Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted
principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted
glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted
souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who
thus betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the
well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's
cripples.
To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct
their avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for
if there is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already
hinted, the place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void
has no attractions for them. On the contrary, they feel themselves
irresistibly drawn towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and
bereft.
An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected
lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last
fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound
wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience
deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded
effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported.
Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor
widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised.
Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the
poor; a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking.
It is forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich
who exhibit a full complement of sorrow.
Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by
the hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite
alone? I do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several
long hours an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect,
wrapped in a little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride
of stoicism.
She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of
an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added
to their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she
dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room,
and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes,
that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and
personal interest.
At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of
those skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated
herself remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of
the regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This
was without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the
purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the
burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy,
without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for
many years past--three hundred and sixty-five times a year!
Yet one more:
I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic
at least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around
the enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the
night, float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of
the women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with
doing nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to
the music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does
not inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of
the mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis,
at the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering
furnace within.
There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of
the poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people
dressed in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking
contrast with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic
woman, and so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having
seen the like in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the
past. A perfume of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her
face, sad and worn, was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in
which she was dressed. She also, like the plebeians she mingled with
and did not see, looked upon the luminous world with a profound eye,
and listened with a toss of her head.
It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this
poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so
noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings
with which she is so strikingly in contrast?"
But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The
tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black.
Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to
pay for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a
superfluity, a toy.
She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating--and alone, always
alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or
patience, and cannot become, anymore than another animal, a dog or a
cat, the confidant of solitary griefs.