The Confession of a Child of the Century
by Alfred de Musset · English · Gutenberg #9869 · 456,902 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Confession of a Child of the Century
Author: Alfred de Musset
Translator: Kendall Warren
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9869]
Most recently updated: December 27, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9869
Credits: Produced by Dagny, and by David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONFESSION OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY ***
Produced by Dagny, and by David Widger
THE CONFESSION OF
A CHILD OF THE CENTURY
BY
ALFRED DE MUSSET
Translated by
Kendall Warren
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE life must be lived before the history of a life can be written, hence
it is not my life that I am writing.
Having been attacked in early youth by an abominable moral malady, I
relate what has happened to me during three years. If I were the only
victim of this disease, I would say nothing, but as there are many others
who suffer from the same evil, I write for them, although I am not sure
that they will pay any attention to it; in case my warning is unheeded, I
shall still have derived this benefit from my words in having cured
myself, and, like the fox caught in a trap, I shall have devoured my
captive foot.
CHAPTER II
DURING the wars of the Empire, while the husbands and brothers were in
Germany, the anxious mothers brought forth an ardent, pale, nervous
generation. Conceived between two battles, educated amidst the noises of
war, thousands of children looked about them with a somber eye while
testing their puny muscles. From time to time their blood-stained fathers
would appear, raise them on their gold-laced bosoms, then place them on
the ground and remount their horses.
The life of Europe was centered in one man; all were trying to fill their
lungs with the air which he had breathed. Every year France presented
that man with three hundred thousand of her youth; it was the tax paid to
Caesar, and, without that troop behind him, he could not follow his
fortune. It was the escort he needed that he might traverse the world,
and then perish in a little valley in a deserted island, under the
weeping willow.
Never had there been so many sleepless nights as in the time of that man;
never had there been seen, hanging over the ramparts of the cities, such
a nation of desolate mothers; never was there such a silence about those
who spoke of death. And yet there was never such joy, such life, such
fanfares of war, in all hearts. Never was there such pure sunlight as
that which dried all this blood. God made the sun for this man, they
said, and they called it the Sun of Austerlitz. But he made this sunlight
himself with his ever-thundering cannons which dispelled all clouds but
those which succeed the day of battle.
It was this air of the spotless sky, where shone so much glory, where
glistened so many swords, that the youth of the time breathed. They well
knew that they were destined to the hecatomb; but they regarded Murat as
invulnerable, and the emperor had been seen to cross a bridge where so
many bullets whistled that they wondered if he could die. And even if one
must die, what did it matter? Death itself was so beautiful, so noble, so
illustrious, in his battle-scarred purple! It borrowed the color of hope,
it reaped so many ripening harvests that it became young, and there was
no more old age. All the cradles of France, as all its tombs, were armed
with shield and buckler; there were no more old men, there were corpses
or demi-gods.
Nevertheless, the immortal emperor stood one day on a hill watching seven
nations engaged in mutual slaughter; as he did not know whether he would
be master of all the world or only half, Azrael passed along, touched him
with the tip of his wing, and pushed him into the Ocean. At the noise of
his fall, the dying powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthily
advancing with furtive tread, all the royal spiders made the partition of
Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the frock of Harlequin.
Just as the traveler, sure of his way, hastens night and day through rain
and sunlight, regardless of vigils or of dangers; but when he has reached
his home and seated himself before the fire, he is seized upon by a
feeling of extreme lassitude and can hardly drag himself to his bed: thus
France, the widow of Caesar, suddenly felt her wound. She fell through
sheer exhaustion, and lapsed into a sleep so profound that her old kings,
believing her dead, wrapped about her a white shroud. The old army, its
hair whitened in service, returned exhausted with fatigue, and the
hearths of deserted castles sadly flickered into life.
Then the men of the Empire, who had been through so much, who had lived
in such carnage, kissed their emaciated wives and spoke of their first
love; they looked into the fountains of their natal prairies and found
themselves so old, so mutilated, that they bethought themselves of their
sons, in order that they might close their eyes in peace. They asked
where they were; the children came from the schools, and seeing neither
sabers, nor cuirasses, neither infantry nor cavalry, they asked in turn
where were their fathers. They were told that the war was ended, that
Caesar was dead, and that the portraits of Wellington and of Blucher were
suspended in the antechambers of the consulates and the embassies, with
these two words beneath: _Salvatoribus mundi_.
Then there seated itself on a world in ruins an anxious youth. All the
children were drops of burning blood which had inundated the earth; they
were born in the bosom of war, for war. For fifteen years they had
dreamed of the snows of Moscow and of the sun of the pyramids. They had
not gone beyond their native towns; but they were told that through each
gate of these towns lay the road to a capital of Europe. They had in
their heads all the world; they beheld the earth, the sky, the streets
and the highways; all these were empty, and the bells of parish churches
resounded faintly in the distance.
Pale fantoms shrouded in black robes, slowly traversed the country;
others knocked at the doors of houses, and when admitted, drew from their
pockets large well-worn documents with which they drove out the tenants.
From every direction came men still trembling with the fear which had
seized them when they fled twenty years before. All began to urge their
claims, disputing loudly and crying for help; it was strange that a
single death should attract so many crows.
The king of France was on his throne, looking here and there to see if he
could perchance find a bee in the royal tapestry. Some held out their
hats, and he gave them money; others showed him a crucifix, and he kissed
it; others contented themselves with pronouncing in his ear great names
of powerful families, and he replied to these by inviting them into his
_grand' salle_, where the echoes were more sonorous; still others showed
him their old cloaks, when they had carefully effaced the bees, and to
these he gave new apparel.
The children saw all this, thinking that the spirit of Caesar would soon
land at Cannes and breathe upon this larva; but the silence was unbroken
and they saw floating in the sky only the paleness of the lily. When
these children spoke of glory, they were answered: "Become priests;" when
they spoke of hope, of love, of power, of life: "Become priests."
And yet there mounted the rostrum a man who held in his hand a contract
between the king and the people; he began by saying that glory was a
beautiful thing, and ambition and war as well; but there was something
still more beautiful, and it was called liberty.
The children raised their heads and remembered that their grandfathers
had spoken thus. They remembered having seen in certain obscure corners
of the paternal home mysterious marble busts with long hair and a Latin
inscription; they remembered seeing their grandsires shake their heads
and speak of a stream of blood more terrible than that of the emperor.
There was something in that word liberty that made their hearts beat with
the memory of a terrible past and the hope of a glorious future.
They trembled at the word; but returning to their homes they encountered
on the street three panniers which were being borne to Clamart; there
were, within, three young men who had pronounced that word liberty too
distinctly.
A strange smile hovered on their lips at that sad sight; but other
speakers, mounted on the rostrum, began to publicly estimate what
ambition had cost and how very dear was glory; they pointed out the
horror of war and called the hecatombs butcheries. And they spoke so
often and so long that all human illusions, like the trees in autumn,
fell leaf by leaf about them, and those who listened passed their hands
over their foreheads as though awakened from a feverish dream.
Some said: "The emperor has fallen because the people wished no more of
him;" others added: "The people wished the king; no, liberty; no, reason;
no, religion; no, the English constitution; no, absolutism;" and the last
one said: "No, none of these things, but repose."
Three elements entered into the life which offered itself to these
children: behind them a past forever destroyed, moving uneasily on its
ruins with all the fossils of centuries of absolutism; before them the
aurora of an immense horizon, the first gleams of the future; and between
these two worlds--something like the Ocean which separates the old world
from Young America, something vague and floating, a troubled sea filled
with wreckage, traversed from time to time by some distant sail or some
ship breathing out a heavy vapor; the present, in a word, which separates
the past from the future, which is neither the one nor the other, which
resemble both, and where one can not know whether, at each step, one is
treading on a seed or a piece of refuse.
It was in this chaos that choice must be made; this was the aspect
presented to children full of spirit and of audacity, sons of the Empire
and grandsons of the Revolution.
As for the past, they would none of it, they had no faith in it; the
future, they loved it, but how? As Pygmalion loved Galatea: it was for
them a lover in marble and they waited for the breath of life to animate
that breast, for the blood to color those veins.
There remained then, the present, the spirit of the time, angel of the
dawn who is neither night nor day; they found him seated on a lime sack
filled with bones, clad in the mantle of egoism, and shivering in
terrible cold. The anguish of death entered into the soul at the sight of
that specter, half mummy and half fetus; they approached it as the
traveler who is shown at Strasburg the daughter of an old count of
Sarvenden, embalmed in her bride's dress: that childish skeleton makes
one shudder, for her slender and livid hand wears the wedding-ring and
her head falls into dust in the midst of orange blossoms.
As upon the approach of a tempest there passes through the forests a
terrible sound which makes all the trees shudder, to which profound
silence succeeds, thus had Napoleon, in passing, shaken the world; kings
felt their crowns vacillate in the storm and, raising their hands to
steady them, they found only their hair, bristling with terror. The pope
had traveled three hundred leagues to bless him in the name of God and to
crown him with the diadem; but Napoleon had taken it from his hands. Thus
everything trembled in that dismal forest of old Europe; then silence
succeeded.
It is said that when you meet a mad dog if you keep quietly on your way
without turning, the dog will merely follow you a short distance growling
and showing his teeth; but if you allow yourself to be frightened into a
movement of terror, if you but make a sudden step, he will leap at your
throat and devour you; when the first bite has been taken there is no
escaping him.
In European history it has often happened that a sovereign has made that
movement of terror and his people have devoured him; but if one had done
it, all had not done it at the same time, that is to say, one king had
disappeared, but not all royal majesty. Before the sword of Napoleon
majesty made this movement, this gesture which loses everything, and not
only majesty, but religion, nobility, all power both human and divine.
Napoleon dead, human and divine power were re-established, but belief in
them no longer existed. A terrible danger lurks in the knowledge of what
is possible, for the mind always goes farther. It is one thing to say:
"That may be" and another thing to say: "That has been;" it is the first
bite of the dog.
The deposition of Napoleon was the last flicker of the lamp of despotism;
it destroyed and it parodied kings as Voltaire the Holy Scripture. And
after him was heard a great noise: it was the stone of St. Helena which
had just fallen on the ancient world. Immediately there appeared in the
heavens the cold star of reason, and its rays, like those of the goddess
of the night, shedding light without heat, enveloped the world in a livid
shroud.
There had been those who hated the nobles, who cried out against priests,
who conspired against kings; abuses and prejudices had been attacked; but
all that was not so great a novelty as to see a smiling people. If a
noble or a priest or a sovereign passed, the peasants who had made war
possible began to shake their heads and say: "Ah! when we saw this man at
such a time and place he wore a different face." And when the throne and
altar were mentioned, they replied: "They are made of four planks of
wood; we have nailed them together and torn them apart." And when some
one said: "People, you have recovered from the errors which led you
astray; you have recalled your kings and your priests," they replied: "We
have nothing to do with those prattlers." And when some one said:
"People, forget the past, work and obey," they arose from their seats and
a dull rumbling could be heard. It was the rusty and notched saber in the
corner of the cottage chimney. Then they hastened to add: "Then keep
quiet, at least; if no one harms you, do not seek to harm." Alas! they
were content with that.
But youth was not content. It is certain that there are in man two occult
powers engaged in a death struggle: the one, clear-sighted and cold, is
concerned with reality, calculation, weight, and judges the past; the
other is thirsty for the future and eager for the unknown. When passion
sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning him of his danger; but
when man listens to the voice of reason, when he stops at her request and
says: "What a fool I am; where am I going?" passion calls to him: "And
must I die?"
A feeling of extreme uneasiness began to ferment in all young hearts.
Condemned to inaction by the powers which governed the world, delivered
to vulgar pedants of every kind, to idleness and to ennui, the youth saw
the foaming billows which they had prepared to meet, subside. All these
gladiators, glistening with oil, felt in the bottom of their souls an
insupportable wretchedness. The richest became libertines; those of
moderate fortune followed some profession and resigned themselves to the
sword or to the robe. The poorest gave themselves up with cold enthusiasm
to great thoughts, plunged into the frightful sea of aimless effort. As
human weakness seeks association and as men are herds by nature, politics
became mingled with it. There were struggles with the _garde du corps_ on
the steps of the legislative assembly; at the theater, Talma wore a
peruke which made him resemble Caesar; every one flocked to the burial of
a liberal deputy.
But of the members of the two parties there was not one who, upon
returning home, did not bitterly realize the emptiness of his life and
the feebleness of his hands.
While life outside was so colorless and so mean, the interior life of
society assumed a somber aspect of silence; hypocrisy ruled in all
departments of conduct; English ideas of devotion, gaiety even, had
disappeared. Perhaps Providence was already preparing new ways, perhaps
the herald angel of future society was already sowing in the hearts of
women the seeds of human independence. But it is certain that a strange
thing suddenly happened: in all the salons of Paris the men passed to one
side and the women to the other; and thus, the one clad in white like a
bride and the other in black like an orphan began to take measurements
with the eye.
Let us not be deceived: that vestment of black which the men of our time
wear is a terrible symbol; before coming to this, the armor must have
fallen piece by piece and the embroidery flower by flower. Human reason
has overthrown all illusions; but it bears in itself sorrow, in order
that it may be consoled.
The customs of students and artists, those customs so free, so beautiful,
so full of youth, began to experience the universal change. Men in taking
leave of women whispered the word which wounds to the death: contempt.
They plunged into the dissipation of wine and courtesans. Students and
artists did the same; love was treated as glory and religion: it was an
old illusion. The grisette, that class so dreamy, so romantic, so tender,
and so sweet in love, abandoned herself to the counting-house and to the
shop. She was poor and no one loved her; she wanted dresses and hats and
she sold herself. O, misery! the young man who ought to love her, whom
she loved, who used to take her to the woods of Verrieres and
Romainville, to the dances on the lawn, to the suppers under the trees;
he who used to talk with her as she sat near the lamp in the rear of the
shop on the long winter evenings; he who shared her crust of bread
moistened with the sweat of her brow, and her love at once sublime and
poor; he, that same man, after having abandoned her, finds her after a
night of orgie, pale and leaden, forever lost, with hunger on her lips
and prostitution in her heart.
About this time two poets, whose genius was second only to that of
Napoleon, consecrated their lives to the work of collecting all the
elements of anguish and of grief scattered over the universe. Goethe, the
patriarch of a new literature, after having painted in "Werther" the
passion which leads to suicide, traced in his "Faust" the most somber
human character which has ever represented evil and unhappiness. His
writings began to pass from Germany into France. From his studio,
surrounded by pictures and statues, rich, happy and at ease, he watched
with a paternal smile, his gloomy creations marching in dismal procession
across the frontiers of France. Byron replied to him by a cry of grief
which made Greece tremble, and suspended "Manfred" over the abyss as if
nothingness had been the answer of the hideous enigma, with which he
enveloped him.
Pardon me! O, great poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace!
Pardon me; you are demi-gods and I am only a child who suffers. But while
writing all this I can not help cursing you. Why did you not sing of the
perfume of flowers, of the voices of nature, of hope and of love, of the
vine and the sun, of the azure heavens and of beauty. You must have
understood life, you must have suffered, and the world was crumbling to
pieces about you, you wept on its ruins and you despaired; and your
mistresses were false; your friends calumniated, your compatriots
misunderstood; and your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and you
were the very Colossi of grief. But tell me, you noble Goethe, was there
no more consoling voice in the religious murmur of your old German
forests? You, for whom beautiful poesy was the sister of science, could
you with their aid find in immortal nature no healing plant for the heart
of their favorite? You, who were a pantheist, and antique poet of Greece,
a lover of sacred forms, could you not put a little honey in the
beautiful vases you made; you, who had only to smile and allow the bees
to come to your lips? And thou, thou Byron, hadst thou not near Ravenna,
under thy orange trees of Italy, under thy beautiful Venetian sky, near
thy dear Adriatic, hadst thou not thy well beloved? O, God! I who speak
to you and who am only a feeble child, I have perhaps known sorrows that
you have never suffered, and yet I believe and I hope, and yet I bless
God.
When English and German ideas passed thus over our heads there ensued
disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion. For to
formulate general ideas is to change saltpeter into powder, and the
Homeric brain of the great Goethe had sucked up, as an alembic, all the
juice of the forbidden fruit. Those who did not read him did not believe
it, knew nothing of it. Poor creatures! The explosion carried them away
like grains of dust into the abyss of universal doubt.
It was a degeneration of all things of heaven and of earth that might be
termed disenchantment, or if you preferred, despair; as if humanity in
lethargy had been pronounced dead by those who held its place. Like a
soldier who was asked: "In what do you believe?" and who replied: "In
myself." Thus the youth of France, hearing that question, replied: "In
nothing."
Then they formed into two camps: on one side the exalted spirits,
sufferers, all the expansive souls who had need of the infinite, bowed
their heads and wept; they wrapt themselves in unhealthy dreams and there
could be seen nothing but broken reeds on an ocean of bitterness. On the
other side the men of the flesh remained standing, inflexible in the
midst of positive joys, and cared for nothing except to count the money
they had acquired. It was only a sob and a burst of laughter, the one
coming from the soul, the other from the body.
This is what the soul said:
"Alas! Alas! religion has departed; the clouds of heaven fall in rain; we
have no longer either hope or expectation, not even two little pieces of
black wood in the shape of a cross before which to clasp our hands. The
star of the future is loath to rise; it can not get above the horizon; it
is enveloped in clouds, and like the sun in winter its disk is the color
of blood, as in '93. There is no more love, no more glory. What heavy
darkness over all the earth! And we shall be dead when the day breaks."
This is what the body said:
"Man is here below to satisfy his senses, he has more or less of white or
yellow metal to which he owes more or less esteem. To eat, to drink and
to sleep, that is life. As for the bonds which exist between men,
friendship consists in loaning money; but one rarely has a friend whom he
loves enough for that. Kinship determines inheritance; love is an
exercise of the body; the only intellectual joy is vanity."
Like the Asiatic plague exhaled from the vapors of the Ganges, frightful
despair stalked over the earth. Already Chateaubriand, prince of poesy,
wrapping the horrible idol in his pilgrim's mantle, had placed it on a
marble altar in the midst of perfumes and holy incense. Already the
children were tightening their idle hands and drinking in their bitter
cup the poisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were drifting toward
the abyss, when the jackals suddenly emerged from the earth. A cadaverous
and infected literature which had no form but that of ugliness, began to
sprinkle with fetid blood all the monsters of nature.
Who will dare to recount what was passing in the colleges? Men doubted
everything: the young men denied everything. The poets sung of despair;
the youth came from the schools with serene brow, their faces glowing
with health and blasphemy in their mouths. Moreover, the French
character, being by nature gay and open, readily assimilated English and
German ideas; but hearts too light to struggle and to suffer withered
like crushed flowers. Thus the principle of death descended slowly and
without shock from the head to the bowels. Instead of having the
enthusiasm of evil we had only the negation of the good; instead of
despair, insensibility. Children of fifteen seated listlessly under
flowering shrubs, conversed for pastime on subjects which would have made
shudder with terror the motionless groves of Versailles. The Communion of
Christ, the host, those wafers that stand as the eternal symbol of divine
love, were used to seal letters; the children spit upon the bread of God.
Happy they who escaped those times! Happy they who passed over the abyss
while looking up to Heaven. There are such, doubtless, and they will pity
us.
It is unfortunately true that there is in blasphemy a certain discharge
of power which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his
watch, gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is
certain that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy.
It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial
powers; it was a poor wretched creature squirming under the foot that was
crushing him; it was a loud cry of pain. And who knows? In the eyes of
Him who sees all things, it was perhaps a prayer.
