CHAPTER IX

BACCHUS, THE CONSOLER

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:

Altra volta gieri biele,

Blanch' a rossa com' un flore,

Ma ora no. Non son piu biele

Consumatis dal' amore.

[Once I was beautiful, white and rosy as a flower; but now I am not.

I am no longer beautiful, consumed by the fire of love.]

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.

PART II

CHAPTER I

AT THE CROSSWAYS

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.

CHAPTER II

THE CHOSEN WAY

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.

CHAPTER III

AFRICAN HOSPITALITY

Desgenais had planned a reunion of young people at his country house.

The best wines, a splendid table, gaming, dancing, hunting, nothing was

lacking. Desgenais was rich and generous. He combined an antique

hospitality with modern ways. Moreover one could always find in his

house the best books; his conversation was that of a man of learning and

culture. He was a problem.

I took with me a taciturn humor that nothing could overcome; he respected

it scrupulously. I did not reply to his questions and he dropped the

subject; he was satisfied that I had forgotten my mistress. I went to

the chase and appeared at the table, and was as convivial as the best;

he asked no more.

One of the most unfortunate tendencies of inexperienced youth is to judge

of the world from first impressions; but it must be confessed that there

is a race of men who are also very unhappy; a race which says to youth:

"You are right in believing in evil, for we know what it is." I have

heard, for example, a curious thing spoken of, a medium between good and

evil, a certain arrangement between heartless women and men worthy of

them--apparently love, but in reality a passing sentiment. They speak of

love as of an engine constructed by a wagon-builder or a building-

contractor. They said to me: "This and that are agreed upon, such and

such phrases are spoken, and certain others are repeated in reply;

letters are written in a prescribed manner, you kneel in a certain

attitude." All is regulated as in a parade.

This made me laugh. Unfortunately for me, I can not tell a woman whom I

despise that I love her, even when I know that it is only a convention

and that she will not be deceived by it. I have never bent my knee to

the ground when my heart did not go with it. So that class of women

known as facile is unknown to me, or if I allow myself to be taken with

them, it is without knowing it, and through innate simplicity.

I can understand that one's soul can be put aside, but not that it should

be handled. That there is some pride in this, I confess, but I do not

intend either to boast or abase myself. Above all things I hate those

women who laugh at love, and I permit them to reciprocate the sentiment;

there will never be any dispute between us.

Such women are beneath courtesans, for courtesans may lie as well as

they; but courtesans are capable of love, and these women are not. I

remember a woman who loved me, and who said to a man many times richer

than I, with whom she was living: "I am weary of you, I am going to my

lover." That woman is worth more than many others who are not despised

by society.

I passed the entire season with Desgenais, and learned that my mistress

had left France; that news left in my heart a feeling of languor which I

could not overcome.

At the sight of that world which surrounded and was so new to me,

I experienced at first a kind of bizarre curiosity, at once sad and

profound, which made me look timorously at things as does a restless

horse. Then an incident occurred which made a deep impression on me.

Desgenais had with him a very beautiful woman who loved him much.

One evening as I was walking with him I told him that I considered her

admirable, as much on account of her attachment for him as because of her

beauty. In short, I praised her highly and with warmth, giving him to

understand that he ought to be happy.

He made no reply. It was his manner, for he was the dryest of men. That

night when all had retired, and I had been in bed some fifteen minutes I

heard a knock at my door. I supposed it was some one of my friends who

could not sleep, and invited him to enter.

There appeared before my astonished eyes a woman, very pale, carrying a

bouquet in her hands, to which was attached a piece of paper bearing

these words "To Octave, from his friend Desgenais."

I had no sooner read these words than a flash of light came to me.

I understood the meaning of this action of Desgenais in making me this

African gift. It made me think. The poor woman was weeping and did not

dare dry her tears for fear I would see them. I said to her: "You may

return and fear nothing."

She replied that if she should return Desgenais would send her back to

Paris. "Yes," I replied, "you are beautiful and I am susceptible to

temptation, but you weep, and your tears not being shed for me, I care

nothing for the rest. Go, therefore, and I will see to it that you are

not sent back to Paris."

One of my peculiarities is that meditation, which with many is a firm and

constant quality of the mind, is in my case an instinct independent of

the will, and seizes me like a fit of passion. It comes to me at

intervals in its own good time, regardless of my will and in almost any

place. But when it comes I can do nothing against it. It takes me

whither it pleases by whatever route seems good to it.

When the woman had left, I sat up.

"My friend," I said to myself, "behold what has been sent you. If

Desgenais had not seen fit to send you his mistress he would not have

been mistaken, perhaps, in supposing that you might fall in love with

her.

"Have you well considered it? A sublime and divine mystery is

accomplished. Such a being costs nature the most vigilant maternal care;

yet man, who would cure you, can think of nothing better than to offer

you lips which belong to him in order to teach you how to cease to love.

"How was it accomplished? Others than you have doubtless admired her,

but they ran no risk. She might employ all the seduction she pleased;

you alone were in danger.

