Upon returning to my apartments I found a large box in the centre of the room. One of my aunts had died, and I was one of the heirs to her fortune, which was not large.
The box contained, among other things, a number of musty old books. Not knowing what to do, and being afflicted with ennui, I began to read one of them. They were for the most part romances of the time of Louis XV; my pious aunt had probably inherited them herself and never read them, for they were, so to speak, catechisms of vice.
I was singularly disposed to reflect on everything that came to my notice, to give everything a mental and moral significance; I treated events as pearls in a necklace which I tried to string together.
It struck me that there was something significant about the arrival of these books at this time. I devoured them with a bitterness and a sadness born of despair. “Yes, you are right,” I said to myself, “you alone possess the secret of life, you alone dare to say that nothing is true and real but debauchery, hypocrisy, and corruption. Be my friends, throw on the wound in my soul your corrosive poisons, teach me to believe in you.”
While buried in these shadows, I allowed my favorite poets and text-books to accumulate dust. I even ground them under my feet in excess of wrath. “You wretched dreamers!” I said to them; “you who teach me only suffering, miserable shufflers of words, charlatans, if you know the truth, fools, if you speak in good faith, liars in either case, who make fairy-tales of the woes of the human heart. I will burn the last one of you!”
Then tears came to my aid and I perceived that there was nothing real but my grief. “Very well,” I cried, in my delirium, “tell me, good and bad genii, counselors for good or evil, tell me what to do! Choose an arbiter and let him speak.”
I seized an old Bible which lay on my table, and read the first passage that caught my eye.
“Reply to me, thou book of God!” I said, “what word hast thou for me?” My eye fell on this passage in Ecclesiastes, Chapter IX:
When I read these words I was astounded; I did not know that there was such a sentiment in the Bible. “And thou, too, as all others, thou book of hope!”
What do the astronomers think when they predict, at a given hour and place, the passage of a comet, that most eccentric of celestial travellers? What do the naturalists think when they reveal the myriad forms of life concealed in a drop of water? Do they think they have invented what they see and that their lenses and microscopes make the law of nature? What did the first law-giver think when, seeking for the corner-stone in the social edifice, angered doubtless by some idle importunity, he struck the tables of brass and felt in his bowels the yearning for a law of retaliation? Did he, then, invent justice? And the first who plucked the fruit planted by his neighbor and who fled cowering under his mantle, did he invent shame? And he who, having overtaken that same thief who had robbed him of the product of his toil, forgave him his sin, and, instead of raising his hand to smite him, said, “Sit thou down and eat thy fill;” when, after thus returning good for evil, he raised his eyes toward Heaven and felt his heart quivering, tears welling from his eyes, and his knees bending to the earth, did he invent virtue? Oh, Heaven! here is a woman who speaks of love and who deceives me; here is a man who speaks of friendship and counsels me to seek consolation in debauchery; here is another woman who weeps and would console me with the flesh; here is a Bible that speaks of God and says: “Perhaps; but nothing is of any real importance.”
I ran to the open window: “Is it true that you are empty?” I cried, looking up at the pale expanse of sky which spread above me. “Reply, reply! Before I die, grant that I may clasp in these arms of mine something more than a dream!”
Profound silence reigned. As I stood with arms outstretched, eyes lost in space, a swallow uttered a plaintive cry; in spite of myself I followed it with my eyes; while the swallow disappeared from sight like a flash, a little girl passed singing.
Before taking life on its pleasant side—a side which to me seemed rather sinister—I resolved to test everything. I remained thus for some time, a prey to countless sorrows, tormented by terrible dreams.
The great obstacle to my cure was my youth. Wherever I happened to be, whatever my occupation, I could think of nothing but women; the sight of a woman made me tremble.
It had been my fate—a fate as rare as happy—to give to love my unsullied youth. But the result of this was that all my senses united in idealizing love; there was the cause of my unhappiness. For not being able to think of anything but women, I could not help turning over in my head, day and night, all the ideas of debauchery, of false love and of feminine treason, with which my mind was filled. For me to possess a woman was to love her; I thought of nothing but women, but I believed no more in the possibility of true love.
All this suffering inspired me with a sort of rage. At times I was tempted to imitate the monks and starve my body in order to conquer my senses; at times I felt like rushing out into the street to throw myself at the feet of the first woman I met and vow to her eternal love.