Thus these youth found employment for their idle powers in a fondness of
despair. To scoff at glory, at religion, at love, at all the world, is a
great consolation for those who do not know what to do; they mock at
themselves and in doing so prove the correctness of their view. And then
it is pleasant to believe oneself unhappy when one is only idle and
tired. Debauchery, moreover, the first conclusion of the principle of
death, is a terrible millstone for grinding the energies.
The rich said: "There is nothing real but riches, all else is a dream;
let us enjoy and then let us die." Those of moderate fortune said: "There
is nothing real but oblivion, all else is a dream; let us forget and let
us die." And the poor said: "There is nothing real but unhappiness, all
else is a dream; let us blaspheme and die."
This is too black? It is exaggerated? What do you think of it? Am I a
misanthrope? Allow me to make a reflection.
In reading the history of the fall of the Roman Empire, it is impossible
to overlook the evil that the Chustions, so admirable in the desert, did
the state when they were in power. "When I think," said Montesquieu, "of
the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity, I
am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks, who
put out the eyes of their slaves in order that nothing might distract
their attention from their work. . . . No affair of state, no peace, no
truce, no negotiation, no marriage could be transacted by any one but the
clergy. The evils of this system were beyond belief."
Montesquieu might have added: Christianity destroyed the emperors but it
saved the people. It opened to the barbarians the palaces of
Constantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministering
angels of Christ. It had much to do with the great ones of earth. And
what is more interesting than the death-rattle of an empire corrupt to
the very marrow of its bones, than the somber galvanism under the
influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of
Heliogabalus and Caracalla! What a beautiful thing that mummy of Rome,
embalmed in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius!
It had to do, messieurs the politicians, with finding the poor and giving
them life and peace; it had to do with allowing the worms and tumors to
destroy the monuments of shame, while drawing from the ribs of this mummy
a virgin as beautiful as the mother of the Redeemer, hope, the friend of
the oppressed.
That is what Christianity did; and now, after many years, what have they
who destroyed it done? They saw that the poor allowed themselves to be
oppressed by the rich, the feeble by the strong, because of that saying:
"The rich and the strong will oppress me on earth; but when they wish to
enter paradise, I shall be at the door and I will accuse them before the
tribunal of God." And so, alas! they were patient.
The antagonists of Christ therefore said to the poor: "You wait patiently
for the day of justice: there is no justice; you wait for the life
eternal to achieve your vengeance: there is no life eternal; you gather
up your tears and those of your family, the cries of children and the
sobs of women, to place them at the feet of God at the hour of death:
there is no God."
Then it is certain that the poor man dried his tears, that he told his
wife to check her sobs, his children to come with him, and that he stood
upon the earth with the power of a bull. He said to the rich: "Thou who
oppressest me, thou art only man;" and to the priest: "Thou who hast
consoled me, thou hast lied." That was just what the antagonists of
Christ desired. Perhaps they thought this was the way to achieve man's
happiness, sending him out to the conquest of liberty.
But, if the poor man, once satisfied that the priests deceive him, that
the rich rob him, that all men have rights, that all good is of this
world, and that misery is impiety; the poor man, believing in himself and
in his two arms, says to himself some fine day: "War on the rich! for me,
happiness here in this life, since there is no other! for me, the earth,
since heaven is empty! for me and for all, since all are equal." Oh!
reasoners sublime who have led him to this, what will you say to him if
he is conquered?
Doubtless you are philanthropists, doubtless you are right about the
future, and the day will come when you will be blessed; but thus far, we
have not blessed you. When the oppressor said: "This world for me!" the
oppressed replied: "Heaven for me!" Now what can he say?
All the evils of the present come from two causes: the people who have
passed through 1793 and 1814, nurse wounds in their hearts. That which
was is no more; what will be, is not yet. Do not seek elsewhere the cause
of our malady.
Here is a man whose house falls in ruins; he has torn it down in order to
build another. The rubbish encumbers the spot, and he waits for fresh
materials for his new home. At the moment he has prepared to cut the
stone and mix the cement, while standing, pick in hand, with sleeves
rolled up, he is informed that there is no more stone, and is advised to
whiten the old material and make the best possible use of that. What can
you expect this man to do who is unwilling to build his nest out of
ruins? The quarry is deep, the tools too weak to hew out the stones.
"Wait!" they say to him, "we will draw out the stones one by one; hope,
work, advance, withdraw." What do they not tell him? And in the meantime
he has lost his old house, and has not yet built the new; he does not
know where to protect himself from the rain, or how to prepare his
evening meal, nor where to work, nor where to sleep, nor where to die;
and his children are newly born.
I am much deceived if we do not resemble that man. O, people of the
future! when on a warm summer day you bend over your plows in the green
fields of your native land; when you see, in the pure sunlight under a
spotless sky, the earth, your fruitful mother, smiling in her matutinal
robe on the workman, her well-beloved child; when drying on your brow the
holy baptism of sweat, you cast your eye over the vast horizon, when
there will not be one blade higher than another in the human harvest, but
only violets and marguerites in the midst of ripening sheafs. Oh! free
men! when you thank God that you were born for that harvest, think of
those who are no more, tell yourself that we have dearly purchased the
repose which you enjoy; pity us more than all your fathers, for we have
suffered the evil which entitled them to pity and we have lost that which
consoled them.
CHAPTER III
I MUST explain how I was first taken with the malady of the age.
I attended a great supper, after a masquerade. About me my friends richly
costumed, on all sides young men and women, all sparkling with beauty and
joy; on the right and on the left exquisite dishes, flagons, splendor,
flowers; above my head a fine orchestra, and before me my mistress, a
superb creature, whom I idolized.
I was then nineteen; I had experienced no great misfortune, I had
suffered from no disease; my character was at once haughty and frank, my
heart full of the hopes of youth. The fumes of wine fermented in my head;
it was one of those moments of intoxication when all that one sees and
hears, speaks to one of the adored. All nature appeared then a beautiful
stone with a thousand facets on which was engraven the mysterious name.
One would willingly embrace all who smile, and one feels that he is
brother of all who live. My mistress had granted me a rendezvous for the
night and I was gently raising my glass to my lips while my eyes were
fixed on her.
As I turned to take a napkin, my fork fell. I stooped to pick it up, and
not finding it at first I raised the table-cloth to see where it had
rolled. I then saw under the table my mistress's foot; it rested on that
of a young man seated beside her; from time to time they exchanged a
gentle pressure.
Perfectly calm, I asked for another fork and continued my supper. My
mistress and her neighbor were also, on their side, very quiet, talking
but little and never looking at each other. The young man had his elbows
on the table and was chatting with another woman who was showing him her
necklace and bracelets. My mistress sat motionless, her eyes fixed and
filled with languor. I watched both of them during the entire supper and
I saw nothing either in their gestures or in their faces that could
betray them. Finally, at dessert, I dropped my napkin, and stooping down
saw that they were still in the same position.
I had promised to take my mistress to her home that night. She was a
widow and therefore quite at liberty, living alone with an old relative
who served as chaperon. As I was crossing the hall she called to me:
"Come, Octave!" she said; "here I am, let us go."
I laughed and passed out without replying. After walking a short distance
I sat down on a stone projecting from a wall. I do not know what my
thoughts were; I sat as though stupefied by the infidelity of that woman
of whom I had never been jealous, whom I had never had cause to suspect.
What I had seen left no room for doubt, I was stunned as though by a blow
from a club. The only thing I remember doing as I sat there, was looking
mechanically up at the sky, and, seeing a star spin across the heavens, I
saluted that fugitive gleam in which poets see a blasted world and
gravely took off my hat to it.
I returned to my home very quietly, experiencing nothing, as though
deprived of sensation and reflection. I undressed and retired; hardly had
my head touched the pillow when the spirit of vengeance seized me with
such force that I suddenly sat bolt upright against the wall as though
all my muscles were made of wood. I jumped from my bed with a cry of
pain; I could walk only on my heels, the nerves in my toes were so
irritated. I passed an hour in this way, completely foolish and stiff as
a skeleton. It was the first burst of passion I had ever experienced.
The man I had surprised with my mistress was one of my most intimate
friends. I went to his house the next day in company with a young lawyer
named Desgenais; we took pistols, another witness, and repaired to the
woods of Vincennes. On the way I avoided speaking to my adversary or even
approaching him; thus I resisted the temptation to insult or strike him,
a useless form of violence at a time when the law recognized the code.
But I could not remove my eyes from him. He was the companion of my
childhood and we had lived in the closest intimacy for many years. He
understood perfectly my love for my mistress and had several times
intimated that bonds of this kind were sacred to a friend, and that he
would be incapable of an attempt to supplant me even if he loved the same
woman. In short, I had perfect confidence in him and I had perhaps never
pressed the hand of any human creature more cordially than his.
My glance was eager and curious as I scrutinized this man whom I had
heard speak of love as an antique hero and whom I had caught caressing my
mistress. It was the first time in my life I had seen a monster; I
measured him with a haggard eye to see how he was made. He whom I had
known since he was ten years old, with whom I had lived in the most
perfect friendship, it seemed to me I had never seen him. Allow me a
comparison.
There is a Spanish play, familiar to all the world, in which a stone
statue comes to sup with a debauchee, sent thither by divine justice. The
debauchee puts a good face on the matter and forces himself to affect
indifference; but the statue asks for his hand, and when he has extended
it he feels himself seized by a mortal chill and falls in convulsions.
Whenever I have loved and confided in any one, either friend or mistress,
and suddenly discover that I have been deceived, I can only describe the
effect produced on me by comparing it to the clasp of that marble hand.
It is the actual impression of marble, it is as though a man of stone had
kissed me. Alas! this horrible apparition has knocked more than once at
my door; more than once we have supped together.
When the arrangements were all made we placed ourselves in line, facing
each other and slowly advancing. My adversary fired the first shot,
wounding me in the right arm. I immediately seized my pistol in the other
hand; but my strength failed, I could not raise it; I fell on one knee.
Then I saw my enemy running up to me with an expression of great anxiety
on his face, and very pale. My seconds hastened to my side, seeing that I
was wounded; but he pushed them aside and seized my wounded arm. His
teeth were set and I could see that he was suffering intense anguish. His
agony was the most frightful that man can experience.
"Go!" he cried, "go dress your wound at the house of--"
He choked, and so did I.
I was placed in a cab where I found a physician. My wound was not
dangerous, the bone being untouched, but I was in such a state of
excitation that it was impossible to properly dress my wound. As they
were about to drive from the field I saw a trembling hand at the door of
my cab; it was my adversary. I shook my head in reply; I was in such a
rage that I could not pardon him, although I felt that his repentance was
sincere.
By the time I reached home I had lost much blood and felt relieved, for
feebleness saved me from the force of anger which was doing me more harm
than my wound. I willingly retired to my bed and called for a glass of
water, which I quickly swallowed with relish.
But I was soon attacked by fever. It was then I began to shed tears. I
could understand that my mistress had ceased to love me, but not that she
could deceive me. I could not comprehend why a woman who was forced to it
by neither duty nor interest could lie to one man when she loved another.
Twenty times a day I asked my friend Desgenais how that could be
possible.
"If I were her husband," I said, "or if I supported her I could easily
understand how she might be tempted to deceive me; but if she no longer
loves me, why deceive me?"
I did not understand how any one could lie for love; I was but a child
then, but I confess that I do not understand it yet. Every time I have
loved a woman I have told her of it, and when I ceased to love her I
confessed it to her with the same sincerity, having always thought that
in matters of this kind the will was not concerned and that there was no
crime but falsehood.
To all this Desgenais replied:
"She is unworthy; promise me that you will never see her again."
I solemnly promised. He advised me, moreover, not to write to her, not
even to reproach her, and if she wrote to me not to reply. I promised all
that with some surprise that he should consider it necessary to exact
such a promise.
Nevertheless the first thing I did when I was able to leave my room was
to visit my mistress. I found her alone, seated in the corner of the room
with an expression of sorrow on her face and an appearance of general
disorder in her surroundings. I overwhelmed her with violent reproaches;
I was intoxicated with despair. In a paroxysm of grief I fell on the bed
and gave free course to my tears.
"Ah! faithless one! wretch!" I cried between my sobs, "you knew that it
would kill me. Did the prospect please you? What have I done to you?"
She threw her arms around my neck, saying that she had been seduced, that
my rival had intoxicated her at that fatal supper, but that she had never
been his; that she had abandoned herself in a moment of forgetfulness;
that she had committed a fault but not a crime; but that if I would not
pardon her, she, too, would die. All that sincere repentance has of
tears, all that sorrow has of eloquence, she exhausted to console me;
pale and distressed, her dress deranged and her hair falling over her
shoulders she kneeled in the middle of her chamber; never have I seen
anything so beautiful and I shuddered with horror as my senses revolted
at the sight.
I went away crushed, scarcely able to direct my tottering steps. I wished
never to see her again; but in a quarter of an hour I returned. I do not
know what desperate resolve I had formed; I experienced a dull desire to
possess her once more, to drain the cup of tears and bitterness to the
dregs and then to die with her. In short, I abhorred her and I idolized
her; I felt that her love was my ruin, but that to live without her was
impossible. I mounted the stairs like a flash; I spoke to none of the
servants, but, familiar with the house, opened the door of her chamber.
I found her seated calmly before her toilet-table, covered with jewels;
she held in her hand a piece of crepe which she passed gently over her
cheeks. I thought I was dreaming; it did not seem possible that this was
the woman I had left, just fifteen minutes before, overwhelmed with
grief, abased to the floor; I was as motionless as a statue. She, hearing
the door open, turned her head and smiled:
"Is it you?" she said.
She was going to the ball and was expecting my rival. As she recognized
me, she compressed her lips and frowned.
I started to leave the room. I looked at her bare neck, lithe and
perfumed, on which rested her knotted hair confined by a jeweled comb;
that neck, the seat of vital force, was blacker than Hades; two shining
tresses had fallen there and some light silvern hairs balanced above it.
Her shoulders and neck, whiter than milk, displayed a heavy growth of
down. There was in that knotted head of hair something indescribably
immodest which seemed to mock me when I thought of the disorder in which
I had seen her a moment before. I suddenly stepped up to her and struck
that neck with the back of my hand. My mistress gave vent to a cry of
terror, and fell on her hands, while I hastened from the room.
When I reached my room I was again attacked by fever and was obliged to
take to my bed. My wound had reopened and I suffered great pain.
Desgenais came to see me and I told him what had happened. He listened in
silence, then paced up and down the room as though undecided as to his
course. Finally he stopped before my bed and burst out laughing.
"Is she your first mistress?" he asked.
"No!" I replied, "she is my last."
Toward midnight, while sleeping restlessly, I seemed to hear in my dreams
a profound sigh. I opened my eyes and saw my mistress standing near my
bed with arms crossed, looking like a specter. I could not restrain a cry
of fright, believing it to be an apparition conjured up by my diseased
brain. I leaped from my bed and fled to the farther end of the room; but
she followed me.
"It is I!" said she; putting her arms around me she drew me to her.
"What do you want of me?" I cried. "Leave me! I fear I shall kill you!"
"Very well, kill me!" she said. "I have deceived you, I have lied to you,
I am an infamous wretch and I am miserable; but I love you, and I can not
live without you."
I looked at her; how beautiful she was! Her body was quivering; her eyes
languid with love and moist with voluptuousness; her bosom was bare, her
lips burning. I raised her in my arms.
"Very well," I said, "but before God who sees us, by the soul of my
father, I swear that I will kill you and that I will die with you."
I took a knife from the table and placed it under the pillow.
"Come, Octave," she said, smiling and kissing me, "do not be foolish.
Come, my dear, all these horrors have unsettled your mind; you are
feverish. Give me that knife."
I saw that she wished to take it.
"Listen to me," I then said; "I do not know what comedy you are playing,
but as for me I am in earnest. I have loved you as only a man can love
and to my sorrow I love you still. You have just told me that you love
me, and I hope it is true; but, by all that is sacred, if I am your lover
to-night, no one shall take my place to-morrow. Before God, before God,"
I repeated, "I would not take you back as my mistress, for I hate you as
much as I love you. Before God, if you consent to stay here to-night I
will kill you in the morning."
When I had spoken these words I fell into a delirium. She threw her cloak
over her shoulders and fled from the room.
When I told Desgenais about it he said:
"Why did you do that? You must be very much disgusted, for she is a
beautiful woman."
"Are you joking?" I asked. "Do you think such a woman could be my
mistress? Do you think I would ever consent to share her with another? Do
you know that she confesses that another possesses her and do you expect
me, loving her as I do, to share my love? If that is the way you love, I
pity you."
Desgenais replied that he was not so particular.
"My dear Octave," he added, "you are very young. You want many things,
beautiful things, which do not exist. You believe in a singular sort of
love; perhaps you are capable of it; I believe you are, but I do not envy
you. You will have other mistresses, my friend, and you will live to
regret what happened last night. If that woman came to you it is certain
that she loved you; perhaps she does not love you at this moment, indeed
she may be in the arms of another; but she loved you last night in that
room; and what should you care for the rest? You will regret it, believe
me, for she will not come again. A woman pardons everything except such a
slight. Her love for you must have been something terrible when she came
to you knowing and confessing herself guilty, risking rebuff and contempt
at your hands. Believe me, you will regret it, for I am satisfied that
you will soon be cured."
There was such an air of simple conviction about my friend's words, such
a despairing certainty based on experience, that I shuddered as I
listened. While he was speaking I felt a strong desire to go to my
mistress, or to write to her to come to me. I was so weak that I could
not leave my bed and that saved me from the shame of finding her waiting
for my rival or perhaps in his company. But I could write to her; in
spite of myself I doubted whether she would come if I should write.
When Desgenais left me I became so desperate that I resolved to put an
end to my trouble. After a terrible struggle horror got the better of
love. I wrote my mistress that I would never see her again and begged her
not to try to see me unless she wished to be exposed to the shame of
being refused admittance. I called a servant and ordered him to deliver
the letter at once. He had hardly closed the door when I called him back.
He did not hear me; I did not dare call again; covering my face with my
hands I yielded to an overwhelming sense of despair.
CHAPTER IV
THE following morning the first question that occurred to my mind was:
"What shall I do?"
I had no occupation. I had studied medicine and law without being able to
decide on either of the two professions; I had worked for a banker for
six months and my services were so unsatisfactory that I was obliged to
resign to avoid being discharged. My studies had been varied but
superficial; my memory was active but not retentive.
My only treasure after love, was independence. In my childhood I had
devoted myself to a morose cult, and had, so to speak, consecrated my
heart to it. One day my father, solicitous about my future, spoke to me
of several careers between which he allowed me to choose. I was leaning
on the window-sill, looking at a solitary poplar-tree that was swaying in
the breeze down in the garden. I thought over all the various occupations
and wondered which one I should choose. I turned them all over, one after
another, in my mind, and then not feeling inclined to any of them I
allowed my thoughts to wander. Suddenly it seemed to me that I felt the
earth move and that a secret invisible force was slowly dragging me into
space and becoming tangible to my senses; I saw it mount into the sky; I
seemed to be on a ship; the poplar near my window resembled a mast; I
arose, stretched out my arms, and cried:
"It is little enough to be a passenger for one day on this ship floating
through space; it is little enough to be a man, a black point on that
ship; I will be a man but not any particular kind of man."
Such was the first vow that, at the age of fourteen, I pronounced in the
face of nature, and since then I have tried to do nothing except in
obedience to my father, never being able to overcome my repugnance.
I was therefore free, not through indolence but by choice; loving,
moreover, all that God had made and very little that man had made. Of
life I knew nothing but love, of the world only my mistress, and I did
not care to know anything more. So falling in love upon leaving college I
sincerely believed that it was for life and every other thought
disappeared.
