THE COLOR OF MARRIAGE
"The dotal husband owes his wife three
nights each month."
Attic Laws.
"Good," Entragues said, as he heard the bell ring. "It is the Russian angel... Ah! I have written a fine blasphemy! '... in his arms.' And to think that for want of understanding, people will tax me with impiety, I who make the Roman breviary my daily reading no less than a clergyman who holds the name of Voltaire as an infamous word."
"My dear Moscowitch, I made you wait. The reason was that I was finishing a phrase and that this phrase ended a chapter."
The Russian angel drank tea while Entragues breakfasted. He spoke little, seeming to hold himself in reserve.
"Have you your manuscripts, your plans, your theories?" asked Entragues.
"My theory," said Moscowitch, "is to make a school of pity out of the theater."
"Orphans, bastards, picked up children, widows, persons condemned to death, serfs of capital, girl mothers, invalids of labor, vagabonds and victims of duty. Well! by dressing them in Russian smocks, by giving the men names ending in itch and the women names ending in ia, with some troikas thrown in, snow, Siberia, a priest or two, policemen in flat caps, some angelic street-walkers, and a studied selection of Darwinian assassins, one can write masterpieces, true masterpieces, while—and here you see what fortune hangs on—were these same tatters passed under a French dye, the most respectable manufacturers and the most influential tradesmen, men wearing the ribbon, people who have country homes at Ville-d'Avray, would not dare to place them in their shop-windows."
"Why?" Moscowitch asked.
"Because it would not be profitable."
"I believe," said Moscowitch, "that you are laughing at me now."
"Aren't you rich? Then raillery cannot touch you. In France it is impossible to laugh at riches, this impiety is forbidden by our adulatory customs. Yet, if you had talent, the common law would get possession of you: until then, be content and walk with a high head."
They entered the Revue spéculative. The presentation of Moscowitch caused no curiosity. Fortier was amiable and Van Baël, absent-minded. Yet when, prompted by Entragues, he declared: "I wish to regenerate the theater through pity," eyes were uplifted and Renaudeau, diverted, dragged him to the stake. It was one of the most amusing courses of dramatic history ever given for the instruction of a beginner. Renaudeau cited names that no one had ever heard of, and Moscowitch took notes, promised to read, and thanked him.
This facile irony irritated Van Baël, who with a tone of superiority took the Russian under his protection, gave him some good advice, and finally two or three quite useless letters of introduction to directors who never opened, naturally, their doors to strangers.
"Ah! here is the Marquise!" said Fortier, as a woman with an extravagant dress entered. Her temples confessed that she had passed the fortieth year. She was strapped in a black bodice studded by way of buttons with authentic old silver coins; a collar with similar medals on her neck, her curled hair, dyed a rose-colored blond, falling on her shoulders; a hat à la Longueville bristling with rebellious plumes; bracelets as far as her elbows under her large sleeves; a heavy furred gown, opened and thrown back, behind which the two plates of a clasp as large as two shields were suspended as far as the neck. She raised her curving nose and fixed on Fortier her impudent eyes of a woman who has thumbed, without omitting one single page, the album of lust. She spoke affectedly:
"My dear Fortier, and my Lauzun?"
"Madame, I should love to be yours," Fortier said.
Her eyes responded with lightning rapidity:
"I accept."
She said:
"Now, you have promised me proofs for this week."
While Fortier was trying to convince her that the Revue spéculative was unworthy of her qualities, that money, rare everywhere, had a sort of dread of his till, Moscowitch asked:
"Who is this woman?"
"They call her the Marquise, why I do not know. Her coins have earned her better names: the Medal Cabinet, and this one, the Reliquary, most cruel of all. Then, as she signs herself 'Françoise' to kitchen recipes, Renaudeau has nicknamed her Françoise the Blue-Stocking. She probably has a real name; it is either ordinary or insignificant."
"To think that at my age," Renaudeau said, "I have never seen any blue stockings. The modistes wear them red most often, and it is among them I have my loves."
"Red? I, too," the Marquise said.
She camped her foot on a chair, lifting her petticoat as far as the garter.
The leg was still pretty and her repartee clever.
Renaudeau, confessing himself outflanked by the movement, bowed and assumed the air of one wishing to say, "I regret I can do no more."
"And I, too," the eyes of the Marquise answered.
Having bowed, not without a certain ironic charm, she departed, certain now that her article would be accepted.
Fortier chided his secretary. She had paid with her person, payment signed and received. Her prose could no longer be refused; but she should get no money.
"Renaudeau, you must sacrifice yourself."
"Well," said Renaudeau, "this jade is full of surprises. I accept."
Moscowitch, very much astonished, found these customs singular. He asked Entragues:
"And will this woman's article, even if wretched, appear in the Revue simply because she has shown her leg?"
"Yes," Entragues answered distractedly, for he reflected, while listening to Moscowitch's question, how dangerous such a profoundly naive man might be. "He must be full of spontaneity, like a concealed spring which the blow of a pickax puts in motion. Some day Sixtine will wound his heart and violent effusions of love will burst forth from the wound. It would be well to watch him, to infuse him with literary distraction. This would be a way: have him understand that he has genius, that he owes it to himself, to his two fatherlands, to humanity, not to put the marvelous plant in jeopardy, the plant which ... which ... God, Nature, Glory and other entities ... I am not at all jealous ... my chapter cured me of jealousy this morning. I have tortured Delia Preda and the tormentor has let fall the pincers which tortured my flesh ... not jealous, but uneasy. In short, it is a question of myself, I have incorporated Sixtine into my life. If she is taken away, I am mutilated."
"Indeed," he told Moscowitch, as there entered a lean, insipid-looking person, whose eyes were terrified by apocalyptic visions, "here is a type worth observing. It is in vain for you to have talent, and even more than talent (good), my dear friend (these familiar words give value to the compliment, by clothing it with sincerity), yes, despite my inclination to irony I must end by confessing the impression you have made on me (his eyes light up), yes, more than talent (the flower expands: open, precious flower of vanity, exhale thy heady odor, intoxicate him!) ... well, nothing must be neglected ... observation ... the little characteristic facts ... these nothings which, capitalized, give a drama, just as a novel, an inimitable air of real Truth (apostate) ... Truth ... my dear ... the truth (a ladder would be needed to paint on the curtain of nothingness the capital belonging to this word....
TRUTH
He commences to understand that I wish him well) ... Listen to him, he is called Blondin and was as fine as his name, as pretty as a heart, but women have left only the shell."
"Ah! my poor friends," Blondin lamented, after having remained huddled in his chair, "there is another one this week. This makes the seventh this year, without counting all those which pass unnoticed ... Ah!"
"What is it?" Moscowitch, inquired.
