TEMPTATION
Last evening, I had a bright fire on the hearth. I was rich enough to
have two candles, and had lighted them both, regardless of the morrow.
I surprised myself singing, as I prepared for a night of toil. The
mansarde laughed to find itself warm and luminous.
As I sat down, I heard on the stairway the sound of voices and hurried
steps. Doors opened and shut. Then, amid the silence that ensued,
stifled cries came up to me. I sprang to my feet, vaguely disturbed, and
listened. The noise ceased. I was about to resume my chair, when some
one ran up-stairs and called out to me that a woman, my neighbor, had a
nervous attack. My help was asked. I held the door open, but saw only
the dark and gloomy stairway.
I put on a warmer coat and went down, forgetting even to take one of my
candles. On the floor below I stopped, not knowing what room to enter. I
did not hear a sound; I was surrounded by thick darkness. At last I saw
a thin thread of light through a half open door. I gave the door a push.
The chamber was the sister of mine: large, irregular and out of repair.
But, as I had left my mansarde in a flood of flame and brightness, the
gloom and cold of this place filled my heart with pity and sadness. Damp
air struck against my face; a miserable candle, burning on one corner of
the mantelpiece, flickered in the blast from the stairway, without
permitting me at first to see the objects before me.
I had paused upon the threshold. Finally I distinguished the bed: the
sheets, thrown off and twisted, had slipped to the floor; scattered
garments lay about on the coverlet.
In the midst of these rags was stretched out a vague, white form. I
should have thought I saw a corpse, if the candle had not given me
occasional glimpses of a hand hanging out of the bed and agitated by
rapid convulsions.
By the pillow was an old woman. Her unfastened gray hair fell in stiff
locks over her forehead, her hastily put on dress showed her yellow and
wasted arms. She had her back towards me, was holding the head and hid
from me the face of the woman on the bed.
The quivering body, watched over by this horrible old woman, gave me a
sudden feeling of disgust and fright. The motionlessness of their
countenances gave them fantastic dimensions, their silence made one
almost doubt that they were alive. I thought for an instant that I was
witnessing one of those terrible scenes of the witches' Sabbath, when
the sorceresses suck the blood of young girls, and, throwing them
ghastly and wrinkled into the arms of Death, rob them of their youth and
freshness.
The noise I made at the door caused the old woman to turn her head. She
let the body she was supporting fall heavily; then, she advanced towards
me.
"Ah! Monsieur," she said, "I thank you for having come. Old people fear
the winter nights, and this room is so cold that, perhaps, I would not
have been able to leave it in the morning. I have been watching a long
while, and when one eats but little, one needs more sleep. Besides, the
crisis is over. You will have to wait only until this girl awakens. Good
night, Monsieur."
The old woman went away, and I was alone. I shut the door, and, taking
up the candle, approached the bed. The girl extended upon it seemed
about twenty-four. She was plunged in that deep stupor which follows
nervous convulsions. Her feet were drawn up beneath her; her arms, still
stiff and wide open, were thrown over the edges of the bed. I could not
at first judge of her beauty: her head, thrown backward, was concealed
by her flood of hair.
I took her in my arms, straightened out her limbs and placed her upon
her back. Then I drew away the hair from her face. She was ugly: her
closed eyes had no lashes, her temples were low and retiring, her mouth
large and sunken. Premature old age had effaced the outlines of her
features and left upon her whole countenance an imprint of lassitude and
avidity.
She was sleeping. I heaped over her feet all the rags within my reach;
then I raised her head by putting under it more old clothes which I had
found and rolled into a bundle. My science being limited to these cares,
I decided to wait until she awoke. I feared lest she might have another
attack, fall and wound herself.
I examined the garret. On entering I had noticed a strong perfume of
musk, which, mingling with the sharp odor of the dampness, struck
strangely upon the sense of smell. Upon the mantelpiece was a row of
vials and little pots, still greasy with aromatic oils. Above hung a
cracked looking-glass, with the amalgam at the back gone in broad
patches. In addition, the walls were bare. Many things lay about on the
floor: satin shoes down at the heel, dirty linen, faded ribbons, rags of
lace. As I went along, scattering the tatters with my foot to make a
passage for myself, I came across a handsome dress of blue silk,
ornamented with bows of velvet. It had been thrown into a corner among
the other gewgaws, rolled up, rumpled, stained yet with the mud of the
town. I raised it and hung it on a nail.