My life was sedentary. I was accustomed to pass the day with my mistress;
my greatest pleasure was to lead her through the fields on beautiful
summer days, the sight of nature in her splendor having ever been for me
the most powerful incentive to love. In winter, as she enjoyed society,
we attended numerous balls and masquerades, and because I thought of no
one but her I fondly imagined her equally true to me.
To give you an idea of my state of mind I can not do better than compare
it to one of those rooms such as we see in these days where are collected
and confounded all the furniture of all times and all countries. Our age
has no form of its own. We have impressed the seal of our time on neither
our houses nor our gardens nor anything that is ours. On the street may
be seen men who have their beards cut as in the time of Henry III, others
who are clean shaven, others who have their hair arranged as in the time
of Raphael, others as in the time of Christ. So the homes of the rich are
cabinets of curiosities: the antique, the Gothic, the taste of the
Renaissance, that of Louis XIII, all pell-mell. In short, we have every
century except our own--a thing which has never been seen at any other
epoch: eclecticism is our taste; we take everything we find, this for
beauty, that for utility, this other for antiquity, such another for its
ugliness even, so that we live surrounded by debris as though the end of
the world were at hand.
Such was the state of my mind; I had read much; moreover I had learned to
paint. I knew by heart a great many things, but nothing in order, so that
my head was like a sponge, swollen but empty. I fell in love with all the
poets one after another; but being of an impressionable nature the last
comer always disgusted me with the rest. I had made of myself a great
warehouse of ruins, so that having no more thirst after drinking of the
novel and the unknown, I became a ruin myself.
Nevertheless, about that ruin there was still something of youth: it was
the hope of my heart which was still childlike.
That hope, which nothing had withered or corrupted and that love had
exalted to excess, had now received a mortal wound. The perfidy of my
mistress had struck deep, and when I thought of it, I felt in my soul a
swooning away, a convulsive flutter as of a wounded bird in agony.
Society which works so much evil is like that serpent of the Indies whose
dwelling is the leaf of a plant which cures its sting; it presents, in
nearly every case, the remedy by the side of the suffering it has caused.
For example, the man whose life is one of routine, who has his business
cares to claim his attention upon rising, visits at such an hour, loves
at another, can lose his mistress and suffer no evil effects. His
occupations and his thoughts are like impassive soldiers ranged in line
of battle; a single shot strikes one down, his neighbors fill up the gap
and the line is intact.
I had not that resource since I was alone: nature, the kind mother,
seemed, on the contrary, more vast and more empty than ever. If I had
been able to forget my mistress I would have been saved. How many there
are who can be cured with even less than that. Such men are incapable of
loving a faithless woman and their conduct, under the circumstances, is
admirable in its firmness. But is it thus that one loves at nineteen
when, knowing nothing of the world, desiring everything, the young man
feels within him the germ of all the passions? On the right, on the left,
below, on the horizon, everywhere some voice which calls him. All is
desire, all is reverie. There is no reality which holds him when the
heart is young; there is no oak so gnarled that it may not give birth to
a dryad; and if one had a hundred arms one need not fear to open them;
one has but to clasp his mistress and all is well.
As for me I did not understand what else there was to do besides love,
and when any one spoke to me of another occupation I did not reply. My
passion for my mistress had something fierce about it, as all my life had
been severely monachal. I wish to cite a single example. She gave me her
portrait in miniature in a medallion; I wore it over my heart, a practise
much affected by men; but one day while idly rummaging about a shop
filled with curiosities I found an iron "discipline whip," such as was
used by the mediaeval flagellants; at the end of this whip was a metal
plate bristling with sharp iron points; I had the medallion riveted to
this plate and then returned it to its place over my heart. The sharp
points pierced my bosom with every movement and caused such a strange
voluptuous anguish that I sometimes pressed it down with my hand in order
to intensify the sensation. I knew very well that I was committing folly;
love is responsible for many others.
When that woman deceived me I removed the cruel medallion. I can not tell
with what sadness I detached that iron girdle and what a sigh escaped me
when it was gone.
"Ah! poor wounds!" I said, "you will soon heal, but what balm is there
for that other deeper wound?"
I had reason to hate that woman, she was, so to speak, mingled with the
blood of my veins; I cursed her but I dreamed of her. What could I do
with a dream? By what effort of the will could I drown memory of flesh
and blood? Macbeth having killed Duncan saw that the ocean would not wash
his hands clean again; it would not have washed away my wounds. I said to
Desgenais: "When I sleep, her head is on my pillow."
My life had been wrapped up in that woman; to doubt her was to doubt all;
to deny her, to curse all; to lose her, to renounce all. I no longer went
out; the world seemed to be peopled with monsters, with horned deer and
crocodiles. To all that was said to distract my mind I replied:
"Yes, that is all very well, but you may rest assured I shall do nothing
of the kind."
I sat in my window and said:
"She will come, I am sure of it, she is coming, she is turning the corner
at this moment, I can feel her approach. She can no more live without me
than I without her. What shall I say? How shall I receive her?"
Then the thought of her perfidy recurred to me.
"Ah! let her come! I will kill her!"
Since my last letter I had heard nothing of her.
"What is she doing?" I asked myself. "She loves another? Then I will love
another also. Whom shall I love?"
While casting about I heard a far distant voice crying:
"Thou, love another? Two beings who love, who embrace, and who are not
thou and I! Is such a thing possible? Are you a fool?"
"Coward!" said Desgenais, "when will you forget that woman? Is she such a
great loss? Take the first comer and console yourself."
"No," I replied, "it is not such a great loss. Have I not done what I
ought? Have I not driven her away from here? What have you to say to
that? The rest concerns me; the bull wounded in the arena is at liberty
to go to sleep in a corner with the sword of the matador in his shoulder,
and die in peace. What can I do, tell me? What do you mean by first
comer? You will show me a cloudless sky, trees and houses, men who talk,
drink, sing, women who dance and horses that gallop. All that is not
life, it is the noise of life. Go, go, leave me in peace."
CHAPTER V
WHEN Desgenais saw that my despondency was incurable, that I would
neither listen to any advice nor leave my room, he took the matter
seriously. I saw him enter one evening with an expression of gravity on
his face; he spoke of my mistress and continued in his tone of sadness,
saying all manner of evil of women. While he was speaking I was leaning
on my elbow, and, rising in my bed, I listened attentively.
It was one of those somber evenings when the sighing of the wind
resembles the moans of a dying man; a storm was brewing, and between the
splashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All
nature suffers in such moments; the trees writhe in pain and twist their
heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of
cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time
before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and
the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not clearly
distinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed to me that I was under
the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake to find
myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been a dream,
ridiculous and childish, the falseness of which had just been disclosed.
Desgenais was seated near the lamp at my side; he was firm and serious,
although a smile hovered about his lips. He was a man of heart, but as
dry as a pumice-stone. An early experience had made him bald before his
time; he knew life and had suffered; but his grief was a cuirass; he was
a materialist and he waited for death.
"Octave," he said, "after what has happened to you I see that you believe
in love such as the poets and romancers have represented; in a word, you
believe in what is said here below and not in what is done. That is
because you do not reason soundly and it may lead you into great
misfortune.
"The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the
musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite
nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest
elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most
harmonious voices of nature. There was, it is said, at Athens a great
number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles designed them all, one after
another; then from all these diverse types of beauty, each one of which
had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus.
The first man who created a musical instrument and who gave to that art
its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of
reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets who understand life, after
having known much of love, more or less transitory, after having felt
that sublime exaltation which passion can for the moment inspire,
deducting from human nature all elements which degrade it, created the
mysterious names which through the ages are passed from lip to lip:
Daphne and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe.
"To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is
the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or
to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
"Perfection does not exist; to comprehend it is the triumph of human
intelligence; to desire to possess it, the most dangerous of follies.
Open your window, Octave; do you not see the infinite? You try to form
some idea of a thing that has no limits, you who were born yesterday and
who will die to-morrow? This spectacle of immensity in every country in
the world, produces the wildest illusions. Religions are born of it; it
was to possess the infinite that Cato cut his throat, that the Christians
delivered themselves to lions, the Huguenots to the Catholics; all the
people of the earth have stretched out their hands to that immensity and
have longed to plunge into it. The fool wishes to possess heaven; the
sage admires it, kneels before it, but does not desire it.
"Perfection, my friend, is no more made for us than infinity. We must
seek for nothing in it, demand nothing of it, neither love nor beauty,
happiness nor virtue; but we must love it if we would be virtuous, if we
would attain the greatest happiness of which man is capable.
"Let us suppose you have in your study a picture by Raphael that you
consider perfect; let us suppose that upon a close examination you
discover in one of the figures a gross defect of design, a limb
distorted, or a muscle that belies nature, such as has been discovered,
they say, in one of the arms of an antique gladiator; you would
experience a feeling of displeasure, but you would not throw that picture
in the fire; you would merely say that it is not perfect but that it has
qualities that are worthy of admiration.
"There are women whose natural singleness of heart and sincerity are such
that they could not have two lovers at the same time. You believed your
mistress such a one; that is best, I admit. You have discovered that she
has deceived you; does that oblige you to despise and to abuse her, to
believe her deserving of your hatred?
"Even if your mistress had never deceived you, even if at this moment she
loved none other than you, think, Octave, how far her love would still be
from perfection, how human it would be, how small, how restrained by the
hypocrisies and conventionalities of the world; remember that another man
possessed her before you, that many others will possess her after you.
"Reflect: what drives you at this moment to despair is the idea of
perfection in your mistress, the idea that has been shattered. But when
you understand that the first idea itself was human, small and
restricted, you will see that it is little more than a round in the
rotten ladder of human imperfection.
"I think you will readily admit that your mistress has had other admirers
and that she will have still others in the future; you will doubtless
reply that it matters little, so long as she loved you. But I ask you,
since she has had others, what difference does it make whether it was
yesterday or two years ago? Since she loves but one at a time what does
it matter whether it is during an interval of two years or the course of
a single night? Are you a man, Octave? Do you see the leaves falling from
the trees, the sun rising and setting? Do you hear the ticking of the
clock of time with each pulsation of your heart? Is there, then, such a
difference between the love of a year and the love of an hour? I
challenge you to answer that, you fool, as you sit there looking out at
the infinite through a window not larger than your hand.
"You consider that woman faithful who loves you two years; you must have
an almanac that will indicate just how long it takes for an honest man's
kisses to dry on a woman's lips. You make a distinction between the woman
who sells herself for money and the one who gives herself for pleasure,
between the one who gives herself through pride and the one who gives
herself through devotion. Among women who are for sale, some cost more
than others; among those who are sought for pleasure some inspire more
confidence than others; and among those who are worthy of devotion there
are some who receive a third of a man's heart, others a quarter, others a
half, depending upon her education, her manner, her name, her birth, her
beauty, her temperament, according to the occasion, according to what is
said, according to the time, according to what you have had to drink for
dinner.
"You love women, Octave, because you are young, ardent, because your
features are regular and your hair dark and glossy, but you do not, for
all that, understand woman.
"Nature, having all, desires the reproduction of beings; everywhere, from
the summit of the mountain to the bottom of the sea, life is opposed to
death. God, to conserve the work of his hands, has established this law
that the greatest pleasure of all loving beings shall be the act of
generation.
"Oh! my friend, when you feel bursting on your lips the vow of eternal
love, do not be afraid to yield, but do not confound wine with
intoxication; do not think the cup divine because the draft is of
celestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty in the
evening. It is but woman, it is a fragile vase, made of earth by a
potter.
"Thank God for giving you a glimpse of heaven, but do not imagine
yourself a bird because you can flap your wings. The birds themselves can
not escape the clouds; there is a sphere where air fails them and the
lark rising with its song into the morning fog, sometimes falls back dead
in the field.
"Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your
mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not,
if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is
agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these
things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us
every day.
"Do not tear your hair and stab yourself because you have a rival. You
say that your mistress deceives you for another; it is your pride that
suffers; but change the words, say that it is for you that she deceives
him, and behold you are happy.
"Do not make a rule of conduct and do not say that you wish to be loved
exclusively, for in saying that, as you are a man and inconstant
yourself, you are forced to add tacitly: 'As far as possible.'
"Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is. The
Spaniards first, among women, love faithfully; their heart is sincere and
violent, but they wear a dagger just above it. Italian women are
lascivious. The English are exalted and melancholy, cold and unnatural.
The German women are tender and sweet, but colorless and monotonous. The
French are spirituelle, elegant, and voluptuous, but they lie like
demons.
"Above all, do not accuse women of being what they are; we have made them
thus, undoing the work of nature.
"Nature, who thinks of everything, made the virgin for love; but with her
first child her bosom loses its form, her beauty its freshness. Woman is
made for motherhood. Man would perhaps abandon her, disgusted by the loss
of beauty; but his child clings to him and weeps. Behold the family, the
human law; everything that departs from this law is monstrous.
"Civilization thwarts the ends of nature. In our cities, according to our
customs, the virgin destined by nature for the open air, made to bask in
the sunlight, to admire the nude wrestlers, as in Lacedemonia, to choose,
and to love, is shut up in close confinement and bolted in; yet she hides
romance under her cross; pale and idle she fades away and loses in the
silence of the nights that beauty that stifles her and which has need of
the open air. Then she is suddenly taken from this solitude, knowing
nothing, loving nothing, desiring everything; an old woman instructs her,
a mysterious word is whispered in her ear, and she is thrown into the
arms of a stranger. There you have marriage--that is to say, the
civilized family. A child is born. This poor creature has lost her beauty
and she has never loved. The child is brought to her with the words: 'You
are a mother.' She replies: 'I am not a mother; take that child to some
woman who can nurse it. I can not.' Her husband tells her that she is
right, that her child would be disgusted with her. She receives careful
attention and is soon cured of the disease of maternity. A month later
she may be seen at the Tuileries, at the ball, at the opera: her child is
at Chaillot, at Auxerre; her husband with another woman. Then young men
speak to her of love, of devotion, of sympathy, of all that is in the
heart. She takes one, draws him to her bosom; he dishonors her and
returns to the Bourse. She cries all night, but discovers that tears make
her eyes red. She takes a consoler, for the loss of whom another consoles
her; thus up to the age of thirty or more. Then, blase and corrupted,
with no human sentiment, not even disgust, she meets a fine youth with
raven locks, ardent eye and hopeful heart; she recalls her own youth, she
remembers what she has suffered, and telling him the story of her life,
she teaches him to shun love.
"That is woman as we have made her; such are your mistresses. But you say
they are women and there is something good in them!
"But if your character is formed, if you are truly a man, sure of
yourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life without
fear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived or
respected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest?
"If you are mediocre and ordinary, I advise you to consider your course
very carefully before deciding, but do not expect too much of your
mistress.
"If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself to be
dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil, make
for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yield to
your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a dead plant,
and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers. The sap of your life will
dissipate into the formation of a useless bark; all your actions will be
as colorless as the leaves of the willow; you will have no tears to water
you, but those from your own eyes, to nourish you, no heart but your own.
"But if you are of exalted nature, believing in dreams and wishing to
realize them, I say to you plainly. Love does not exist.
"For to love is to give body and soul, or, better, it is to make a single
being of two; it is to walk in the sunlight, in the open air through the
boundless prairies with a body having four arms, two heads and two
hearts. Love is faith, it is the religion of earthly happiness, it is a
luminous triangle suspended in the temple of the world. To love is to
walk freely through that temple and to have at your side a being capable
of understanding why a thought, a word, a flower makes you pause and
raise your eyes to that celestial triangle. To exercise the noble
faculties of man is a great good, and that is why genius is glorious; but
to double those faculties, to place a heart and an intelligence upon a
heart and an intelligence--that is supreme happiness. God has nothing
better for man; that is why love is better than genius. But tell me, is
that the love of our women? No, no, it must be admitted. Love, for them,
is another thing; it is to go out veiled, to write in secret, to make
trembling advances, to heave chaste sighs under a starched and unnatural
robe, then to draw bolts and throw it aside, to humiliate a rival, to
deceive a husband, to render a lover desolate; to love, for our women, is
to play at lying, as children play at hide and seek, the hideous
debauchee of a heart, worse than all the lubricity of the Romans, or the
Saturnalia of Priapus; bastard parody of vice itself as well as of
virtue; loathsome comedy where all is whispering and oblique glances,
where all is small, elegant and deformed like the porcelain monsters
brought from China; lamentable derision of all that is beautiful and
ugly, divine and infernal; a shadow without a body, a skeleton of all
that God has made."
Thus spoke Desgenais; and the shadows of night began to fall.
CHAPTER VI
THE next morning I rode through the Bois de Boulogne; the day was dark
and threatening. At the Porte Maillot I dropped the reins on the back of
my horse and abandoned myself to reverie, revolving in my mind the words
spoken by Desgenais the evening before.
Suddenly I heard my name called. Turning my head I spied one of my
mistress's most intimate friends in an open carriage. She called to me to
stop, and, holding out her hand with a friendly air, invited me to dine
with her if I had no other engagement.
This woman, Madame Levasseur by name, was small, stout, and decidedly
blonde; I had never liked her and my attitude toward her had always been
one of studied politeness. But I could not resist a desire to accept her
invitation; I pressed her hand and thanked her; I was sure we would talk
of my mistress.
She sent a servant to lead my horse and I entered her carriage; she was
alone and we at once took the road to Paris. Rain began to fall, and the
carriage curtains were drawn; thus shut up together we rode on in
silence. I looked at her with inexpressible sadness; she was not only the
friend of my faithless one but her confidante. She had often formed one
of our party when I called on my mistress in the evening! With what
impatience had I endured her presence. How often I counted the minutes
that must elapse before she would leave! That was probably the cause of
my aversion for her. I knew that she approved of our love; she even went
so far as to defend me in our quarrels. In spite of the services she had
rendered me, I considered her ugly and tiresome. Alas! now I found her
beautiful! I looked at her hands, her clothes; every gesture went
straight to my heart; all the past was associated with her. She noticed
the change in manner and understood that I was oppressed by sad memories
of the past. Thus we rode on our way, I looking at her; she smiling at
me. When we reached Paris she took my hand:
"Well?" she said.
"Well?" I replied, sobbing, "tell her if you wish." Tears rushed from my
eyes.
After dinner we sat before the fire.
"But tell me," she said, "is it irrevocable? Can nothing be done?"
"Alas! madame," I replied, "there is nothing irrevocable except the grief
that is killing me. My condition can be expressed in a few words: I can
not love her, I can not love another, and I can not cease loving."
At these words she moved uneasily in her chair and I could see an
expression of compassion on her face. For some time she seemed to be
reflecting, as though pondering over my fate and seeking some remedy for
my sorrow. Her eyes were closed and she appeared lost in reverie. She
extended her hand and I took it in mine.
"And I, too," she murmured, "that is just my experience." She stopped,
overcome by emotion.
Of all the sisters of love, the most beautiful is pity. I held Madame
Levasseur's hand as she began to speak of my mistress, saying all she
could think of in her favor. My sadness increased. What could I reply?
Finally she came to speak of herself.
Not long since, she said, a man who loved her had abandoned her. She had
made great sacrifices for him; her fortune was compromised as well as her
honor and her name. Her husband, whom she knew to be vindictive, had made
threats. Her tears flowed as she continued, and I began to forget my own
sorrow in my sympathy for her. She had been married against her will; she
struggled a long time; but she regretted nothing except that she had not
been able to inspire a more sincere affection. I believe she even accused
herself because she had not been able to hold her lover's heart, and
because she had been guilty of apparent indifference.
When she had unburdened her heart she became silent.
"Madame," I said, "it was not chance that brought about our meeting in
the Bois de Boulogne. I believe that human sorrows are but wandering
sisters and that some good angel unites the trembling hands that are
stretched out for aid. Do not repent having told me your sorrow. The
secret you have confided to me is only a tear which has fallen from your
eye, but has rested on my heart. Permit me to come again and let us
suffer together."