"A premature burial."
"Ah! my poor friends," sighed Blondin, stretching his contracted hands towards a vision of horror, "to be buried alive, to twist in the coffin with anguish and suffocation ... and first of all the calvary of cataleptics condemned to torment ... the hypocritical tears ... the stirrings in the chamber ... the ominous carpenter ... the church ... the Dies irae ... the stones and the wet ground, and the rain falling, falling, falling on the oak ... then silence, silence, silence...."
"My dear Blondin," Fortier said, "you should get married. That will divert you."
"Poor woman!" Renaudeau exclaimed. "Let him rather take light o' loves."
"But I believe," Entragues said, "that his principles...."
"Yes, this unfortunate creature is truly mal-treated by life. What a specimen. And not one of us is assured against such a disorder! When one thinks of this possible end, it is best to follow Fortier's advice, marry, become bourgeois, procreate and only read the first page of the papers, the feuilleton, the exchange, and deny oneself all other sundry facts as too exciting."
"More than one of us will end," Entragues said, "with marriage, corporeal progeniture."
"Do you not find it odd, Entragues, that to marry, one is forced to submit to ceremonies and to the assent of one's contemporaries?"
"I imagine," Entragues said, "that a religious marriage, in a tiny solitary chapel, by an affected priest, in the presence of two or three dear friends, with no discourse other than the admirable words of the missal, without celebrations, without dances, without any consequent dinner—I believe that in such forms marriage is an interesting act which one would pleasurably recall, especially if a red lamp hung from the vault, if the priest had a fine, well-accentuated voice, and if one loved one's bride. As practiced, marriage is the most repugnant of the ceremonies imposed on men by tradition. It is, what? the official authorization given by society to a man and woman to live together. There! Ah! analysis goes to the bottom of everything, even to the most sacred customs."
Entragues was almost applauded for his phrases, spoken with a very noble conviction. It was the thought of every one present, expressed in splendid language.
David Dazin alone seemed sad. He was a lean and tall Belgian with curled hair, blond as the moon and as disquieting. His vanity was pleased by the hoaxes of the papers who jeered, from time to time, at his theory of colored vowels. Although he had taken this from Rimbaud, he imagined that he had invented it and he prided himself on being a revolutionary genius. Rimbaud was a madman with gleams which often touched on talent; Dazin was a sane man in quest of madness: it had frustrated him, for his unaccountable amputations only formed, on the clown's arena, poses that were neither new nor pleasant.
He feigned a deep grief of feelings wounded in their delicacy, and addressed Entragues:
"What, you associate with red, that is with bright coppers, such an image as a religious marriage! The organs prevail there: the tone is black."
"But," Entragues answered, "I do not fix any obligatory association. I see my sanctuary illuminated by feeble red lamp, a quite occasional and personal association. As for marriage, it is, doubtless, white, blue, rose, usually; for me it is black with a red speck and some beams of dull gold."
"That would be better," Dazin returned, "but red alone, as I understood it, would pain me."
"Ah! how sensitive this poor Dazin is?"
"Entragues," interrupted Fortier, "do you wish a box for the Odéon, tomorrow?"
"Oh! no, thanks."
"Be careful, there is a surprise. They will play...."
"What?"
"You will see! You will see!"
"Very well," said Entragues.
CHAPTER XXV
DEPARTURE
"Déjà il rêvait à une thébaïde raffinée,
à un désert confortable, à une arche immobile
et tiède où il se réfugierait loin de l'incessant
déluge de la sottise humaine."
Huysmans, A Rebours.
Moscowitch, feeling bored and out of place among such obscure discussions, bowed to the honorable editors, and excusing himself to Entragues, left.
"Ah!" Renaudeau said, "perhaps we are going to learn who this new manufacturer of dramatic literature is."
"I do not know myself," Entragues answered, "having brought him here only through international courtesy."
"And to get rid of him?" Fortier questioned. "But Renaudeau does not permit himself to be overreached. Besides, we shall see, for he has left me a copy: 'The Voluntary Expiation, drama in eight scenes.' Ah! there is an Explanatory Note: 'In default of social justice, inner justice punishes the guilty; one has opprobrium for its end; the other, rehabilitation; the one abases, the other elevates.' A period, then a dash, and these three words twice underlined: 'VOLUNTARY EXPIATION SANCTIFIES.'"
"Well!" Entragues said, "it is quite puerile, but perhaps the text contains interesting details."
"Yes," Renaudeau put in, "a new form justifies all subjects, as a fine resilvering conceals verdigris. Do you ask for indulgence?"
"Oh! no," Entragues returned, "although I have a certain interest in having him believe he is destined for fame. If you wish to oblige me, humor him with illusions until the final dagger thrust."
"So you are becoming wicked, Entragues?" asked Fortier.
"No, it is just for the sport."
He requested an envelope and, after inserting the box ticket with his card and writing the name of Madame Sixtine Magne upon it, he had it dispatched to her. As soon as the office boy left, remorse seized him: perhaps he would have done better to go there in person. No. Yes. No. Yes.
Renaudeau, who had glanced over the manuscript, arrested this fatiguing game of see-saw by saying:
"It is not, perhaps, so bad. When a drama has a philosophy, it appears superior to anything we have. Our classical theater is so denuded of mystic sense! Corneille does politics, Racine, the psychology of the laboratory, and as for Molière, he is closed to aught that is not ruse, enjoyment, banal remarks on love, and vague statements. When he wishes to take up any traits of manners, it is to subject women to the materialism of life, to rail at nobility, because there is none, or at the doctors, because they cannot cure him of his hypochondria. Veuillot, but Hello especially, has judged him well: he shuts the door. It is really the theater of a Gassendist."
"You are speaking of Molière?" asked Calixte, entering. "He is a wretch: he has jeered at the dreamer."
"Nevertheless," objected Van Baël, "what of Alceste and Don Juan?"
"But," Renaudeau interposed, "even had he done nothing at all, he would be, like Voltaire, beyond criticism."
"Don Juan would have charm, were it not for his ridiculous rustics," Calixte said. "But see how everything shrinks in the brain of this bourgeois: if Don Juan is not a fastidious person, if in the vast field of corn he does not choose the finest, the highest and the most golden, if he makes a sheaf of everything, he is no longer Don Juan, he is a trailer after petticoats."
"Precisely," Entragues said, "but if he loves them all, it is because he idealizes them all."