God is my witness that I did all in my power to cure myself. Preoccupied from the first with the idea that the society of men was the haunt of vice and hypocrisy, where all were like my mistress, I resolved to separate myself from them and live in complete isolation. I resumed my neglected studies, and plunged into history, poetry, and anatomy. There happened to be on the fourth floor of the same house an old and learned German. I determined to learn his language; the German was poor and friendless, and willingly accepted the task of instructing me. My perpetual state of distraction worried him. How many times he waited in patient astonishment while I, seated near him with a smoking lamp between us, sat with my arms crossed on my book, lost in revery, oblivious of his presence and of his pity.
“My dear sir,” said I to him one day, “all this is useless, but you are the best of men. What a task you have undertaken! You must leave me to my fate; we can do nothing, neither you nor I.”
I do not know that he understood my meaning, but he grasped my hand and there was no more talk of German.
I soon realized that solitude, instead of curing me, was doing me harm, and so I completely changed my system. I went into the country, and galloped through the woods with the huntsmen; I would ride until I was out of breath, trying to cure myself with fatigue, and when, after a day of sweat in the fields, I reached my bed in the evening smelling of powder and the stable, I would bury my head in the pillow, roll about under the covers and cry: “Phantom, phantom! are you not satiated? Will you not leave me for one single night?”
But why these vain efforts? Solitude sent me to nature, and nature to love. Standing in the street of Mental Observation, I saw myself pale and wan, surrounded by corpses, and, drying my hands on my bloody apron, stifled by the odor of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and saw floating before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields, and the pensive harmony of the evening. “No,” said I, “science can not console me; rather will I plunge into this sea of irresponsive nature and die there myself by drowning. I will not war against my youth; I will live where there is life, or at least die in the sunlight.” I began to mingle with the throngs at Sevres and Chaville, and stretch myself on flowery swards in secluded groves. Alas! all the forests and fields cried to me:
“What do you seek here? We are young, poor child! We wear the colors of hope.”
Then I returned to the city; I lost myself in its obscure streets; I looked up at the lights in its windows, into those mysterious family nests; I watched the passing carriages; I saw man jostling against man. Oh, what solitude! How sad the smoke on those roofs! What sorrow in those tortuous streets where all are hurrying hither and thither, working and sweating, where thousands of strangers rub against your elbows; a sewer where society is of bodies only, while souls are solitary and alone, where all who hold out a hand to you are prostitutes! “Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!” This has been the cry of all cities unto man; it is written with charcoal on the walls, on the streets with mud, on men’s faces with extravasated blood.
At times, when seated in the corner of some salon I watched the women as they danced, some rosy, some blue, and others white, their arms bare and their hair gathered gracefully about their shapely heads, looking like cherubim drunk with light, floating in spheres of harmony and beauty, I would think: “Ah, what a garden, what flowers to gather, to breathe! Ah! Marguerites, Marguerites! What will your last petal say to him who plucks it? A little, a little, but not all. That is the moral of the world, that is the end of your smiles. It is over this terrible abyss that you are walking in your spangled gauze; it is on this hideous reality you run like gazelles on the tips of your little toes!”
“But why take things so seriously?” said Desgenais. “That is something that is never seen. You complain because bottles become empty? There are many casks in the vaults, and many vaults in the hills. Give me a dainty fish-hook gilded with sweet words, a drop of honey for bait, and quick! catch in the stream of oblivion a pretty consoler, as fresh and slippery as an eel; you will still have the hook when the fish shall have glided from your hands. Youth must pass away, and if I were you I would carry off the queen of Portugal rather than study anatomy.”
Such was the advice of Desgenais. I made my way home with swollen heart, my face concealed under my cloak. I kneeled at the side of my bed and my poor heart dissolved in tears. What vows! what prayers! Galileo struck the earth, crying: “Nevertheless it moves!” Thus I struck my heart.
Suddenly, in the midst of black despair, youth and chance led me to commit an act that decided my fate.
I had written my mistress that I wished never to see her again; I kept my word, but I passed the nights under her window, seated on a bench before her door. I could see the lights in her room, I could hear the sound of her piano, at times I saw something that looked like a shadow through the partially drawn curtains.