Such lively sympathy took possession of me that without reflection I
kissed her; it did not occur to my mind that it could offend her and she
did not appear even to notice it.
Our conversation continued in this tone of great friendship. She told me
her sorrows, I told her mine, and between those two experiences which
touched each other, I felt arise a sweetness, as of a celestial accord
born of two voices in anguish. All this time I had seen nothing but her
face. Suddenly I noticed that her dress was in disorder. It appeared
singular to me that, seeing my embarrassment, she did not rearrange it,
and I turned my head to give her an opportunity. She did nothing. Finally
meeting her eyes and seeing that she was perfectly aware of the state she
was in, I felt as though I had been struck by a thunderbolt, for I
clearly understood that I was the plaything of her monstrous effrontery,
that grief itself was for her but a means of seducing the senses. I took
my hat without a word, bowed profoundly and left the room.
CHAPTER VII
UPON returning to my apartments I found a large box in the center of the
room. One of my aunts had died and I was one of the heirs to her fortune,
which was not large. The box contained, among other things, a number of
musty old books. Not knowing what to do and being affected with ennui, I
began to read one of them. They were for the most part romances of the
time of Louis XV; my pious aunt had probably inherited them herself and
never read them, for they were, so to speak, catechisms of vice.
I was singularly disposed to reflect on everything that came to my
notice, to give everything a mental and moral significance; I treated
events as pearls in a necklace which I tried to string together.
It struck me that there was something significant about the arrival of
these books at this time. I devoured them with a bitterness and a sadness
born of despair. "Yes, you are right," I said to myself, "you alone
possess the secret of life, you alone dare to say that nothing is true
and real but debauchery, hypocrisy and corruption. Be my friends, throw
on the wound in my soul your corrosive poisons, teach me to believe in
you."
While buried in these shadows I allowed my favorite poets and text-books
to accumulate dust. I even ground them under my feet in excess of wrath.
"You wretched dreamers," I said to them; "you who teach me only
suffering, miserable shufflers of words, charlatans if you knew the
truth, fools if you speak in good faith, liars in either case, who make
fairy tales of the human heart, I will burn every one of you!"
Then tears came to my aid and I perceived that there was nothing real but
my grief. "Very well," I cried, in my delirium, "tell me, good and bad
genii, counsellors for good or evil, tell me what to do! Choose an
arbiter and let him speak."
I seized an old Bible which lay on my table and read the first passage
that caught my eye.
"Reply to me, thou book of God," I said, "what word have you for me?" My
eye fell on this passage in Ecclesiastes, chapter ix:
I pondered all these things in my heart, and I sought diligently
for wisdom. There are just and wise men and their works are in the
hands of God; nevertheless man does not know whether he is worthy
of love or hatred.
And the future is unknown, for there is one event to the righteous
and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the
unclean; to him that sacrificeth and him that sacrificeth not. The
righteous is treated as the sinner and the perjurer as him who
speaks the truth.
There is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, and
there is one event to all. Therefore the hearts of the children of
men are full of evil and madness while they live, and after that
they go to the dead.
When I read these words I was astounded; I did not know that there was
such a sentiment in the Bible. "And thou, too, as all others, thou book
of hope!"
What do the astronomers think when they predict at a given hour and place
the passage of a comet, that most eccentric of celestial travelers? What
do the naturalists think when they reveal the myriad forms of life
concealed in a drop of water? Do they think they have invented what they
see and that their microscopes and lenses make the law of nature? What
did the first lawgiver think when, seeking for the corner-stone in the
social edifice, angered doubtless by some idle importunity, he struck the
tables of brass and felt in his bowels the yearning for a law of
retaliation? Did he then invent justice? And the first who plucked the
fruit planted by his neighbor and who fled cowering under his mantle, did
he invent shame? And he who, having overtaken that same thief who had
robbed him of the product of his toil, forgave him his sin, and instead
of raising his hand to smite him, said, "Sit thou down and eat thy fill";
when after having thus returned good for evil he raised his eyes toward
Heaven and felt his heart quivering, tears welling from his eyes, and his
knees bending to the earth, did he invent virtue? Oh! Heaven! here is a
woman who speaks of love and who deceives me, here is a man who speaks of
friendship, and who counsels me to seek consolation in debauchery; here
is another woman who weeps and would console me with the flesh; here is a
Bible that speaks of God and says: "Perhaps; there is one event to the
righteous and to the wicked."
I ran to the open window: "Is it true that you are empty?" I cried,
looking up at the pale expanse of sky which spread above me. "Reply,
reply! Before I die grant that I may clasp in these arms of mine
something more than a dream!"
Profound silence reigned. As I stood with arms outstretched, eyes lost in
space, a swallow uttered a plaintive cry; in spite of myself I followed
it with my eyes; while the swallow disappeared from sight like a flash, a
little girl passed, singing.
CHAPTER VIII
YET I was not willing to yield. Before taking life on its pleasant side
after having seen its evil side so dearly, I resolved to test everything.
I remained thus for some time a prey to countless sorrows, tormented by
terrible dreams.
The great obstacle to my cure was my youth. Wherever I happened to be,
whatever my occupation, I could think of nothing but women; the sight of
a woman made me tremble.
I had been so fortunate as to give to love my virginity. But the result
of this was that all my senses were united in the idea of love; there was
the cause of my unhappiness. For not being able to think of anything but
women, I could not help turning over in my head, day and night, all the
ideas of debauchery, of false love and of feminine treason with which my
mind was filled. To possess a woman was for me to love her; for I thought
of nothing but women and I did not believe in the possibility of true
love.
All this suffering inspired me with a sort of rage, and at times I was
tempted to imitate the monks and murder myself in order to conquer my
senses; at times I felt like going out into the street and throwing
myself at the feet of the first woman I met and vowing eternal love.
God is my witness that I did all in my power to cure myself. Preoccupied
from the first with the idea that the society of men was the haunt of
vice and hypocrisy, where all were like my mistress, I resolved to
separate myself from them and live in complete isolation. I resumed my
neglected studies, I plunged into history, poetry, and anatomy. There
happened to be on the fourth floor of the same house an old German who
was well versed in lore. I determined to learn his tongue; the German was
poor and friendless and willingly accepted the task of instructing me. My
perpetual state of distraction worried him. How many times seated near
him with a smoking lamp between us, he waited in patient astonishment
while I sat with my arms crossed on my book, lost in reverie, oblivious
of his presence and of his pity.
"My dear sir," said I to him one day, "all this is useless, but you are
the best of men. What a task you have undertaken! You must leave me to my
fate; we can do nothing, neither you nor I."
I do not know that he understood my meaning, but he grasped my hand and
there was no more talk of German.
I soon realized that solitude instead of curing me was doing me harm, and
so completely changed my system. I went to the country and galloped
through the woods with the huntsmen; I rode until I was out of breath, I
tried to break myself with fatigue, and when after a day of sweat in the
fields, I reached my bed in the evening smelling of powder and the
stable, I buried my head in the pillow, I rolled about under the covers
and I cried: "Fantom, fantom! are you not tired? Will you leave me for
one night?"
But why these vain efforts? Solitude sent me to nature, and nature to
love. When I stood in the street of Observation I saw myself surrounded
by corpses, and, drying my hands on my bloody apron, stifled by the odor
of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and I saw floating
before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields and the pensive harmony of
the evening. "No," I said, "science can not console me; I can not plunge
into dead nature, I would die there myself and float about like a livid
corpse amidst the debris of shattered hopes. I would not cure myself of
my youth; I will live where there is life, or I will at least die in the
sun." I began to mingle with the throngs at Sevres and Chaville; I lay
down in the midst of a flowery dale, in a secluded part of Chaville.
Alas! all these forests and prairies cried to me:
"What do you seek here? We are green, poor child, we wear the colors of
hope."
Then I returned to the city; I lost myself in its obscure streets; I
looked up at the lights in all its windows, all those mysterious family
nests; I watched the passing carriages; I saw man jostling against man.
Oh! what solitude! How sad the smoke on those roofs! What sorrow in those
tortuous streets where all are hurrying hither and thither, working and
sweating, where thousands of strangers rub against your elbows; a cloaca
where there is only society of bodies, while souls are solitary and
alone, where all who hold out a hand to you are prostitutes! "Become
corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of
all cities to man; it is written with charcoal on city walls, on its
streets with mud, on its faces with extravasated blood.
And at times, when seated in the corner of some salon I watched the women
as they danced, some rosy, some blue, and others white, their arms bare
and hair clustered gracefully about their shapely heads, looking like
cherubim drunk with light, floating in their spheres of harmony and
beauty, I would think: "Ah, what a garden, what flowers to gather, to
breathe! Ah! Marguerites, Marguerites! What will your last petal say to
him who plucks it? A little, a little, but not all. That is the moral of
the world, that is the end of your smiles. It is over this terrible abyss
that you are walking in your flower-strewn gauze; it is on this hideous
truth you run like gazelles on the tips of your little toes!"
"But why take things so seriously?" said Desgenais. "That is something
that is never seen. You complain because bottles become empty? There are
many casks in the vaults, and many vaults in the hills. Make me a good
fish-hook gilded with sweet words, with a drop of honey for bait, and
quick! catch for me in the stream of oblivion a pretty consoler, as fresh
and slippery as an eel; you will still have the hook when the fish shall
have glided from your hands. Youth must pass away, and if I were you I
would carry off the queen of Portugal rather than study anatomy."
Such was the advice of Desgenais. I made my way home with swollen heart,
my face concealed under my cloak. I kneeled at the side of my bed and my
poor heart dissolved in tears. What vows! what prayers! Galileo struck
the earth, crying: "Nevertheless it moves!" Thus I struck my heart.
CHAPTER IX
SUDDENLY, in the midst of greatest despair youth and chance led me to
commit an act that decided my fate.
I had written my mistress saying that I never wished to see her again; I
kept my word, but I passed the nights under her window, seated on a bench
before her door. I could see the lights in her room, I could hear the
sound of her piano, at times I saw something that looked like a shadow
through the partially drawn curtains.
One night, as I was seated on the bench, plunged in frightful melancholy,
I saw a belated workman staggering along the street. He muttered a few
words in a dazed manner and then began to sing. He was so much under the
influence of liquor that he walked at times on one side of the gutter and
then on the other. Finally he fell on a bench facing another house
opposite me. There he lay still, supported on his elbows, and slept
profoundly.
The street was deserted, a dry wind swept the dust here and there; the
moon shone through a rift in the clouds and lighted the spot where the
man slept. So I found myself tete-a-tete with this man who, not
suspecting my presence, was sleeping on that stone bench as peacefully as
though in his own bed.
He served to divert my grief; I arose to leave him in full possession,
then returned and resumed my seat. I could not leave that door at which I
would not have knocked for an empire. Finally, after walking up and down
for a few times I stopped before the sleeper.
"What sleep!" I said. "Surely this man does not dream. His clothes are in
tatters, his cheeks are wrinkled, his hands hardened with toil; he is
some unfortunate who does not have bread every day. A thousand gnawing
cares, a thousand mortal sorrows await his return to consciousness;
nevertheless, this evening he had a piece of money in his pocket, he
entered a tavern where he purchased oblivion; he has earned enough in a
week to enjoy a night of slumber and he has perhaps purchased it at the
expense of his children's supper. Now his mistress can betray him, his
friend can glide like a thief into his hut; I could shake him by the
shoulder and tell him that he is being murdered, that his house is on
fire; he would turn over and continue to sleep.
"And I, I do not sleep," I continued pacing up and down the street, "I do
not sleep, I who have enough in my pocket at this moment to purchase
sleep for a year; I am so proud and so foolish that I dare not enter a
tavern, and I do not understand that if all unfortunates enter there, it
is in order that they may come out happy. Oh! God! the juice of a grape
crushed under the foot suffices to dissipate the deepest sorrow and to
break all the invisible threads that the fates weave about our pathway.
We weep like women, we suffer like martyrs; in our despair it seems that
the world is crumbling under our feet and we sit down in our tears as did
Adam at Eden's gate. And in order to cure our wound we have but to make a
movement of the hand and moisten our throats. How pitiable our grief
since it can be thus assuaged. We are surprised that Providence does not
send angels to grant our prayers; it need not take the trouble, for it
has seen our woes, it knows our desires, our pride and bitterness, the
ocean of evil that surrounds us, and is content to hang a small black
fruit along our paths. Since that man sleeps so soundly on his bench why
do not I sleep on mine? My rival is doubtless passing the night with my
mistress; he will leave her at daybreak; she will accompany him to the
door and they will see me asleep on my bench. Their kisses will not
awaken me, and they will shake me by the shoulder; I will turn over on
the other side and sleep on."
Thus, inspired by a fierce joy, I set out in quest of a tavern. As it was
past midnight some were closed; that put me in a fury. "What!" I cried,
"even that consolation is refused me!" I ran hither and thither knocking
at the doors of taverns crying: "Wine! Wine!"
At last I found one open; I called for a bottle and without caring
whether it was good or bad I gulped it down; a second followed and then a
third. I dosed myself as with medicine, and I forced the wine down as
though it had been prescribed by a physician to save my life.
The heavy fumes of the liquor, which was doubtless adulterated, mounted
to my head. As I had gulped it down at a breath, drunkenness seized me
promptly; I felt that I was becoming muddled, then I experienced a lucid
moment, then confusion followed. Then consciousness left me, I leaned my
elbows on the table and said adieu to myself.
But I had a confused idea that I was not alone in the tavern. At the
other end of the room stood a hideous group with haggard faces and harsh
voices. Their dress indicated that they belonged to the poorer class but
were not bourgeois; in short they belonged to that ambiguous class, the
vilest of all, which has neither fortune nor occupation, which never
works except at some criminal plot, which is neither poor nor rich and
combines the vices of one class with the misery of the other.
They were disputing over a dirty pack of cards; among them I saw a girl
who appeared to be very young and very pretty, decently clad, and
resembling her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her
voice, which was rough and broken as though it had performed the office
of public crier. She looked at me closely as though astonished to see me
in such a place, for I was elegantly attired. Little by little she
approached my table, and seeing that all the bottles were empty, smiled.
I saw that she had fine teeth of brilliant whiteness; I took her hand and
begged her to be seated; she consented with good grace and asked what we
should have for supper.
I looked at her without saying a word, while my eyes began to fill with
tears; she observed my emotion and inquired the cause. I could not reply.
She understood that I had some secret sorrow and forebore any attempt to
learn the cause; drawing her handkerchief she dried my tears from time to
time as we dined.
There was something about that girl that was at once repulsive and sweet,
a singular impudence mingled with pity, that I could not understand. If
she had taken my hand in the street she would have inspired a feeling of
horror in me, but it seemed so strange that a creature I had never seen
should come to me, and without a word, proceed to order supper and dry my
tears with her handkerchief that I was rendered speechless, revolted and
yet charmed. What I had done had been done so quickly that I seemed to
have obeyed some impulse of despair. Perhaps I was a fool or the victim
of some supernal caprice.
"Who are you?" I suddenly cried out; "what do you want of me? How do you
know who I am? Who told you to dry my tears? Is this your vocation and do
you think I desire you? I would not touch you with the tip of my finger.
What are you doing here? Reply at once. Is it money you want? What price
do you put on your pity?"
I arose and tried to go out, but my feet refused to support me. At the
same time my eyes failed me, a mortal weakness took possession of me and
I fell over a chair.
"You are not well," she said, taking me by the arm, "you have drunk, like
the child that you are, without knowing what you were doing. Sit down in
this chair and wait until a cab passes. You will tell me where you live
and I will order the driver to take you home to your mother, since," she
added, "you really find me ugly."
As she spoke I raised my eyes. Perhaps my drunkenness deceived me, or
perhaps I had not seen her face clearly before, but suddenly I detected
in that unfortunate a fatal resemblance to my mistress. I shuddered at
the sight. There is a certain shudder that affects the hair; some say it
is death passing over the head, but it was not death that passed over
mine.
It was the malady of the age, or rather that girl was it herself; and it
was she who, with her pale, half-mocking features, came and seated
herself before me near the door of the tavern.
CHAPTER X
THE instant I noticed her resemblance to my mistress a frightful idea
occurred to me; it took irresistible possession of my muddled mind and I
put it into execution at once.
I took that girl home with me, I arranged my room just as I was
accustomed to do when my mistress was with me. I was dominated by a
certain recollection of past joys.
Having arranged my room to my satisfaction I gave myself up to the
intoxication of despair. I probed my heart to the bottom in order to
sound its depths. A Tyrolean song that my mistress used to sing began to
run through my head:
Altra volta gieri biele,
Blanch 'e rossa com' un flore;
Ma ora no. Non son piu biele,
Consumatis dal' amore.*
* Once I was beautiful, white and rosy as a flower; but now I am
not. I am no longer beautiful, consumed by the fire of love.
I listened to the echo of that song as it reverberated through my heart.
I said: "Behold the happiness of man; behold my little Paradise; behold
my queen Mab, a girl from the streets. My mistress is no better. Behold
what is found at the bottom of the glass when the nectar of the gods has
been drained; behold the corpse of love."
The unfortunate creature heard me singing and began to sing herself. I
turned pale; for that harsh and rasping voice, coming from the lips of
one who resembled my mistress, seemed to be a symbol of my experience. It
sounded like a gurgle in the throat of debauchery. It seemed to me that
my mistress, having been unfaithful, must have such a voice. I was
reminded of Faust who, dancing at Brocken with a young sorceress, saw a
red mouse come from her throat.
"Stop!" I cried. I arose and approached her.
Let me ask you, O, you men of the time, who are bent upon pleasure, who
attend the balls and the opera and who upon retiring this night will seek
slumber with the aid of some threadbare blasphemy of old Voltaire, some
sensible badinage of Paul Louis Courier, some essay on economics, you who
dally with the cold substance of that monstrous water-lily that Reason
has planted in the hearts of our cities; I beg of you, if by some chance
this obscure book falls into your hands, do not smile with noble disdain,
do not shrug your shoulders; do not be too sure that I complain of an
imaginary evil; do not be too sure that human reason is the most
beautiful of faculties, that there is nothing real here below but
quotations on the Bourse, gambling in the salon, wine on the table, a
healthy body, indifference toward others, and the orgies, which come with
the night.
For some day, across your stagnant life, a gust of wind will blow. Those
beautiful trees that you water with the stream of oblivion, Providence
will destroy; you will be reduced to despair, messieurs the impassive,
there will be tears in your eyes. I will not say that your mistresses
will deceive you; that would not grieve you so much as the loss of your
horse; but I do tell you that you will lose on the Bourse; your moneyed
tranquillity, your golden happiness are in the care of a banker who may
fail; in short I tell you, all frozen as you are, you are capable of
loving something; some fiber of your being will be torn and you will give
vent to a cry that will resemble a moan of pain. Some day, wandering
about the muddy streets, when daily material joys shall have failed, you
will find yourself seated disconsolately on a deserted bench at midnight.
O! men of marble, sublime egoists, inimitable reasoners who have never
given way to despair or made a mistake in arithmetic, if this ever
happens to you, at the hour of your ruin you will remember Abelard when
he lost Heloise. For he loved her more than you love your horses, your
money or your mistresses; for he lost in losing her more than your prince
Satan would lose in falling again from the battlements of Heaven; for he
loved her with a certain love of which the gazettes do not speak, the
shadow of which your wives and your daughters do not perceive in our
theaters and in our books; for he passed half of his life kissing her
white forehead, teaching her to sing the psalms of David and the
canticles of Saul; for he did not love her on earth alone; and God
consoled him.
