Yet I was unwilling to yield.
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.