.
Tonnelle et berceaux étaient heureusement vides. Ils ne se
remplissaient que le dimanche.
Au delà du petit mur qui encerclait le jardin, la vue s’étendait sur
l’admirable vallée. Au premier plan le village de Vaux, dont les
maisons groupées pittoresquement entouraient le clocher.
Ce fut un gai déjeuner rempli d’incidents imprévus. Des poules
entrant sans façon pour venir picorer les miettes sur la robe de
Diane ; un papillon que Jacques réussit à attraper et piquer malgré
les protestations de sa sœur. Puis, la mère Hippolyte en personne
sortant de sa cuisine entre chaque service, s’essuyant les doigts à
son tablier bleu pour venir quêter quelques compliments sur sa
cuisine.
— Eh ben, mon officier ? et vous, madame, et vous le p’tit jeune
homme ? Qu’est-ce que vous en dites de mon lapin sauté ? hein ?
On irait loin pour manger le pareil !
Et mon p’tit vin blanc ? Y s’laisse boire !
 Allez ! faut pas vous gêner ! Il n’est point méchant. Y en a d’autre
à la cave…
Marie, tu remonteras deux bouteilles… du bon, tu sais, les
militaires, faut pas les attraper…
Allons, s’pèce d’engourdie ! R’mue-toi, et pus vite que ça !…
Excusez, messieurs, madame ; à c’t’ âge-là, ça n’a que l’amour en
tête ! Ah ! jeunesse !
Avec des clins d’œil rieur du côté des jeunes gens, la mère
Hippolyte repartait à petits pas, toute sa forte poitrine secouée de
rires et répétant :
— Ah ! c’te jeunesse ! Toutes les mêmes ! Allez, allez ! ça y
passera avant que ça me r’prenne !
Le repas terminé par un café exécrable, Jacques sortit afin de
faire seller les chevaux pendant que sa sœur s’apprêtait.
Debout devant la glace pendue au-dessus de la cheminée,
Diane, les bras levés, remettait son chapeau et son voile.
De loin, Hervé suivait ses mouvements. Il s’avisa que la jeune
fille avait laissé ses gants et sa cravache sur une chaise à l’entrée
de la salle ; il alla les prendre.
De l’endroit où elle était, Diane suivait ses mouvements dans la
glace tout en continuant à causer.
Elle le vit revenir vers elle, lentement, en retournant les gants
entre ses doigts avec délicatesse, puis… (Était-ce pour sentir l’odeur
dont ils étaient parfumés ?) il les porta très vite à sa bouche en lui
jetant un regard furtif et il s’approcha…
Diane avait saisi le geste étrange ; cependant elle ne se retourna
pas et dit d’une voix tranquille, continuant la conversation du
dessert :
— Vous ne voyez pas le moyen de renvoyer votre Farfadet en
Bretagne sans y aller vous-même ?
— Cela serait possible ; mais, de toutes façons, il est préférable
que j’y aille moi-même. J’ai plusieurs affaires à régler avec mes
fermiers.
 Il ajouta plus bas, avec un accent pénétré :
— Oui, cette promenade est la dernière que je fais avec vous…
Ayant pris ses gants, elle les boutonna lentement, toujours
tournée vers la glace.
Elle eut l’idée d’y jeter un coup d’œil.
Elle rencontra alors le regard de Kéravan fixé sur elle avec une
intense et douloureuse expression. Regret, douleur, tendresse… Il y
avait tout cela ! A cette minute, Diane se sentit pénétrée de la
conviction absolue qu’il l’aimait… comme elle avait longtemps
désespéré d’être aimée…
Puis, une réflexion traversa son esprit :
« Il m’aime, mais il n’osera jamais me le dire. »
Elle se retourna très calme, puis, prenant sa cravache :
— Venez, dit-elle. J’entends les chevaux ; ils doivent être prêts.
A plusieurs reprises, pendant le cours de l’après-midi, Jacques
remarqua que sa sœur avait des distractions ; elle ne parlait plus
avec sa gaieté légère du matin, ou bien elle arrêtait souvent ses
yeux sur leur compagnon et l’examinait avec attention.