Believe me, when in your distress you think of Abelard you will not look
with the same eye upon the sweet blasphemy of Voltaire and the badinage
of Courier; you will feel that the human reason can cure illusions but
not sorrows; that God has use for Reason but He has not made her the
sister of Charity. You will find that when the heart of man said: "I
believe in nothing, for I see nothing," it did not speak the last word on
the subject. You will look about you for something like hope, you will
shake the doors of churches to see if they still swing, but you will find
them walled up; you will think of becoming Trappists, and destiny will
mock at you and for reply give you a bottle of wine and a courtesan.
And if you drink the wine, if you take the courtesan, you will have
learned how such things come about.
PART II
CHAPTER I
AWAKENING the next morning I experienced a feeling of such deep disgust
with myself, I felt so degraded in my own eyes that a horrible temptation
assailed me. I leaped from bed and ordered the creature to leave my room
as quickly as possible. Then I sat down and looked gloomily about the
room, my eyes resting mechanically on a brace of pistols that decorated
the walls.
When the suffering mind advances its hands, so to speak, toward
annihilation, when our soul forms a violent resolution, there seems to be
an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of
some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold
and hard. Nature recoils as the condemned walks to death. I can not
express what I experienced while waiting for that girl to go, unless it
was as though my pistol had said to me "Think what you are about to do."
Since then I have often wondered what would have happened to me if the
girl had departed immediately. Doubtless the first flush of shame would
have subsided; sadness is not despair, and God has joined them in order
that one should not leave us alone with the other. Once relieved of the
presence of that woman, my heart would have become calm. There would
remain only repentance, for the angel of pardon has forbidden man to
kill. But I was doubtless cured for life; debauchery was once for all
driven from my door and I would never again know the feeling of disgust
with which its first visit had inspired me.
But it happened otherwise. The struggle which was going on within, the
poignant reflections which overwhelmed me, the disgust, the fear, the
wrath, even (for I experienced all these emotions at the same time), all
these fatal powers nailed me to my chair, and, while I was thus a prey to
the most dangerous delirium, the creature, standing before my mirror,
thought of nothing but how best to arrange her dress and fix her hair,
smiling the while. This lasted more than a quarter of an hour, during
which I had almost forgotten her. Finally, some slight noise attracted my
attention to her, and turning about with impatience I ordered her to
leave the room in such a tone that she at once opened the door and threw
me a kiss before going out.
At the same moment some one rang the bell of the outer door. I arose
hastily and had only time to open the closet door and motion the creature
into it when Desgenais entered the room with two friends.
The great currents that are found in the middle of the ocean resemble
certain events in life. Fatality, Chance, Providence, what matters the
name? Those who quarrel over the word, admit the fact. Such are not those
who, speaking of Napoleon or Caesar, say: "He was a man of Providence."
They apparently believe that heroes merit the attention which Heaven
shows them and that the color of purple attracts gods as well as bulls.
What decides the course of these little events, what objects and
circumstances, in appearance the least important, lead to changes in
fortune, there is not, to my mind, a deeper abyss for the thought. There
is something in our ordinary actions that resembles the little blunted
arrows we shoot at targets; little by little we make of our successive
results an abstract and regular entity that we call our prudence or our
will. Then a gust of wind passes, and behold the smallest of these
arrows, the very lightest and most futile, is carried beyond our vision,
beyond the horizon, to the dwelling-place of God himself.
What a strange feeling of unrest seizes us then! What becomes of those
fantoms of tranquil pride, the will and prudence? Force itself, that
mistress of the world, that sword of man in the combat of life, in vain
do we brandish it over our heads in wrath, in vain do we seek to ward off
with it a blow which threatens us; an invisible power turns aside the
point, and all the impetus of our effort, deflected into space, serves
only to precipitate our fall.
Thus at the moment I was hoping to cleanse myself from the sin I had
committed, perhaps to inflict the penalty, at the very instant when a
great horror had taken possession of me, I learned that I had to sustain
a dangerous intervention.
Desgenais was in good humor; stretching out on my sofa he began to chaff
me about the appearance of my face which looked, he said, as though I had
not slept well. As I was little disposed to indulge in pleasantry I
begged him to spare me.
He appeared to pay no attention to me, but warned by my tone he soon
broached the subject that had brought him to me. He informed me that my
mistress had not only two lovers at a time, but three, that is to say she
had treated my rival as badly as she had treated me; the poor boy having
discovered her inconstancy made a great ado and all Paris knew it. At
first I did not catch the meaning of Desgenais' words as I was not
listening attentively; but when he had repeated his story three times in
detail I was so stupefied that I could not reply. My first impulse was to
laugh, for I saw that I had loved the most unworthy of women; but it was
no less true that I loved her still. "Is it possible?" was all I could
say.
Desgenais' friends confirmed all he had said. My mistress had been
surprised in her own house between two lovers, and a scene that all Paris
knew by heart ensued. She was disgraced, obliged to leave Paris or remain
exposed to the most bitter taunts.
It was easy for me to see that in all, the ridicule expended on the
subject of this woman, on my unreasonable passion for her, was
premeditated. To say that she deserved severest censure, that she had
perhaps committed worse sins than those with which she was charged, that
was to make me feel that I had been merely one of her dupes.
All that did not please me; but Desgenais had undertaken the task of
curing me of my love and was prepared to treat my disease heroically. A
long friendship founded on mutual services gave him rights, and as his
motive appeared praiseworthy I allowed him to have his way.
Not only did he not spare me, but when he saw my trouble and my shame
increase, he pressed me the harder. My impatience was so obvious that he
could not continue, so he stopped and remained silent, a course that
irritated me still more.
In my turn I began to ask questions; I paced to and fro in my room.
Although the recital of that story was insupportable, I wanted to hear it
again. I tried to assume a smiling face and tranquil air, but in vain.
Desgenais suddenly became silent after having shown himself to be a most
virulent gossip. While I was pacing up and down my room he looked at me
calmly as though I was a caged fox.
I can not express my feeling. A woman who had so long been the idol of my
heart and who, since I had lost her, had caused me such deep affliction,
the only one I had ever loved, she for whom I would weep till death,
become suddenly a shameless wretch, the subject of coarse jests, of
universal censure and scandal! It seemed to me that I felt on my shoulder
the impression of a heated iron and that I was marked with a burning
stigma.
The more I reflected, the more the darkness thickened about me. From time
to time I turned my head and saw a cold smile or a curious glance.
Desgenais did not leave me, he knew very well what he was doing, he knew
that I might go to any length in my present desperate condition.
When he found that he had brought me to the desired point he did not
hesitate to deal the finishing stroke.
"Does that story displease you?" he asked. "The best is yet to come. My
dear Octave, the scene I have described took place on a certain night
when the moon was shining brightly; while the two lovers were quarreling
over their fair one and talking of cutting her throat as she sat before
the fire, down in the street a certain shadow was seen to pass up and
down before the house, a shadow that resembled you so closely that it was
decided that it must be you."
"Who says that," I asked, "who has seen me in the street?"
"Your mistress herself; she has told every one about it who cared to
listen, just as cheerfully as we tell you her story. She claims that you
love her still, that you keep guard at her door, in short--everything you
can think of; but you should know that she talks about you publicly."
I have never been able to lie, for whenever I have tried to disguise the
truth my face betrayed me. Amour propre, the shame of confessing my
weakness before witnesses induced me, however, to make the effort. "It is
very true that I was in the street," I thought, "but if I had known that
my mistress was as bad as she was, I would not have been there."
Finally I persuaded myself that I had not been seen distinctly; I
attempted to deny it. A deep blush suffused my face and I felt the
futility of my feint. Desgenais smiled.
"Take care," said he, "take care, do not go too far."
"But," I protested, "how did I know it, how could I know--"
Desgenais compressed his lips as though to say:
"You knew enough."
I stopped short, mumbling the remnant of my sentence. My blood became so
hot that I could not continue.
"I, in the street bathed in tears, in despair; and during that time that
encounter within! What! that very night! Mocked by her! Surely Desgenais
you are dreaming. Is it true? Can it be possible? What do you know about
it?"
Thus talking at random, I lost my head, and an irresistible feeling of
wrath began to rise within me. Finally I sat down exhausted.
"My friend," said Desgenais, "do not take the thing so seriously. The
solitary life you have been leading for the last two months has made you
ill, I see you have need of distraction. Come to supper with me this
evening, and to-morrow morning we will go to the country."
The tone in which he said this hurt me more than anything else; in vain I
tried to control myself. "Yes," I thought, "deceived by that woman,
poisoned by horrible suggestions, having no refuge either in work or in
fatigue, having for my only safeguard against despair and ruin, a sacred
but frightful grief. O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my
sorrow that has just crumbled in my hands! It is no longer my love, it is
my despair that is insulted. Mockery! She mocks at me as I weep!" That
appeared incredible to me. All the memories of the past clustered about
my heart when I thought of it. I seemed to see, one after the other, the
specters of our nights of love; they hung over a bottomless eternal
abyss, black as chaos, and from the bottom of that abyss there burst
forth a shriek of laughter, sweet but mocking, that said: "Behold your
reward!"
If I had been told that the world mocked at me I would have replied: "So
much the worse for it," and I would not be angry; but at the same time I
was told that my mistress was a shameless wretch. Thus, on one side, the
ridicule was public, vouched for, stated by two witnesses who, before
telling what they knew, must have felt that the world was against me;
and, on the other hand, what reply could I make? How could I escape? What
could I do when the center of my life, my heart itself, was ruined,
killed, annihilated. What could I say when that woman for whom I had
braved all, ridicule as well as blame, for whom I had borne a mountain of
misery, when that woman whom I loved and who loved another, of whom I
demanded no love, of whom I desired nothing but permission to weep at her
door, no favor but that of vowing my youth to her memory and writing her
name, her name alone, on the tomb of my hopes! Ah! when I thought of it,
I felt the hand of death heavy upon me; that woman mocked me, it was she
who first pointed her finger at me, singling me out to the idle crowd
which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips so many times pressed
to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood,
it was from that source the injury came; yes, the last of all, the most
cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh that spits in the face
of grief.
The more I thought of it the more enraged I became. Did I say enraged? I
do not know what passion controlled me. What I do know is that an
inordinate desire for vengeance took possession of me. How could I
revenge myself on a woman? I would have paid any price for a weapon that
could be used against her. But I had none, not even the one she had
employed; I could not pay her in her own coin.
Suddenly I noticed a shadow moving behind the curtain before the closet.
I had forgotten her.
"Listen to me!" I cried, rising. "I have loved, I have loved like a fool.
I deserve all the ridicule you have subjected me to. But, by Heaven! I
will show you something that will prove to you that I am not such a fool
as you think."
With these words I pulled aside the curtain and exposed the interior of
the closet. The girl was trying to conceal herself in a corner.
"Go in, if you choose," I said to Desgenais; "you who call me a fool for
loving a woman, see how your teaching has affected me. Do you think I
passed last night under the windows of -----? But that is not all," I
added, "that is not all I have to say. You give a supper to-night, and
to-morrow go to the country; I am with you, and shall not leave you from
now on. We shall not separate, but pass the entire day together. Are you
with me? Agreed! I have tried to make of my heart the mausoleum of my
love, but I will bury my love in another tomb."
With these words I sat down, marveling how indignation can solace grief
and restore happiness. Whoever is astonished to learn that from that day
I completely changed my course of life does not know the heart of man,
and he does not understand that a young man of twenty may hesitate before
taking a step, but does not retreat when he has once taken it.
CHAPTER II
THE apprenticeship to debauchery resembles vertigo, for one feels at
first a sort of terror mingled with sensuous delight as though peering
down from some dizzy height. While shameful secret dissipation ruins the
noblest of men, in frank and open irregularities there is some palliation
even for the most depraved. He who goes at nightfall, muffled in his
cloak, to sully his life incognito, and to clandestinely shake off the
hypocrisy of the day, resembles an Italian who strikes his enemy from
behind, not daring to provoke him to open quarrel. There are
assassinations in the dark corners of the city under shelter of the
night. He who goes his way without concealment says: "Every one does it
and conceals it; I do it and do not conceal it." Thus speaks pride, and
once that cuirass has been buckled on, it glitters with the refulgent
light of day.
It is said that Damocles saw a sword suspended over his head. Thus
libertines seem to have something over their heads which says "Go on, but
I hold the thread." Those masked carriages that are seen during carnival
are the faithful images of their life. A dilapidated open wagon, flaming
torches lighting up painted faces; such laugh and sing. Among them you
see what appears to be women; they are in fact the remains of women, with
human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they
are or what their names. All that floats and staggers under the flaming
torch in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is
said, a god watches.
But if the first impression is astonishment, the second is horror, and
the third pity. There is displayed there so much force, or rather such an
abuse of force, that it often happens that the noblest characters and the
strongest constitutions are ruined. It appears hardy and dangerous to
these; they would make prodigies of themselves; they bind themselves to
debauchery as did Mazeppa to his horse; they gallop, they make Centaurs
of themselves, and they see neither the bloody trail that the shreds of
their flesh leave, nor the eyes of the wolves that gleam in hungry
pursuit, nor the desert, nor the vultures.
Launched into that life by the circumstances that I have recounted, I
must now describe what I saw there.
The first time I had a close view of one of those famous gatherings
called theatrical masked balls I heard the debauchery of the Regency
spoken of, and the time when a queen of France was disguised as a flower
merchant. I found there flower merchants disguised as camp-followers. I
expected to find libertinism there, but in fact I found none at all. It
is only the scum of libertinism, some blows and drunken women lying in
deathlike stupor on broken bottles.
The first time I saw debauchery at table I heard of the suppers of
Heliogabalus and of the philosophy of Greece which made the pleasure of
the senses a kind of religion of nature. I expected to find oblivion or
something like joy; I found there the worst thing in the world, ennui
trying to live, and an Englishman who said: "I do this or that, therefore
I amuse myself. I have spent so many pieces of gold, therefore I
experience so much pleasure." And they wear out their life on that
grindstone.
The first time I saw courtesans I heard of Aspasia who sat on the knees
of Alcibiades while discussing philosophy with Socrates. I expected to
find something bold and insolent, but gay, free, and vivacious, something
of the sparkle of champagne; I found a yawning mouth, a fixed eye and
hooked hands.
The first time I saw titled courtesans I read Boccaccio and Andallo;
tasting of everything, I read Shakespeare. I had dreamed of those
beautiful triflers; of those cherubim of hell. A thousand times I had
drawn those heads so poetically foolish, so enterprising in audacity,
heads of harebrained mistresses who spoil a romance with a glance and who
walk through life by waves and by shocks like the undulating sirens; I
thought of the fairies of the modern tales who are always drunk with love
if not with wine. I found, instead, writers of letters, arrangers of
precise hours who practise lying as an art and cloak their baseness under
hypocrisy, whose only thought is to give themselves and forget.
The first time I looked on the gaming table I heard of floods of gold, of
fortunes made in the quarter of an hour, and of a lord of the court of
Henry IV who won on one card a hundred thousand _louis_. I found a narrow
room where workmen who had but one shirt, rented a suit for the evening
for twenty _sous_, police stationed at the door and starving wretches
staking a crust of bread against a pistol-shot.
The first time I saw an assembly, public or other, open to one of those
thirty thousand women who are permitted to sell themselves in Paris, I
heard of the saturnalia of all times, of every imaginable orgy, from
Babylon to Rome, from the temple of Priapus to the _Parc-aux-Cerfs_, and
I have always seen written on the sill of that door the word, "Pleasure."
I found nothing suggestive of pleasure but in its place the word,
"Prostitution;" and it has always appeared ineffaceable, not graven in
that metal that takes the sun's light, but in the palest of all, that of
the cold light whose colors seem tinted by the somber hues of night,
silver.
The first time I saw the people--it was a frightful morning of Ash
Wednesday, near Courtille. A cold fine rain had been falling since the
evening before; the streets were covered with pools of water. Masked
carriages filed hither and thither, crowding between hedges of hideous
men and women standing on the sidewalks. That sinister wall of spectators
had tiger eyes, red with wine, gleaming with hatred. The carriage wheels
splashed mud over this wall, but it did not move. I was standing on the
front seat of an open carriage; from time to time a man in rags would
step out from the wall, hurl a torrent of abuse at us, then cover us with
a cloud of flour. Mud would soon follow; yet we kept on our way toward
the Isle of Love and the pretty wood of Romainville consecrated by so
many sweet kisses. One of my friends fell from his seat into the mud,
narrowly escaping death on the paving. The people threw themselves on him
to overpower him and we were obliged to hasten to his assistance. One of
the trumpeters who preceded us on horseback was struck on the shoulder by
a paving stone; the flour had given out. I had never heard of anything
like that.
I began to understand the time and comprehend the spirit of the age.
CHAPTER III
DESGENAIS had planned a reunion of young people at his country house. The
best wines, a splendid table, gaming, dancing, hunting, nothing was
lacking. Desgenais was rich and generous. He combined antique hospitality
with modern custom. Moreover one could always find in his house the best
books; his conversation was that of a man of learning and culture. He was
a problem.
I took with me a taciturn humor that nothing could overcome; he respected
it scrupulously. I did not reply to his questions and he dropped the
subject; he was satisfied that I had forgotten my mistress. Nevertheless,
I went to the chase and appeared at the table and was as convivial as the
best; he asked no more.
One of the most unfortunate proclivities of inexperienced youth is to
judge of the world from first impressions; but it must be confessed that
there is a race of men who are very unfortunate; it is that race which
says to youth: "You are right in believing in evil, and we know what it
is." I have heard, for example, a curious thing spoken of, a medium
between good and evil, a certain arrangement between heartless women and
men worthy of them; they call love the passing sentiment. They speak of
it as of an engine constructed by a wagon builder or a building
contractor. They said to me: "This and that are agreed upon, such and
such phrases are spoken and certain others are repeated in reply; letters
are written in a prescribed manner, the knees adjusted in a certain
attitude." All that was regulated as a parade; these fine fellows had
gray hair.
That made me laugh. Unfortunately for me I can not tell a woman whom I
despise that I love her, even when I know that it is only a convention
and that she will not be deceived by it. I have never bent my knee to the
ground when my heart did not go with it. So that class of women known as
easy is unknown to me, or if I allow myself to be taken with them, it is
without knowing it, and through simplicity.
I can understand that one's soul can be put aside but not that it should
be handled. That there is some pride in this, I confess, but I do not
intend either to boast or to lower myself. Above all things I hate those
women who laugh at love and I permit them to reciprocate the sentiment;
there will never be any dispute between us.
Such women are beneath the courtesans, for courtesans may lie as well as
they; but courtesans are capable of love and those women are not. I
remember a woman who loved me and who said to a man many times richer
than I with whom she was living: "I am weary of you, I am going to my
lover." That woman is worth more than many others who are not despised by
society.
I passed the entire season with Desgenais, and learned that my mistress
had left France; that news left in my heart a feeling of languor which I
could not overcome.
At the sight of that world which surrounded me, so new to me, I
experienced at first a kind of bizarre curiosity, at once sad and
profound, that caused me to look at things as does a restless horse. An
incident occurred which made a deep impression on me.
Desgenais had with him a very beautiful mistress who loved him much. One
evening as I was walking with him I told him that I considered her such
as she was, that is to say, admirable, as much on account of her
attachment for him as because of her beauty. In short, I praised her
highly and with warmth, giving him to understand that he ought to be
happy.
He made no reply. It was his manner, for he was the driest of men. That
night when all had retired and I had been in bed some fifteen minutes I
heard a knock at my door. I supposed it was some one of my friends who
could not sleep and invited him to enter.
There appeared before my astonished eyes a woman, very pale, carrying a
bouquet in her hands to which was attached a piece of paper bearing these
words: "To Octave, from his friend Desgenais."