"I do not think so," Calixte said. "Molière only made these countrywomen victims of Don Juan to put the comic note into his play: he had to make his audience laugh and the first conception that came was good. And Alceste? Does this person who detests men and who prefers solitude to the few concessions demanded by a pretty woman—does this man find, at the end of five acts, a single word to paint the soul-state of a hater of humanity? He is only a crabbed fellow. Above all else, he places the joy of being himself in liberty, far from the world, and he does not know how to express it: he has no soul! With what delicious grace does the so ridiculed Thisbé, the Thisbé of Théophile, tell Bersiane of her dread of noise, external life, the movement of things:
THISBE
Sais-tu pas bien que j'aime à rêver, à me taire
Et que mon naturel est un peu solitaire,
Que je cherche souvent à m'ôter hors du bruit?
Alors, pour dire vrai, je hais bien qui me suit:
Quelquefois mon chagrin trouverait importune
La conservation de la bonne fortune,
La visite d'un Dieu me désobligerait,
Un rayon de soleil parfois me fâcherait.
"And what do the professors mean by telling us that the sentiment of nature was unknown in the seventeenth century, when we find such verses, again in the same Théophile:
Les roses des rosiers, les ombres, les ruisseaux,
Le murmure des vents et le bruit des oiseaux,
or such lines:
Chaque saison donne ses fruits,
L' automne nous donne ses pommes,
L'Hyver donne ses longues nuits,
Pour un plus grand repos des hommes.
Le Printemps nous donne des fleurs,
Il donne l'âme et les couleurs
A la feuille qui semblait morte....
"I do not know the rest. One always reads the same books," Calixte concluded, "without suspecting that only those which the majority disdains have interest."
"Théophile," Entragues remarked, "is one of the rare French poets. He is full of delicate reveries. I know him well for I love him:
Prête-moi ton sein pour y boire
Des odeurs qui m' embaumeront.
"The second Théophile has spoken of him without having read him. This is obvious, for why should he have passed his time in explaining him, if he had known him? One only talks of what one does not know; to talk of what one knows seems useless; one gets bored and bores others as well. That is why criticism is, most often, so disagreeable when it is well informed, and partaking of an emetic laxity, the rest of the time."
"Like that of Bergeron," Calixte said. "Why have you accepted his dilution of nonsense on Verlaine and Huysmans?"
"As an advertisement, my dear," Fortier answered. "It is virtually printed on the blue sheets of the initial and final announcements."
"He is witty," Renaudeau said, "and that amuses: one must live. It has gained us several alleged subscriptions."
"The man is pretending," Entragues declared. "He is as incapable of feeling Verlaine's poetry as I of feeling Molière's."
"And then," Calixte interposed, "he is truly too destitute of principles. After some savage attack, he offers you, what? another article, 'this one serious, according to my real convictions.' As Goncourt says, there are 'droll vulgarians.' Ah! I see nothing since Hennequin, whose precision of method and sureness of deduction pardoned an absolutism of theory that was a little hard. I see nothing except those of to-morrow, those who still speak in the desert. It is, nevertheless, interesting to read the alleged opinion of an intelligence on works old or new...."
"There remains Fiction and Poetry," Entragues said, "and for me that suffices."
Dazin, who had only offered some inarticulations since his blue and red vowels had foundered under the gales of talk, declared:
"Nothing, nothing more, and besides, there was never anything; but one believed, and now one no longer believes. I love them. You will soon see the Abyssales which are now being printed: you will see. It is a chaplet of medals where, with a certain material force, I have restored the profiles of women. I believe they are in a tolerable style. Here are the first lines of the first one:
Basilisse, icon.—In the lecherous and parthenoide incognition, the abysmal gleam of the muliebrile future towards the flames and the chimerical burning ah (wings unfold for this flight and eyeballs glisten: silk rumples at the carnal rustling)! slumbers and blond the cruel senses are veiled!
She.
Here blond the gloom.
To smile at the growth of vernal grass and the gladioles died of ennui the blood returns to the heart.
Sharp already? The Arachnean dead in rents and the pungency the red and the buckler is resolved on the aureoles twinly surge the Breasts."
Among the flakes of this verbal fog, Entragues suspected Dazin of having wished to suggest the birth of puberty and the awaking of the senses. He knew the facile arcena of these strained phrases of which Dazin was not the inventor. Such a style was not absolutely to be condemned, provided one only used it for the sake of desired obscurities and with the glossary of a context.
Mortified at being understood by a simple analyst, Dazin left.
"He believes himself," Renaudeau said, "a Mallarmé or a more subtle Laforgue."
"He has not even surprised," Calixte Heliot answered, "the most elementary of their processes."
"The processes of a poet," Entragues said, "are part of his talent: it would be quite sterile to possess it. Mallarmé plays with the complementary colors of those with which he wishes to suggest vision. If Dazin had remained, I would have given him this secret and also told him that to be a more subtle Laforgue, one must have more than a capricious syntax, abusive metaphors of rare words, and the like—one must have a spontaneity which touches the heart."
Hubert and Calixte left together and walked at random through the streets, continuing, almost always in agreement, the conversation begun in the Revue.
This time, again, they did not separate until the hour of sleep; they were happy in enjoying each other, with the certainty of likewise delighting each other, of expressing concordant thoughts, of offering nothing that would be a blasphemy to the other.
As they were noting the parallelism of these two evenings which chance meetings had given them, at a short interval, Hubert remarked the duality in the development of events.
"When an act is produced, it is always produced a second time. This is an axiom. It is evident that, to demonstrate it, one would have to be fortified with a multiplicity of historic anecdotes, and I do not know if this is possible. As far as I and my past life are concerned, there is such a surprising and frightful exactitude in the axiom that I believe I could predict nearly half the things which will happen to me from to-day until the last sleep. Besides, this axiom, perhaps, is quite personal to me, special to my organism. Such a tendency to repetition is not the source of any joy. I wish that pleasures could be doubled like pains and that the proportion, in short, could remain the same, but consider the infirmity of mathematics applied to the human soul: it is assuredly less painful to me to have seven griefs for one felicity than to bear a double weight counterbalanced by such a weak duplication as that of one to two. Prolonged to infinity, the two proportions would go on eternally equipoised, but the scale of pains breaks with its chains and crushes our hearts."