"It must be that Desgenais has a heart, since he lives. In what respect

does he differ from you. He is a man who believes in nothing, fears

nothing, who knows no care or ennui, perhaps, and yet it is clear that a

scratch on the finger would fill him with terror, for if his body

abandons him, what becomes of him? He lives only in the body. What sort

of creature is he who treats his soul as the flagellants treat their

bodies? Can one live without a head?

"Think of it. Here is a man who possesses one of the most beautiful

women in the world; he is young and ardent; he finds her beautiful and

tells her so; she replies that she loves him. Some one touches him on

the shoulder and says to him: 'She is unfaithful.' Nothing more, he is

sure of himself. If some one had said: 'She is a poisoner,' he would,

perhaps have continued to love her, he would not have given her a kiss

less; but she is unfaithful, and it is no more a question of love with

him than of the star of Saturn.

"What is there in that word? A word that is merited, positive,

withering, at will. But why? It is still but a word. Can you kill a

body with a word?

"And if you love that body? Some one pours a glass of wine and says to

you: 'Do not love that, for you can get four for six francs.' And it may

intoxicate you!

"But Desgenais loves his mistress, since he keeps her; he must,

therefore, have a peculiar fashion of loving? No, he has not; his

fashion of loving is not love, and he cares no more for the woman who

merits affection than for her who is unworthy. He loves no one, simply

and truly.

"What has led him to this? Was he born thus? To love is as natural as

to eat and to drink. He is not a man. Is he a dwarf or a giant? Is he

always so impassive? Upon what does he feed, what beverage does he

drink? Behold him at thirty like old Mithridates; poisons are his

familiar friends.

"There is the great secret, my child, the key you must grasp. By

whatever process of reasoning debauchery may be defended, it will be

proven that it is natural at a given day, hour, or night, but not to-

morrow nor every day. There is not a nation on earth which has not

considered woman either the companion and consolation of man or the

sacred instrument of life, and has not under either of these two forms

honored her. And yet here is an armed warrior who leaps into the abyss

that God has dug with His own hands between man and brute; as well might

he deny that fact. What mute Titan is this who dares repress under the

kisses of the body the love of the soul, and place on human lips the

stigma of the brute, the seal of eternal silence?

"There is a word that should be studied. In it you hear the faint moan

of those dismal labyrinths we know as secret societies, mysteries that

the angels of destruction whisper in the ear of night as it descends upon

the earth. That man is better or worse than God has made him. He is

like a sterile woman, in whom nature has not completed her work, or there

is distilled in the shadow of his life some venomous poison.

"Ah! yes, neither occupation nor study has been able to cure you, my

friend. To forget and to learn, that is your device. You turn the

leaves of dead books; you are too young for antiquities. Look about you,

the pale throng of men surrounds you. The eyes of life's sphynx glitter

in the midst of divine hieroglyphics; decipher the book of life!

Courage, scholar, launch out on the Styx, the deathless flood, and let

the waves of sorrow waft you to oblivion or to God."

CHAPTER IV

MARCO

"All the good there was in it, supposing there was some good in it, was

that false pleasures were the seeds of sorrow and of bitterness which

fatigued me to the point of exhaustion." Such are the simple words

spoken with reference to his youth by a man who was the most manly of any

who have lived--St. Augustine. Of those who have done as I, few would

say those words; all have them in their hearts; I have found no others in

mine.

Returning to Paris in the month of December, I passed the winter

attending pleasure parties, masquerades, suppers, rarely leaving

Desgenais, who was delighted with me: not so was I with him. The more

I went about, the more unhappy I became. It seemed to me after a short

time that the world which had at first appeared so strange would hamper

me, so to speak, at every step; yet where I had expected to see a

spectre, I discovered, upon closer inspection, a shadow.

Desgenais asked what ailed me.

"And you?" I asked. "What is the matter with you? Have you lost some

relative? Or do you suffer from some wound?"

At times he seemed to understand and did not question me. Occasionally

we sat down at a cafe table and drank until our heads swam; or in the

middle of the night took horses and rode ten or twelve leagues into the

country; returning to the bath, then to table, then to gambling, then to

bed; and on reaching mine, I fell on my knees and wept. That was my

evening prayer.

Strange to say, I took pride in passing for what I was not, I boasted of

being worse than I really was, and experienced a sort of melancholy

pleasure in doing so. When I had actually done what I claimed, I felt

nothing but ennui, but when I invented an account of some folly, some

story of debauchery, or a recital of an orgy with which I had nothing to

do, it seemed to me that my heart was better satisfied, although I know

not why.

Whenever I joined a party of pleasure-seekers and visited some spot made

sacred by tender associations I became stupid, went off by myself, looked

gloomily at the trees and bushes as if I would like to trample them under

my feet. Upon my return I would remain silent for hours.

The baleful idea that truth is nudity beset me on every occasion.

"The world," I said to myself, "is accustomed to call its disguise

virtue, its chaplet religion, its flowing mantle convenience. Honor and

Morality are man's chambermaids; he drinks in his wine the tears of the

poor in spirit who believe in him; while the sun is high in the heavens

he walks about with downcast eye; he goes to church, to the ball, to the

assembly, and when evening has come he removes his mantle and there

appears a naked bacchante with the hoofs of a goat."