I had no sooner read these words when a flash of light came to me. I
understood the meaning of this action of Desgenais in making me this
Turk's gift. It was intended for a lesson in love. That woman loved him,
I had praised her and he wished to tell me that I ought not to love her,
whether I refused her or accepted her.
That made me think. The poor woman was weeping and did not dare dry her
tears for fear I would see them. What threat had he used to make her
come? I did not know. I said to her:
"You may return and fear nothing."
She replied that if she should return Desgenais would send her back to
Paris.
"Yes," I replied, "you are beautiful and I am susceptible to temptation;
but you weep, and your tears not being shed for me, I care nothing for
the rest. Go, therefore, and I will see to it that you are not sent back
to Paris."
One of my peculiarities is that meditation, which with the great number
is a firm and constant quality of the mind, is in my case an instinct
independent of the will and it seizes me like an access of passion. It
comes to me at intervals in its own good time, in spite of me and in
almost any place. But when it comes I can do nothing against it. It takes
me whither it pleases by whatever route seems good to it.
When the woman had left, I sat up.
"My friend," I said to myself, "behold what has been sent you. If
Desgenais had not seen fit to send you his mistress he would not have
been mistaken, perhaps, in supposing that you might fall in love with
her.
"Have you well considered it? A sublime and divine mystery is
accomplished. Such a being costs nature the most vigilant maternal care;
yet man who would cure you, can think of nothing better than to offer you
lips which belong to him in order to teach you how to cease to love.
"How was it accomplished? Others than you have doubtless admired her, but
they ran no risk. She might employ all the seduction she pleased; you
alone were in danger.
"It must be that Desgenais has a heart, since he lives. In what respect
does he differ from you? He is a man who believes in nothing, fears
nothing, who knows no care or ennui, perhaps, and yet it is clear that a
scratch on the finger would fill him with terror, for if his body
abandons him, what becomes of him? He lives only in the body. What sort
of creature is that who treats his soul as the flagellants treat their
bodies? Can one live without a head?
"Think of it. Here is a man who possesses the most beautiful woman in the
world; he is young and ardent; he finds her beautiful and tells her so;
she replies that she loves him. Some one touches him on the shoulder and
says to him 'She is unfaithful.' Nothing more, he is sure of himself. If
some one had said: 'She is a poisoner,' he would, perhaps, have continued
to love her, he would not have given her a kiss less; but she is
unfaithful and it is no more a question of love with him than of the star
of Saturn.
"What is there in that word? A word that is merited, positive, withering,
it is agreed. But why? It is still but a word. Can you kill a body with a
word?
"And if you love that body? Some one pours a glass of wine and says to
you: 'Do not love that, for you can get four for six francs.' And if you
become intoxicated?
"But that Desgenais loves his mistress, since he keeps her; he must,
therefore, have a peculiar fashion of loving? No, he has not; his fashion
of loving is not love, and he cares no more for the woman who merits
affection than for her who is unworthy. He loves no one, simply and
truly.
"What has led him to that? Was he born thus? To love is as natural as to
eat and to drink. He is not a man. Is he a dwarf or a giant? What! always
that impassive body? Upon what does he feed, what brew does he drink?
Behold him at thirty as old as the senile Mithridates; the poisons of
vipers are his familiar friends.
"There is the great secret, my child, the key to which you must seize. By
whatever process of reasoning debauchery may be defended, it will be
proven that it is natural at a given day, hour or evening, but not
to-morrow nor every day. There is not a people on earth which has not
considered woman either the companion and consolation of man or the
sacred instrument of life, and has not under these two forms honored her.
And yet here is an armed warrior who leaps into the abyss that God has
dug with his own hands between man and brute; as well might he deny the
fact. What mute Titian is this who dares repress under the kisses of the
body the love of the thought, and place on human lips the stigma of the
brute, the seal of eternal silence?
"There is a word that should be studied. There breathes under the wind of
those dismal forests that are called secrets of the body, one of those
mysteries that the angels of destruction whisper in the ear of night as
it descends upon the earth. That man is better or worse than God has made
him. His bowels are like those of sterile women, where nature has not
completed her work, or there is distilled in the shadow some venomous
poison.
"Ah! yes, neither occupation nor study have been able to cure you, my
friend. To forget and to learn, that is your device. You finger the
leaves of dead books; you are too young for ruins. Look about you, the
pale herd of men surrounds you. The eyes of the sphinx glitter in the
midst of divine hieroglyphics; decipher the book of life! Courage,
scholar, launch out on the Styx, the invulnerable flood, and let the
waves of sorrow waft you to death or to God."
CHAPTER IV
"ALL there was of good in that, supposing there was some good in it, was
that false pleasures were the seeds of sorrow and of bitterness which
fatigued me to the point of exhaustion." Such are the simple words spoken
with reference to his youth by that man who was the most a man of any who
have lived, Saint Augustine. Of those who have done as I, few would say
those words, all have them in their hearts; I have found no others in
mine.
Returning to Paris in the month of December I passed the winter attending
pleasure parties, masquerades, suppers, rarely leaving Desgenais, who was
delighted with me; I was not with him. The more I went about, the more
unhappy I became. It seemed to me after a short enough time, that the
world, which had at first appeared so strange, would tie me up, so to
speak, at every step; where I had expected to see a specter, I
discovered, upon closer inspection, a shadow.
Desgenais asked what was the matter with me.
"And you?" I asked. "What is the matter with you? You have lost some
relative? Or do you suffer from some wound?"
At times he seemed to understand me and did not question me. We sat down
before a table and drank until we lost our heads; in the middle of the
night we took horses and rode ten or twelve leagues into the country;
returning we went to the bath, then to table, then to gambling, then to
bed; and when I reached mine, I fell on my knees and wept. That was my
evening prayer.
Strange to say, I took pride in passing for what I was not, I boasted of
being worse than I really was, and experienced a sort of melancholy
pleasure in doing so. When I had actually done what I claimed, I felt
nothing but ennui, but when I invented an account of some folly, some
story of debauchery or recital of an orgy with which I had nothing to do,
it seemed to me that my heart was better satisfied, although I know not
why.
Whenever I joined a party of pleasure-seekers and we visited some spot
made sacred by tender associations I became stupid, went off by myself,
looked gloomily at the trees and bushes as though I would like to crush
them under my feet. Upon my return I would remain silent for hours.
The baleful idea that truth is nudity beset me on every occasion.
"The world," I said to myself, "is accustomed to call his disguise
virtue, his chaplet religion, his flowing mantle convenience. Honor and
Morality are his chamber-maids; he drinks in his wine the tears of the
poor in spirit who believe in him; while the sun is high in the heavens
he walks about with downcast eye; he goes to church, to the ball, to the
assembly, and when evening has come he removes his mantle and there
appears a naked bacchante with hoofs of a goat."
But such thoughts aroused a feeling of horror, for I felt that if the
body was under the clothing, the skeleton was under the body. "Is it
possible that that is all?" I asked in spite of myself. Then I returned
to the city, I saw a little girl take her mother's arm and I became like
a child.
Although I had followed my friends into all manner of dissipation, I had
no desire to resume my place in the world of society. The sight of women
caused me intolerable pain; I could not touch a woman's hand without
trembling. I had decided never to love again.
Nevertheless I returned from the ball one evening so sick at heart that I
feared that it was love. I happened to have beside me at supper the most
charming and the most distinguished woman whom it had ever been my good
fortune to meet. When I closed my eyes to sleep I saw her image before
me. I thought I was lost, and I at once resolved that I would avoid
meeting her again. A sort of fever seized me and I lay on my bed for
fifteen days, repeating over and over the lightest words I had exchanged
with her.
As there is no spot on earth where one is so well known by his neighbors
as at Paris, it was not long before people of my acquaintance who had
seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being a great libertine. In
that I admired the discernment of the world: in proportion as I had
passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the time of my rupture with my
mistress, I was now considered insensible and hardened. Some one had just
told me that it was clear I had never loved that woman, that I had
doubtless merely played at love, thereby paying me a compliment which I
really did not deserve; but the most of it was that I was so swollen with
vanity that I was charmed with that view.
My desire was to pass for blase, even while I was filled with desires and
my exalted imagination was carrying me beyond all limits. I began to say
that I could not make any headway with the women; my head was filled with
chimeras which I preferred to realities. In short, my unique pleasure
consisted in altering the nature of facts. If a thought were but
extraordinary, if it shocked common sense, I became its ardent champion
at the risk of advocating the most dangerous sentiments.
My greatest fault was imitation of everything that struck me, not by its
beauty but by its strangeness, and not wishing to confess myself an
imitator I resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original.
According to my idea nothing was good or even tolerable; nothing was
worth the trouble of turning the head, and yet when I had become warmed
up in a discussion it seemed as if there was no expression in the French
language violent enough to sustain my cause; but my warmth would subside
as soon as my opponents ranged themselves on my side.
It was a natural consequence of my conduct. Although disgusted with the
life I was leading I was unwilling to change it:
Simigliante a quella 'nferma
Che non puo trovar posa in su le piume,
Ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma.--DANTE.
Thus I tortured my mind to give it change and I fell into all these
vagaries in order to get out of myself.
But while my vanity was thus occupied, my heart was suffering, so that
there was always within me a man who laughed and a man who wept. It was a
perpetual counter-stroke between my head and my heart. My own mockeries
frequently caused me great pain and my deepest sorrows aroused a desire
to burst into laughter.
One day a man boasted of being proof against superstitious fears, in
fact, fear of every kind; his friends put a human skeleton in his bed and
then concealed themselves in an adjoining room to wait for his return.
They did not hear any noise, but in the morning they found him dressed
and sitting on the bed playing with the bones; he had lost his reason.
There would be in me something that resembled that man but for the fact
that my favorite bones were those of a well-beloved skeleton; they were
the debris of my love, all that remained of the past.
But it must not be supposed that there were no good moments in all this
disorder. Among Desgenais's companions were several young men of
distinction, a number of artists. We sometimes passed together delightful
evenings under pretext of being libertines. One of them was infatuated
with a beautiful singer who charmed us with her fresh and melancholy
voice. How many times we sat listening while supper was served and
waiting! How many times, when the flagons had been emptied, one of us
held a volume of Lamartine and read in a voice choked by emotion! Every
other thought disappeared. The hours passed by unheeded. What strange
libertines we were! We did not speak a word and there were tears in our
eyes.
Desgenais especially, habitually the coldest and driest of men, was
inexplicable on such occasions; he delivered himself of such
extraordinary sentiments that he might have been considered a poet in
delirium. But after these effusions he would be seized with furious joy.
He would break everything within reach when warmed by wine; the genius of
destruction stalked forth armed to the teeth. I have seen him pick up a
chair and hurl it through a closed window.
I could not help making a study of that singular man. He appeared to me
the marked type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was
unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the
despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a spoiled child.
During the fete, in particular, he was in such a state of nervous
excitation that he acted like a schoolboy. He persuaded me to go out on
foot with him one day, muffled in grotesque costumes, with masks and
instruments of music. We promenaded gravely all night, in the midst of a
most frightful din of horrible sounds. We found a driver asleep on his
box and unhitched his horses; then pretending we had just come from the
ball, set up a great cry. The coachman started up, cracked his whip and
his horses started off on a trot, leaving him seated on the box. The same
evening we passed through the Champs Elysees; Desgenais, seeing another
carriage passing, stopped it after the manner of a highwayman; he
intimidated the coachman by threats and forced him to climb down and lie
flat on his stomach. He then opened the carriage door and found within a
young man and lady motionless with fright. Whispering to me to imitate
him, we began to enter one door and go out the other, so that in the
obscurity the poor young people thought they saw a procession of bandits
going through their carriage.
As I understand it, the men who say that the world gives experience ought
to be astonished if they are believed. The world is merely a number of
whirlpools, each one whirling independent of the others; they float about
in groups like flocks of birds. There is no resemblance between the
different quarters of the same city, and the denizen of the Chausee
d'Antin has as much to learn at Marais as at Lisbon. It is true that
these whirlpools are traversed, and have been since the beginning of the
world, by seven personages who are always the same: the first is called
hope; the second, conscience; the third, opinion; the fourth, desire; the
fifth, sorrow; the sixth, pride; and the seventh, man.
We were, therefore, my companions and I, a flock of birds, and we
remained together until springtime, sometimes singing, sometimes flying.
"But," the reader objects, "where are the women in all this? I see
nothing of debauchery here."
O! creatures who bear the name of women and who have passed like dreams
through a life that was itself a dream, what shall I say of you? Where
there is no shadow of hope can there be memory? Where shall I seek for
memory's meed? What is there more dumb in human memory? What is there
more completely forgotten than you?
If I must speak of women I will mention two; here is one of them:
I ask what would be expected of a poor sewing-girl, young and pretty,
about eighteen, with a romantic affair on her hands that is purely a
question of love; with little knowledge of life and no idea of morals;
eternally sewing near a window before which processions were not allowed
to pass, by order of the police, but near which a dozen women prowled who
were licensed and recognized by these same police; what could you expect
of her, when, after having tired her hands and eyes all day long on a
dress or a hat, she leans out of that window as night falls? That dress
she has sewed, that hat she has trimmed with her poor and honest hands in
order to earn a supper for the household, she sees passing along the
street on the head or on the body of a public woman. Thirty times a day a
hired carriage stops before the door and there steps out a prostitute,
numbered as is the hack in which she rides, who stands before a glass and
primps, taking off and putting on the results of many days' work on the
part of the poor girl who watches her. She sees that woman draw from her
pocket six pieces of gold, she who has but one a week; she looks at her
feet and her head, she examines her dress, and eyes her as she steps into
her carriage; and then, what could you expect? When night has fallen,
after a day when work has been scarce, when her mother is sick, she opens
her door, stretches out her hand and stops a passer-by.
Such was the story of a girl I have known. She could play the piano, knew
something of accounts, a little designing, even a little history and
grammar, and thus a little of everything. How many times have I regarded
with poignant compassion that sad sketch made by nature and mutilated by
society! How many times have I followed in the darkness the pale and
vacillating gleam of a spark flickering in abortive life! How many times
have I tried to revive the fire that smoldered under those ashes! Alas!
her long hair was the color of ashes and we called her Cendrillon.
I was not rich enough to help her; Desgenais, at my request, interested
himself in the poor creature; he made her learn over again all of which
she had a slight knowledge. But she could make no appreciable progress.
When her teacher left her she would fold her arms and for hours look
silently across the public square. What days! What misery! One day I
threatened that if she did not work she should have no money; she
silently resumed her task and I learned that she stole out of the house a
few minutes later. Where did she go? God knows. Before she left I asked
her to embroider a purse for me. I still have that sad relic, it hangs in
my room a monument of the ruin that is wrought here below.
But here is another case:
It was about ten in the evening when, after a riotous day, we repaired to
Desgenais, who had left us some hours before to make his preparations.
The orchestra was ready and the room filled when we arrived.
Most of the dancers were girls from the theaters. As soon as we entered I
plunged into the giddy whirl of the waltz. That delightful exercise has
always been dear to me; I know of nothing more beautiful, more worthy of
a beautiful woman and a young man; all dances compared with the waltz are
but insipid conventions or pretexts for insignificant converse. It is
truly to possess a woman, in a certain sense, to hold her for a half hour
in your arms, and to draw her on in the dance, palpitating in spite of
herself, in such a way that it can not be positively asserted whether she
is being protected or seduced. Some deliver themselves up to the pleasure
with such modest voluptuousness, with such sweet and pure abandon that
one does not know whether he experiences desire or fear, and whether, if
pressed to the heart they would faint or break in pieces like the rose.
Germany, where that dance was invented, is surely the land of love.
I held in my arms a superb danseuse from an Italian theater who had come
to Paris for the carnival; she wore the costume of a bacchante, with a
dress of panther's skin. Never have I seen anything so languishing as
that creature. She was tall and slender, and while dancing with extreme
rapidity, had the appearance of allowing herself to be led; to see her
one would think that she would tire her partner, but such was not the
case, for she moved as though by enchantment.
On her bosom rested an enormous bouquet, the perfume of which intoxicated
me. She yielded to my encircling arms as does the Indian liana, with a
gentleness so sweet and so sympathetic that I seemed surrounded with a
perfumed veil of silk. At each turn there could be heard a light tinkling
from her metal girdle; she moved so gracefully that I thought I beheld a
beautiful star, and her smile was that of a fairy about to vanish from
human sight. The tender and voluptuous music of the dance seemed to come
from her lips, while her head, covered with a wilderness of black
tresses, bent backward as though her neck was too slender to support its
weight.
When the waltz was over I threw myself on a chair; my heart beat wildly.
"O, Heaven!" I murmured, "how can it be possible! O, superb monster! O,
beautiful reptile! How you writhe, how you coil in and out, sweet adder,
with supple and spotted skin! Thy cousin the serpent has taught thee to
coil about the tree of life, holding between thy lips the apple of
temptation. O, Melusina! Melusina! The hearts of men are thine. You know
it well, enchantress, with your soft languor that seems to suspect
nothing! You know very well that you ruin, that you destroy, you know
that he who touches you will suffer; you know that he dies who basks in
your smile, who breathes the perfume of your flowers and comes under the
magic influence of your charms; that is why you abandon yourself so
freely, that is why your smile is so sweet, your flowers so fresh; that
is why you so gently place your arms on our shoulders. O, Heaven! what is
your will with us?"
Professor Halle has said a terrible thing: "Woman is the nervous part of
humanity, man the muscular." Humboldt himself, that serious thinker, has
said that an invisible atmosphere surrounds the human nerves. I do not
quote the dreamers who watch the flight of Spallanzani's bat, and who
think they have found a sixth sense in nature. Such as nature is, her
mysteries are terrible enough, her powers mighty enough, that nature
which creates us, mocks at us, and kills us, without deepening the
shadows that surround us. But where is the man who has lived who will
deny woman's power over us, if he has ever taken leave of a beautiful
dancer with trembling hands. If he has ever felt that indefinable
enervating magnetism which, in the midst of the dance, under the
influence of the sound of music, and the warmth that makes all else seem
cold, that comes from a young woman, that electrifies her and leaps from
her to him as the perfume of aloes from the swinging censer? I was struck
with stupor. I was familiar with a certain sensation similar to
drunkenness, which characterizes love; I knew that it was the aureole
which crowned the well-beloved. But that she should excite such
heart-throbs, that she should evoke such fantoms with nothing but her
beauty, her flowers, her motley costume, and a certain trick of turning
she had learned from some merry-andrew; and that without a word, without
a thought, without even appearing to know it! What was chaos if it
required seven days to transform it?
It was not love, however, that I felt, and I do not know how to describe
it unless I call it thirst. For the first time I felt vibrating in my
body a cord that was not attuned to my heart. The sight of that beautiful
animal had aroused a responsive roar from another animal in my bowels. I
felt sure I would never tell that woman that I loved her or that she
pleased me or even that she was beautiful; there was nothing on my lips
but a desire to kiss her, and say to her: "Make a girdle of those
listless arms and lean that head on my breast; place that sweet smile on
my lips." My body loved hers, I was under the influence of beauty as of
wine.
Desgenais passed and asked what I was doing there.
"Who is that woman?" I asked.
"What woman? Of whom do you speak?" I took his arm and led him into the
hall. The Italian saw us coming and smiled. I stopped and stepped back.
"Ah!" said Desgenais, "you have danced with Marco?"
"Who is Marco?" I asked.
"Why, that idle creature who is laughing over there. Does she please
you?"
"No," I replied, "I have waltzed with her and wanted to know her name; I
have no further interest in her."
Shame led me to speak thus, but when Desgenais turned away I followed
him.
"You are very prompt," he said, "Marco is no ordinary woman. She was
almost the wife of M. de -----, ambassador to Milan. One of his friends
brought her here. Yet," he added, "you may rest assured I shall speak to
her. We shall not allow you to die so long as there is any hope for you
or any resource left untried. It is possible that she will remain to
supper."