One night as I was seated on the bench, plunged in frightful melancholy, I saw a belated workman staggering along the street. He muttered a few words in a dazed manner and then began to sing. So much was he under the influence of liquor that he walked at times on one side of the gutter and then on the other. Finally he fell upon a bench facing another house opposite me. There he lay still, supported on his elbows, and slept profoundly.
The street was deserted, a dry wind stirred the dust here and there; the moon shone through a rift in the clouds and lighted the spot where the man slept. So I found myself tete-a-tete with this boor, who, not suspecting my presence, was sleeping on that stone bench as peacefully as if in his own bed.
The man served to divert my grief; I arose to leave him in full possession, but returned and resumed my seat. I could not leave that fateful door, at which I would not have knocked for an empire. Finally, after walking up and down a few times, I stopped before the sleeper.
“What sleep!” I said. “Surely this man does not dream. His clothes are in tatters, his cheeks are wrinkled, his hands hardened with toil; he is some unfortunate who does not have a meal every day. A thousand gnawing cares, a thousand mortal sorrows await his return to consciousness; nevertheless, this evening he had money in his pocket, and entered a tavern where he purchased oblivion. He has earned enough in a week to enjoy a night of slumber, and perhaps has purchased it at the expense of his children’s supper. Now his mistress can betray him, his friend can glide like a thief into his hut; I could shake him by the shoulder and tell him that he is being murdered, that his house is on fire; he would turn over and continue to sleep.”
“And I—I do not sleep,” I continued, pacing up and down the street, “I do not sleep, I who have enough in my pocket at this moment to purchase sleep for a year. I am so proud and so foolish that I dare not enter a tavern, and it seems I do not understand that if unfortunates enter there, it is to come out happy. O God! grapes crushed beneath the foot suffice to dissipate the deepest sorrow and to break the invisible threads that the fates weave about our pathway. We weep like women, we suffer like martyrs; in our despair it seems that the world is crumbling under our feet, and we sit down in tears as did Adam at Eden’s gate. And to cure our griefs we have but to make a movement of the hand and moisten our throats. How contemptible our sorrow since it can be thus assuaged! We are surprised that Providence does not send angels to grant our prayers; it need not take the trouble, for it has seen our woes, it knows our desires, our pride and bitterness, the ocean of evil that surrounds us, and is content to hang a small black fruit along our paths. Since that man sleeps so soundly on his bench, why do not I sleep on mine? My rival is doubtless passing the night with my mistress; he will leave her at daybreak; she will accompany him to the door and they will see me asleep on my bench. Their kisses will not awaken me, and they will shake me by the shoulder; I will turn over on the other side and sleep on.”
Thus, inspired by fierce joy, I set out in quest of a tavern. As it was past midnight some were closed; this put me in a fury. “What!” I cried, “even that consolation is refused me!” I ran hither and thither knocking at the doors of taverns, crying: “Wine! Wine!”
At last I found one open; I called for a bottle, and without caring whether it was good or bad, I gulped it down; a second followed, and then a third. I dosed myself as with medicine, and forced the wine down as if it had been prescribed by some physician to save my life.
The heavy fumes of the liquor, doubtless adulterated, mounted to my head. As I had gulped it down at a breath, drunkenness seized me promptly; I felt that I was becoming muddled, then I experienced a lucid moment, then confusion followed. Then consciousness left me, I leaned my elbows on the table and said adieu to myself.
But I had a confused idea that I was not alone in the tavern. At the other end of the room stood a hideous group with haggard faces and harsh voices. Their dress indicated that they belonged to the poorer class, but were not bourgeois; in short, they belonged to that ambiguous class, the vilest of all, which has neither fortune nor occupation, which never works except at some criminal plot, a class which, neither poor nor rich, combines the vices of one with the misery of the other.
They were quarrelling over a dirty pack of cards. Among them was a girl who appeared to be very young and very pretty, was decently clad, and resembled her companions in no way, except in the harshness of her voice, which was as rough and broken as if it had performed the office of public crier. She looked at me closely, as if astonished to see me in such a bad place, for I was elegantly attired. Little by little she approached my table and seeing that all the bottles were empty, smiled. I saw that she had fine teeth of brilliant whiteness; I took her hand and begged her to be seated; she consented with good grace and asked what we should have for supper.
I looked at her without saying a word, while my eyes began to fill with tears; she observed my emotion and inquired the cause. I could not reply. She understood that I had some secret sorrow and forebore any attempt to learn the cause; with her handkerchief she dried my tears from time to time as we dined.