But such thoughts aroused a feeling of horror, for I felt that if the

body was under the clothing, the skeleton was under the body. "Is it

possible that that is all?." I asked in spite of myself. Then I

returned to the city, I saw a little girl take her mother's arm, and I

became like a child.

Although I had followed my friends into all manner of dissipation, I had

no desire to resume my place in the world of society. The sight of women

caused me intolerable pain; I could not touch a woman's hand without

trembling. I had decided never to love again.

Nevertheless I returned from the ball one evening so sick at heart that I

feared that it was love. I happened to have had beside me at supper the

most charming and the most distinguished woman whom it had ever been my

good fortune to meet. When I closed my eyes to sleep I saw her image

before me. I thought I was lost, and I at once resolved that I would

avoid meeting her again. A sort of fever seized me, and I lay on my bed

for fifteen days, repeating over and over the lightest words I had

exchanged with her.

As there is no spot on earth where one can be so well-known by his

neighbors as in Paris, it was not long before the people of my

acquaintance who had seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being a

great libertine. In that I admired the discernment of the world: in

proportion as I had passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the time of

my rupture with my mistress, I was now considered corrupt and hardened.

Some one had just told me that it was clear I had never loved that woman,

that I had doubtless merely played at love, thereby paying me a

compliment which I really did not deserve; but the truth of it was that

I was so swollen with vanity I was charmed with it.

My desire was to pass as blase, even while I was filled with desires and

my exalted imagination was carrying me beyond all limits. I began to say

that I could not make any headway with the women; my head was filled with

chimeras which I preferred to realities. In short, my unique pleasure

consisted in altering the nature of facts. If a thought were but

extraordinary, if it shocked common sense, I became its ardent champion

at the risk of advocating the most dangerous sentiments.

My greatest fault was imitation of everything that struck me, not by its

beauty but by its strangeness, and not wishing to confess myself an

imitator I resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original.

According to my idea, nothing was good or even tolerable; nothing was

worth the trouble of turning the head, and yet when I had become warmed

up in a discussion it seemed as if there was no expression in the French

language strong enough to sustain my cause; but my warmth would subside

as soon as my opponents ranged themselves on my side.

It was a natural consequence of my conduct. Although disgusted with the

life I was leading I was unwilling to change it:

Simigliante a quells 'nferma

Che non puo trovar posa in su le piume,

Ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma.--DANTE.

Thus I tortured my mind to give it change, and I fell into all these

vagaries in order to get away from myself.

But while my vanity was thus occupied, my heart was suffering, so that

ever within me were a man who laughed and a man who wept. It was a

perpetual struggle between my head and my heart. My own mockeries

frequently caused me great pain and my deepest sorrows aroused a desire

to burst into laughter.

One day a man boasted of being proof against superstitious fears, in

fact, fear of every kind. His friends put a human skeleton in his bed

and then concealed themselves in an adjoining room to wait for his

return. They did not hear any noise, but in the morning they found him

dressed and sitting on the bed playing with the bones; he had lost his

reason.

I might be that man but for the fact that my favorite bones are those of

a well-beloved skeleton; they are the debris of my first love, all that

remains of the past.

But it must not be supposed that there were no joyous moments in all this

maddened whirl. Among Desgenais's companions were several young men of

distinction and a number of artists. We sometimes passed together

delightful evenings imagining ourselves libertines. One of them was

infatuated with a beautiful singer, who charmed us with her fresh and

expressive voice. How many times we sat listening to her while supper

was waiting! How many times, when the flagons had been emptied, one of

us held a volume of Lamartine and read aloud in a voice choked by

emotion! Every other thought disappeared. The hours passed by unheeded.

What strange "libertines" we were! We did not speak a word and there

were tears in our eyes.

Desgenais especially, habitually the coldest and dryest of men,

was inexplicable on such occasions; he delivered himself of such

extraordinary sentiments that he might have been a poet in delirium.

But after these effusions he would be seized with furious joy. When

warmed by wine he would break everything within reach; the genius of

destruction stalked forth in him armed to the teeth. I have seen him

pickup a chair and hurl it through a closed window.

I could not help making a study of this singular man. He appeared to me

the exact type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was

unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the

despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a spoiled child.

During the fete, in particular, he was in such a state of nervous

excitement that he acted like a schoolboy. Once he persuaded me to go

out on foot with him, muffled in grotesque costumes, with masks and

instruments of music. We promenaded all night, in the midst of the most

frightful din of horrible sounds. We found a driver asleep on his box

and unhitched his horses; then, pretending we had just come from the

ball, set up a great cry. The coachman started up, cracked his whip,

and his horses started off on a trot, leaving him seated on the box.

That same evening we had passed through the Champs Elysees; Desgenais,

seeing another carriage passing, stopped it after the manner of a

highwayman; he intimidated the coachman by threats and forced him to

climb down and lie flat on his stomach. He opened the carriage door and

found within a young man and a lady motionless with fright. He whispered

to me to imitate him, and we began to enter one door and go out by the

other, so that in the obscurity the poor young people thought they saw a

procession of bandits going through their carriage.