At the request of Calixte, skilful in diverting a conversation headed for the abysses, Entragues related some of his plans to his friend. What works to be constructed! It was not that the freestone was lacking, nor cement, nor accessories; it was a question of time. He had, ready for erection, more ideas than a century could utilize, and sometimes the things which would never be done frightened and haunted him like a swarming of gnomes. He had thought of this on certain mornings: to put some books, his copybooks, his notes, his written sheets in a valise and hide himself for the rest of his life in a closed house, facing the sea. He saw it built on the dunes, between the strand and the first trees of the coast: no vegetation nearby excepting the pallid grass, the violet thistles and the tall darnels; the view of steeples far off, on the land side; on the other side, the sea and a lighthouse, amid wind and wave, like a symbol. Wagons pass, full of sea-weed; horses and men pant on the sand, yoked to the labor of the fecundation of the ground, and he, yoked to the labor of the sterilization of desires, would watch them pass. Towards the equinoxes, the spray of waves agitated by moon and tempest would come to strike against his window, like a bird's wing. And birds would also come towards the gleam of his lamp and he would open his window to the spray of waves and the wings of birds. Like a monster, he would be alone. "For we are monsters, my poor Calixte, we have put our duty above life; our souls afar from men, like fabulous dragons, we guard imaginary treasures, and we know it, and to this nothingness we sacrifice all, even our life! We have hearts of anchorites and we would court women! Ah! were I there—a hermit among my dreams, an excellent shelter—I should write what I shall perhaps not write: a work. But to what end? Now, at other times I would like to get into some fixed habit, punctually deliver myself to love, quarrel with my wife at stated hours, rise late, enfeeble the ennui of evenings in the vain noise of theaters, eat nourishing foods which charge the nerves with vibrant fluids, and busy myself, during rainy hours, with an honorable compilation."
"It would be better to clothe oneself in love," Calixte said. "To transfer one's egoism to a woman: to be jealous of one's own joys more than of hers, in fine, to give to another the absurd happiness one would not wish for oneself; to dream that she is happy, that she feels it and knows it is through my agency."
"Do you imagine that this would be possible for us?" Entragues asked.
He made no allusion to his personal sentiments, for even Calixte was not his confidant. In questioning his friend or in answering him, he spoke with full liberty, completely abstract.
"Yes," Calixte answered, "the 'Imitation' gives the clue. It suffices to transfer to a creature the love, proportionately lessened, which the priest feels towards God. It would be a sort of obligation to love which one would impose upon oneself, the first rule of a more general rule of life, freely and Chistianly accepted, once for all."
"I had not thought of this," Entragues said, "of love considered as a spiritual discipline."
"Such is the exact formula," Calixte declared. "If we can yet save ourselves, we and all similar monsters, it is through Christianity and Christian discipline. This will singularly elevate our souls and it may curb our transcendental egoisms!"
"We should require Beatrices," Hubert said.
"They can be created," Calixte responded, "and we can baptize a nobly profiled woman with divine love."
(Hubert received this note on the following day:
"It is perhaps quite compromising, but I am free. Be good enough to call for me at eight o'clock."
Then he began to dream of the joy of shared pleasures, and instantly the fourth chapter of The Adorer found itself shaped.)
CHAPTER XXVI
THE ADORER
IV. The Blond Forest
"Nous promenions notre visage
(Nous fûmes deux, je le maintiens)
Sur maints charmes de paysage,
O soeur, y comparant les tiens."
Stéphane Mallarmé.
Prose pour des Esseintes.
The blond forest is filled with love: after the fall of sunlight and the night, smiling jewels.
"Together, our souls thrilled at the return of the primordial splendor; noons have not blinded us, for we have slept, during the heat of the day, in the shadow of our love: our tendernesses, like wings, fanned us and the freshness of our breath vaporized the perfumes.
"Like us, the forest filled with love has slept, for it is in our souls that its verdures have arisen, its birds, its drooping branches, its flowers, its murmurings and the dominating heights of its radiant trees.
"The blond forest is a body filled with love: it sleeps but sparingly and during our sleep, slumbering it sang, its body filled with love, and we heard the song of the blond forest:
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse,
Mes herbes sont les cils trempés de larmes claires
Et mes blancs liserons sont les écrins, paupières
Où les bourraches bleues, ces yeux fleuris, reposent
Leurs éclatants saphirs, étoilés de sourires,
Je suis le corps tout plein d' amour d'une amoureuse.
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse.
Mes lierres sont les lourds cheveux et mes viournes
Contournent leurs ourlets, pareils à des oreilles.
O muguets, blanches dents! Eglantines, narines!
O gentianes roses, plus roses que les lèvres!
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse,
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse.
Mes saules out le profil des tombantes épaules,
Mes trembles sont des bras tremblants de convoitise,
Mes digitales sont les doigts frêles, et les oves
Des ongles sont moins fins que la fleur de mes mauves,
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse,
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse.
Mes sveltes peupliers out des des tailles flexibles,
Mes hêtres blancs et durs sont de fermes poitrines
Et mes larges platanes courbent comme des ventres
L'orgueilleux bouclier de leurs écorces fauves,
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse,
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse.
Boutons rouges, boutons sanglants des paquerettes,
Vous êtes les fleurons purs et vierges des mamelles,
Anémones, nombrils! Pommeroles, auréoles!
Mûres, grains de beauté! Jacinthes, azur des veines!
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse,
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse.
Mes ormes sont la grâce des reins creux et des hanches,
Mes jeunes chênes, la force et le charme des jambes,
Le pied mi de mes aunes se cambre dans les sources
Et j'ai des mousses blondes, des mystères, des ombres,
Je suis le corps tout plein d'amour d'une amoureuse!
"When we had heard the love song of the blond forest, we awoke, and together we enjoyed the blue calm of the last hours.
"The beloved madonna gave me a last smile, night separated us and, left alone, I dreamed of the delights of shared love."
CHAPTER XXVII
THE EDUCATION OF MAIDENS
"Enamourée, tant que mon coeur étouffe!"
Ciacco Dell' Anguillara.
Scraps of conversation of the preceding evening returned to his memory after he left. The approaching pleasure of the promised evening led his thoughts to the theater, and he mentally re-read some of the dramatic projects he had conceived and written.
Two or three particularly interested him. They sketched some brief scenes of stupidity, egoism, ill-nature, the eternal and contemporary eagerness to engage with the passion embedded in very young hearts. He merely showed simple persons dominated by a vice, an ambition, a mania; no analysis except in the rough; probabilities carefully extracted from the improbable confusion of ordinary life; soul states which tend to become symbolic; no mere news, no sudden changes, no modification of facts. What an agreeable spectacle, for example, in the legend of the Prodigal Son, defined in images, or the story which a biscuit manufacturer prints on rough pale rose paper for his trade, or some popular tale, or higher, among holy or saintly things, Passion, the Life of the Magdalene, a narrative dramatized by a little of the unforeseen struggles of spirit against flesh. Everything came back to that.
Prey to a devouring intellectual excitement, Hubert walked rapidly with no destination in mind beyond the desire to free himself by means of the natural denouements of the agitated world which stirred in him, assailing, like grapeshot of besiegers, the fortress of his logic.
Finally, as he was walking along the rue des Tuileries, near the wooden and zinc booth where at certain times people exhibit paintings, and where at other times young girls exhibit their capacities as teachers; near this booth, the enchanted army disappeared, returning to limbo.