There was something about this girl at once repulsive and sweet, a singular boldness mingled with pity, that I could not understand. If she had taken my hand in the street she would have inspired a feeling of horror in me; but it seemed so strange that a creature I had never seen should come to me, and, without a word, proceed to order supper and dry my tears with her handkerchief, that I was rendered speechless; it revolted, yet charmed me. What I had done had been done so quickly that I seemed to have obeyed some impulse of despair. Perhaps I was a fool, or the victim of some supernatural caprice.
“Who are you?” I suddenly cried out; “what do you want of me? How do you know who I am? Who told you to dry my tears? Is this your vocation and do you think I desire you? I would not touch you with the tip of my finger. What are you doing here? Reply at once. Is it money you want? What price do you put on your pity?”
I arose and tried to go out, but my feet refused to support me. At the same time my eyes failed me, a mortal weakness took possession of me and I fell over a stool.
“You are not well,” she said, taking me by the arm, “you have drunk, like the child that you are, without knowing what you were doing. Sit down in this chair and wait until a cab passes. You will tell me where you live and I will order the driver to take you home to your mother, since,” she added, “you really find me ugly.”
As she spoke I raised my eyes. Perhaps my drunkenness deceived me, or perhaps I had not seen her face clearly before, but suddenly I detected in that unfortunate girl a fatal resemblance to my mistress. I shuddered at the sight. There is a certain shudder that affects the hair; some say it is death passing over the head, but it was not death that passed over mine.
It was the malady of the age, or rather was it that girl herself; and it was she who, with her pale, halfmocking features and rasping voice, came and sat with me at the end of the tavern room.
The moment I perceived her resemblance to my mistress a frightful idea occurred to me; it took irresistible possession of my muddled mind, and I put it into execution at once.
I escorted that girl to my home; and I arranged my room just as I had been wont to do when my mistress was with me, for I was dominated by a certain recollection of past joys.
Having arranged my room to my satisfaction, I gave myself up to the intoxication of despair. I probed my heart to the bottom in order to sound its depths. A Tyrolean song that my loved one used to sing began to run through my head:
I listened to the echo of that song as it reverberated through the desert of my heart. I said: “Behold the happiness of man; behold my little Paradise; behold my queen Mab, a girl from the streets. My mistress is no better. Behold what is found at the bottom of the glass when the nectar of the gods has been drained; behold the corpse of love.”
The unfortunate creature heard me singing and began to sing herself. I turned pale; for that harsh and rasping voice, coming from the lips of one who resembled my mistress, seemed a symbol of my experience. It sounded like a gurgle in the throat of debauchery. It seemed to me that my mistress, having been unfaithful, must have such a voice. I was reminded of Faust who, dancing at the Brocken with a young sorceress, saw a red mouse emerge from her throat.
“Stop!” I cried. I arose and approached her.
Let me ask you, O men of the time, bent upon pleasure, who attend the balls and the opera and who, upon retiring this night, will seek slumber with the aid of some threadbare blasphemy of old Voltaire, some sensible satire by Paul Louis Courier, or some essay on economics, you who dally with the cold substance of that monstrous water-lily that Reason has planted in the hearts of our cities-let me ask, if by some chance this obscure book falls into your hands, not to smile with noble disdain or shrug your shoulders. Be not too sure that I complain of an imaginary evil; be not too sure that human reason is the most beautiful of faculties, that there is nothing real here below but quotations on the Bourse, gambling in the salon, wine on the table, the glow of health, indifference toward others, and the pleasures of the night.
For some day, across your stagnant life, a gust of wind will blow. Those beautiful trees, that you water with the stream of oblivion, Providence will destroy; despair will overtake you, heedless ones, and tears will dim your eyes. I will not say that your mistresses will deceive you—that would not grieve you so much as the loss of a horse—but you can lose on the Bourse. For the first plunge is not the last, and even if you do not gamble, bethink you that your moneyed tranquillity, your golden happiness, are in the care of a banker who may fail. In short, I tell you, frozen as you are, you are capable of loving something; some fibre of your being can be torn and you can give vent to cries that will resemble a moan of pain. Some day, wandering about the muddy streets, when daily material joys shall have failed, you will find yourself seated disconsolately on a deserted bench at midnight.