As I understand it, the men who say that the world gives experience ought

to be astonished if they are believed. The world is merely a number of

whirlpools, each one independent of the others; they circle in groups

like flocks of birds. There is no resemblance between the different

quarters of the same city, and the denizen of the Chaussee d'Antin has as

much to learn at Marais as at Lisbon. It is true that these various

whirlpools are traversed, and have been since the beginning of the world,

by seven personages who are always the same: the first is called hope;

the second, conscience; the third, opinion; the fourth, desire; the

fifth, sorrow; the sixth, pride; and the seventh, man.

"But," the reader objects, "where are the women in all this?"

Oh! creatures who bear the name of women and who have passed like dreams

through a life that was itself a dream, what shall I say of you? Where

there is no shadow of hope can there be memory? Where shall I seek for

it? What is there more dumb in human memory? What is there more

completely forgotten than you?

If I must speak of women I will mention two; here is one of them:

I ask what would be expected of a poor sewing-girl, young and pretty,

about eighteen, with a romantic affair on her hands that is purely a

question of love; with little knowledge of life and no idea of morals;

eternally sewing near a window before which processions were not allowed

to pass by order of the police, but near which a dozen young women

prowled who were licensed and recognized by these same police; what could

you expect of her, when after wearying her hands and eyes all day long on

a dress or a hat, she leans out of that window as night falls? That

dress she has sewed, that hat she has trimmed with her poor and honest

hands in order to earn a supper for the household, she sees passing along

the street on the head or on the body of a notorious woman. Thirty times

a day a hired carriage stops before the door, and there steps out a

dissolute character, numbered as is the hack in which she rides, who

stands before a glass and primps, taking off and putting on the results

of many days' work on the part of the poor girl who watches her. She

sees that woman draw from her pocket gold in plenty, she who has but one

louis a week; she looks at her feet and her head, she examines her dress

and eyes her as she steps into her carriage; and then, what can you

expect? When night has fallen, after a day when work has been scarce,

when her mother is sick, she opens her door, stretches out her hand and

stops a passerby.

Such is the story of a girl I once knew. She could play the piano, knew

something of accounts, a little designing, even a little history and

grammar, and thus a little of everything. How many times have I regarded

with poignant compassion that sad work of nature, mutilated by society!

How many times have I followed in the darkness the pale and vacillating

gleams of a spark flickering in abortive life! How many times have I

tried to revive the fire that smouldered under those ashes! Alas! her

long hair was the color of ashes, and we called her Cendrillon.

I was not rich enough to help her; Desgenais, at my request, interested

himself in the poor creature; he made her learn over again all of which

she had a slight knowledge. But she could make no appreciable progress.

When her teacher left her she would fold her arms and for hours look

silently across the public square. What days! What misery! One day I

threatened that if she did not work she should have no money; she

silently resumed her task, and I learned that she stole out of the house

a few minutes later. Where did she go? God knows. Before she left I

asked her to embroider a purse for me. I still have that sad relic, it

hangs in my room, a monument of the ruin that is wrought here below.

But here is another case:

It was about ten in the evening when, after a riotous day, we repaired to

Desgenais's, who had left us some hours before to make his preparations.

The orchestra was ready and the room filled when we arrived.

Most of the dancers were girls from the theatres.

As soon as we entered I plunged into the giddy whirl of the waltz. That

delightful exercise has always been dear to me; I know of nothing more

beautiful, more worthy of a beautiful woman and a young man; all dances

compared with the waltz are but insipid conventions or pretexts for

insignificant converse. It is truly to possess a woman, in a certain

sense, to hold her for a half hour in your arms, and to draw her on in

the dance, palpitating in spite of herself, in such a way that it can not

be positively asserted whether she is being protected or seduced. Some

deliver themselves up to the pleasure with such modest voluptuousness,

with such sweet and pure abandon, that one does not know whether he

experiences desire or fear, and whether, if pressed to the heart, they

would faint or break in pieces like the rose. Germany, where that dance

was invented, is surely the land of love.

I held in my arms a superb danseuse from an Italian theatre who had come

to Paris for the carnival; she wore the costume of a Bacchante with a

robe of panther's skin. Never have I seen anything so languishing as

that creature. She was tall and slender, and while dancing with extreme

rapidity, had the appearance of allowing herself to be led; to see her

one would think that she would tire her partner, but such was not the

case, for she moved as if by enchantment.

On her bosom rested an enormous bouquet, the perfume of which intoxicated

me. She yielded to my encircling arms as would an Indian vine, with

a gentleness so sweet and so sympathetic that I seemed enveloped with

a perfumed veil of silk. At each turn there could be heard a light

tinkling from her metal girdle; she moved so gracefully that I thought

I beheld a beautiful star, and her smile was that of a fairy about to

vanish from human sight. The tender and voluptuous music of the dance

seemed to come from her lips, while her head, covered with a wilderness

of black tresses, bent backward as if her neck was too slender to support

its weight.

When the waltz was over I threw myself on a chair; my heart beat wildly:

"Oh, heaven!" I murmured, "how can it be possible? Oh, superb monster!

