Laurence felt herself in a country with which she was acquainted; she was no longer afraid; she had resumed her freedom of manner and gave vent to bursts of hearty laughter. Her familiar words, her easy gestures, filled her with satisfaction. She was perfectly at home in her present atmosphere.
This was what I wished, but I had hoped that a month of tranquillity, even though it had not succeeded in reforming her, had at least led her to forget somewhat her former ways. I had imagined that, when the mask fell, the face it would disclose would have less pallor about the lips and more blushes upon the cheeks. I was mistaken. The mask fallen, I had before me the same faded features, the same thick and noisy laugh. As this woman was when she entered my mansarde, rough, vulgar and cynical, so I again found her, after I had for a month protested against the infamy of her past life, silently to be sure, but every day. She had learned nothing, she had forgotten nothing. If her eyes shone with a new expression, it was only because of the miserable joy she felt on seeing that I seemed, at last, to have come down to her level. In view of this strange result, I asked myself if it would not be simply a waste of time to try again. I had wished for a real Laurence, and this Laurence, through whom ran a breath of life, terrified me more, perhaps, than the mournful creature of the past month. But the struggle promised to be so sharp that I heard, in the depths of my being, my audacity of twenty revolt at my repugnance and my fright.
As six o'clock struck, although the ball would not begin until midnight, Laurence began to make her toilet. Soon the chamber was in complete disorder: water, splashing from the wash-basin and dripping from the wet towels, flooded the floor; soap lather, fallen from Laurence's hands, spread out upon the planks in whitish patches; the comb was on the floor near the hair brush, and various articles of clothing, forgotten upon the chairs, on the mantelpiece and in the corners, were soaking amid pools of water. Laurence, to be more at her ease, had squatted down. She was washing herself energetically, throwing handfuls of water in her face and upon her shoulders. Despite this deluge, the soap, covered with dust, left broad streaks of dirt on her skin. At this she was in despair. Finally, she emptied the entire contents of the wash-basin over her.
Then she arose, shivering, her shoulders red, and began to use the towel.
The key had remained in the lock of the door. As Laurence was rubbing her neck with the icy towel, Pâquerette came in. The old woman visited us occasionally to get a stick or two from the hearth with which to kindle her fire, and pity prevented me from driving her off in disgust.
"Ah! my dear," cried Laurence to her, "come and help me a little. I'm tired of this wretched rubbing."
Pâquerette took the towel, and began to rub with all the strength of her wasted arms. She did not seem astonished at either the disorder of the chamber or Laurence's wholesale preparations for the ball. She quietly passed her stiff hands over the girl's fresh looking shoulders, envying their whiteness, thinking of the pleasures of the past. Laurence, her head half turned around, smiled upon her and shivered by fits.
"Where are you going, my child?" at last asked the horrible old woman.
"Claude has invited me to go to the ball."
"Ah! that's as it should be, Monsieur," resumed Pâquerette, ceasing to ply the towel and turning towards me.
Then, taking up a dry towel, she continued, as she affectionately wiped Laurence's arms:
"I said to myself only this morning that you would soon die of sadness, if you persisted in always remaining shut up in this chamber. Laurence is a good girl, Monsieur, a very good girl and a kind-hearted and indulgent one into the bargain. I know more than one such who would have quitted you twenty times, if subjected to the same treatment that Laurence has undergone for the past month. She is a miracle of patience and devotion to have remained. There, my child, you are as dry as a bone and as beautiful as a butterfly. You will have hosts of handsome and attentive gallants at the ball to-night! Are you jealous, Claude?"
I could not answer her. I smiled mechanically, and continued to gaze upon the strange scene. A single engrossing recollection, which unceasingly presented itself to my mind, prevented me from hearing what the old woman said. It was that of an antiquated engraving, which I had seen I know not where, representing Venus at her toilet, bathed by nymphs, caressed by little Cupids. The goddess has abandoned herself to the arms of her women, as young and beautiful as herself; the foam of the waves partially covers them, and, on the shore, an old faun stands lost in mute admiration and astonishment at the sight of so much youth and freshness.
"He is jealous, he is jealous!" cried Pâquerette, with a sharp laugh, broken by hiccoughs. "So much the better for you, my girl; he will make you more presents and it will be much easier for you to fool him. I once had an admirer, who strongly resembled you, Monsieur. He was a trifle shorter, I think, but he had the same eyes, the same mouth; he even wore his hair combed back, as you do. He adored me, overwhelmed me with attention and followed me everywhere, but, nevertheless, I dismissed him at the end of a week."
While Pâquerette was chattering, Laurence had dressed herself. She combed her hair, standing before the looking-glass, serious and thoughtful. The old woman stood beside her, as straight as a lance; she had ceased to babble, and was enviously contemplating the packages of rouge, and the vials of aromatic oils, common perfumery bought at a low price at stands in the open air. The two women having forgotten me, I sat down in a corner.
I saw their images in the looking-glass. Both the faces, despite the wrinkles of the one and the relative freshness of the other, seemed to me to have the same expression of degradation and baseness. The same looks stamped with dissipation, the same pale lips, were common to each. One could hardly read upon their faded cheeks the number of years which separated their ages. They were equally old in sin. For an instant I thought that I was endeavoring to reform Pâquerette instead of Laurence, and I closed my eyes to banish her from my sight.
They had forgotten that I existed. Occasionally they spoke in whispers. Laurence swore, striking her foot violently on the floor, when one of her rebellious locks refused to curl. Then the old woman spoke of her own flaxen tresses of other days; she described the style of coiffure of the girls of her time, and, to make herself better understood, arranged in her turn her gray locks before the looking-glass. Then followed long eulogies upon my companion's youth, endless lamentations in regard to the weariness of old age. Pâquerette said that her wrinkles had come to her long before she was ready for them, and that she greatly regretted not having enjoyed herself more when she was twenty. Now, she must live slowly in silence and gloom, having at heart a jealous admiration for those who could yet grow old.
Laurence listened, but only asked questions, demanding if such and such a curl became her, seeking for new praises. Then, when her locks, so long toiled over, had been satisfactorily arranged, her face was to be painted. Pâquerette wished to put the finishing touch to the masterpiece. She took red and blue pigments upon little balls of wadding, and passed them along the cheeks and around the eyes of the young woman. She enlarged her eyelids, purified her forehead and gave health to her lips. And, like us, poor dreamers, who daub reality with discordant colors and afterwards cry out that we have made a creation, she was amazed at her work, without seeing that her trembling hand had confused the features, exaggerated the red of the lips and made the eyelids too large. Beneath her fingers Laurence's visage had horribly changed, I thought. It had acquired in spots dull and earthy tints, while in other spots, which had been rubbed with ointment put on to fix the rouge, it shone with tremendous brilliancy. The stretched and irritated skin grimaced; the entire face, at once red and faded, had the silly smile of pasteboard dolls. The tones were so loud and so false that they wounded the sight.
Laurence, straight and motionless, her glance partially turned towards the looking-glass, complacently allowed herself to be rejuvenated. She scratched off with her finger-nail the touches which seemed to her too prominent. Leaning forward, she gravely studied for several seconds each of the beauties which Pâquerette gave her.
The work finished, the old woman drew back a few paces the better to scrutinize what she had done and note its effect. Then, satisfied, she exclaimed:
"Ah! my child, you look like a girl of fifteen!"