The booth was shut and the street empty, but Entragues saw the door open and the highway as far as the garden fill with little pupils, with mammas hanging to their coats, proudly, and black paper-boxes under their arms, faded complexions, breasts drooping through the constant bending of the chest, ugly robes without even the coquetry of a beggar's colored rags, ink-stained fingers, sleeves made glossy by rubbing against wooden tables, and orthographic preoccupations in the eyes of those at the age of a mild little love affair with "the friend of my brother" or "the brother of my girl friend."
He distinguished, however, a future woman between two who wore spectacles. She walked with a sprightly and decided air, carrying her body that was rebellious to the obligatory deformations; she was brunette and garbed in a becoming black. A young man, who moved timidly among all these skirts, lifted his hat as he glanced at her; she answered with a little motion of the head, joined him without shame and both, arms united, departed. In the middle of the street, she threw over the wooden fence her black box, inkstand, pencils, penholder and papers; these articles the wind blew about; the girl joyously clapped her hands, seemed to pause for a long breath; then they fled. They hastened with reason, for a teacher, warned, was running towards her pupil, the hope of her cage and the honor of her manger; they hastened with reason: for they were going to live.
Entragues understood quite well what had happened. It was during the dictation that a sudden lance thrust had pierced her heart, making a breech in the breastplate of boards. Blood had rushed, mingling with rules of syntax: she was saved!
Entragues was not at all satisfied with the too humorously ironic form which the anecdote took. He decided, in case he ever returned to it with a view of writing, to introduce a more methodical and haughty protestation. The instruction given to young girls did not vex him, but its quality did: they were crammed, like Turkish women, with maize-flour, so as to obtain a forced corpulency, although fine dieting is necessary for those creatures who can so easily be deformed. Neither grammar, nor geography, nor distasteful chronological history, nor practically anything now customary was suitable for women, but only the Old and New Testament, the Life of the Saints, solid mystic readings, then the poets, the romancers of dreams, all that can, in gloomy hours, reflower in the soul, at the call of holy harps, at the summons of kisses of love, under children's caresses.
These thoughts accompanied him as far as his home, whither the rain forced him to return.
He had not wished to think directly of Sixtine all day, for fear of withering the expected pleasures by a precocious plucking; she had her revenge; although it was long before the hour of the rendezvous, he held her before his eyes, but changing and retreating, like a woman who comes and goes, busied with her toilet, disappearing all white, reappearing clothed in color, a summer landscape whose nuances obey the transparent play of clouds.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE ESTHETIC THRILL
"Le style est inviolable."
Ernest Hello.
"Besides, here is the spring, it will enliven me. You will see," said the actor, with a malicious smile. "You will see. I do not detest the country, once in a while. It inspires fresh ideas that sometimes are lucrative. It is like the theater...."
"The public seems uneasy," said Sixtine. "One would swear that it does not understand."
"While waiting to be shocked. It is permissible to curse gold, not to scorn it. Would you," continued Hubert, "incite men to the mockery of the secret quintessence of their ideal? To scoff at lucre in the theater is to blaspheme God in a church."
"Oh! my manner, Monsieur," said the actress, "never signifies anything...."
This was taken by Sixtine almost as a personal allusion. She would have liked to hear herself addressed in a phrase which permitted such a reply. All the hypocrisy imposed on women protected in syllables against the stupidity of men who never guess. When she heard:
"... Yes ... I believe you have some illusions concerning my true nature...."
Her hands came together in a gesture of applause. She, too, was misunderstood; she felt herself capable of using a similar phrase. The audience murmured.
"You are mistaken," she told Hubert. "Here is sympathy, if these sounds are, as I believe, a mark of indignation against the impudent foolishness of this man."
"I think," said Hubert, "that they are growing angry against the boldness of the woman. Visibly before them, she lies to her duty which is to lie and go noiselessly about her love affairs."
"... Be honest and rich, the rest is vanity...."
"There is an unbending," remarked Hubert. "This last has been received as a flattery. They now believe she is going to reproach him because she has only been honest and rich, thanks to herself. There! that's right. This is fine, this is invigorating! Ah! ah!"
"I told you of admirable things of the earth, I told you of the true reality, that which you must choose...."
"Sixtine leaned forward, drawn by the magnetism of the noble speech, then fell back in her seat, dreamy, her fingers trembling, feeling the imperious desire of a hand to envelop her hand. Without moving her head, she turned her eyes towards Hubert: he was listening, less moved than fascinated.
"I want to live! Do you understand, madman that you are!... I thirst after serious things! I want to breathe the full air of the sky!"
The same esthetic thrill shook them at the same instant: their breath came faster, they had grown pale; their lips opened as for silent exclamations.
The electric current which descended down their spines with rapid waves stirred their limb, and at last, unconsciously attracted to each other, they were forced to let their hands obey the attraction of the fluids.
Then, the intensity of the emotional excitement doubled: their beings floated in a warm and caressing eddy, under the delicious downpour of a water-fall warmed by a mysterious sun, and the corporeal flowers of sensuality burned to open.
They listened, without letting a syllable of the magic prose escape their ears, and they dreamed while listening; they forgot "the omnipotence of inferior minds;" they deified each other, they ascended, supple and light, the mystic steps, summoned now by the illusion of a very pure and very expanding air at the summit of a narrow mountain above the clouds. Indeed, they had, "agitated minds," as the male character of the piece had so well said; they said to the whole world: "Your joys are not my joys;" all that stirred outside of them, all things that agitated below their flight were quite truly "infantile and noxious," in the silence they were in rapport with their "old friend"; they cried aloud to life: "It is no longer a question of all this! Adieu!..."
And at the end, when they went down with the curtain's fall to the stupefied room, the same stifled cry issued from their mouths, the cry of Hamlet:
"Horrible! Horrible! Horrible!"
Entragues, swept away by a movement of anger, so little in accord with his usual character, thus challenged a man who was hissing:
"Monsieur, you are a cur!"
As the rascal contented himself with shrugging his shoulders, in this way taking his key away, Entragues felt sadness and shame welling within him in place of anger.
"We will protest," said Sixtine, "by foregoing the rest of the play."
It was nine o'clock. Some persons, having been spared the rise of the curtain, were strolling under the Odéon galleries, looking at the latest novels: Hubert recognized several eminent critics and thought he could read, underneath the ribbon of their hats, the repetition of the naive avowal Collé made in his Journal: "I undertake to criticize plays because I cannot write any myself." They spoke of the revival of the little machine, and one of them deemed, in a simple and new style, that "the need of it did not perhaps make itself very acutely perceived." This irony was relished.
"We shall go on foot," said Sixtine.
The weather was humid, but mild. They walked through little dark streets, grazed by occasional passersby, in silence.