Weary and finding no chair, I sat down on the foot of the bed. I began
to understand where I was. The girl still slept; she was now plainly
visible. I thought I had made a mistake in declaring her ugly, and
looked at her with greater attention. An easier sleep had brought to her
lips a vague smile; her features were relaxed; her past suffering had
given a sort of gentle and sad beauty to her ugliness. She reposed,
sorrowful and resigned. Her soul seemed to have taken advantage of her
rest to mount to her face.
I was amid unclean want, a strange assemblage of blue silk and filth.
This garret was the infamous den of famished luxury selling its satiety;
this girl was one of those old wretches of twenty, no longer having
anything of the woman about them but the fatal stamp of their sex,
vending that mortality which Heaven has left them in withdrawing their
souls. How could so much slime be in a single being, so many stains on a
single heart! God roughly smites His creature when He allows her to tear
her robe of innocence and assume the wretched garments of vice! In our
visions of love, we never dreamed that some night we should find a
miserable bed in a garret full of gloom, and, upon that bed, a girl of
the gutter, asleep and half-clad!
The unfortunate creature was evidently under the caressing wing of a
dream; gentle and regular breath escaped from her lips; over her
languidly closed eyelids at times ran a faint quiver. I leaned upon the
bed; my glance could not loosen itself from that pale face, beautiful
with a strange beauty. I know not what fascination was exerted upon me
by this peaceful sleep of vice, these faded features, stamped in their
repose with an angelic mildness. I said to myself that this slumbering
girl was receiving a visit from her sixteenth year, and that thus purity
itself was before me. This thought filled my mind; if any other mingled
with it I did not know it. I no longer felt the cold, but I trembled. My
veins throbbed with an unknown fever. My reverie rambled on, more uneasy
and more sorrowful.
The girl uttered a sigh, and turned over. She threw back the coverlet,
exposing her bust.
My dreams had shown me only chaste statues, always veiled by dazzling
brightness. I had seen but the arms of washerwomen, gayly beating their
linen. Sometimes, perhaps, my glance had strayed over the white and
delicate neck of a danseuse, when, getting the better of my heart, I had
felt my thoughts troubled by the sweep of her flaxen tresses.
This roughly uncovered bust made me blush, and filled me with such
anguish that I was on the point of weeping. I was ashamed for the young
woman's sake; I felt my purity departing as I gazed at her.
Nevertheless, I could not turn away my eyes; I followed the gentle
undulations of her breast, and was dazzled by its whiteness. My senses
were still silent; my mind alone was intoxicated. My impressions had a
charm so strange that I can now compare them only to the holy horror
that shook me the day I beheld a corpse for the first time. My
imagination had represented death to me. But when I saw that bluish
face, that black and open mouth, when destruction showed itself in its
energetic grandeur, I could not withdraw my glances from the dead, for I
was quivering with a sorrowful delight, I was attracted by I know not
what glimmer of reality.
Thus, the first bare throat held me palpitating with an emotion I am
unable to define.
And it was a bust bruised by harsh caresses upon which my eyes rested!
Ah! when I now think of it, of that frightened ecstasy which restrained
my breath, when I again see myself bent over that infamous couch, uneasy
and blushing, I ask myself with anguish who will restore to me that
first glance that I may bend and blush over the couch of purity! I ask
myself who will restore to me the instant when the veil falls from the
shoulders of the bride, when the bridegroom comprehends that the
choicest gift of Heaven is his and bows his head, dazzled by the
knowledge! I have drunk to intoxication from a perilous cup; I shall
never realize what splendor a bride has in the eyes of a young and
innocent husband.
The girl awoke and smiled, without seeming astonished to find me near
her. Her smile was vague, as if addressed to a crowd, as if weary of
being upon her lips. She did not speak, but put out her arms towards me.
In the morning, when I returned to my garret, I found my candles
entirely burned away and the fire on my hearth long dead. The chamber
was cold and sombre: I no longer had either flame or brightness.