Laurence smiled contentedly. Both of these creatures were sincere; they frankly admired, not doubting in the least that a miracle had been worked. Then, they remembered me. Laurence, proud of the restored charms of her fifteenth year, came to embrace me, wishing to dazzle my eyes with her newly-acquired beauty. Her bare shoulders had the fresh and peculiar odor of a person who has just come out of a bath. At the touch of her cold lips, damp with rouge, I shivered with disgust.
"Bear me in mind, my child," said Pâquerette, as she was leaving the room. "Old women like sweetmeats."
We had yet two full hours to wait. I have no remembrance of any weariness so terrible. This waiting for a pleasure which clashed with all my tastes was indescribably uncomfortable and sad, and Laurence's impatience retarded still more for me the slow march of the minutes.
She was seated upon the bed, in her costume of pink satin ornamented with gilt spangles; this tinsel had the strangest effect in the world, brought into bold relief by the smoky paper on the chamber walls. The lamp burned dimly, the silence was broken only by the dashing of the rain against the window panes. Brothers, I do not know what demon then took possession of me, but I must admit to you, who know all my thoughts and feelings, that, sitting in the presence of that woman, abandoned by my cherished ideas, I caught myself wishing Laurence young and beautiful; I desired the power to transform my miserable mansarde into a delicious and mysterious retreat, a veritable nest for ideal happiness, with every surrounding of luxury and magnificence. For the moment, I lost all higher aspirations. What disgusted me was no longer vice, but ugliness and poverty.
At last, I went for a carriage and we started for the ball. Despite the lateness of the hour, the streets were still full of noise and light. Bursts of laughter came from every corner, groups of drunkards and women were in each drinking house. Nothing could be more odious to see than the people running in the mud, and elbowing each other amid the refrains of bacchanalian songs. Laurence, leaning out of the carriage window, laughed heartily at this disgusting joy. She called to the passers-by, seeking insult, happy at being able to participate in a war of rough words. As I remained mute, she said to me:
"Well! what on earth are you doing? Do you intend to go to sleep while you are taking me to the ball?"
I leaned out of the window in my turn; I sought for some one to insult. I would willingly have struck one of those brutes who were amused by such a spectacle as I then saw. Before me, upon the sidewalk, stood a tall young man with his shirt unbuttoned at the throat; a circle of laughers surrounded him, applauding each one of the many oaths he uttered. I shook my fist menacingly at him, for I was terribly exasperated. I hurled at him, as we went along, the most offensive epithets I could summon up.
"And your wife!" cried he, in reply. "Put her out here a little while, that we may pay her our compliments!"
The rough words of this man changed my anger into an indescribable sadness. I closed the window and leaned my forehead against the damp glass, leaving Laurence to her wretched pleasure. I was, so to speak, rocked by the cries of the crowd and the hollow roll of the vehicle. I saw, with the vague sight of a dream, the passers flee behind me, strange shadows which lengthened and vanished without presenting any meaning to my mind. And, in this din, in this quick succession of darkness and light, I remember that I forgot everything for an instant, and gazed dreamily into the pools of water and mud between the pavements, upon which the lamps of the shops cast rapid reflections.
It was thus that we reached the ball-room.
To-morrow, brothers, I will tell you the rest. I cannot write everything now.
CHAPTER XII
THE PUBLIC BALL
Oh! my remembrances, faithful companions, I cannot take a step in this world but you rise before me! When, with Laurence on my arm, I cast from a gallery a rapid glance around the ball-room full of noise and light, I saw again, in a sudden and sad vision, the smooth, stone-paved floor upon which the girls of Provence dance, in the evening, to the music of the fife and tambourine! How we used to ridicule them! The peasant girls, not those of our dreams, those who had the faces and the hearts of queens, but poor creatures whom the ardent soil had faded before their time, seemed to us to bound heavily, casting us silly smiles as they lumbered by. We closed our eyes against reality. We saw, beyond the horizon, immense palaces, halls paved with marble, with lofty and gilded roofs, filled with a whole nation of young women, who danced with the utmost harmony, in a cloud of lace spangled with diamonds. Truly, we were foolish children. Now, brothers, the peasant girls have taken vengeance for our disdain.
I beheld, from the gallery in which I found myself, a sort of oblong hall, of quite large dimensions, ornamented with faded paintings and gilding. A fine dust, raised by the dancers' feet, ascended slowly from the floor, like a mist, and filled the place. The bright flames of the gas looked red in this cloud; everything had a vague appearance, a strange hue of old copper. At the further end of the hall, galloped a frightful circle of creatures who could not be seen distinctly; the fury of their movements seemed to communicate itself to the thick and nauseous air; in the whirl, I thought I saw the walls tremble and turn with the crowd. A piercing clamor, accompanied by a sort of prolonged roll, drowned the music of the orchestra.
I cannot describe to you the first impressions produced on me by this place, in which each thing had in my eyes a special and unknown life. The shrill noises, the sonorous laughter bursting out like sobs, the frightful contortions of the furious dancers, the biting and suffocating odors, all came to me in a sharp sensation which filled my being with a vague terror, with which was mingled a sad pleasure. I could not laugh, for I felt my throat close, and yet I was unable to turn away my head, so delirious was the joy I experienced amid my suffering. I now understand the fascination of these exciting soirées. At the first sight one trembles, one refuses to lend himself to the terrible gayety; then intoxication comes, and, with bewildered brain, one abandons himself to the gulf. Common souls are soon won over. Those who have the strength of their dreams—dare I, brothers, count myself among them?—revolt, and, in their frankness, regret the humble dancing-floors of Provence upon which the awkward and lumbering peasant girls dance in the fresh, clear night.
From the gallery in which we were, we could see only the general effect of the scene. We quitted it, descending the stairways and reaching the main floor by passing through narrow and dark passages. Arrived in the ball-room, we were forced to follow a slender path contrived between the walls and the quadrilles. All my pleasure was gone; I now felt only disgust. The women were clad in tatters, in ragged silks spangled with dirty brass; their bare shoulders were dripping with perspiration; paint, in broad pools, in long streaks, reddened and blued their skin. One of them, with an inflamed visage and a hoarse voice, turned towards me, gesticulating and shouting. What a strange, hideous face she had! I shall see it again in my bad dreams!
I do not remember having noticed the men. They were, it seems to me, for the most part, standing straight and motionless, looking with great calmness at the tumultuous bounds of the women. I cannot tell you what kind of people they were, or if they appeared to comprehend the extent of their idiocy.
Weary already, feeling my head ready to split, I reached a table, dragging Laurence after me. We sat down, and I drank what the waiter brought me, studying my companion.
Laurence, at her entrance, had smiled, quivering with enjoyment, breathing her fill of that vitiated air so sweet to her lips. Her smile soon vanished and her countenance resumed its mournful look. Sometimes, she put out her arm and touched the hand of a woman or a man who passed. On such occasions her smile reappeared for a few seconds, and then vanished again. Partially thrown back upon her chair, her feet resting on a small bench, she rocked herself slowly, gazing into the ball-room with an air at once attentive and wearied. She looked from group to group in silence, turning her head at each new noise, seeming to wish to let nothing escape her. But there was so much fatigue in her attention that I asked myself, as I saw her pale and desolate face, what singular pleasure she could be experiencing to show so little of it.
Twice, thinking that my presence was a clog to her, I told her to leave me if she liked, to mingle with and greet her friends, to dance in perfect freedom.
"Why should I get up?" she tranquilly answered me. "I am very comfortable and perfectly satisfied. Are you weary of having me beside you?"