She asked him if he personally knew the author of this piece so unlike the things ordinarily heard at the theater.
"He is dead," said Hubert. "He was the noblest writer of our time."
Half of the young writers recognized him as their master and almost all had been touched by his influence. In his works were pages of an incomparable magnificence and purity of language. He truly gave the impression of the two souls of Goethe and Edgar Allen Poe melted into one and lodged in the same person.
Sixtine was surprised that he was not better known, but Hubert assured her that he was known to those who could understand him. Others would only be capable of acquiring the verbal knowledge of his name, and to what end? He proceeded just like some other contemporaries whom Hubert named, but when the thieves of glory would have used up their life-interest, the others would enter the house, the parchment of immortality in their hands, and would expel the intruders. Perhaps at this very hour still others, more unknown, were lying in a cellar or were dying bedridden, whose names would to-morrow fill the world with an unexpected gleam.
"Well! Madame, think that Jesus, who was the son of God and whose works and speech, sown in time and space, have yielded great harvests, think that Jesus died so unknown that Josephus, almost his contemporary, the grandson of the high-priests and descendant of the Maccabees, captain general of the Galileans, historian of all the little details of Jewish history,—Josephus had never heard of Jesus. I could give you more accessible examples, but this is primordial and those among us, who go through with an obscure life, unjustly, should not deem themselves humiliated: their day will come if they are worthy, and if not, it is quite useless that a light should spring up which will have to be extinguished."
"You are all quite haughty," said Sixtine, "you would not be vexed to be compared, in your wretched distresses, with the Son of Man."
"Oh!" answered Hubert, "I never dreamed of such a ridiculous blasphemy. Just as saints and less lofty souls, endowed with good will, take for example the human career of Jesus, and console themselves for their merited sufferings by thinking of the unmerited injuries of Christ, so it is permitted us to assuage the feeling of our disappointments by similar meditations. Would you have us take for themes of prayer the life of Socrates, who died unknown to the Greeks? Would you have us take Spinoza? He was a polisher of spectacle glasses, a drinker of milk, and he died of starvation, not of penury, because his mind was distracted and he forgot to nourish himself, having other things to do."
Sixtine was confounded with astonishment that he should give her such barren talk after their mutual esthetic and sentimental emotions. She attempted to reascend to the source to see if, this time, the craft would not take another branch of the stream.
She spoke of the acting, which she found perfect.
"Alas!" said Hubert. "Ignorance, sometimes, resembles genius among actors. Whoever is ignorant and yet must get out of a difficulty, invents badly or well, has recourse to personal souvenirs, to intuitive gestures. No, those we heard are perfect: they know all they have learned. Especially, nothing unforeseen: the foot goes like this, the hand like that, etc."
"At least," said Sixtine, "they pronounce well and speak clearly."
"It is proper, but without conviction. What woman, besides, outside of two or three select creatures...."
"I," thought Sixtine, "I, for example."
"... Could take this rôle royally enough to make one feel that it is not a rôle? Oh! the public is not exacting. The women come here to distract themselves, the men because it gives them ideas after a good dinner. Pathetic things to the former, cantharides to the latter. If they followed their inclinations most women would go to the Eden and most men to the Ambigu."
"I owe you," said Sixtine, "a very noble pleasure and I am grateful. We are at my door."
Hubert, recognizing the door, had a vision of lost time; he uttered a word which atoned somewhat for his awkward digressions:
"Already!"
"If it were not so late, I should have offered you a cup of tea, ten minutes by the fire-place which awaits me, but really...."
"Oh! I entreat you!"
"It is because ... no, it is not possible."
"In that case, you should not have made me think of it," said Hubert in a tone of chagrin.
"You had not thought of it? Then, go back to the very place where you did not think of it, and you will return in peace."
"Five minutes, only five minutes!"
"Be sensible, I will look for you to-morrow."
"Only as far as your door!"
"For what reason, then? Come, ring for me, if you please."
He obeyed. The door opened, she offered him her hand, then slowly, with movements of weariness or regret, she crossed the threshold. Still more slowly she pushed the door behind her, pausing twice before closing it.
At the moment of the inexorable sound, Hubert experienced a great sadness. He remained there for a few seconds, without thought, then suddenly a quite illogical association of ideas made him see once more the quasi-nuptial room of the "dark Marceline," and in this story he now divined, without really knowing why, premonitory ironies. Then he walked away, dreaming of doors which close, of doors which have been opened and which no longer open.
CHAPTER XXIX
PANTOMIME
"Il paraît que l'opéra était fini."
E. and J. de Goncourt,
Idées et Sensations.
Entragues, endowed with a deductive mind, liked to find his bearings—to know what he was about. To recall the past, confront it with the present, determine the resultant of the two terms, the future—this he called living. Nothing, in fact, clarifies the conscious mind more than these analytical processes. What a philter! The state of one's soul is clearly perceived. It is an egoistic enjoyment, but as salubrious as opening the windows after awaking in the morning.
He saw the cold gardens, the trees despoiled of their illusions: could he, with a glance, warm the earth again and bedeck the trees?
No, he only acquired the certainty of his impotence, an immense acquisition.
"With a glance? There certainly is a certain way of looking at things which makes them tremble like conquests under the conqueror's eyes. The book of universal magic should teach this. Satan knows it. But Faust is in hell. That denouement was a good lesson: we will not be caught again! Now, what is momentary love at the cost of eternal life?
"I must confess that I was deliciously agitated yesterday. But why? I realize it now, though I did not yesterday. Yesterday I revelled in perfect unselfconsciousness: I had to leave the flower-bed in order to breathe the perfume of flowers.
"It is true that I had breathed them in advance. Ah! I remember it all. It was not a flower-bed, but a forest,—it comes to the same thing: one can take the wrong symbol.
"So, there is no present. My calculations are simplified. The future is uncertain, for, thinking that I was penetrating the jungle of a somewhat disordered forest, I found myself in the smooth walks of a pretty little parterre: we were very well-behaved there, we did not trample on the flower-beds with heedless feet, and we breathed the fragrance of the flowers with fitting gestures of assent. Thus only the past has some chances of existence.
"Here is the question reduced to the simplest unity: is it worth while traveling for the sake of memories? All who have gone to Constantinople or to the Gobelins can respond.
"But to live again, one must have lived.
"Is it I who have spoken? I thought I heard an oracular voice.
"No matter, the premise of my logic was false, for the conclusion is absurd.
"We live in imaginary realms, that is to say in the transcendental or supernatural reality; then why not place both feet on the same plane? To dream of love, must I have pressed against my flesh the flesh of my beloved? Naïveté. Did Guido touch his madonna? It she a woman he has possessed—or only played with? For its is a true pleasure of love to reinvolve its illusory carnality in order to love, in the person of the woman, the intangible creature of one's dreams!
