PAQUERETTE
Brothers, where is the sweetheart, queen of the lakes and clouds, or the
harvest brunette whose glance is so deep as to suffice for a life of
love?
Well, all is over: I have belied my youth; I am the fiancé of vice. The
remembrance of my first hour of love is closely bound to that of an
infamous den, of a couch over which strange kisses float. When, during
the May nights, I shall evoke my fiancée, I shall see arise a
half-clad, cynical girl, awaking and putting out her arms towards me.
This pale and stained spectre will be a participant in all my
love affairs. It will stand between my mouth and that of my bride,
claiming the kisses of my soiled lips. When I am asleep, it will visit
me in a horrible dream. When my sweetheart shall whisper in my ear some
delicious word, it will be there to tell me that it was the first to
talk thus to me. When I shall lean my head upon the shoulder of my
bride, it will present to me its shoulder on which I once reposed. Thus
it will ever freeze my heart with the accursed remembrance of our
betrothal.
Yes, that night has sufficed to deprive me of supreme peace. My first
kiss has not awakened a soul. I have not felt the holy ignorance of pure
caresses, my timid lips have not found lips as timid as themselves. I
shall never experience that simple playfulness, that innocence of a
couple who know not the ways of the world. They tremble, embrace, and
weep for joy. But, as they kiss each other, hesitatingly, they realize
that they are one, that their hearts beat in unison, and that God has
joined them for the voyage of life.
Then, when this knowledge has come, when they have in a kiss divined the
law of the Omnipotent, what must be their delight to owe to each other
this revelation, this infinitude of joy! They have participated in a
common blessing: they have put on their white robes and now are clad
like the cherubim. Mingling their very breath, smiling with the same
smile, they repose in their union. Holy hour, in which hearts beat more
freely, finding a heaven to which they can ascend. Sainted hour, in
which ignorant love suddenly learns the full measure of its strength,
believes itself the master of the universe and is intoxicated with its
first flight. Brothers, may God keep for you that hour, the remembrance
of which perfumes one's entire life. It will never be mine.
Such is fate. It is rare that two pure hearts meet; nearly always one
heart of any twain can no longer give its ecstasy in its flower. To-day,
most young men of twenty like ourselves, who are eager to love, lacking
the power to force the bars and bolts of honest houses, hasten to the
wide open doors of boudoirs easier of access. When we ask upon what
shoulders we shall lean our heads, fathers hide their daughters and push
us into the gloom of the lanes. They cry out to us to respect their
children, who will some day be our wives; they prefer for them, instead
of our first caresses, those learned elsewhere.
Hence how few keep their early love for their brides, how few, in the
desert of their youth, refuse the companions into whose society they are
driven by the singular behavior of parents! Some, foolish and wicked
lads, glory in their shame; they drag their ignoble flirtations before
the public eye. Others, when the soul awakes at the first summons of the
sweetheart, are filled with overwhelming sorrow on vainly interrogating
the horizon and at not knowing where to find the rightful claimant of
the heart. They go straight ahead, staring at the balconies, leaning
towards each youthful visage: the balconies are deserted, the youthful
visages remain veiled. Some night an arm is slipped within their own, a
voice makes them start. Already weary and despairing, unable to discover
the angel of love, they follow the spectre.
Brothers, I do not wish to make an excuse for my fault, but let me say
that it is strange to cloister purity and permit dissipation to walk in
the glare of the sun with uplifted head. Let me deplore this distrust of
love, which creates a solitude around the lover, and this guarding of
virtue by vice, which causes a young man to encounter shame before
reaching the door of innocence. He who yields to temptation may well say
to his bride: "I am unworthy of you, but why did you not come to my
rescue? Why did you not meet me in the flowery fields, before all those
by-ways, each nook of which has its priestess? Why were you not the
first to greet my eyes, thus sparing yourself in sparing me?"
On returning home this evening, I found upon the stairway the old woman
of the other night. She was toilsomely ascending in front of me, aiding
herself with the cord and placing both feet on each step. She turned
around.
"Well, Monsieur, is your patient better?" she asked. "She no longer
shivers, I imagine, and you yourself do not seem to have suffered from
the cold. Ah! I well knew that a young man could take better care of a
handsome girl than an old woman."
She laughed, showing her empty mouth. The politeness of this aged wretch
who had led a gay life made me blush.
"You need not color so!" she added. "I have seen others as proud as
yourself enter without shame and depart singing. Youth loves to laugh,
and girls who play the wise one are fools. Ah! if I were only fifteen
again!"
I had reached my door. She caught me by the arm as I was about to go in,
and continued:
"I had flaxen hair then, and my cheeks were so fresh that my admirers
nicknamed me Pâquerette. If you had seen me, you would have been
astonished. I lived on the ground floor, in a nest of silk and gold.
Now, I lodge under the eaves. I have only to descend to go to the
cemetery. Ah! your friend Laurence is happy: she is as yet but in the
fourth story."
So the girl was called Laurence. I had been ignorant even of her name.