It was thus that we passed five hours, face to face, in a corner of the ball-room, I unconsciously sketching men's figures on the marble top of the table with a few drops of liquor spilled from a decanter, she maintaining despairing gravity and silence, her hands crossed upon her lap. I no longer had the least comprehension of what was going on around me. As the ball was drawing towards its close, I felt more like suffocating than ever. This was the last sensation that I remember having experienced. When the final galop drew me from this species of deep stupor, I saw Laurence arise; she swore and kicked aside the little bench, which had become entangled among her skirts; then, she took my arm, and we made a final tour of the ball-room before departing. Upon the threshold, Laurence turned with a yawn, casting a last look at the disordered circle of dancers who were vociferating in the midst of a frightful din.
When we reached the street, an icy blast, which struck me in the face, gave me a delicious feeling. I felt that I was restored to the good, to free and energetic life; the intoxication which had possessed me was driven away, and, beneath the drizzling winter rain, I had an instant of ineffable pleasure, casting from me all the disgusts of the mad night. I comprehended the wretchedness I had left behind me; I would have preferred to go home on foot through the streets, allowing the glacial water to penetrate me and renew my being.
Laurence shivered at my side. She had fastened her handkerchief over her bare shoulders; not daring to venture on, she looked in a despairing way at the sombre sky and at the gutters which were overflowing upon the pavements. The poor girl thought the wintry sky capable only of giving her inflammation of the lungs.
I had two francs left. I hailed a fiacre and helped Laurence into it. She gathered herself up in one of the corners and there sat silently, without ceasing to shiver. I saw her on my left, like a patch of tarnished white. Sometimes, a drop of water, which had remained upon her garments, rolled as far as my hand.
After an instant had elapsed, a sort of drowsiness seized upon me and sleep closed my eyes. As I dozed, I seemed to hear the din of the ball; the jolts of the vehicle whirled me away as in a furious dance, and the axle-trees, with their sharp noise, played those airs which all night long had filled my ears. When, feverish and excited, I opened my eyes, I stared stupidly at the sides of the narrow box which seemed to me full of music and tumult. Then, I felt a biting sensation of cold; finding beneath my hand the icy hand of Laurence, I remembered where I had been and realized where I was. Without, the rain was still falling; the flickering lights fled rapidly behind us.
Fatigue once more made me close my eyes, and again I was drawn into the midst of gigantic circles of dancers, incessantly renewed. It seems to me now that I remember vaguely having danced thus for long hours. I found myself nailed to a bench, beside a shivering woman, and I whirled I know not how in a sort of box which rolled with a tremendous noise at the bottom of a glacial gulf.
Having ascended to my chamber, while Laurence was taking off her costume, I threw all my remaining wood upon the fire, which was faintly burning upon the hearth. Then, I hastened to bed, happy as a child to find myself again amid my poverty, gazing with loving glances at the broad lights and shadows which the flames of the hearth caused to dance up and down along my poor walls. Calmness had taken possession of me from the moment I crossed the threshold of this retired chamber. With my head upon the pillow, at peace and almost smiling, I gazed at my companion who, standing pensively before the fire, was removing her garments one by one.
She soon came to me, and sat down at my feet on the edge of the bed. Breaking, at last, the silence which she had maintained until then, she began to talk with extreme volubility.
Enveloped in an old wrapper, with her feet drawn up under her and her hands clasped in front of her knees, she indulged in loud bursts of laughter, throwing her head backwards. She seemed to be in haste to throw off all the words, all the gayety, she had amassed. For nearly a whole hour she entertained me with a recital of the thousand incidents of the ball. She had seen everything, heard everything. She gave vent to exclamations without end, sudden joys, hurried and tumultuous reminiscences. A man had slipped in such a way, a woman had sworn in such another way; Jeanne wore a milkmaid's costume which became her marvellously; Louise looked hideous as a Scotch lassie; as to Edouard, he had certainly pawned his watch that very morning. And she rattled on, always finding some new detail, repeating the same circumstance ten times rather than pause. Then, shivering with cold, she finally went to bed. She asserted that she had never before been so much amused at a ball, and made me promise to take her to another as soon as I possibly could. She fell asleep thus, while still talking to me, laughing amid her slumber.
This sudden awakening to life, this flood of feverish words, strangely astonished me. I could not then and I cannot now explain to myself the coldness and indolence of this girl amid the tumult of the night, and her bursts of gayety, her chatter of the morning in our sad and silent chamber. Why had she torn from me the promise to take her as soon and as often as possible to these balls, where she laughed so little and did not dance at all? Besides, if she were acting in good faith, what was that singular joy which had manifested itself by silence and ill-humor during the soirée, and, later, had broken out in thick and delighted laughter?
Oh! what an unknown world is that of the flesh and dissipation, in which I find food for amazement at every step! I dare not as yet critically examine all this wretchedness, the motives of this puzzling woman, cold in her feelings, weary and half asleep amid her joys! I took her to the ball to save her, but she had come back from it more terrible, more impenetrable than ever!
CHAPTER XIII
AN ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY
You complain of my silence; you are uneasy, and ask me what new sorrows have made the pen fall from my fingers.
Brothers, my new sorrows are caused by the fact that our ridiculous fancies of childhood are being dissipated one by one. This adieu to early hopes has, in its salutary harshness, the most profound bitterness. I feel myself becoming a man; I weep over my departing weaknesses, taking, at the same time, a great pride in the strength I am acquiring.
Ah! how silly youth would be, if it had not its beautiful simplicity! The foolishness upon the lips of the child is an adorable ignorance by which men are quietly amused. Scarcely a month ago, I was a simpleton; I spoke to you innocently of the redemption of women. Verily, to have heard me, an old man would at once have smiled his sweetest smile and ironically shaken his head: he would have given the smile to the young soul who had faith in entire perfection, and addressed the shake of the head to the absurd youth who was boldly attempting the miracle which the Saviour alone has the power to work.
Enough of deceptions! The brutal truth has strange delights for those who are tormented by the problem of life; they are weary of those hopes which mothers bequeath to their children, and which, slow to vanish, abandon them one by one, lengthening their martyrdom. As for me, I prefer, even should I suffer from having all my illusions torn from me in a day, to see clearly into this world of dissipation to the depths of which I have descended.
No doubt, some once sinful women who have sincerely repented are met with. Women who have strayed from the right path have seen the error of their ways, have reformed, have found husbands and have been pardoned. But such things are miracles. The laws common to short-sighted humanity seem to ordain that wretched women, who have once forgotten themselves, shall be trodden under foot, torn to pieces, and their fragments so scattered that they cannot be reunited at the final hour.
Listen, brothers: should a Magdalen crawl at your feet, cursing her past errors, promising you a new youth of love, do not believe her. Heaven is not lavish of prodigies. Providence rarely shackles human misfortunes. Say to yourselves that evil is powerful, and that in this world of ours falsehood is not changed into truth even to give relief to a poor, suffering soul. Repulse the Magdalen, spurn her, laugh at her tears and the pleading of her heart; rail against all redemption. Such is the advice of what men call wisdom.
I feel that I am gaining experience in worldly matters.
Laurence is a soul forever lost, a stupefied intelligence, a creature so hardened that nothing can awaken her from her sleep in the mud. I might bruise her flesh, I might break her bones with a club, or I might lift her drowsy eyelids with kisses, but she would still squat at my feet, without a quiver, without a cry either of pain or joy. Sometimes, I am tempted to cry out to her:
"Get up and let us fight; awake, shout, swear, and show me that you are yet alive by making me suffer!"
She looks at me with her dull eyes; I recoil affrighted, not daring to speak. Laurence is dead, dead in heart and in thought. I can do nothing with such a corpse.