He left me, and I was alarmed to see him approach her. But they were soon
lost in the crowd.
"Is it possible," I murmured, "have I come to this? O, heavens! is this
what I am going to love? But after all," I thought, "my senses have
spoken, but not my heart."
Thus I tried to calm myself. A few minutes later Desgenais tapped me on
the shoulder.
"We shall go to supper at once," said he. "You will give your arm to
Marco; she knows that she has pleased you and it is all arranged."
"Listen," I said; "I hardly know what I experienced. It seems to me I see
limping Vulcan covering Venus with kisses while his beard smokes with the
fumes of the forge. He fixes his affrighted eyes on the dazzling skin of
his prey. His happiness in the possession of his prize causes him to
laugh for joy, and at the same time shudder with happiness, and then he
remembers his father, Jupiter, who is seated up on high among the gods."
Desgenais looked at me but made no reply; taking me by the arm he led me
away.
"I am tired," he said, "and I am sad; this noise wearies me. Let us go to
supper, that will refresh us."
The supper was splendid, but I could not touch it.
"What is the matter with you?" asked Marco.
But I sat like a statue, making no reply and looking at her from head to
foot with amazement.
She began to laugh, and Desgenais, who could see us from his table,
joined her. Before her was a large crystal glass, cut in the shape of a
chalice, which reflected the glittering lights on its thousand sparkling
facets, shining like the prism and revealing the seven colors of the
rainbow. She listlessly extended her arm and filled it to the brim with
Cyprian and a sweetened Oriental wine which I afterward found so bitter
on the deserted Lido.
"Here," she said, presenting it to me, "_per voi, bambino mio_."
"For you and for me," I said, presenting her my glass in turn.
She moistened her lips while I emptied my glass, unable to conceal the
sadness she seemed to read in my eyes.
"Is it not good?" she asked.
"No," I replied.
"Perhaps your head aches?"
"No."
"Or you are tired?"
"No."
"Ah! then it is the ennui of love?"
With these words she became serious, for in spite of herself, in speaking
of love, her Italian heart beat the faster.
A scene of folly ensued. Heads were becoming heated, cheeks were assuming
that purple hue with which wine colors the face as though to prevent
shame from appearing there; a confused murmur like to that of a rising
sea could be heard all over the room, here and there eyes would become
inflamed, then fixed and empty; I know not what wind stirred above this
drunkenness. A woman rose, as in a tranquil sea the first wave that feels
the tempest's breath, and rises to announce it; she makes a sign with her
hand to command silence, empties her glass at a gulp, and with the same
movement undoes her hair, which falls in shining tresses over her
shoulders; she opens her mouth as though to start a drinking song; her
eyes were half closed. She breathed with an effort; twice a harsh sound
came from her throat; a mortal pallor overspread her features and she
dropped into her chair.
Then came an uproar which lasted an hour. It was impossible to
distinguish anything, either laughter, songs or cries.
"What do you think of it?" asked Desgenais.
"Nothing," I replied. "I have stopped my ears and am looking at it."
In the midst of that bacchanal the beautiful Marco remained mute,
drinking nothing and leaning quietly on her bare arm. She seemed neither
astonished nor affected by it.
"Do you not wish to do as they?" I asked. "You have just offered me
Cyprian wine; why do you not drink some yourself?"
With these words I poured out a large glass full to the brim. She raised
it to her lips, and then placed it on the table and resumed her listless
attitude.
The more I studied that Marco, the more singular she appeared; she took
pleasure in nothing and did not seem to be annoyed by anything. It
appeared as difficult to anger her as to please her; she did what was
asked of her, but no more. I thought of the genius of eternal repose, and
I imagined that if that pale statue should become somnambulant it would
resemble Marco.
"Are you good or bad?" I asked. "Are you sad or gay? Are you loved? Do
you wish to be loved? Are you fond of money, of pleasure, of what?
Horses, the country, balls? What pleases you? Of what are you dreaming?"
To all these questions the same smile on her part, a smile that expressed
neither joy nor sorrow, but which seemed to say, "What does it matter?"
and nothing more.
I held my lips to hers; she gave me a listless kiss and then passed her
handkerchief over her mouth.
"Marco," I said, "woe to him who loves you."
She turned her dark eyes on me, then turned them upward, and raising her
finger with that Italian gesture which can not be imitated, she
pronounced that characteristic feminine word of her country:
"_Forse_!"
And then dessert was served. Some of the party had departed, some were
smoking, others gambling, and a few still at table; some of the women
danced, others slept. The orchestra returned; the candles paled and
others were lighted. I recalled a supper of Petronius where the lights
went out around the drunken masters, and the slaves entered and stole the
silver. All the while songs were being sung in various parts of the room,
and three Englishmen, three of those gloomy figures for whom the
continent is a hospital, kept up a most sinister ballad that must have
been born of the fogs of their marshes.
"Come," said I to Marco, "let us go."
She arose and took my arm.
"To-morrow!" cried Desgenais to me, as we left the hall.
When approaching Marco's house, my heart beat violently and I could not
speak. I could not understand such a woman; she seemed to experience
neither desire nor disgust, and could think of nothing but the fact that
my hand was trembling and hers motionless.
Her room was, like her, somber and voluptuous; it was dimly lighted by an
alabaster lamp.
The chairs and sofa were as soft as beds, and there was everywhere
suggestion of down and silk. Upon entering I was struck with the strong
odor of Turkish pastilles, not such as are sold here on the streets, but
those of Constantinople, which are more nervous and more dangerous. She
rang and a maid appeared. She entered an alcove without a word, and a few
minutes later I saw her leaning on her elbow in her habitual attitude of
nonchalance.
I stood looking at her. Strange to say, the more I admired her, the more
beautiful I found her, the more rapidly I felt my desires subside. I do
not know whether it was some magnetic influence or her silence and
listlessness. I lay down on a sofa opposite the alcove and the coldness
of death settled on my soul.
The pulsation of the blood in the arteries is a sort of clock, the
ticking of which can be heard only at night. Man, abandoned by exterior
objects, falls back upon himself; he hears himself live. In spite of my
fatigue I could not close my eyes; those of Marco were fixed on me; we
looked at each other in silence, gently, so to speak.
"What are you doing there?" she asked.
She heaved a gentle sigh that was almost a plaint. I turned my head and
saw that first gleams of morning light were shining through the window.
I arose and opened the window; a bright light penetrated every corner of
the room. The sky was clear.
I motioned to her to wait. Considerations of prudence had led her to
choose an apartment some distance from the center of the city; perhaps
she had other quarters, for she sometimes received a number of visitors.
Her lover's friends sometimes visited her, and this room was doubtless
only a _petite maison_; it overlooked the Luxembourg, the garden of which
extended as far as my eye could reach.
As a cork held under water seems restless under the hand which holds it,
and slips through the fingers to rise to the surface, thus there stirred
in me a sentiment that I could neither overcome nor escape. The garden of
the Luxembourg made my heart leap and banished every other thought. How
many times had I stretched out on one of those little mounds, a sort
sylvan school, while I read in the cool shade some book filled with
foolish poetry! For such, alas! were the debauches of my childhood. I saw
many souvenirs of the past among those leafless trees and faded lawns.
There, when ten years of age, I had walked with my brother and my tutor,
throwing bits of bread to some of the poor benumbed birds; there, seated
under a tree, I had watched a group of little girls as they danced; I
felt my heart beat in unison with the refrain of their childish song;
there, returning from school, I had followed a thousand times the same
path, lost in contemplation of some verse of Virgil and kicking the
pebbles at my feet. "Oh! my childhood! You are there!" I cried. "O,
Heaven! now I am here."
I turned around. Marco was asleep, the lamp had gone out, the light of
day had changed the aspect of the room; the hangings, which had at first
appeared blue, were now a faded yellow, and Marco, the beautiful statue,
was livid as death.
I shuddered in spite of myself; I looked at the alcove, then at the
garden; my head became drowsy and fell on my breast. I sat down before an
open secretary near one of the windows. A piece of paper caught my eye;
it was an open letter, and I looked at it mechanically. I read it several
times before I thought what I was doing. Suddenly a gleam of intelligence
came to me, although I could not understand everything. I picked up the
paper and read what follows, written in an unskilled hand and filled with
errors in spelling:
"She died yesterday. She began to fail at twelve, the night before. She
called me and said: 'Louison, I am going to join my companion; go to the
closet and take down the cloth that hangs on a nail; it is the mate of
the other.' I fell on my knees and wept, but she took my hand and said:
'Do not weep, do not weep!' And she heaved such a sigh--"
The rest was torn. I can not describe the impression, that sad letter
made on me; I turned it over and saw on the other side Marco's address
and the date, that of the evening previous.
"Is she dead? Who is dead?" I cried, going to the alcove. "Dead! Who?"
Marco opened her eyes. She saw me with the letter in my hand.
"It is my mother," she said, "who is dead. You are not coming?"
As she spoke she extended her hand.
"Silence!" I said; "sleep and leave me to myself."
She turned over and went to sleep. I looked at her for some time to
assure myself that she would not hear me, and then quietly left the
house.
CHAPTER V
ONE evening I was seated by the fire with Desgenais. The window was open;
it was one of the early days in March, a harbinger of spring. It had been
raining and a sweet odor came from the garden.
"What shall we do this spring?" I asked. "I do not care to travel."
"I shall do what I did last year," replied Desgenais. "I shall go to the
country when the time comes."
"What!" I replied. "Do you do the same thing every year? Are you going to
begin life over again this year?"
"What would you expect me to do?"
"What would I expect you to do?" I cried, jumping to my feet. "That is
just like you. Ah! Desgenais, how all this wearies me! Do you never tire
of this sort of life?"
"No," he replied.
I was standing before an engraving of the Madeleine. Involuntarily I
joined my hands.
"What are you doing?" asked Desgenais.
"If I were an artist," I replied, "and wished to represent Melancholy, I
would not paint a dreamy girl with a book in her hands."
"What is the matter with you this evening?" he asked, smiling.
"No, in truth," I continued, "that Madeleine, in tears, has the spark of
hope in her bosom; that pale and sickly hand on which she supports her
head, is still sweet with the perfume with which she anointed the feet of
her Lord. You do not understand that in that desert there are thinking
people who pray. This is not Melancholy."
"It is a woman who reads," he replied dryly.
"And a happy woman," I continued, "and a happy book."
Desgenais understood me; he saw that a profound sadness had taken
possession of me. He asked if I had some secret cause of sorrow. I
hesitated, but did not reply.
"My dear Octave," he said, "if you have any trouble, do not hesitate to
confide in me. Speak freely and you will find that I am your friend!"
"I know it," I replied, "I know I have a friend; that is not my trouble."
He urged me to explain.
"But what will it avail," I asked, "since neither of us can help matters?
Do you want the bottom of my heart or merely a word and an excuse?"
"Be frank!" he said.
"Very well," I replied, "you have seen fit to give me advice in the past
and now I ask you to listen to me as I have listened to you. You ask what
is in my heart and I am about to tell you.
"Take the first comer and say to him: 'Here are people who pass their
lives drinking, riding, laughing, gambling, enjoying all kinds of
pleasures; no barrier restrains them, their law is their pleasure, women
are their playthings; they are rich. They have no cares, not one. All
their days are days of feasting.' What do you think of it? Unless that
man happened to be a severe bigot he would probably reply that that was
the greatest happiness that could be imagined.
"Then take that man into the thick of the action, place him at a table
with a woman on either side, a glass in his hand, a handful of gold every
morning and say to him: 'This is your life. While you sleep near your
mistress, your horses neigh in the stables; while you drive your horses
along the boulevards, your wines are ripening in your vaults; while you
pass away the night drinking, the bankers are increasing your wealth. You
have but to express a wish and your desires are gratified. You are the
happiest of men. But take care lest some night of carousal you drink too
much and destroy the capacity of your body for enjoyment. That would be a
serious misfortune, for all the ills that afflict human flesh can be
cured, except that. You ride some night through the woods with joyous
companions; your horse falls and you are thrown into a ditch filled with
mud, and it may be that your companions, in the midst of their happy
fanfares, will not hear your cry of anguish; it may be that the sound of
their trumpets will die away in the distance while you drag your broken
limbs through the deserted forest. Some night you will lose at the gaming
table; Fortune has its bad days. When you return to your home and are
seated before the fire, do not strike your forehead with your hands, and
do not allow sorrow to moisten your cheeks with tears, do not bitterly
cast your eyes about here and there as though seeking for a friend; do
not, under any circumstances, think of those who, under some thatched
roof, enjoy a tranquil life and who sleep holding each other by the hand;
for before you, on your luxurious bed, will sit a pale creature who
loves--your money. You will seek from her consolation for your grief, and
she will remark that you are very sad and ask if your loss was
considerable; the tears from your eyes will concern her deeply, for they
may be the cause of allowing her dress to grow old or the rings to drop
from her fingers. Do not name him who won your money that night for she
may meet him on the morrow, and she may make sweet eyes at him that would
destroy your remaining happiness. That is what is to be expected of human
frailty; have you the strength to endure it? Are you a man? Beware of
disgust, it is an incurable evil; death is more to be desired than a
living distaste for life. Have you a heart? Beware of love, for it is
worse than disease for a debauchee and it is ridiculous. Debauchees pay
their mistresses, and the woman who sells herself has no right but that
of contempt for the purchaser. Are you passionate? Take care of your
face. It is shameful for a soldier to throw down his arms and for a
debauchee to appear to hold to anything; his glory consists in touching
nothing except with hands of marble that have been bathed in oil in order
that nothing may stick to them. Are you hot-headed? If you desire to
live, learn how to kill, for wine is a wrangler. Have you a conscience?
Take care of your slumber, for a debauchee who repents too late is like a
ship that leaks: it can neither return to land nor continue on its
course; the winds can with difficulty move it, the ocean yawns for it, it
careens and disappears. If you have a body, look out for suffering; if
you have a soul, despair awaits you. O, unhappy one! beware of men; while
they walk along the same path with you, you will seem to see a vast plain
strewn with garlands where a happy throng of dancers trip the gladsome
_furandole_ standing in a circle, each a link in an endless chain; it is
but a mirage; those who look down know that they are dancing on a silken
thread stretched over an abyss that swallows up all who fall and shows
not even a ripple on its surface. What foot is sure? Nature herself seems
to deny you her divine consolation; trees and flowers are yours no more;
you have broken your mother's laws, you are no longer one of her
foster-children, the birds of the field become silent when you appear.
You are alone! Beware of God! You are face to face with Him, standing
like a cold statue upon the pedestal of will. The rain from heaven no
longer refreshes you, it undermines and weakens you. The passing wind no
longer gives you the kiss of life, the benediction on all that lives and
breathes; it buffets you and makes you stagger. Every woman who kisses
you, takes from you a spark of life and gives you none in return; you
exhaust yourself on fantoms; wherever falls a drop of our sweat, there
springs up one of those sinister weeds that grow in graveyards. Die! You
are the enemy of all, who love; blot yourself from the face of the earth,
do not wait for old age; do not leave a child behind you, do not
fecundate a drop of your corrupted blood; vanish as does the smoke, do
not deprive a single blade of living grass of a ray of sunlight!'"
When I had spoken these words, I fell back in my chair and a flood of
tears streamed from my eyes.
"Ah! Desgenais," I cried, sobbing, "this is not what you told me. Did you
not know it? And if you did, why did you not tell me of it?"
But Desgenais sat still with folded hands; he was as pale as a shroud and
a long tear trickled down his cheek.
A moment of silence ensued. The clock struck; I suddenly remembered that
it was this hour and this day, one year ago, that my mistress deceived
me.
"Do you hear that clock?" I cried, "do you hear it? I do not know what it
means at this moment, but it is a terrible hour and one that will count
in my life."
I was beside myself and scarcely knew what I was saying. But that instant
a servant rushed into the room; he took my hand and led me aside,
whispering in my ear:
"Sir, I have come to inform you that your father is dying; he has just
been seized with an attack of apoplexy and the physicians despair of his
life."
PART III
CHAPTER I
MY father lived in the country, some miles from Paris. When I arrived, I
found a physician at the door who said to me:
"You are too late; your father expressed a desire to see you before he
died."
I entered and saw my father dead. "Sir," I said to the physician, "please
have every one retire that I may be alone here; my father had something
to say to me, and he will say it."
In obedience to my order the servants left the room. I approached the bed
and raised the shroud which already covered the face. But when my eyes
fell on that face, I stooped to kiss it and lost consciousness.
When I recovered, I heard some one say:
"If he requests it, you must refuse him on some pretext or other."
I understood that they wanted to get me away from the bed of death and so
I feigned that I had heard nothing. When they saw that I was resting
quietly, they left me. I waited until the house was quiet and then took a
candle and made my way to my father's room. I found there a young priest
seated near the bed.
"Sir," I said, "to dispute with an orphan the last vigil at a father's
side, is a bold enterprise. I do not know what your orders may be. You
may remain in the adjoining room; if anything happens, I alone am
responsible."
He retired. A single candle on the table shone on the bed. I sat down in
the chair the priest had just left and again uncovered those features I
was to see for the last time.
"What do you wish to say to me, father?" I asked. "What was your last
thought concerning your child?"
My father had a book in which he was accustomed to write from day to day
the record of his life. That book lay on the table and I saw that it was
open; I kneeled before it; on the open page were these words and no more:
"Adieu, my son, I love you and I die."
I did not shed a tear, not a sob came from my lips; my throat was swollen
and my mouth sealed; I looked at my father without moving.
He knew my life, and my irregularities had caused him much sorrow and
anxiety. He did not refer to my future, to my youth and my follies. His
advice had often saved me from some evil course, and had influenced my
entire life, for his life had been one of singular virtue and kindness. I
supposed that before dying he wished to see me, to try once more to turn
me from the path of error; but death had come too swiftly; he felt that
he could express all he had to say in one word and he wrote in his book
that he loved me.
CHAPTER II
A SMALL wooden railing was placed around my father's grave. According to
his expressed wish, he was buried in the village cemetery. Every day I
visited his tomb and passed part of the day on a little bench in the
interior of the vault. The rest of the time I lived alone in the house in
which he died and I kept with me only one servant.
Whatever sorrows the passions may cause, the woes of life are not to be
compared with those of death. My first thought, as I sat beside my
father's bedside, was that I was a helpless child, knowing nothing,
understanding nothing; I can not say that my heart felt physical pain,
but I sometimes bent over and wrung my hands as one who wakens from a
long sleep.
During the first months of my life in the country I had no thought of
either the past or the future. It did not seem to be I who had lived up
to that time; what I felt was not despair, and in no way resembled the
terrible grief I had experienced in the past; there was a sort of languor
in every action, a sense of fatigue with all of life, a poignant
bitterness that was eating out my heart. I held a book in my hand all day
long but I did not read, I did not even know what I dreamed about. I had
no thoughts; within, all was silence; I had received such a violent blow,
and yet one that was so prolonged in its effect, that I remained a purely
passive being and there seemed to be no reaction.
My servant, Larive by name, had been much attached to my father; he was,
after my father himself, probably the best man I have ever known. He was
the same height and wore the clothes my father had left him, having no
livery.
He was about the same age, that is, his hair was turning gray, and during
the twenty years he had lived with my father, he had learned some of his
ways. While I was pacing up and down the room after dinner, I heard him
doing the same in the hall; although the door was open, he did not enter
and not a word was spoken; but from time to time we would look at each
other and weep. The entire evening would pass thus, and it would be late
in the night before I would ask for a light, or get one myself.