Le lieutenant devait faire effort sur lui-même pour soutenir la
conversation au diapason du matin ; mais, à mesure que les heures
passaient, sa mélancolie naturelle reprenait le dessus.
Somme toute, cette belle partie, commencée avec un joyeux
entrain, s’acheva dans une impression de tristesse à laquelle le
prochain départ de l’officier pouvait servir de prétexte.
Ils rentrèrent à Paris par le dernier train. Avant de se séparer de
ses compagnons, l’officier promit d’aller faire ses adieux durant son
court passage à Paris entre ses deux voyages… Et ils se
séparèrent.
Le lendemain, dans le wagon qui l’emportait vers la Bretagne,
Hervé de Kéravan repassait de souvenir les semaines qui venaient
de s’écouler… ces jours rapides, si vite passés, qui, à ce qu’il lui
semblait, avaient bouleversé toute sa vie !
 Trois visions familières prenaient tour à tour possession de son
esprit au point qu’il ne pouvait s’en détacher.
C’était Diane dans les attitudes et les situations où quelque
aspect nouveau de la jeune fille l’avait frappé.
Diane, chez elle, pendant cette soirée de mai avec sa robe
blanche aux mouvements onduleux, sa taille gracieuse, et le sourire
qu’elle avait en disant : « Il faudra revenir » et encore, pendant la
même soirée, quand il avait ressenti les premiers symptômes de son
amour, la voix enchanteresse au timbre si pur qui, par une
coïncidence étrange, lui avait pour ainsi dire tracé sa ligne de
conduite… Comme Fortunio, il savait que son secret ne dépasserait
jamais ses lèvres, dût-il en mourir !
Il voyait encore Diane à l’hôpital, sa face pâle, ses grands yeux
rayonnants d’une douce pitié, et l’air dont elle lui avait dit : « Plus
leurs plaies sont hideuses, plus ils ont le droit d’en être fiers ! »
Si jamais il devait revenir, comme ce pauvre Jacquet, défiguré ou
mutilé, daignerait-elle jeter encore un regard sur lui ?
Il se répondait « oui », car il la croyait aussi noble et aussi bonne
qu’elle était belle.
Mais, hélas ! ce n’était point sa pitié qu’il eût convoitée…
C’était enfin Diane insouciante et gaie, la veille, dans la forêt, ou
encore à la petite table du déjeuner avec son visage animé, le rire
fusant de ses lèvres ouvertes et ce rayon de soleil filtrant à travers
les branches qui mettait des tons chauds sur ses cheveux bruns.
Ces trois silhouettes, d’abord distinctes, finirent par se confondre
et il s’endormit croyant voir devant lui le sourire énigmatique de
l’amazone telle qu’il l’avait rencontrée pour la première fois.
Hervé revint à Paris deux jours plus tard, rompu de fatigue, ayant
passé le temps à se promener dans ses terres dont il avait constaté
le triste abandon et à écouter les doléances des fermières qui, en
l’absence de leurs maris, déclaraient ne pouvoir payer leurs
fermages.
 Pourtant il recueillit une somme suffisante pour solder le compte
arriéré de ses loyers et, aussitôt de retour à Paris, il l’envoya au
gérant de la marquise de Trivières.
Hervé ne voulait plus revoir celle qui occupait ses pensées.
Il avait trop rêvé de son image durant sa courte absence ; il ne se
sentait plus assez sûr de lui-même, plus assez certain qu’en sa
présence rien ne trahît ses sentiments.
Ayant vu Mlle de Trivières traverser le jardin accompagnée de
son frère, et ayant entendu résonner sous la voûte le roulement de
l’auto, il se présenta à l’hôtel et laissa sa carte au bas de laquelle il
griffonna quelques mots de regrets et d’adieu…
Le soir, en rentrant, Mlle de Trivières reçut cette carte qu’elle
examina longuement.
Puis la jeune fille monta chez elle, très vite.