Brothers, I have no longer the slightest hope; I no longer wish to trouble myself about this girl. She has refused my life of toil and I cannot accept her life of dissipation. The dream was too lofty; the reality seems to me like a bottomless pit. I have paused and am waiting. For what? I do not know!
I have only to justify myself in your eyes. I know that you see clearly into my soul, that you explain my acts to yourselves by thoughts of justice and duty. You have more confidence in me than I myself dare to have. At times I question myself, I judge myself as I am, no doubt, judged by the passers whom I elbow in this life; I am afraid of the vice which surrounds without corrupting me, of the woman who remains in my presence without being my companion. Then, in utter despair, I am tempted to do what others would do, to take Laurence by the shoulders and push her back into the street from whence she came. Should I do this, she would resume her old career as madly, as recklessly, as ever, bearing upon her forehead the stamp of the same wretchedness and infamy as before. And I would calmly close my door, having stolen nothing from her, owing her nothing. Men's consciences are very elastic; there are people who possess the science of remaining honest by becoming cowardly and cruel.
Laurence has thrust herself upon my protection with all the strength of her abandonment. She remains with me, tranquil and passive. I cannot, however, drive her away. My poverty prevents me from paying her to go. We are fatally bound one to the other by misfortune. As long as she shall feel inclined to stay, I shall believe it my duty to accept her presence.
Hence I am waiting, and, I repeat, I know not for what I am waiting. Like Laurence, I am weighed down, I live in a sort of somnolence at once mild and sad, without suffering too greatly, feeling in my heart only a colossal fatigue. After all, I am not irritated against this girl; I feel more pity than anger, more sadness than hatred.
I no longer struggle, I abandon myself; I find in the certainty of evil a strange repose, a pacification of my entire being.
CHAPTER XIV
JACQUES AND MARIE
You remember tall Jacques, that long, pale and quiet lad, do you not? I see him yet, walking in the shade of the plane trees on the college green; he walked with a slow and firm step, kicking away the pebbles with his foot; he laughed tranquilly, was logical in his smiles and lived in supreme indifference. I remember that, on a day of effusion, he confided to me the secret of his strength. I understood nothing of his disclosures, except that he designed to live happily by ripening his heart and mind.
When fifteen, I dreamed only of tall Jacques. I envied his long blond hair, his superb indolence. He was, among us, a type of elegance and aristocratic disdain. I was surprised by his selfish nature, which had nothing either young or generous about it; I admired the dull and cold lad who went among us with the indulgent and superior gravity of a man.
I have seen tall Jacques again. He is my neighbor; he lives in the same house as I, two floors lower down. Yesterday, as I was mounting the stairway, I met a young man and a young woman who were descending. The young man, without hesitation and in the most natural manner in the world, extended me his hand.
"How are you, Claude?" he said to me.
He acted as if he had quitted me only the previous day. He had scarcely looked at my face, but I looked at his in the partial obscurity of the landing, without being able to recognize his features. His hand was cold. I know not by what strange sensation I recognized his calm and indifferent flesh.
"Is it you, Jacques?" I cried. "Good heavens! you are taller than ever!"
"Yes, yes, it is I," answered he, with a smile. "I lodge there, at the end of the passage, number 17. Come and see me this evening, between seven and eight o'clock."
And he went down-stairs, without turning his head, preceded by the young woman who stared at me with the wide open eyes of a child. I stood still for an instant, leaning over the railing, and looked after this youth who was departing with a calm step, while my heart was leaping violently in my breast.
In the evening, I went down to number 17. The chamber was fitted up with the false and discouraging luxury of the furnished lodging-houses of Paris. You cannot imagine, brothers, the wretched and shameful air of the frayed red hangings, gray with dust, of the dirty and greasy furniture, of the cracked faïences, of the nameless objects, rags and wrecks which were spread out along the damp walls. My mansarde is barer, but not so hideous. Two large and lofty windows, garnished with thin muslin curtains, threw a raw light over all this rubbish. One saw a wardrobe with glass doors, which was tarnished and had one side broken; a bed enveloped by faded curtains; a miserable sofa and deplorable arm-chairs, yellow from use; besides, the room contained a toilet-bureau, a desk, a table, chairs, odd pieces of furniture—furniture which had served in dining-rooms, bed-chambers, parlors and offices. The general effect had I know not what of pretentiousness and filth which disgusted me. At the first glance, one might think he had entered the chamber of the right sort of people; at the second, one saw the dirt on the mahogany and on the damask, and one felt that he was amid vice and slovenliness.
I was saddened by the unhealthful aspect of this chamber; I breathed with disgust the thick and nauseous air, smelling of dust, old varnish and faded stuffs, a biting and stifling odor which is common to all furnished lodging-houses.
Jacques, seated at the desk, was toiling away peacefully, a Code open before him. The young woman I had met on the stairway was lying upon the sofa, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, silent and grave.
Jacques half turned his chair; his face appeared to me in the full light. It was still the same visage of other days, a superb and indifferent visage; one read in it a strong will, made up of selfishness and coldness. The man had become what the boy promised to be. Our former comrade must be what the world calls a practical and serious person; he has an aim: he wishes to be a counselor, a lawyer or a notary, and moves onward towards his goal with all the power of his tranquillity. With closed heart and calm flesh, he accepts this world without either thanks or revolt. Jacques has an honest nature, a just mind; he will live honorably, according to duty and custom; he will not weaken, because he will not have to weaken; he will pass on, straight and firm, having nothing either to hate or to love. In his clear and empty eyes, I do not find the soul; upon his pale lips I do not see the blood of the heart.
In the presence of this quiet and smiling young man, bending over his law books and extending to me his cool hand, I thought of myself, brothers, of my poor being incessantly shaken by the fever of wishes and regrets. I advance staggeringly; I have not to protect me Jacques' imperturbable tranquillity, his silence of heart and of soul. I am all flesh, all love; I feel myself profoundly vibrate at the least sensation. Events lead me; I can neither conduct nor surmount them. To-morrow, in my free life, if I should happen to wound the world, the world will turn from me, because I obeyed my pride and my tenderness. Jacques will be saluted, having followed the common route. I dare not say aloud that virtue is a question of temperament; but, brothers, I think all the same that the Jacqueses upon this earth are basely virtuous, while the Claudes have the frightful misfortune of having in them an eternal tempest, an immense desire for the good, which agitates them and leads them beyond the judgment of the crowd.
The young woman had taken her glance from the ceiling and was looking at me, with partially open lips and curious eyes. Her face had the transparent whiteness of wax, with dull flushes on the cheeks; her pale lips, her soft and brown eyelids gave to her visage the air of a sick and resigned child. She was fifteen, and, at times, when she smiled, one would have thought her scarcely twelve.
While Jacques was talking to me in his slow voice, I could not take my eyes from the young girl's touching countenance, so youthful and so faded. There were upon her frank forehead profound lassitude and languor; the blood no longer flowed beneath her skin; the shivers of life no longer made her slumbering flesh tremble. Have you ever seen, in her cradle, a little girl whom fever has rendered whiter and more innocent than usual? She sleeps with her eyes wide open; she has the gentle and peaceful visage of an angel; she suffers and she seems to smile. The strange little girl whom I had before me, that woman who had remained a child, resembled her sister in the cradle. Only, in her case, it was more pitiful to see upon a forehead of fifteen so much purity and so much pallor, all the innocent graces of a young girl and all the shameful fatigues of a woman.