Oh! beautiful reptile! How you writhe, how you coil in and out, sweet

adder, with supple and spotted skin! Thy cousin the serpent has taught

thee to coil about the tree of life holding between thy lips the apple of

temptation. Oh! Melusina! Melusina! The hearts of men are thine. You

know it well, enchantress, with your soft languor that seems to suspect

nothing! You know very well that you ruin, that you destroy;

you know that he who touches you will suffer; you know that he dies who

basks in your smile, who breathes the perfume of your flowers and comes

under the magic influence of your charms; that is why you abandon

yourself so freely, that is why your smile is so sweet, your flowers so

fresh; that is why you place your arms so gently on our shoulders. Oh,

heaven! what is your will with us?"

Professor Halle has said a terrible thing: "Woman is the nervous part of

humanity, man the muscular." Humboldt himself, that serious thinker, has

said that an invisible atmosphere surrounds the human nerves.

I do not quote the dreamers who watch the wheeling flight of

Spallanzani's bat, and who think they have found a sixth sense in nature.

Such as nature is, her mysteries are terrible enough, her powers mighty

enough--that nature which creates us, mocks at us, and kills us--without

our seeking to deepen the shadows that surround us. But where is the man

who thinks he has lived that will deny woman's power over us? Has he

ever taken leave of a beautiful dancer with trembling hands? Has he ever

felt that indefinable enervating magnetism which, in the midst of the

dance, under the influence of music, and the warmth, making all else seem

cold, that comes from a young woman, electrifying her and leaping from

her to him as the perfume of aloes from the swinging censer?

I was struck with stupor. I was familiar with that sensation similar to

drunkenness which characterizes love; I knew that it was the aureole

which crowned my well-beloved. But that she should excite such heart-

throbs, that she should evoke such phantoms with nothing but her beauty,

her flowers, her motley costume, and a certain trick of dancing she had

learned from some merry-andrew; and that without a word, without a

thought, without even appearing to know it! What was chaos, if it

required seven days to make such a being?

It was not love, however, that I felt, and I do not know how to describe

it unless I call it thirst. For the first time I felt vibrating in my

body a cord that was not attuned to my heart. The sight of that

beautiful animal had aroused a responsive roar from another animal in my

nature. I felt sure I could never tell that woman that I loved her, or

that she pleased me, or even that she was beautiful; there was nothing on

my lips but a desire to kiss her, and say to her: "Make a girdle of those

listless arms and lean that head on my breast; place that sweet smile on

my lips." My body loved hers; I was under the influence of beauty as of

wine.

Desgenais passed and asked what I was doing there.

"Who is that woman?" I asked.

"What woman? Of whom do you speak?"

I took his arm and led him into the hall. The Italian saw us coming and

smiled. I stopped and stepped back.

"Ah!" said Desgenais, "you have danced with Marco?"

"Who is Marco?" I asked.

"Why, that idle creature who is laughing over there. Does she please

you?"

"No," I replied, "I have waltzed with her and wanted to know her name;

I have no further interest in her."

Shame led me to speak thus, but when Desgenais turned away I followed

him.

"You are very prompt," he said, "Marco is no ordinary woman. She was

almost the wife of M. de ------, ambassador to Milan. One of his friends

brought her here. Yet," he added, "you may rest assured I shall speak to

her. We shall not allow you to die so long as there is any hope for you

or any resource left untried. It is possible that she will remain to

supper."

He left me, and I was alarmed to see him approach her. But they were

soon lost in the crowd.

"Is it possible," I murmured; "have I come to this? Oh! heavens! is this

what I am going to love? But after all," I thought, "my senses have

spoken, but not my heart."

Thus I tried to calm myself. A few minutes later Desgenais tapped me on

the shoulder.

"We shall go to supper at once," said he. "You will give your arm to

Marco."

"Listen," I said; "I hardly know what I am experiencing. It seems to me

I see limping Vulcan covering Venus with kisses while his beard smokes

with the fumes of the forge. He fixes his staring eyes on the dazzling

skin of his prey. His happiness in the possession of his prize makes him

laugh for joy, and at the same time shudder with happiness, and then he

remembers his father, Jupiter, seated on high among the gods."

Desgenais looked at me but made no reply; taking me by the arm he led me

away.

"I am tired," he said, "and I am sad; this noise wearies me. Let us go

to supper, that will refresh us."

The supper was splendid, but I could not touch it.

"What is the matter with you?" asked Marco.

I sat like a statue, making no reply and looking at her from head to foot

with amazement.

She began to laugh, and Desgenais, who could see us from his table,

joined her. Before her was a large crystal glass cut in the shape of a

chalice, which reflected the glittering lights on its thousand sparkling

facets, shining like the prism and revealing the seven colors of the

rainbow. She listlessly extended her arm and filled it to the brim with

Cyprian and a sweetened Oriental wine which I afterward found so bitter

on the deserted Lido.

"Here," she said, presenting it to me, "per voi, bambino mio."

"For you and for me," I said, presenting her my glass in turn.

She moistened her lips while I emptied my glass, unable to conceal the

sadness she seemed to read in my eyes.

"Is it not good?" she asked.

"No," I replied.

"Perhaps your head aches?"

"No."

"Or you are tired?"

"No."

"Ah! then it is the ennui of love?"

With these words she became serious, for in spite of herself, in speaking

of love, her Italian heart beat the faster.