"I reason well, decidedly. I am a logician.
"I should have followed this career.... Ah! here is the house! Already? The same exclamation as yesterday evening! I do not get bored with myself. No, and here I am returned to the place I left."
Entragues shrugged his shoulders, thinking: "One would say that above is someone who is stronger and who mocks at us."
Then, he rang.
She was tired, pale despite the red of her robe, reclining in a large arm-chair, barricaded with cushions, very near a big wood fire; she was reading, her head thrown back.
The light, feeble and bluish, fell from a suspended lamp. Hubert suspected that she could not decipher the printed pages and thought she had assumed an attitude, but he was mistaken: Sixtine, like many women, had the eyes of a cat; she was very seriously reading les Victimes d'Amour.
Seeing this title on the rose-colored cover of the volume which Sixtine had thrown on the ground at his approach, Hubert had a moment of anguish.
"I misunderstood the woman!"
It seemed to him that his love was rendered abject in promiscuity with the banal adventures in this head, which nevertheless was charming and delicate under this fawn-colored hair.
"So these are the things she loves!"
"Are you annoyed?" she asked.
"Yes," Hubert answered frankly, and to get a reassuring answer, "it is because I see you taking pleasure in unworthy books."
"But I swear to you that this book is agreeable and most exciting. It pleases me, as you say, and indeed! it would be very painful to me had I mislaid the other books. I thought I had, at first: thank Heaven, the anguish was brief. Here they are," she added, searching among the cushions, "and I am sorry that there are only three of them and that I shall be obliged, after finishing them, to commence some other story again. Oh! for this sort of distraction, the quality of literature is quite indifferent to me: all I ask is that it be complicated, threatening, as absurd as impossible. It is my opium, or, if you wish, my supply of cigars. In what would you really have me interested, in your analytical things and ... what? symbolical things?"
"But yesterday?" hazarded Hubert.
"Yesterday, the esthetic emotion was presentable. It harmonized with the nuance of my robe and the form of my bodice, to which, moreover, you paid no attention."
"I beg your pardon! the shade was light green and the form was that of Brittany. You looked like a severe lady of yore confining in a rigid corselet breasts that have been mortified by penitence."
"Yes, but you acted as if I were incorporeal and only garbed with the charms of my virtues. I warn you, Monsieur, that on any future occasion when I walk with you (quite improbable occasion!), I will put on the severest black of the severest woolen robe I have."
She continued, after listlessly stirring the embers in the grate.
"The pleasure in pretty robes is quite ended. I would like a uniformed costume like nuns, not too unbecoming, so as not to weary my eyes in mirrors."
"Black," said Hubert, "would be agreeable, but why this renunciation?"
"So that the external gayety might not make a false contrast with the darkness of my soul ... I should not have received you this evening, for I am sad and forlorn."
"You promised."
"That is no reason. I have had more important promises made to me which were never fulfilled. I bear no malice, only regret."
"Let me love you?"
"And to what purpose?" asked Sixtine, drawing herself up in her chair as if stupefied.
"It will perhaps console you."
"Oh! my dear, do what you wish, I am patient and passive, but I warn you, it will be the worse for you."
"You are so discouraging!" Hubert gently returned. "Thus, you should have let me enter with you yesterday evening...."
"Did I forbid you?"
"You refused to let me."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Did I forbid you to take hold of the door when I was closing it? Did I forbid you to ring if the first stratagem did not succeed? Did I forbid you to hasten after me while I slowly climbed the steps?... Yesterday, it was necessary to enter, and to-day it is necessary to leave ... because," she quickly added, "I am ill and inclined to go to bed. It is not an idealistic sight, I do not invite you to it. Your modesty would suffer, and mine perhaps. A bientôt, come again, do not fail to come again."
Without answering such impertinences, Hubert arose and violently imprisoned her in his two arms. She closed her eyes, he kissed them; he kissed her mouth; Sixtine, with a sudden start, half lifted herself, then they fall back against the cushions, interlaced. There, profiting by the fact that one of his arms relaxed its hold to travel along the body towards the bottom of the robe, she freed herself entirely (it is the moment when complicity is necessary), and standing, with crossed arms, she ironically regarded Hubert who was still on his knees.
This time it was she who walked towards him.
She took his hand, led him under the little suspended lamp and silently pointed with her finger to two or three significant red spots that were swelling at the corner of her mouth.
"Do not say a word, please, but go. It is perhaps a pity ... but I have no heart for love this evening.... You should have perceived it, my dear, if only by the color of my voice...."
CHAPTER XXX
THE MAN AND THE PRETTY BEAST
"E parvemi mirabil vanitate
Fermar in cose il cor, ch' el tempo preme,
Che mentre più le stringe, son passate."
Petrarque, Triumph of Time.
That evening, Hubert had had the courage to return to his home, to undress, to go to bed, to fall asleep, without admitting the intrusion, in his consciousness, of any thought. He was like a beaten dog filled with an irrational shame, and buried under the heavy covers, his eyes shut, he had attained sleep by a system of long and slow inhalings which, regulating the heart movement, calmed, then enfeebled the brain, like chloral.
In the morning, his adventure brought a smile to his face, and he even composed, in a tone of sad raillery, a series of little acrobatic verses, entitled: The Thread. Of fifteen stanzas, two amused him. He wrote them:
De quoi s'agit-il?
De presque rien. Ah!
Le plaisir tient a
Un fil.
C est un fil de tulle,
C'est un fil de soie:
S'en va, comme bulle,
La joie.
Then he attempted, while stirring the fire, which a moist wind was troubling, to recite to himself the sonnet of his friend, Calixte:
Les Désirs, s' envolant sur le dos des Chimères,
Jouent avec la lumière et le crin des crinères....
But his stubborn memory gave him only these two lines. He recalled that Delphin was going to put it to music, was even going to do some instrumentation on the theme as a gloss. But Delphin, for want of a fitting medium between the brass instruments and the strings, did not yet compose: he was waiting.
"In fine," thought Hubert, "I must admit that I have missed being happy. To surprise a woman, hypnotize her with kisses, chloroform her with caresses, then be united with her through the falling of cushions, with, before one's eyes, the future boredom of partial repetitions of a similar proceeding—this is called being happy!"
Heliot had related to him that once, in a similar situation, the maid had discreetly entered at the most interesting passage, asking, through the open door: "Does Madace wish her slippers?"
"Consequently, I have missed being happy once more, for such felicities are not unknown to me: it is only the color of garters that differs. Well, till tomorrow or the day after tomorrow: Sixtine is in my power. It is certainly pleasant, very pleasant.