Everything about the house was left unchanged, not a piece of paper was
moved. The great leather armchair in which my father sat, stood near the
fire; his table and his books, just as he left them; I respected even the
dust on these articles, which in life, he never liked to see disturbed.
The walls of that solitary house, accustomed to silence and the most
tranquil life, seemed to look down on me in pity as I sat in my father's
chair, enveloped in his dressing-gown. A feeble voice seemed to whisper:
"Where is the father? It is plain to see that this is an orphan."
I received several letters from Paris and replied to each that I desired
to pass the summer alone in the country, as my father was accustomed to
do. I began to realize that in all evil there is some good, and that
sorrow, whatever else may be said of it, is a means of repose. Whatever
the message brought by those who are sent by God, they always accomplish
the happy result of awakening us from the sleep of the world, and when
they speak, all are silent. Passing sorrows blaspheme and accuse Heaven;
great sorrows neither accuse nor blaspheme, they listen.
In the morning, I passed entire hours in the contemplation of nature. My
windows overlooked a valley in the midst of which arose the village
steeple; all was plain and calm. Spring, with its budding leaves and
flowers, did not produce on me the sinister effect of which the poets
speak, who find in the contrasts of life the mockery of death. I looked
upon that frivolous idea, if it was serious and not a simple antithesis
made in pleasantry, as the conceit of a heart that has known no real
experience. The gambler who leaves the table at break of day, his eyes
burning and hands empty, may feel that he is at war with nature like the
torch at some hideous vigil; but what can the budding leaves say to a
child who mourns a lost father? The tears of his eyes are sisters of the
rose; the leaves of the willow are themselves tears. It is when I look at
the sky, the woods and the prairies, that I understand men who seek
consolation.
Larive had no more desire to console me than to console himself. At the
time of my father's death he feared I would sell the property and take
him to Paris. I did not know what he had learned of my past life, but I
had noticed his anxiety, and, when he saw me settle down in the old home,
he gave me a glance that went to my heart. One day I had a large portrait
of my father sent from Paris, and placed it in the dining-room. When
Larive entered the room to serve me, he saw it; he hesitated, looked at
the portrait, and then at me, in his eyes there shone a melancholy joy
that I could not fail to understand. It seemed to say: "What happiness!
We are to suffer here in peace!"
I gave him my hand which he covered with tears and kisses.
He looked upon my grief as the mistress of his own. When I visited my
father's tomb in the morning I found him there watering the flowers; when
he saw me he went away and returned home. He followed me in my rambles;
when I was on my horse I did not expect him to follow me, but when I saw
him trudging down the valley, wiping the sweat from his brow, I bought a
small horse from a peasant and gave it to him; thus we rode through the
woods together.
In the village were some people of our acquaintance who frequently
visited my father. My door was closed to them, although I regretted it;
but I could not see any one, with patience. Some time, when sure to be
free from interruption, I hoped to examine my father's papers. Finally,
Larive brought them to me, and untying the package with trembling hand,
spread them before me.
Upon reading the first pages, I felt in my heart that vivifying freshness
that characterizes the air near a lake of cool water; the sweet serenity
of my father's soul exhaled as a perfume from the dusty leaves I was
unfolding. The journal of his life lay open before me; I could count the
diurnal throbbings of that noble heart. I began to yield to the influence
of a dream that was both sweet and profound, and in spite of the serious
firmness of his character, I discovered an ineffable grace, the flower of
kindness. While I read, the recollection of his death mingled with the
narrative of his life, I can not tell with what sadness I followed that
limpid stream until its waters mingled with those of the ocean.
"Oh! just man," I cried, "fearless and stainless! what candor in thy
experience! Thy devotion to thy friends, thy admiration for nature, thy
sublime love of God, this is thy life, there is no place in thy heart for
anything else. The spotless snow on the mountain's summit is not more
pure than thy saintly old age, thy white hair resembles it. Oh! father,
father! Give thy snowy locks to me, they are younger than my blond head.
Let me live and die as thou hast lived and died. I wish to plant in the
soil over your grave the green branch of my young life, I will water it
with my tears, and the God of orphans will protect that sacred twig
nourished by the grief of youth and the memory of age."
After having read these precious papers I classified them and arranged
them in order. I formed a resolution to write a journal myself. I had one
made just like that of my father's, and, carefully searching out the
minor details of his life, I tried to conform my life to his. Thus
whenever I heard the clock strike the hour, tears came to my eyes:
"This," said I, "is what my father did at this hour," and whether it was
reading, walking, or eating, I never failed to follow his example. Thus I
accustomed myself to a calm and regular life; there was an indefinable
charm about this orderly life that did me good. I went to bed with a
sense of comfort and happiness, such as I had not known for a long time.
My father spent much of his time about the garden; the rest of the day
was devoted to walking and study, a nice adjustment of bodily and mental
exercise.
At the same time, I followed his example in doing little acts of
benevolence among the unfortunate. I began to search for those who were
in need of my assistance, and there were many of them in the valley. I
soon became known among the poor; my message to them was: "When the heart
is good, sorrow is sacred!" For the first time in my life I was happy,
God blessed my tears, and sorrow taught me virtue.
CHAPTER III
ONE evening, as I was walking under a row of linden-trees on the
outskirts of the village, I saw a young woman come from a house some
distance from the road. She was dressed simply and veiled so that I could
not see her face; but her form and her carriage seemed so charming that I
followed her with my eyes for some time. As she was crossing a field, a
white goat, running at liberty through the grass, ran to her side; she
caressed it softly, and looked about as though searching for some
favorite herb to feed it. I saw near me some wild mulberry; I plucked a
branch and stepped up to her holding it in my hand. The goat watched my
approach with apprehension; he was afraid to take the branch from my
hand. His mistress made a sign as though to encourage him, but he looked
at her with an air of anxiety; she then took the branch from my hand and
the goat promptly accepted it from hers. I bowed, and she passed on her
way.
On my return home, I asked Larive if he knew who lived in the house I
described to him; it was a small house, modest in appearance, with a
garden. He recognized it; there were but two people in the house, an old
woman who was very religious, and a young woman whose name was Madame
Pierson. It was she I had seen. I asked him who she was and if she ever
came to see my father. He replied that she was a widow, that she led a
retired life, and that she had visited my father, but rarely. When I had
learned all he knew, I returned to the lindens and sat down on a bench.
I do not know what feeling of sadness came over me as I saw the goat
approaching me. I arose from my seat, and, for distraction, I followed
the path I had seen Madame Pierson take, a path that led to the
mountains.
It was nearly eleven in the evening before I thought of returning; as I
had walked some distance, I directed my steps toward a farmhouse,
intending to ask for some milk and bread. Drops of rain began to splash
at my feet, announcing a thunder-shower which I was anxious to escape.
Although there was a light in the house and I could hear the sound of
feet going and coming through the house, no one responded to my knock,
and I walked around to one of the windows to ascertain if there was any
one within.
I saw a bright fire burning in the lower hall; the farmer, whom I knew,
was sitting near his bed; I knocked on the window-pane and called to him.
Just then the door opened and I was surprised to see Madame Pierson, who
inquired who was there.
I waited a moment, in order to conceal my astonishment. I then entered
the house and asked permission to remain until the storm should pass. I
could not imagine what she was doing at such an hour in this deserted
spot; suddenly, I heard a plaintive voice from the bed, and turning my
head, I saw the farmer's wife lying there with the mark of death on her
face.
Madame Pierson, who had followed me, sat down before the old man who was
bowed down with sorrow; she made me a sign to make no noise as the sick
woman was sleeping. I took a chair and sat in a corner until the storm
passed.
While I sat there, I saw her rise from time to time and whisper something
to the farmer. One of the children, whom I took upon my knee, said that
she came every night since the mother's illness. She performed the duties
of a sister of charity--there was no one else in the country who could do
it; there was but one physician, and he was very inferior.
"That is Brigitte la Rose," said the child; "do you not know her?"
"No," I replied in a low voice. "Why do you call her by such a name?"
He replied that he did not know, unless it was because she had been rosy
and the name had clung to her.
As Madame Pierson had laid aside her veil, I could see her face; when the
child left me I raised my head. She was standing near the bed, holding in
her hand a cup which she was offering the sick woman, who had awakened.
She appeared to be pale and thin; her hair was ashen blond. Her beauty
was not of the regular type. How shall I express it? Her large, dark eyes
were fixed on those of her patient, and those eyes, that shone with
approaching death, returned her gaze. There was, in that simple exchange
of kindness and gratitude, a beauty that can not be described.
The rain was falling in torrents; a heavy darkness settled over the
lonely mountain-side, pierced by occasional flashes of lightning. The
noise of the storm, the roaring of the wind, the wrath of the unchained
elements, made a deep contrast with the religious calm which prevailed in
the little cottage. I looked at the wretched bed, at the broken windows,
the puffs of smoke forced from the fire by the tempest, I observed the
helpless despair of the farmer, the superstitious terror of the children,
the fury of the elements besieging the bed of death; and when, in the
midst of all that, I saw that gentle, pale-faced woman, going and coming,
bravely meeting the duties of the moment regardless of the tempest, and
of our presence, it seemed to me there was in that calm performance
something more serene than the most cloudless sky, and that there was
something superhuman about this woman who, surrounded by such horrors,
did not for an instant, lose her faith in God.
What woman is this, I wondered; whence comes she and how long has she
been here? A long time since, they remember when her cheeks were rosy.
How is it I have never heard of her? She comes to this spot alone, and at
this hour? Yes, she has traversed these mountains and valleys through
storm and fair weather, she goes hither and thither, bearing life and
hope wherever they fail, holding in her hand that fragile cup, caressing
her goat as she passes. And this is what has been going on in this valley
while I have been dining and gambling; she was probably born here, and
will be buried in a corner of the cemetery, by the side of her father.
Thus will that obscure woman die, a woman of whom no one speaks and of
whom the children say: "Do you not know her?"
I can not express what I experienced; I sat quietly in my corner,
scarcely breathing, and it seemed to me that if I had tried to assist
her, if I had reached out my hand to spare her a single step, I would
have been guilty of sacrilege, I would have touched sacred vessels.
The storm lasted two hours. When it subsided, the sick woman sat up in
her bed and said that she felt better, that the medicine she had taken
had done her good. The children ran to the bedside, looking up into their
mother's face with great eyes that expressed both surprise and joy.
"I am very sure you are well," said the husband, who had not stirred from
his seat, "for we have had a mass celebrated, and it cost us a large
sum."
At that coarse and stupid expression, I glanced at Madame Pierson; her
swollen eyes, her pallor, her attitude, all clearly expressed fatigue and
the exhaustion of long vigils.
"Ah! my poor man!" said the farmer's wife, "may God reward you!"
I could hardly contain myself, I was so angered by the stupidity of these
brutes who were capable of crediting the work of charity to the avarice
of a cure. I was about to reproach them for their ingratitude and treat
them as they deserved, when Madame Pierson took one of the children in
her arms and said with a smile:
"You may kiss your mother, for she is saved."
I stopped when I heard these words.
Never, was the naive contentment of a happy and benevolent heart painted
in such beauty on so sweet a face. Fatigue and pallor seemed to be gone,
she became radiant with joy.
A few minutes later, Madame Pierson told the children to call the
farmer's boy to conduct her home. I advanced to offer my services; I told
her that it was useless to awaken the boy as I was going in the same
direction, and that she would do me an honor by accepting my offer. She
asked me if I was not Octave de T-----.
I replied that I was, and that she doubtless remembered my father. It
struck me as strange that she should smile at that question; she
cheerfully accepted my arm and we set out on our return.
CHAPTER IV
WE walked along without a word; the wind was lowering; the trees quivered
gently, shaking the rain from the boughs. Some distant flashes of
lightning could still be seen; the perfume of humid verdure filled the
warm air. The sky soon cleared and the moon illumined the mountain.
I could not help thinking of the freakishness of chance, which had seen
fit to make me the solitary companion of a woman, of whose existence I
knew nothing a few hours before. She had accepted me as her escort on
account of the name I bore, and leaned on my arm with quiet confidence.
In spite of her distracted air, it seemed to me that this confidence was
either very bold or very simple; and she must needs be either the one or
the other, for at each step, I felt my heart becoming at once proud and
innocent.
We spoke of the sick woman she had just left, of the scenes along the
route; it did not occur to us to ask the questions incident to a new
acquaintance. She spoke to me of my father, and always in the same tone I
had noted when I first revealed my name--that is, cheerfully, almost
gaily. By degrees, I thought I understood why she did this, observing
that she spoke thus of all, both living and dead, of life and of
suffering and death. It was because human sorrows had taught her nothing
that could accuse God, and I felt the piety of her smile.
I told her of the solitary life I was leading. Her aunt, she said, had
seen more of my father than she, as they sometimes played cards together
after dinner. She urged me to visit them, assuring me a welcome.
When about half-way home, she complained of fatigue and sat down to rest
on a bench that the heavy foliage had protected from the rain. I stood
before her and watched the pale light of the moon playing on her face.
After a moment's silence, she arose and in a constrained manner observed:
"Of what are you thinking? It is time for us to think of returning."
"I was wondering," I replied, "why God created you, and I was saying to
myself that it was for the sake of those who suffer."
"That is an expression, which, coming from you, I can not look upon
except as a compliment."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you appear to be very young."
"It sometimes happens," I said, "that one is older than the face would
seem to indicate."
"Yes," she replied, smiling, "and it sometimes happens that one is
younger than his words would seem to indicate."
"Have you no faith in experience?"
"I know that it is the name most young men give to their follies and
their disappointments; what can one know at your age?"
"Madame, a man of twenty may know more than a woman of thirty. The
liberty which men enjoy, enables them to see more of life and its
experiences than women; they go wherever they please and no barrier
restrains them; they test life in all its phases. When inspired by hope,
they press forward to achievement; what they will, they accomplish. When
they have reached the end, they return; hope has been lost on the route,
and happiness has broken its word."
As I was speaking, we reached the summit of a little hill which sloped
down to the valley; Madame Pierson, yielding to the downward tendency,
began to trip lightly down the incline. Without knowing why, I did the
same, and we ran down the hill, arm in arm; the long grass under our feet
retarded our progress. Finally, like two birds, spent with flight, we
reached the foot of the mountain.
"Behold!" cried Madame Pierson, "just a short time ago I was tired, but
now I am rested. And, believe me," she added, with a charming smile, "you
should treat your experience as I have treated my fatigue. We have made
good time and will enjoy supper the more on that account."
CHAPTER V
I WENT to call upon her the next morning. I found her at the piano, her
old aunt at the window sewing, the little room filled with flowers, the
sunlight streaming through the blinds, a large bird-cage at her side.
I expected to find her somewhat religious, at least one of those women of
the provinces who know nothing of what happens two leagues away, and who
live in a certain narrow circle from which they never escape. I confess
that such isolated life, which is found here and there in small towns,
under a thousand unknown roofs, had always produced on me the effect of
stagnant pools of water; the air does not seem respirable: in everything
on earth that is forgotten, there is something of death.
On Madame Pierson's table were some papers and new books; they looked as
though they had not been more than touched. In spite of the simplicity of
everything around her, of furniture and dress, it was easy to recognize
mode, that is to say, life; she did not live for this alone, but that
goes without saying. What struck me in her taste was, that there was
nothing bizarre, everything breathed of youth and pleasantness. Her
conversation indicated a finished education; there was no subject on
which she could not speak well and with ease. While admitting that she
was naive, it was evident that she was at the same time profound in
thought and fertile in resource; an intelligence, at once broad and free,
soared gently over a simple heart and over the habits of a retired life.
The sea-swallow, whirling through the azure heavens, soars thus over the
blade of grass that marks its nest.
We talked of literature, music, and even politics. She had visited Paris
during the winter; from time to time, she dipped into the world; what she
saw there served as a basis for what she divined.
But her distinguishing trait was gaiety, a cheerfulness that, while not
exactly joy itself, was constant and unalterable; it might be said that
she was born a flower, and that her perfume was gaiety.
Her pallor, her large dark eyes, her manner at certain moments, all led
me to believe that she had suffered. I know not what it was that seemed
to say that the sweet serenity of her brow was not of this world, but had
come from God, and that she would return it to him spotless in spite of
man; and there were times when she reminded one of the careful housewife,
who, when the wind blows, holds her hand before the candle.
When I had been in the house half an hour, I could not help saying what
was in my heart. I thought of my past life, of my disappointment and my
ennui; I walked to and fro, breathing the fragrance of the flowers, and
looking at the sun. I asked her to sing, and she did so with good grace.
In the meantime, I leaned on the window sill and watched the birds
flitting about the garden. A saying of Montaigne's came into my head: "I
neither love nor esteem sadness although the world has invested it, at a
given price, with the honor of its particular favor. They dress up in it
wisdom, virtue, conscience. Stupid and absurd adornment."
"What happiness!" I cried in spite of myself. "What repose! What joy!
What forgetfulness of self!"
The good aunt raised her head and looked at me with an air of
astonishment; Madame Pierson stopped short. I became red as fire when
conscious of my folly, and sat down without a word.
We went out into the garden. The white goat I had seen the evening before
was lying in the grass; it came up to her and followed us about the
garden.
When we reached the end of the garden walk, a large young man with a pale
face, clad in a kind of black cassock, suddenly appeared at the railing.
He entered without knocking, and bowed to Madame Pierson; it seemed to me
that his face, which I considered a bad omen, darkened a little when he
saw me. He was a priest I had often seen in the village, and his name was
Mercanson; he came from St. Sulpice and was related to the cure of the
parish.
He was large and at the same time pale, a thing which always displeased
me and which is, in fact, unpleasant; it impresses one as a sort of
diseased healthfulness. Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of
speaking that characterizes the pedant. Even his manner of walking, which
was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it
might be said that he had none. I do not know what to think of a man
whose eyes have nothing to say. These are the signs which led to an
unfavorable opinion of Mercanson, an opinion which was unfortunately
correct.
He sat down on a bench and began to talk about Paris, which he called the
modern Babylon. He had been there, he knew every one; he knew Madame de
B-----, who was an angel; he had preached sermons in her salon and was
listened to on bended knee. (The worst of this was, that it was true.)
One of his friends, who had introduced him there, had been expelled from
school for having seduced a girl; a terrible thing to do, very sad. He
paid Madame Pierson a thousand compliments for her charitable deeds
throughout the country; he had heard of her benefactions, her care for
the sick, her vigils at the bed of suffering and of death. It was very
beautiful and noble; he would not fail to speak of it at St. Sulpice. Did
he not seem to say that he would not fail to speak of it to God?
Wearied by this harangue, in order to conceal my rising disgust, I sat
down on the grass and began to play with the goat. Mercanson turned on me
his dull and lifeless eye:
"The celebrated Vergniand," said he, "was afflicted with that mania of
sitting on the ground and playing with animals."
"It is a mania," I replied, very innocently. "If there were none others,
the world would get along without so much meddling on the part of
others."
My reply did not please him; he frowned and changed the subject. He was
charged with a commission; his uncle, the cure, had spoken to him of a
poor devil who was unable to earn his daily bread. He lived in such and
such a place; he had been there himself and was interested in him; he
hoped that Madame Pierson--
I was looking at her while he was speaking, wondering what reply she
would make and hoping she would say something in order to drown out the
memory of the priest's voice with her gentle tones. She merely bowed, and
he retired.
When he had gone our gaiety returned. We entered a greenhouse in the rear
of the garden.
Madame Pierson treated her flowers as she did her birds and her peasants,
everything about her must be well cared for, each flower must have its
drop of water and ray of sunlight in order that she might be gay and
happy as an angel; so nothing could be in better condition than her
little greenhouse. When we had made the round of the building she said:
"This is my little world; you have seen all I possess, and my domain ends
here."
"Madame," I said, "as my father's name has secured for me the favor of
admittance here, p
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