She had thrown back her arms and was supporting her languishing head upon her hands. I was ignorant of her history; I knew not who she was or what she was doing in this chamber. But, from her entire being, I saw the innocence of her heart and the disgrace of her life; I recognized the youthfulness of her glances and the premature age of her blood; I said to myself that she was dying of decrepitude at fifteen, with a spotless soul. Emaciated and weakened, she would expire like a fallen creature, but with the smile of an angel upon her lips.
I sat for two full hours between Jacques and Marie, contemplating these two beings, studying their countenances. I could not conjecture what had brought such a man and such a woman together. Then, I thought of Laurence, and comprehended that unions existed which could not be avoided.
Jacques seems to me satisfied with the existence he leads. He toils, he regulates his pleasures and his studies; he lives the life of a student without impatience, even with a certain tranquil satisfaction. I noticed that he showed some pride in receiving me in such a beautiful chamber; he does not see all the ignoble ugliness of the false and wretched luxury which surrounds him. Besides, he is neither vain nor a coxcomb; he is a great deal too practical to have such defects. He spoke to me only of his hopes, of his future position; he is in haste to be no longer young and to live as becomes a grave man. Meanwhile, in order to be like the rest of mankind, he consents to inhabit a chamber at fifty francs per month rent, he wishes to smoke, to drink a little, and even to have a sweetheart. But he considers all this simply as a custom which he cannot refuse; he designs, after having passed his final examination, to disembarrass himself of his cigar, of Marie and of his glass as pieces of furniture thenceforward useless. He has calculated, nearly to the minute, the time when he will have a right to the respect of worthy people.
Marie listened to Jacques' theories with perfect calmness. She did not appear to comprehend that she was one of those pieces of furniture which a young man would abandon on removing from one circle of society to another. The poor girl, doubtless, cares very little who protects her, provided that she has a sofa upon which she can rest her painful limbs.
Besides, Jacques and Marie talked together with a gentleness which surprised me. They seemed to accept each other, to take care of each other. There is not love, not even friendship in their discourse; it is a polite language which shuns every quarrel and keeps the heart in a state of complete indifference. Jacques must have been the inventor of this language.
After an hour had elapsed, Jacques declared that he could not afford to lose any more time; he resumed his work, begging me to remain, assuring me that my presence would not annoy him in any way whatever. I drew my chair up to the sofa, and chatted in a low voice with Marie. This woman attracted me; I felt for her all the tenderness and pity of a father.
She talked like a child, now in monosyllables, now with volubility, enthusiastically and without pausing. I had formed a correct opinion of her: her intelligence and heart have remained those of an infant, while, physically, she has grown up and strayed from the path which leads to true happiness. She is exquisitely innocent; horribly so sometimes, when, with a sweet smile upon her lips and large, astonished eyes, she allows rude words to escape from her delicate mouth. She does not blush, being totally ignorant of blushes; she does not seem to realize her condition, and is slowly dying, without knowing either what she is or what are the other young girls who turn away their heads when she passes them on the streets.
Little by little, she told me the story of her life. I was able, phrase by phrase, to reconstruct this lamentable story. A connected narrative would not have satisfied me, for I should have hesitated to believe. I preferred that she should make a confession, without knowing she was doing so, by partial avowals, in the course of conversation.
Marie thinks she is fifteen years old. She does not know where she was born, but vaguely remembers a woman who beat her, her mother without doubt. Her earliest recollections date from the streets; she recalls that she played there and that she slept there. In fact, her life has been a long walk in the thoroughfares. It would be very difficult for her to tell what she did up to the age of eight; when I questioned her in regard to her early years, she replied that she had forgotten all about them, except that she was very hungry and very cold. In her eighth year, like all the little outcasts, she sold flowers. She slept then at the Fontainebleau gate, in a large, gloomy garret which was the refuge of a whole herd of children of the same age as herself, all of whom had been abandoned by their parents to the cold charity of the world. Until she was fourteen, she went to this kennel, choosing her corner every night, sometimes well received by her companions, sometimes beaten by them, growing up amid wretchedness and want, nobody stretching out a hand to save her or uttering a word to awaken her heart. She was in the deepest ignorance, and did not even know that she possessed a mind and a soul. She acquired evil ways, without suspecting that evil existed; at present, though she had become a woman of the world, she still had her childish face and her mind was yet infantile and innocent. She had strayed too early in life for sin to touch her soul.
I now understood the meaning of her strange visage, made up of shamelessness and innocence, of beauty at once youthful and faded. I had the key to the mystery of this cynical girl, this weary woman, who was dying with the calmness and the whiteness of a martyr. She was the daughter of the great city, and the great city had made of her a monstrous creature neither a child nor a woman. In that being, whose soul no one had awakened, that soul still slumbered. The body itself had, doubtless, never been aroused. Marie was a creature simple in mind and flesh, who, while she had trodden muddy paths, had remained pure amid the mud, knowing nothing and accepting everything. I saw her before me, already branded, with her sweet smile, talking to me of herself, in her somewhat hoarse voice, as our little sisters talk to us of their dolls, and I felt a sickening sensation take possession of my heart.
When Marie reached fourteen, an old woman, who had no right whatever to her, sold her. She allowed herself to be bought; she almost offered herself for sale, as she had offered her bouquets of violets. She still had rosy cheeks, and her laughter rang out gayly. She now had silk dresses and jewels; she accepted the silk and the gold as she would have accepted playthings, tearing, wasting everything. But Marie lived thus, because she did not know that one could live in any other way; she could not appreciate the value of luxury, and would have accepted with indifference either a hovel or a hôtel. It pleased her to live in idleness, to look at the walls; suffering, which had already bent her, made her love repose, a sort of vague reverie, on coming out of which she seemed uneasy and agitated. When one interrogated her, asking her what she had seen, she responded in a bewildered tone: "I do not know!"
She lived thus for nearly a year, running about among the furnished lodging houses, sometimes living in one, sometimes in another, without losing anything of her serenity. As I showed some surprise and could not vanquish all the disgust with which such an existence filled me, she was greatly amazed and did not in the least understand my feelings.
One evening, poverty returned to her, and Marie was on her way back to the garret at the Fontainebleau gate, when she met Jacques. She told me of this meeting in a voice which I shall never forget, with a stony look in her eyes and noisy laughter upon her lips. It was she who spoke to Jacques, asking him for his arm because it was dark and the pavement was slippery. She had no other thought than to obtain his aid for the moment. Jacques questioned her, drew her story from her and took pity on her. He offered her a shelter more suitable for her than that to which she was going, and took her to the house in which he lived. She made no objection, maintaining her usual calmness. She would not, perhaps, have asked any one for a bed, for she had thought only of the straw in the garret at the Fontainebleau gate, but she accepted the feathers and white sheets, which had fallen from the sky, without either joy or repugnance. From that time, she had lived as much as possible on the sofa.
I can easily imagine that Jacques thought he had made a good acquisition, in offering his protection to Marie. She was in every way suited to become his companion. She was of a weak and calm nature, and would not trouble him in his indifference; she was a careless girl of whom he could easily disembarrass himself, a woman charming in her pallor, who had all the grace of youth without having either its caprices or its inconsistency. Besides, Marie, though sometimes suffering, has her days of life and gayety; she is not yet nailed to a mattress, and, when she laughs in the sunshine, among her flaxen curls, she glows with enough beauty to make Jacques himself dream.
It pleases me, brothers, to talk to you of Jacques and Marie.