O men of marble! sublime egoists, inimitable reasoners, who have never given way to despair or made a mistake in arithmetic, if this ever happens to you, at the hour of your ruin you will remember Abelard when he lost Heloise. For he loved her more than you love your horses, your money, or your mistresses; and in losing her he lost more than your monarch Satan would lose in falling again from the battlements of Heaven. He loved her with a love of which the gazettes do not speak, the shadow of which your wives and your daughters do not perceive in our theatres and in our books. He passed half of his life kissing her white forehead, teaching her to sing the psalms of David and the canticles of Saul; he had but her on earth alone; and God consoled him.
Believe me, when in your distress you think of Abelard you will not look with the same eye upon the rich blasphemy of Voltaire and the badinage of Courier; you will feel that human reason can cure illusions but can not heal sorrows; that God has use for Reason but that He has not made her a sister of Charity. You will find that when the heart of man said: “I believe in nothing, for I see nothing,” it did not speak the last word on the subject. You will look about you for something like hope, you will shake the doors of churches to see if they still swing, but you will find them walled up; you will think of becoming Trappists, and destiny will mock at you, and for reply will give you a bottle of wine and a courtesan.
And if you drink the wine, and take the courtesan, you will learn how such things come to pass.
Upon awaking the following morning I experienced a feeling of such deep disgust with myself, and felt so degraded in my own eyes that a horrible temptation assailed me. Then I sat down and looked gloomily about the room, my eyes resting mechanically on a brace of pistols that decorated the walls.
When the suffering mind stretches its hands, so to speak, toward annihilation, when the soul forms some violent resolution, there seems to be an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold and hard. Nature recoils as the condemned walks to death. I can not express what I experienced, unless it was as if my pistol had said to me: “Think what you are about to do.”
Since then I have often wondered what would have happened to me if the girl had departed immediately. Doubtless the first flush of shame would have subsided; sadness is not despair, and God has joined them in order that the one should not leave us alone with the other. Once relieved of the presence of that woman, my heart would have become calm. There would remain only repentance, for the angel of pardon has forbidden man to kill. But I was doubtless cured for life; debauchery was once for all driven from my door, and I would never again know the feeling of disgust with which its first visit had inspired me.
But it happened otherwise. The struggle which was going on within, the poignant reflections which overwhelmed me, the disgust, the fear, the wrath, even (for I experienced all these emotions at the same time), all these fatal powers nailed me to my chair; and, while I was thus a prey to dangerous delirium, the creature, standing before my mirror, thought of nothing but how best to arrange her dress and fix her hair, smiling the while. This lasted more than a quarter of an hour, during which I had almost forgotten her. Finally some slight noise attracted my attention to her, and turning about with impatience I ordered her to leave the room in such a tone that she at once opened the door and threw me a kiss before going out.
At the same moment some one rang the bell of the outer door. I arose precipitately, and had only time to open the closet door and motion the creature into it, when Desgenais entered the room with two friends.
The great currents that are found in the middle of the ocean resemble certain events in life. Fatality, Chance, Providence, what matters the name? Those who quarrel over the word admit the fact. Such are not those who, speaking of Napoleon or Caesar, say:
“He was a man of Providence.” They apparently believe that heroes merit the attention which Heaven shows them, and that the color of purple attracts gods as well as bulls.
As to what rules the course of these little events, or what objects and circumstances, in appearance the least important, lead to changes in fortune, there is not, to my mind, a deeper cause and opportunity for thought. For something in our ordinary actions resembles the little blunted arrows we shoot at targets; little by little we make of our successive deeds an abstract and regular entity that we call our prudence or our will. Then comes a gust of wind, and lo! the smallest of these arrows, the very lightest and most ineffective, is wafted beyond our vision, beyond the very horizon to the dwelling-place of God himself.
What a strange feeling of unrest seizes us then! What becomes of those phantoms of tranquil pride, the will and prudence? Force itself, that mistress of the world, that sword of man in the combat of life, in vain do we brandish it over our heads in wrath, in vain do we seek to ward off with it a blow which threatens us; an invisible power turns aside the point, and all the impetus of effort, deflected into space, serves only to precipitate our fall.
Thus, at the moment I was hoping to cleanse myself from the sin I had committed, perhaps to inflict the penalty, at the very instant when a great horror had taken possession of me, I learned that I had to sustain a dangerous test.