"We will enjoy charming evenings. She is intelligent and I shall read her my manuscripts: here and there, I need a woman's opinion. It is astonishing that heretofore this has not troubled me more. When shall I see her again. To-day? No. To-morrow? No. But shall I write to her? Twice daily. She will answer in little brief and impersonal phrases, with shafts of raillery. I shall let her rail at me: I can do it, for I am sure of my case. Well, Tuesday? We shall see. Happiness leaves me cold and its regular perspectives sadden me. Thus, I, too, have pursued the pretty beast and I am satisfied. With what? With having put my foot on its shadow."
MAN AND THE PRETTY BEAST
The road, under the sun, lies, white and dusty, lies under the sun.
The pretty beast, what is it like? It runs too swiftly, one sees it run, one does not see it, the pretty beast.
The man is naked, panting and with cruel eyes, like a hunter, naked, however, and disarmed.
"Pretty beast, I would trap thee, ah I pretty beast, I have thee, pretty beast."
The man has bounded, he has put his foot on the pretty beast, his bare foot, very gently, so as not to hurt it.
"Ah! I have thee, pretty beast!"
"No, no, thou dost not have me. Thy bare foot is resting on my shadow."
"Ah! this time, pretty beast, thou art my prisoner; I have thee, pretty beast, I have thee in my hands."
"Thou hast me and thou seest me not, for the odor of my body blinds men. Thou hast me, and see!
"See, I escape thee and I run. Run after me, run after the pretty beast."
"Ah! I am weary with running for sixty years; come, my son, it is thou who will catch the pretty beast.
"I am weary, I sit down to rest; go, it is now thy hour to run after the pretty beast!"
Having finished this rhapsody, Entragues wrote the beginning of the story of Gaetan Solange, which had long tormented him.
It was a way of explaining himself by means of an anticipated commentary, for he was on the verge, doubtless! of a similar state of soul: would not Hubert and Gaetan be true counterparts, to-morrow, if this continued?
CHAPTER XXXI
THE INFAMY OF BEING HAPPY
"I now see distinctly," he said, "what
manner of people these maskers are."
Poe: Hop-Frog
Solange's pessimism was practical: he perseveringly endeavored to make his life wretched by all sorts of very simple, yet ingenious combinations.
First of all, principles: Men lie and women deceive. There are but two motives to human acts—lucre and lust. All women with pleasant faces conceal objectionable defects. Men who are not wicked are stupid.
Other principles: All food is tainted or adulterated; it is useless to seek anything better than the bad. All streets are hideous, full of vile women, rubbish, drains and filth. All apartments lack air and light. And so on.
Consequently, and as he could not take pleasure in principles, Gaetan Solange had taken lodgings in a foul quarter, at the end of a damp court, in two or three little dark rooms. They were the most agreeable rooms he could find after years of patient search.
When he returned to his rooms, in the evening, it was amid the repugnant attacks of an army of wretched women; and sometimes a drunken vagrant barred his way through the narrow alley with insults and threats. Solange was satisfied, for this proved that the police were lax, that nobody could return to his dwelling after ten o'clock without risking his life.
A spongy cutlet, a woody cigar, bitter beer, a spotted table-cloth gave his visible satisfaction. It was thus: "What would you? If you wish to live, you must accept the inconveniences of life."
He liked to be plagued by a woman who, penniless, became refractory to all caresses—as in Un Dilemme—and the friends who had abused his confidence, wittingly ill-placed, were dear to him as the orthographic faults of a literary master: this proved once more the absolute rules of his grammar.
He only read newspapers, and the vilest of them, so that nothing might disturb his belief that no one wrote save to earn money, and that the viler and more lying any literature is, the more it entertains the public—all the public.
Entragues paused in his work and reflected: "We are almost in accord, yes, for if I detest to lull myself in joy and in the contentment of my heart, it is not through a desired and coddled impotence. I do not disdain life, I have never disowned its pleasures. It is neither bad nor good, it is indifferent, it is the conditional state of dreams, and that is all. To demand of life a little happiness is to give too much importance to the mechanism of the senses and to make oneself conform with corporeal invitations and with the rules of matter, whereas the will should aim towards emancipation.
"But I know the perils of asceticism and its infamies; and were I happy, I would experience astonishment rather than shame. I have never believed that this was written in my destiny. This attitude is proper, for I cannot, like a fool, believe that "this was due me," and despite some gleams of Christian humility, my pride is so superb that I cannot for any length of time admit the frailty of my merits. No person, doubtless, was ever worthy of happiness; but unless I am a Pharisee, I should not deem myself below average humanity: such a posture of kneeling would partake of weakness and cowardice. It is permitted me, without any disturbing in the order of my essential idealism, to moisten my lips from the cup which this charming woman offers me; then I shall make her drink it; then, emboldened, we shall quench our thirsts together, inhaling, like harvesters leaning over the clear spring, the delights of cooling refreshments.
"I leave to Solange his shame; he is a madman whose crippled understanding is blind to this idea: that only those who suffer from the refinements of their sensitiveness are permitted to toy ironically with the cankers that life is soiled with, and not those who delight in breathing, without disgust, the sordid purulence."
He continued to muse, without writing:
"Solange is a rather good fellow although a little uncultured, with coarse clothes and ugly shoes. At a marriage which he was obliged to attend, he met a young girl who fell in love with him, discreetly and with reserve, but seriously. She watched him, blushing under his glance in quest of defects; she lowered her eyes. When she passed near him she felt a strange fear come over her—the fear of being arrested by his arm and the fear of a banal bow. Naturally the young girl's mother introduced Solange to her; he was asked some favor, a very skillful maternal snare, since he would have to bring the information in a short while. He came, he returned, ever drawn by adroit combinations; finally, he returned for his own pleasure and found himself enmeshed before he had time to reflect. Besides, he thought of nothing, he let himself go, conquered and captive.
"They were married. Their moderate fortunes joined together became, in the hands of the intelligent young woman, a source of honest and almost luxurious comfort. Their apartment was large, light and sunny, the food carefully chosen; and instead of looking forward to the ennui of a lonely single bed, he enjoyed the constant presence of a beloved being who tinted with rose and blue the hours formerly gloomy with lonely awakenings.
"He no longer had time to scorn men or to relish their low greediness; pleasure of love, enjoyed in full naïveté, evoked no lewd images in his desires, no horror of self or of others; what others?
"In fine, he was happy!
"Happy! He! He the stubborn pessimist, he whose aversion to every ideal had astonished the most impotent! Happy! what a shame! He plunged to the depths of the abyss in which this adventure had overwhelmed his principles; he brought them back one by one; ah! they were rotting; all was ended and with them all joy of living—for he had just understood how much the wretchedness of a mediocre existence, how much the sentiment of the universal dunghill, was necessary to his happiness!"