I remained two or three hours with them, forgetting my sufferings, and I wished to forget them still longer in describing to you my visit. It will give you a glimpse of a world of which you are ignorant. That world is touching; the study of it is biting, full of vertigo. I would penetrate into its hearts and souls; I am attracted by these women and men who live around me. Perhaps, when I analyze them, I shall be discouraged at the result, but I love to analyze, nevertheless. These people live a life so strange, that I believe myself always to be upon the point of discovering in them new truths.
CHAPTER XV
BITING POVERTY
We eat from day to day, selling old books or a few old clothes to get money. My poverty is such that I no longer have any comprehension of it, and that I go to sleep at night almost satisfied when I have twenty sous remaining with which to purchase the two meals of the morrow.
I have been to many offices to solicit employment. I have always been received with roughness; I comprehend that I was guilty of the sin of being poorly clad. I wrote a bad hand, they said; I was good for nothing. I believed their words and retired, ashamed of having had, for an instant, the thought of robbing these honest people by putting my intelligence and will at their service.
I am good for nothing—such is the truth that I have learned by my attempts. I am good for nothing, except to suffer, to sob, to weep over my youth and my heart. Hence, behold me alone in the world, repulsed and miserable, not daring to beg, and feeling myself more famished than the poor wretch who holds out his hand for alms. I came to Paris, plunged in a dream of glory and fortune; I have awakened in the midst of mud and distress.
Happily, Heaven is kind and good. There is in want a sort of heavy intoxication, a pleasurable somnolence, which puts to sleep the conscience, the flesh and the mind. I do not clearly feel my degree of indigence and infamy; I suffer little from my destitution; I doze in my hunger and grovel in my idleness.
This is my life:
In the morning, I rise late. The mornings are foggy, cold and wan; the light enters, gray and sad, through the curtainless window; it lies about in a melancholy way upon the floor and walls. I experience a sensation of comfort in feeling the agreeable warmth of the garments I heap upon the bed. Laurence sleeps a sleep of lead, her face thrown back and expressionless. As for me, with open eyes, the covers drawn to my chin, I stare at the dingy ceiling which is crossed by a long chink. I fall into an ecstasy before this chink; I study it, I follow delightedly with my glance its broken lines; I contemplate it for hours at a time, without thinking of anything.
This is the best period of the day. I am warm and half asleep. My flesh is satisfied, my mind strays gently through that beautiful land of partial slumber in which life has all the pleasures of death. Then, sometimes, when I am completely awakened, I abandon myself to the sway of some dream. Brothers, what a child my poor heart must be that I can still lie to it! Ah! yes, I dream constantly, I yet have that strange power of escaping from reality, of creating from its wrecks a better world and better beings. There, between two dirty sheets, in the immediate vicinity of a woman hideous and wretched in her degradation, in the midst of a gloomy chamber, I often see a palace, all marble and silver, and a spotless, beautiful sweetheart, who stretches out her arms to me and summons me to quit my miserable retreat and its shameful surroundings.
Eleven o'clock strikes and I leap from bed. The damp cold of the floor, which suddenly chills the soles of my feet, draws me from my dream. I shiver and dress myself. Then I walk about the room, going from the window to the door, glancing at the wall which bounds my horizon, and returning to stare at Laurence without seeing her. I smoke, yawn and try to read. I am cold and weary.
Laurence awakes. Then begins the chapter of suffering. We must eat. We talk the matter over. We search the chamber for some object to sell. Often we give up the idea of breakfasting, when the problem is too difficult to solve and all is said. When we have happened to find some old rag, some piece of paper, no matter what, Laurence dresses herself and goes to offer the deplorable merchandise to a second-hand dealer, who gives her eight or ten sous. She brings back bread and a little pork which we eat as we stand, without talking to each other.
The days are long for the wretched. When it is too cold and we have no fire, I go to bed again. When the weather is milder I strive to toil, giving myself a fever in trying to carry on work which does not desire me any longer.
Laurence throws herself into a chair or walks about with slow steps. She drags along her blue silk dress, which seems to weep as it rustles past the furniture. This rag is all yellow with grease, all torn, ripped at the seams and worn at the folds. Laurence lets it get soiled and tattered, without either cleaning or mending it. She puts it on in the morning, having nothing else to wear, and walks in it the whole day about this miserable chamber, with dishevelled locks, the low-necked ball dress displaying her back and throat. And this dress, this soft silk of a pale blue color, which still shines in spots, is an infamous, twisted, faded and lamentable rag. I experience I know not what keen anguish on seeing these shreds of rich tissue, this luxury dragged about in the midst of want, this woman's bare shoulders reddened by the cold. I shall always remember Laurence walking about, thus clad, in the den sacred to my twentieth year.
In the evening, the question of bread returns, terrible and pressing. We eat or we do not eat. Then, we retire, weary and sleepy. On the morrow, the same life begins again, but sharper and more biting every day.
I have not been out of doors for a week past. One evening—we had not eaten the previous day—I took off my coat on the Place du Panthéon, and Laurence went to sell it. It was freezing. I went home on a run, sweating great beads from fear and suffering. Two days afterwards my pantaloons followed the coat. I no longer have clothes to wear. I wrap myself up in a coverlet, I cover myself as I can and take thus the most exercise possible to prevent my joints from stiffening. When any one comes to see me, I hurry to bed and pretend to be a trifle indisposed.
Laurence appears to suffer less than I do. She feels no shock, she does not try to escape from the existence we lead. I cannot comprehend this woman. She tranquilly accepts my poverty. Is it devotion or necessity?
As for me, brothers, as I have told you, I am comfortable, I am plunged in lethargy. I feel my being melting away; I abandon myself to that gentle prostration of dying men, who ask for pity in a weak and caressing tone. I have no desire whatever, except to eat more frequently. I would also be pitied, caressed and loved. I have need of a heart.
* * * * *
Oh! brothers, I suffer, I suffer. I dare not speak; I feel shame close my lips, and I can only weep, without taking from my breast the crushing weight which is upon it.
Poverty is mild and infamy light. And now Heaven is punishing me, bowing me beneath a terrible hurricane, beneath an implacable wound.
At last, brothers, you can give up all hope of me: I have no more steps to descend, for I am at the bottom of the ladder; I am about to abandon myself to the gulf—I am lost forever.
Do not question me. I allow my cries to float to your ears, for grief is too bitter for me to succeed in stifling its groans. But I restrain the words upon my lips; I wish neither to frighten you nor to sadden you with the recital of the terrible history of my heart.
Say to yourselves that Claude is dead, that you will never see him more, that all is, indeed, over. I prefer to suffer alone, even if I should die of my suffering, to troubling your holy tranquillity by tearing myself open before you, by showing you my bleeding wound.
No, you will suffer from the revelation, but it is impossible for me to maintain silence. I will find some consolation in imparting to you all my thoughts and actions; I will be quieted when I know that you are sobbing with me.
Brothers, I love Laurence!
CHAPTER XVI
REMINISCENCES
Let me regret, let me remember, let me review all my youth in a single glance.
We were then twelve years old. I met you one October evening upon the college green, beneath the plane trees, near the little fountain. You were weak and timid. I know not what united us; our weakness, perhaps. From that evening, we walked together, separating from each other for a few hours, but clasping hands with stronger friendship after each separation.
I know that we have neither the same flesh nor the same heart. You live and think differently from me, but you love as I do. There is the secret of our fraternity. You have my tenderness and my pity; you kneel in life, you seek some one upon whom to bestow your souls. We have a communion of tenderness and affection.