Desgenais was in good humor; stretching himself out on my sofa he began to chaff me about my appearance, which indicated, he said, that I had not slept well. As I was little disposed to indulge in pleasantry I begged him to spare me.
He appeared to pay no attention to me, but, warned by my tone, soon broached the subject that had brought him to me. He informed me that my mistress had not only two lovers at a time, but three; that is to say, she had treated my rival as badly as she had treated me; the poor boy, having discovered her inconstancy, made a great ado and all Paris knew it. At first I did not catch the meaning of Desgenais’s words, as I was not listening attentively; but when he had repeated his story three times in detail I was so stupefied that I could not reply. My first impulse was to laugh, for I saw that I had loved the most unworthy of women; but it was no less true that I loved her still. “Is it possible?” was all I could say.
Desgenais’s friends confirmed all he had said. My mistress had been surprised in her own house between two lovers, and a scene ensued that all Paris knew by heart. She was disgraced, obliged to leave Paris or remain exposed to the most bitter taunts.
It was easy for me to see that in all this ridicule a great part was directed at me, not only on account of my duel in connection with this woman, but from my whole conduct in regard to her. To say that she deserved severest censure, that she had perhaps committed far worse sins than those she was charged with, was but to make me feel that I had been one of her dupes.
All this did not please me; but Desgenais had undertaken the task of curing me of my love, and was prepared to treat my disease heroically. A long friendship, founded on mutual services, gave him certain rights, and as his motive appeared praiseworthy I allowed him to have his way.
Not only did he not spare me, but when he saw my trouble and my shame increase, he pressed me the harder. My impatience was so obvious that he could not continue, so he stopped and remained silent—a course that irritated me still more.
In my turn I began to ask questions; I paced to and fro in my room. Although the recital of the story was well-nigh insupportable, I wished to hear it again. I tried to assume a smiling face and tranquil air, but in vain. Desgenais suddenly became silent after having shown himself to be a most virulent gossip. While I was pacing up and down my room he looked at me calmly, as if I were a caged fox.
I can not express my state of mind. That a woman who had so long been the idol of my heart, and who, since I had lost her, had caused me such deep affliction, the only one I had ever loved, for whom indeed I might sorrow till death, should become suddenly a shameless wretch, the subject of coarse jests, of universal censure and scandal! It seemed to me that I felt on my shoulder the brand of a glowing iron and that I was marked with a burning stigma.
The more I reflected, the more the darkness thickened about me. From time to time I turned my head and saw a cold smile or a curious glance. Desgenais did not leave me; he knew very well what he was doing, and saw that I might go to any lengths in my present desperate condition.
When he found that he had brought me to the desired point, he did not hesitate to deal the finishing stroke.
“Does that story displease you?” he asked. “The best is yet to come. My dear Octave, the scene I have described took place on a certain night when the moon was shining brightly. While the two lovers were quarrelling over their fair one, and talking of cutting her throat as she sat before the fire, down in the street a certain shadow was seen to pass up and down before the house, a shadow that resembled you so closely that it was decided it must be you.”
“Who says so?” I asked, “who saw me in the street?”
“Your mistress herself; she told it to every one who cared to listen, just as cheerfully as we tell you her story. She claims that you love her still, that you keep guard at her door, in short—everything you can think of; but you ought to know that she talks about you publicly.”
I have never been able to lie, for whenever I have tried to disguise the truth my face has betrayed me. ‘Amour propre’, the shame of confessing my weakness before witnesses induced me, however, to make the effort. “It is very true that I was in the street,” I thought, “but had I known that my mistress was as bad as she is, I should not have been there.”
Finally I persuaded myself that I had not been seen distinctly; I attempted to deny it. A deep flush suffused my face and I felt the futility of my feint. Desgenais smiled.
“Take care,” said he, “take care, do not go too far.”
“But,” I protested, “how did I know it, how could I know—”
Desgenais compressed his lips as if to say:
“You knew enough.”
I stopped short, mumbling the remnant of my sentence. My blood became so hot that I could not continue.
“I in the street bathed in tears, in despair, and during that time that encounter within! What! that very night! Mocked by her! Surely, Desgenais, you are dreaming. Is it true? Can it be possible? What can you know about it?”