A scene of folly ensued. Heads were becoming heated, cheeks were

assuming that purple hue with which wine suffuses the face as if to

prevent shame appearing there. A confused murmur, like to that of a

rising sea, could be heard all over the room; here and there eyes would

become inflamed, then fixed and empty; I know not what wind stirred above

this drunkenness. A woman rises, as in a tranquil sea the first wave

that feels the tempest's breath foams up to announce it; she makes a sign

with her hand to command silence, empties her glass at a gulp and with

the same movement undoes her hair, which falls in shining tresses over

her shoulders; she opens her mouth as if to start a drinking-song; her

eyes are half closed. She breathes with an effort; twice a harsh sound

comes from her throat; a mortal pallor overspreads her features and she

drops into her chair.

Then came an uproar which lasted an hour. It was impossible to

distinguish anything, either laughter, songs, or cries.

"What do you think of it?" asked Desgenais.

"Nothing," I replied. "I have stopped my ears and am looking at it."

In the midst of this Bacchanalian orgy the beautiful Marco remained mute,

drinking nothing and leaning quietly on her bare arm. She seemed neither

astonished nor affected by it.

"Do you not wish to do as they?" I asked. "You have just offered me

Cyprian wine; why do you not drink some yourself?"

With these words I poured out a large glass full to the brim. She raised

it to her lips and then placed it on the table, and resumed her listless

attitude.

The more I studied that Marco, the more singular she appeared; she took

pleasure in nothing and did not seem to be annoyed by anything.

It appeared as difficult to anger her as to please her; she did what

was asked of her, but no more. I thought of the genius of eternal

repose, and I imagined that if that pale statue should become

somnambulant it would resemble Marco.

"Are you good or bad?" I asked. "Are you sad or gay? Are you loved?

Do you wish to beloved? Are you fond of money, of pleasure, of what?

Horses, the country, balls? What pleases you? Of what are you

dreaming?"

To all these questions the same smile on her part, a smile that expressed

neither joy nor sorrow, but which seemed to say, "What does it matter?"

and nothing more.

I held my lips to hers; she gave me a listless kiss and then passed her

handkerchief over her mouth.

"Marco," I said, "woe to him who loves you."

She turned her dark eyes on me, then turned them upward, and raising her

finger with that Italian gesture which can not be imitated, she

pronounced that characteristic feminine word of her country:

"Forse!"

And then dessert was served. Some of the party had departed, some were

smoking, others gambling, and a few still at table; some of the women

danced, others slept. The orchestra returned; the candles paled and

others were lighted. I recalled a supper of Petronius, where the lights

went out around the drunken masters, and the slaves entered and stole the

silver. All the while songs were being sung in various parts of the

room, and three Englishmen, three of those gloomy figures for whom the

Continent is a hospital, kept up a most sinister ballad that must have

been born of the fogs of their marshes.

"Come," said I to Marco, "let us go."

She arose and took my arm.

"To-morrow!" cried Desgenais to me, as we left the hall.

When approaching Marco's house, my heart beat violently and I could not

speak. I could not understand such a woman; she seemed to experience

neither desire nor disgust, and I could think of nothing but the fact

that my hand was trembling and hers motionless.

Her room was, like her, sombre and voluptuous; it was dimly lighted by an

alabaster lamp. The chairs and sofa were as soft as beds, and there was

everywhere suggestion of down and silk. Upon entering I was struck with

the strong odor of Turkish pastilles, not such as are sold here on the

streets, but those of Constantinople, which are more powerful and more

dangerous. She rang, and a maid appeared. She entered an alcove without

a word, and a few minutes later I saw her leaning on her elbow in her

habitual attitude of nonchalance.

I stood looking at her. Strange to say, the more I admired her, the more

beautiful I found her, the more rapidly I felt my desires subside. I do

not know whether it was some magnetic influence or her silence and

listlessness. I lay down on a sofa opposite the alcove, and the coldness

of death settled on my soul.

The pulsation of the blood in the arteries is a sort of clock, the

ticking of which can be heard only at night. Man, free from exterior

attractions, falls back upon himself; he hears himself live. In spite of

my fatigue I could not close my eyes; those of Marco were fixed on me; we

looked at each other in silence, gently, so to speak.

"What are you doing there?" she asked.

She heaved a gentle sigh that was almost a plaint.

I turned my head and saw that the first gleams of morning light were

shining through the window.

I arose and opened the window; a bright light penetrated every corner of

the room. The sky was clear.

I motioned to her to wait. Considerations of prudence had led her to

choose an apartment some distance from the centre of the city; perhaps

she had other quarters, for she sometimes received a number of visitors.

Her lover's friends sometimes visited her, and this room was doubtless

only a petite maison; it overlooked the Luxembourg, the gardens of which

extended as far as my eye could reach.

As a cork held under water seems restless under the hand which holds it,

and slips through the fingers to rise to the surface, thus there stirred

in me a sentiment that I could neither overcome nor escape. The gardens

of the Luxembourg made my heart leap and banished every other thought.