Do you remember the first years of our acquaintance? We read together idle tales, grand romances of adventure which held us for six months beneath their fascinating spell. We wrote verses and made chemical experiments; we indulged in painting and music. There was, at the house of one of us, on the fourth floor, a large chamber which served as our laboratory and atelier. There, in the solitude, we committed our childish crimes: we ate the raisins hanging from the ceiling, we risked our eyes over retorts brought to a white heat, we wrote rhymed comedies in three acts which I yet read to-day when I wish to smile. I still see that large chamber, with its broad window, flooded with white light and full of old newspapers, engravings trodden under foot, chairs with their straw bottoms gone, and broken wood horses. It seems to me pleasant and smiling, when I look at my chamber of to-day and perceive, standing in the middle of it, Laurence who terrifies and attracts me.
Later, the open air intoxicated us. We enjoyed the healthful dissipation of the fields and long walks. It was madness, fury. We broke the retorts, forgot the raisins and closed the door of the laboratory. In the morning, we set out before day. I came beneath your windows to summon you in the midst of darkness, and we hastened to quit the town, our game bags on our backs, our guns upon our shoulders. I know not what kind of game we chased; we went along, idling in the dew, running amid the tall grass which bent down beneath our feet with sharp and quick sounds; we wallowed in the country like young colts escaped from the stable. Our game bags were empty on our return, but our minds were full and our hearts also.
What a delicious district is Provence, biting and mild for those who are penetrated by its ardor and tenderness! I remember those white, damp and almost cool dawns, which filled my being and the sky above with the peace of supreme innocence; I remember the overwhelming sun of noon, the hot, heavy and fragrant atmosphere which weighed down upon the earth, those broad rays which poured from the heights like gold in fusion—virile and powerful hour, giving to the blood a precocious maturity and to the earth a marvellous fertility. We walked like brave children amid those dawns and scorching noons, young and frisky in the morning, but grave and more thoughtful in the evening; we talked in brotherly fashion, sharing our bread together and experiencing the same emotions.
The lands were yellow or red, desert and desolate, sown with slender trees; here and there were groves of foliage, of a dark green, staining the broad gray stretch of the plain; then, in the distance, all around the horizon, were low hills ranged in an immense circle, full of jagged spots, of a light blue or a pale violet, standing out with a delicate sharpness against the dark, deep blue of the sky. I can still see those penetrating landscapes of my youth. I well know that I belong to them, that what little of love and truth is in me comes to me from their tranquil delights.
At other times, towards evening, when the sun was sinking, we took the broad white highway which leads to the river. Poor river, meagre as a brook, here narrow, troubled and deep, there broad and flowing in a sheet of silver over a bed of stones. We chose one of the hollows, on the edge of a lofty bank which the waters had eaten away, and in it we bathed beneath the overhanging branches of the trees. The last rays of the sun glided between the leaves, sowing the sombre shade with luminous specks, and rested upon the bosom of the river in broad plates of gold. We perceived only water and verdure, little corners of the sky, the summit of a distant mountain, the vineyards in a neighboring field. And we lived thus in the silence and the coolness. Seated upon the bank, in the short grass, with legs hanging and bare feet splashing in the water, we enjoyed our youth and our friendship. What delicious dreams we indulged in upon those shores, the gravel of which was being gradually borne away every day by the waves! Our dreams vanish thus, borne away by the resistless current of life!
To-day these remembrances are harsh and implacable towards me. At certain hours, in my idleness, a remembrance of that age will suddenly come to me, sharp and dolorous, with the violence of a blow from a club. I feel a burning sensation running across my breast. It is my youth which is awakening in me, desolate and dying. I take my head in my hands, restraining my sobs; I plunge with a bitter delight into the history of those vanished days and take pleasure in enlarging the wound, the while repeating to myself that all this is no more and will never be again. Then, the recollection vanishes; the lightning has passed over me; I am overwhelmed with grief, recalling nothing.
Later still, at the age when the man awakens in the child, our life changed. I prefer the first hours to those hours of passion and budding virility; the recollections of our hunting excursions, of our vagabond existence, are more agreeable to me than the far off vision of young girls, whose visages remain imprinted on my heart. I see them, pale and indistinct, in their coldness, their virgin indifference; they passed by, knowing me not, and, to-day, when I dream of them again, I say to myself that they cannot dream of me. I know not how it is, but this thought makes them strangers to me; there is no exchange of recollections, and I regard them in the light of thoughts alone, in the light of visions which I have cherished and which have vanished.
Let me also recall the society which surrounded us: those professors, excellent men, who would have been better had they possessed more youth and more love; those comrades of ours, the wicked and the good, who were without pity and without soul like all children. I must be a strange creature, fit only to love and weep, for I was softened and suffered from the time I first walked. My college years were years of weeping. I had in me the pride of loving natures. I was not loved, for I was not understood and I refused to make myself known. To-day, I no longer have any hatred; I see clearly that I was born to tear myself with my own hands. I have pardoned my former comrades who ruffled me, wounded me in my pride and in my tenderness; they were the first to teach me the rude lessons of the world, and I almost thank them for their harshness. Among them were sorry, foolish and envious lads, who must now be perfect imbeciles and wicked men. I have forgotten even their names.
Oh! let me, let me recollect. My past life, at this hour of anguish, comes to me with a singular sensation of pity and regret, of pain and joy. I feel myself deeply agitated, when I compare all that is with all that is no more. All that is no more are Provence, the broad, open country flooded with sunlight, you, my tears and my laughter of other days; all that is no more are my hopes and dreams, my innocence and pride. Alas! all that is are Paris with its mud, my garret with its poverty; all that is are Laurence, infamy, my tenderness and love for that miserable and degraded woman.
Listen: it was, I believe, in the month of June. We were together on the brink of the river, in the grass, our faces turned towards the sky. I was talking to you. I have this instant recollected my words, and the remembrance of them burns me like a red hot iron. I had confided to you that my heart had need of purity and innocence, that I loved the snow because it was white, that I preferred the water of the springs to wine because it was limpid. I pointed to the sky; I told you that it was blue and immense like the clear, deep ocean, and that I loved the ocean and the sky. Then, I spoke to you of woman; I said I would have preferred that she were born, like the wild flowers, in the open air, amid the dew, that she were a water plant, that an eternal current washed her heart and her flesh. I swore to you that I would love only a pure girl, a spotless innocent, whiter than the snow, more limpid than the water of the spring, deeper and more immense in purity than the sky and the ocean. For a long while, I held forth enthusiastically to you thus, quivering with a holy wish, anxious for the companionship of innocence and immaculate whiteness, unable to pause in my dream which was soaring towards the light.
At last, I possess a companion, a spotless innocent! She is beside me and I love her. Oh! if you could see her! She has a sombre and unfeeling visage like a clouded sky; the waters were low and she has bathed in the mud. My spotless innocent is soiled to such an extent that formerly I would not have dared to touch her with my finger, for fear of dying therefrom. Yet I love her.
I am laughing; I feel a strange delight in jeering at myself. I dreamed of luxury, and I have no longer even a morsel of cloth with which to clothe myself; I dreamed of purity, and I love Laurence!
Amid my poverty, when my heart bled and I realized that I loved, my throat was choked, terror seized upon me. Then it was that my remembrances rose up. I have not been able to drive them away; they have remained with me, implacable, in a crowd, tumultuous, all entering simultaneously into my breast and burning it. I did not summon them; they came and I yielded to them. Every time I weep, my youth returns to console me, but its consolations redouble my tears, for I dream of that youth which is dead forever.
CHAPTER XVII
CLAUDE'S LOVE
I cannot stop, I cannot lie to myself. I had resolved to hide my misfortune from myself, to seem ignorant of my wound, hoping to forget. One sometimes kills death in its germ when one believes in life.