Thus talking at haphazard, I lost my head and an irresistible feeling of wrath began to rise within me. Finally I sat down exhausted.
“My friend,” said Desgenais, “do not take the thing so seriously. The solitary life you have been leading for the last two months has made you ill; I see you have need of distraction. Come to supper with me this evening, and tomorrow morning we will go to the country.”
The tone in which he said this hurt me more than anything else; in vain I tried to control myself. “Yes,” I thought, “deceived by that woman, poisoned by horrible suggestions, having no refuge either in work or in fatigue, having for my only safeguard against despair and ruin a sacred but frightful grief. O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my sorrow, that has just crumbled in my hands! It is no longer, my love, it is my despair that is insulted. Mockery! She mocks at me as I weep!” That appeared incredible to me. All the memories of the past crowded about my heart when I thought of it. I seemed to see the spectres of our nights of love; they hung over a bottomless, eternal abyss, black as chaos, and from the bottom of that abyss arose a shriek of laughter, sweet but mocking, that said: “Behold your reward!”
Had I been told that the world mocked at me I would have replied: “So much the worse for it,” and I should not have been angry; but at the same time I was told that my mistress was a shameless wretch. Thus, on one side, the ridicule was public, vouched for, stated by two witnesses who, before telling what they knew, must have felt that the world was against me; and, on the other hand, what reply could I make? How could I escape? What could I do when the centre of my life, my heart itself, was ruined, killed, annihilated. What could I say when the woman for whom I had braved all, ridicule as well as blame, for whom I had borne a load of misery, whom I loved, and who loved another, of whom I demanded no love, of whom I desired nothing but permission to weep at her door, no favor but that of vowing my youth to her memory and of writing her name, her name alone, on the tomb of my hopes!—Ah! when I thought of it, I felt the hand of death heavy upon me. That woman mocked me, it was she who first pointed her finger at me, singling me out to the idle crowd which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips erstwhile so many times pressed to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood, it was from that source the injury came; yea, the last pang of all, the most cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh that sneers in the face of grief.
The more I thought of it the more enraged I became. Did I say enraged? I do not know what passion possessed me. What I do know is that an inordinate desire for vengeance entered into my soul. How could I revenge myself on a woman? I would have paid any price for a weapon that could be used against her. But I had none, not even the one she had employed; I could not pay her in her own coin.
Suddenly I noticed a shadow moving behind the curtain before the closet. I had forgotten my prisoner.
“Listen to me!” I cried, rising, “I have loved, I have loved like a fool. I deserve all the ridicule you have subjected me to. But, by Heaven! I will show you something that will prove to you that I am not such a fool as you think.”
With these words I pulled aside the curtain and exposed the interior of the closet. The girl was trying to conceal herself in a corner.
“Go in, if you choose,” I said to Desgenais; “you who call me a fool for loving a woman, see how your teaching has affected me. Do you think I passed last night under the windows of—? But that is not all,” I added, “that is not all I have to say. You give a supper to-night and to-morrow go to the country; I am with you, and shall not leave you from now on. We will not separate, but will pass the entire day together. Are you with me? Agreed! I have tried to make of my heart the mausoleum of my love, but I will bury my love in another tomb.”
With these words I sat down, marvelling how indignation can solace grief and restore happiness. Whoever is astonished to learn that, from that day, I completely changed my course of life does not know the heart of man, and does not understand that a young man of twenty may hesitate before taking a step, but does not retreat when he has once taken it.
The first steps in debauchery resemble vertigo, for one feels a sort of terror mingled with sensuous delight, as if peering downward from some giddy—height. While shameful, secret dissipation ruins the noblest of men, in the frank and open defiance of conventionality there is something that compels respect even in the most depraved. He who goes at nightfall, muffled in his cloak, to sully his life in secret, and clandestinely to shake off the hypocrisy of the day, resembles an Italian who strikes his enemy from behind, not daring to provoke him to open quarrel. There are assassinations in the dark corners of the city under shelter of the night. He who goes his way without concealment says: “Every one does it and conceals it; I do it and do not conceal it.” Thus speaks pride, and once that cuirass has been buckled on, it glitters with the refulgent light of day.
It is said that Damocles saw a sword suspended over his head. Thus libertines seem to have something over their heads which says: “Go on, but remember, I hang not by a thread.” Those masked carriages that are seen during Carnival are the faithful images of their life. A dilapidated open wagon, flaming torches lighting up painted faces; some laugh, some sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. They float and stagger under the flaming torches in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is said, a pitying God watches.