How many times had I stretched myself out on one of those little mounds,

a sort of sylvan school, while I read in the cool shade some book filled

with foolish poetry! For such, alas, were the extravagances of my

childhood. I saw many souvenirs of the past among those leafless trees

and faded lawns. There, when ten years of age, I had walked with my

brother and my tutor, throwing bits of bread to some of the poor half-

starved birds; there, seated under a tree, I had watched a group of

little girls as they danced, and felt my heart beat in unison with the

refrain of their childish song. There, returning from school, I had

followed a thousand times the same path, lost in meditation upon some

verse of Virgil and kicking the pebbles at my feet.

"Oh, my childhood! You are there!" I cried. "Oh, heaven! now I am

here."

I turned around. Marco was asleep, the lamp had gone out, the light of

day had changed the aspect of the room; the hangings which had at first

appeared blue were now a faded yellow, and Marco, the beautiful statue,

was livid as death.

I shuddered in spite of myself; I looked at the alcove, then at the

garden; my head became drowsy and fell on my breast. I sat down before

an open secretary near one of the windows. A piece of paper caught my

eye; it was an open letter and I looked at it mechanically. I read it

several times before I thought what I was doing. Suddenly a gleam of

intelligence came to me, although I could not understand everything. I

picked up the paper and read what follows, written in an unskilled hand

and filled with errors in spelling:

"She died yesterday. She began to fail at twelve the night before. She

called me and said: 'Louison, I am going to join my companion; go to the

closet and take down the cloth that hangs on a nail; it is the mate of

the other.' I fell on my knees and wept, but she took my hand and said:

'Do not weep, do not weep!' And she heaved such a sigh--"

The rest was torn, I can not describe the impression that sad letter made

on me; I turned it over and saw on the other side Marco's address and the

date that of the evening previous.

"Is she dead? Who is dead?" I cried going to the alcove. "Dead! Who?"

Marco opened her eyes. She saw me with the letter in my hand.

"It is my mother," she said, "who is dead. You are not coming?"

As she spoke she extended her hand.

"Silence!" I said, "sleep, and leave me to myself."

She turned over and went to sleep. I looked at her for some time to

assure myself that she would not hear me, and then quietly left the

house.

CHAPTER V

SATIETY

One evening I was seated before the fire with Desgenais. The window was

open; it was one of the early days in March, a harbinger of spring.

It had been raining, and a light odor came from the garden.

"What shall we do this spring?" I asked. "I do not care to travel."

"I shall do what I did last year," replied Desgenais. "I shall go to the

country when the time comes."

"What!" I replied. "Do you do the same thing every year? Are you going

to begin life over again this year?"

"What would you expect me to do?"

"What would I expect you to do?" I cried, jumping to my feet. "That is

just like you. Ah! Desgenais, how all this wearies me! Do you never

tire of this sort of life?"

"No," he replied.

I was standing before an engraving of the Magdalen in the desert.

Involuntarily I joined my hands.

"What are you doing?" asked Desgenais.

"If I were an artist," I replied, "and wished to represent melancholy,

I would not paint a dreamy girl with a book in her hands."

"What is the matter with you this evening?" he asked, smiling.

"No, in truth," I continued, "that Magdalen in tears has a spark of hope

in her bosom; that pale and sickly hand on which she supports her head,

is still sweet with the perfume with which she anointed the feet of her

Lord. You do not understand that in that desert there are thinking

people who pray. This is not melancholy."

"It is a woman who reads," he replied dryly.

"And a happy woman," I continued, "with a happy book."

Desgenais understood me; he saw that a profound sadness had taken

possession of me. He asked if I had some secret cause of sorrow.

I hesitated, but did not reply.

"My dear Octave," he said, "if you have any trouble, do not hesitate to

confide in me. Speak freely and you will find that I am your friend!"

"I know it," I replied, "I know I have a friend; that is not my trouble."

He urged me to explain.

"But what will it avail," I asked, "since neither of us can help matters?

Do you want the fulness of my heart or merely a word and an excuse?"

"Be frank!" he said.

"Very well," I replied, "you have seen fit to give me advice in the past

and now I ask you to listen to me as I have listened to you. You ask

what is in my heart, and I am about to tell you.

"Take the first comer and say to, him: 'Here are people who pass their

lives drinking, riding, laughing, gambling, enjoying all kinds of

pleasures; no barrier restrains them, their law is their pleasure, women

are their playthings; they are rich. They have no cares, not one. All

their days are days of feasting.' What do you think of it? Unless that

man happened to be a severe bigot, he would probably reply that it was

the greatest happiness that could be imagined.

"'Then take that man into the centre of the whirl, place him at a table

with a woman on either side, a glass in his hand, a handful of gold every

morning and say to him: 'This is your life. While you sleep near your

mistress, your horses neigh in the stables; while you drive your horses

along the boulevards, your wines are ripening in your vaults; while you

pass away the night drinking, the bankers are increasing your wealth.

You have but to express a wish and your desires are gratified. You are

the happiest of men. But take care lest some night of carousal you drink

too much and destroy the capacity of your body for enjoyment. That would

be a serious misfortune, for all the ills that afflict human flesh can be

cured, except that. You ride some night through the woods with joyous

companions; your horse falls and you are thrown into a ditch filled with

mud, and it may be that your companions, in the midst of their happy

shoutings will not hear your cry of anguish; it may be that the sound of

their trumpets will die away in the distance while you drag your broken

limbs through the deserted forest.