I suffer and weep. Without doubt, by searching within myself I will find a lamentable certainty, but I prefer to know everything to living thus, affecting a carelessness which costs me such great effort.
I wish to ascertain to what point of despair I have descended; I wish to open my heart and there read the truth; I wish to penetrate to the utmost depths of my being, to interrogate it and to demand from it an account of itself. At least, I ought to discover how it happens that I have fallen so low; I have the right to probe my wound, at the risk of torturing myself and ascertaining that I must die of it.
If, in this disagreeable task, I should make my wound greater than it is, if my love should increase by affirming itself, I will accept this augmented pain with joy, for the brutal truth is necessary to those who walk unshackled in life, obeying only their instincts.
I love Laurence, and I exact from my heart the explanation of this love. I did not fall in love with her at first sight, as men fall in love with women in romances. I have felt myself attracted little by little, melted, so to speak, gnawed and covered gradually by the horrible affliction. Now, I am altogether under its influence; there is not a single fibre of my flesh which does not belong to Laurence.
A month ago I was free; I kept Laurence beside me as one keeps an object which one cannot cast into the street. At present, she has bound me to her; I watch over her, I gaze at her when she is wrapped in slumber; I do not wish her to leave me.
All this was decreed by fate, and I think I can comprehend how love for this woman entered into me, took slow possession of my entire being. Amid suffering and abandonment, one cannot live with impunity beside a woman who suffers as one does, who is abandoned as one is. Tears have their sympathy, hunger is fraternal; those who are dying together, with empty stomachs, warmly grasp each other's hands.
I have remained five weeks in this sad and cold chamber, always in Laurence's company. I saw only her in the whole world; she was for me the universe, life, affection. From morning till night, I had before my eyes the face of this woman upon which I imagined I sometimes surprised a rapid flash of friendship. As for me, I was wretched and weak; I lived wrapped in my coverlet, an exile from society, not even possessing the power to go to seek my portion of the sunlight. I no longer had the smallest hope of anything; I had limited my existence to these four dark walls, to that corner of the sky which I saw between the chimney tops; I had fastened myself up in my dungeon, I had there imprisoned my thoughts, my wishes. I know not if you can thoroughly understand this: if you are some day without a shirt, you will realize that man can create a world, vast and full of living beings, from the bed upon which he is stretched.
I was in that condition when I met a woman as I went from the window to the door, enveloped in my coverlet. Laurence, seated in her chair, saw me walking about for hours together. Each time I trudged back and forth, I passed before her and found her eyes tranquilly following me. I felt her glance fasten itself upon me, and I was solaced in my weariness. I cannot tell what intense and strange consolation I derived from knowing myself regarded by a living creature, by a woman. It is from the period of these glances that my love must date. I perceived for the first time that I was not alone; I felt a profound satisfaction in discovering a human creature near me.
This creature was, without doubt, at first only a friend. I finally sat down beside her, talked, and wept without concealing my tears. Laurence, whom my sad situation and extreme poverty must have filled with pity, answered me, wiped away my tears. She also was weary of thus dying by inches; the silence and cold had at last begun to be tiresome to her. Her words seemed to me more refined, her gestures more caressing than usual; she had almost become a woman again.
At this point, brothers, I was suddenly invaded by love. My sphere of life was growing narrower each day. The earth was fleeing from me; Paris, France, yourselves, my thoughts and my acquaintances, all were no more. Laurence represented in my eyes God and mankind, humanity and the Divinity; the chamber in which she was had acquired a horizon out of all proportion. I felt myself beyond the world, almost in the embrace of death; I no longer thought that I might one day descend into the street, the noise of which mounted to my ears, and I had so little comprehension that I was alive that the thought had come to me to live without eating. It seemed to me that Laurence and I were in another part of the celestial system, lost, separated from the living, transported to some unknown corner beyond time and space. We could not have been more alone in the midst of the infinite.
One evening, as twilight came on, filling the chamber with a transparent gloom, I was walking slowly about, still going from the door to the window. In the growing obscurity, I saw Laurence's pale face, standing out from amid her dishevelled black hair; her sombre eyes had a vague brightness, and she looked at me thus, steadily, beautiful in her sufferings. I stopped in my weary walk and contemplated her. I knew not what had taken place within me; my flesh was shaken, my heart was open and I trembled like a leaf in every limb. All of a quiver, I ran to Laurence and clasped her in my arms. I loved her.
I loved Laurence with all the strength of my abandonment and poverty. I was suffering from hunger and cold, I was clad in a rag of wool, I felt myself forsaken by everybody, and yet I had a sweetheart to fold to my bosom, to love with the love of desperation! In the depths of infamy, I had found the sweetheart who was waiting for me. Now, in the gulf, far removed from the light, we were alone to embrace, to clasp each other, like children who are afraid and who reassure themselves by hiding their heads on each other's shoulders. What silence was around us, and what gloom! How sweet it is to love in solitude, amid those deserts of despair whither all sounds of life have ceased to penetrate! I plunged to the depths of this supreme felicity; I loved Laurence with the caressing delight with which the dying man must love the existence which is escaping from him.
I passed a week in a sort of dolorous ecstasy. I was tempted to stop up the window, that we might live in the midst of darkness for the balance of our lives; I wished to shut out the entire world and all it contained; I wished that the garret were very much smaller, so small, in fact, that no intruder could ever get into it to remind us that we were mortal like the rest of mankind and womankind. I did not think myself sufficiently miserable; I wanted more wretchedness, an excess of affliction of the most biting and terrible description; I desired the advent of some frightful misfortune that should strip me of all that want had left, that should tear from me every remaining comfort and leave Laurence and myself to live without having to thank this earth for anything whatever! I sighed for perfect independence and complete isolation. Then, my days would sweep by, each in its turn plunging me deeper into my love and my poverty. I was enraptured with cold and hunger, with the dirty mansarde, with the stains upon the walls and the furniture. I was enraptured with the blue silk dress, that lamentable assemblage of soiled tatters. My heart almost burst with pity when I saw Laurence standing before me, with this rag upon her back; I asked myself with the utmost anxiety by what kiss, by what superhuman kindness, I could clearly and unmistakably prove to her that I adored her in her poverty. As for me, I was happy in possessing only my coverlet: I would be colder, I would suffer more. I recall those first days like some strange, bewildering dream; I see the mansarde more in disorder, gloomier than ever, I breathe the thick and suffocating atmosphere which the window did not renew; I see Laurence and myself, like shadowy ghosts, walking about the miserable garret in our repulsive rags, chatting lovingly together, living in ourselves.
Yes, I love her, I love her desperately. I interrogate myself, and my palpitating heart narrates to me the horrible story, telling me how it came about. I have enlarged my wound; now that I have searched within myself, now that I know the reason and the depth of my love, I feel that I have more fever, that I have become mad and reckless.
A short time ago, I was shocked at the very thought of loving Laurence. My pride is dead, for I am shocked no longer. I have descended to Laurence's level; I understand her perfectly now, and do not wish her to be other than she is. I take a savage joy in saying to myself that I am now at the very bottom of the social scale, that I am satisfied there, and that there I will remain. I appreciate Laurence the more because of the gay and careless life she led in the past. There is, I know, despair, a sort of bitter irony, in my love; I have the intoxication of evil, the delirium of abandonment and hunger; I give myself up to the existence which has suddenly welcomed me, in order to insult the light on which my soul dotes and to which I cannot ascend.