Elle ouvrit un tiroir de son petit bureau où elle prit une lettre
ouverte et, debout auprès de l’embrasure de la fenêtre, elle compara
longuement les deux écritures : celle de la lettre et celle de la carte
d’Hervé de Kéravan.
Elle murmura :
— C’est étrange ! Je n’aurais pas cru qu’il fût possible de trouver
deux écritures se ressemblant autant !
 CHAPITRE IV

Feu le marquis de Trivières avait fait élever, à deux ou trois

kilomètres de son château de Vauclair, un chalet au milieu des bois.
C’était un rendez-vous de chasse où il aimait quelquefois réunir ses
amis, les nemrods de la contrée. Sa fille ayant toujours montré une
prédilection pour cette demeure champêtre, d’ailleurs admirablement
située, une clause du testament du marquis l’en avait instituée
légataire.
A partir de cet été, où elle atteignait sa majorité, la jeune fille
devenait la maîtresse incontestée de la Biche-au-Bois. A peine
arrivée à Vauclair, elle s’ouvrit à sa mère de son désir d’installer
dans son petit domaine le siège de plusieurs œuvres qu’elle désirait
fonder. Il y aurait de la place, en haut, en abattant quelques cloisons,
pour une quinzaine de lits, et l’hôpital de Bonnétable, le gros bourg
le plus rapproché, serait heureux d’y envoyer des convalescents ;
plus tard, on ferait venir des petits orphelins. Enfin, la grande salle
du bas servirait d’ouvroir et les femmes du pays pourraient y venir
travailler. Le curé de Vauclair, venu saluer les châtelaines,
s’intéressa aux projets charitables de Diane. Par son entremise, on
vit bientôt arriver à la Biche-au-Bois des convalescents, des
ouvrières et des religieuses dont le dévouement fut fort apprécié. La
marquise de Trivières donnait à sa fille le concours de sa fortune et
de ses relations dans le pays.
Dans l’ouvroir de la Biche-au-Bois, six heures du soir. Les
ouvrières sont parties.
Mlle de Trivières termine des comptes devant un bureau ; Rose
Perrin fait des reprises dans des chemises de soldats.
Une jeune religieuse compte des serviettes qu’elle empile sur
une longue table.
 Mlle de Trivières s’informe sans tourner la tête.
— Rose, le facteur est-il passé ?
— Oui, mademoiselle. Il y en avait une pour Ramée, une pour
Graindor, une autre pour la sœur Philomène et une pour moi, que je
ne connais pas. Mais sûrement ce n’est pas celle que mademoiselle
veut dire…
— Laissez vos reprises, Rose, et lisez votre lettre. Six heures ont
sonné, c’est le temps du repos.
— Je n’ose pas, mademoiselle. Si c’était une mauvaise
nouvelle ?
— Allons ! vous êtes par trop enfant ! Lisez-la, et ne restez pas
dans le courant d’air.
— Oh ! mademoiselle, avec la santé que j’ai maintenant, courant
d’air ou pas courant d’air, c’est tout comme ! Mais, si mademoiselle
voulait bien la lire, ou bien vous, ma sœur des Anges, j’aurais plus
de courage pour écouter…
Une voix claire, celle de sœur des Anges.
— Si cela vous fait plaisir, mademoiselle Rose, je lirai.
La sœur décachète l’enveloppe avec de petits mouvements nets,
proprement, et lit :

« Mademoiselle Perrin,
« La présente est pour vous apprendre en douceur, comme il me
l’a bien recommandé, que votre filleul et ami Plisson Victor, de la
quatrième, vient d’être gravement blessé… »
— Oh ! mon Dieu ! Qu’est-ce que je disais ? Continuez, ma sœur.
— On lui a coupé la jambe hier, la gauche, ça s’est très bien
passé ; il avait reçu dedans un éclat d’obus dans le gras de la… »
Lisez, mademoiselle Rose, il y a un mot…
— « De la cuisse ! » Ah ! mon pauvre Victor ! Ensuite, ma sœur ?
Est-ce qu’il donne des détails ?