But if the first impression be astonishment, the second is horror, and the third pity. There is evident so much force, or rather such an abuse of force, that often the noblest characters and the strongest constitutions are ruined. The life appears hardy and dangerous to these; they would make prodigies of themselves; bound to debauchery as Mazeppa to his horse, they gallop, making Centaurs of themselves and seeing neither the bloody trail that the shreds of their flesh leave, nor the eyes of the wolves that gleam in hungry pursuit, nor the desert, nor the vultures.
Launched into that life by the circumstances that I have recounted, I must now describe what I saw there.
Before I had a close view of one of those famous gatherings called theatrical masked balls, I had heard the debauchery of the Regency spoken of, and a reference to the time when a queen of France appeared disguised as a violet-seller. I found there flower-merchants disguised as vivandieres. I expected to find libertinism there, but in fact I found none at all. One sees only the scum of libertinism, some blows, and drunken women lying in deathlike stupor on broken bottles.
Ere I saw debauchery at table I had heard of the suppers of Heliogabolus and of the philosophy of Greece, which made the pleasures of the senses a kind of natural religion. I expected to find oblivion or something like joy; I found there the worst thing in the world: ennui trying to live, and some Englishmen who said: “I do this or that, and so I amuse myself. I have spent so many sovereigns, and have procured so much pleasure.” And thus they wear out their life on that grindstone.
I had known nothing of courtesans when I heard of Aspasia, who sat on the knees of Alcibiades while discussing philosophy with Socrates. I expected to find something bold and insolent, but gay, free, and vivacious, something with the sparkle of champagne; I found a yawning mouth, a fixed eye, and light fingers.
Before I saw titled courtesans I had read Boccaccio and Bandello; above all, I had read Shakespeare. I had dreamed of those beautiful triflers; of those cherubim of hell. A thousand times I had drawn those heads so poetically foolish, so enterprising in audacity, heads of harebrained mistresses who wreck a romance with a glance, and who pass through life by waves and by pulsations, like the sirens of the tides. I thought of the fairies of the modern tales, who are always drunk with love if not with wine. I found, instead, writers of letters, exact arrangers of assignations, who practised lying as an art and cloaked their baseness under hypocrisy, whose only thought was to give themselves for profit and to forget.
Ere first I looked on the gaming-table I had heard of floods of gold, of fortunes made in a quarter of an hour, and of a lord of the court of Henry IV, who won on one card a hundred thousand louis. I found a narrow room where workmen who had but one shirt rented a suit for the evening for twenty sous, police stationed at the door, and starving wretches staking a crust of bread against a pistol-shot.
Unknown to me were those dance-halls, public or other, open to any of those thirty thousand women who are permitted to sell themselves in Paris; I had heard of the saturnalia of all ages, of every imaginable orgy, from Babylon to Rome, from the temple of Priapus to the Parc-aux-Cerfs, and I have always seen written on the sill of that door the word, “Pleasure.” I found nothing suggestive of pleasure, but in its place another word; and it has always seemed ineffaceable, not graven in that glorious metal that takes the sun’s light, but in the palest of all, the cold colors of which seem tinted by the moonlight silver.
The first time I saw a mob, it was a depressing morning—Ash Wednesday, near Courtille. A cold, fine rain had been falling since the evening before; the streets were covered with pools of water. Carriages with blinds down were strung out hither and thither, crowding between hedges of hideous men and women standing on the sidewalks. That sinister wall of spectators had tigerish eyes, red with wine, gleaming with hatred. The carriage-wheels splashed mud over them, but they did not move. I was standing on the front seat of an open carriage; from time to time a man in rags would step out from the wall, hurl a torrent of abuse at us, then cover us with a cloud of flour. Mud would soon follow; yet we kept on our way toward the Isle of Love and the pretty wood of Romainville, consecrated by so many sweet kisses. One of my friends fell from his seat into the mud, narrowly escaping death on the paving. The people threw themselves on him to overpower him, and we were obliged to hasten to his assistance. One of the trumpeters who preceded us on horseback was struck on the shoulder by a paving-stone; the flour had given out. I had never heard of anything like that.
I began to understand the time and comprehend the spirit of the age.