"'Some night you will lose at the gaming-table; fortune has its bad days.

When you return home and are seated before the fire, do not strike your

forehead with your hands, and allow sorrow to moisten your cheeks with

tears; do not anxiously cast your eyes about here and there as if

searching for a friend; do not, under any circumstances, think of those

who, under some thatched roof, enjoy a tranquil life and who sleep

holding each other by the hand; for before you on your luxurious bed

reclines a pale creature who loves--your money. From her you will seek

consolation for your grief, and she will remark that you are very sad and

ask if your loss was considerable; the tears from your eyes will concern

her deeply, for they may be the cause of allowing her dress to grow old

or the rings to drop from her fingers. Do not name him who won your

money that night, for she may meet him on the morrow, and may make sweet

eyes at him that would destroy your remaining happiness.

"'That is what is to be expected of human frailty; have you the strength

to endure it? Are you a man? Beware of disgust, it is an incurable

evil; death is more to be desired than a living distaste for life. Have

you a heart? Beware of love, for it is worse than disease for a

debauchee, and it is ridiculous. Debauchees pay their mistresses, and

the woman who sells herself has no right but that of contempt for the

purchaser. Are you passionate? Take care of your face. It is shameful

for a soldier to throw down his arms and for a debauchee to appear to

hold to anything; his glory consists in touching nothing except with

hands of marble that have been bathed in oil in order that nothing may

stick to them.

"'Are you hot-headed? If you desire to live, learn how to kill, for wine

is a wrangler. Have you a conscience? Take care of your slumber, for a

debauchee who repents too late is like a ship that leaks: it can neither

return to land nor continue on its course; the winds can with difficulty

move it, the ocean yawns for it, it careens and disappears. If you have

a body, look out for suffering; if you have a soul, despair awaits you.

"'O unhappy one! beware of men; while they walk along the same path with

you, you will see a vast plain strewn with garlands where a happy throng

of dancers trip the gladsome farandole standing in a circle, each a link

in an endless chain. It is but a mirage; those who look down know that

they are dancing on a silken thread stretched over an abyss that swallows

up all who fall and shows not even a ripple on its surface. What foot is

sure? Nature herself seems to deny you her divine consolation; trees and

flowers are yours no more; you have broken your mother's laws, you are no

longer one of her foster children; the birds of the field become silent

when you appear.

"'You are alone! Beware of God! You are face to face with Him, standing

like a cold statue upon the pedestal of will. The rain from heaven no

longer refreshes you, it undermines and weakens you. The passing wind no

longer gives you the kiss of life, its benediction on all that lives and

breathes; it buffets you and makes you stagger. Every woman who kisses

you takes from you a spark of life and gives you none in return; you

exhaust yourself on phantoms; wherever falls a drop of your sweat there

springs up one of those sinister weeds that grow in graveyards. Die!

You are the enemy of all who love; blot yourself from the face of the

earth, do not wait for old age; do not leave a child behind you, do not

perpetuate a drop of your corrupted blood; vanish as does the smoke, do

not deprive a single blade of living grass of a ray of sunlight.'"

When I had spoken these words I fell back in my chair, and a flood of

tears streamed from my eyes.

"Ah! Desgenais," I cried, sobbing, "this is not what you told me. Did

you not know it? And if you did, why did you not tell me of it?"

But Desgenais sat still with folded hands; he was as pale as a shroud,

and a tear trickled slowly down his cheek.

A moment of silence ensued. The clock struck; I suddenly remembered that

it was on this hour and this day one year ago that my mistress deceived

me.

"Do you hear that clock?" I cried, "do you hear it? I do not know what

it means at this moment, but it is a terrible hour, and one that will

count in my life."

I was beside myself, and scarcely knew what I was saying. But at that

instant a servant rushed into the room; he took my hand and led me aside,

whispering in my ear:

"Sir, I have come to inform you that your father is dying; he has just

been seized with an attack of apoplexy and the physicians despair of his

life."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A terrible danger lurks in the knowledge of what is possible

Accustomed to call its disguise virtue

All that is not life, it is the noise of life

Become corrupt, and you will cease to suffer

Began to forget my own sorrow in my sympathy for her

Beware of disgust, it is an incurable evil

Death is more to be desired than a living distaste for life

Despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a spoiled child

Do they think they have invented what they see

Force itself, that mistress of the world

Galileo struck the earth, crying: "Nevertheless it moves!"

Grief itself was for her but a means of seducing

He lives only in the body

Human weakness seeks association

I boasted of being worse than I really was

I can not love her, I can not love another

I do not intend either to boast or abase myself

Ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity

In what do you believe?

Indignation can solace grief and restore happiness

Is he a dwarf or a giant

Men doubted everything: the young men denied everything

Of all the sisters of love, the most beautiful is pity

Perfection does not exist

Resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original

Sceptic regrets the faith he has lost the power to regain

Seven who are always the same: the first is called hope

St. Augustine

Ticking of which (our arteries) can be heard only at night

When passion sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning

Wine suffuses the face as if to prevent shame appearing there

You believe in what is said here below and not in what is done

You turn the leaves of dead books

Youth is to judge of the world from first impressions