LAURENCE
Yesterday afternoon, I went to bed at five o'clock, in broad day,
forgetting the key in the lock.
About midnight, as I saw in a dream a young blonde stretch out her arms
to me, a sound which I had heard in my sleep made me suddenly open my
eyes. My lamp was lighted. A woman, standing at the foot of the bed, was
looking at me. Her back was towards the light, and I thought, in the
confusion of awaking, that God had taken pity on me and transformed one
of my visions into reality.
The woman approached. I recognized Laurence--Laurence with bare head,
wearing her handsome blue silk dress. Her uncovered shoulders were
purple with cold. Laurence had come to me.
"My friend," said she, "I owe the landlord forty francs. He has just
refused me the key of my door and told me to seek shelter elsewhere. It
was too late to go out, and I thought of you."
She sat down to unlace her boots. I did not understand, I did not wish
to understand. It seemed to me that this girl had stolen into my garret
to destroy me. The lamp, lighted I knew not how, the scantily-clad woman
in the middle of the icy chamber, terrified me. I was tempted to shout
for help.
"We will live as you like," continued Laurence. "I am not embarrassing."
I sat up to awaken myself completely. I began to understand, and what I
understood was horrible. I restrained a harsh word which had arisen to
my lips: abuse is repugnant to me, and I suffer when I insult any one.
"Madame," I simply said, "I am poor."
Laurence burst into a torrent of laughter.
"You call me Madame!" she resumed. "Are you angry? What have I done to
you? I know you are poor--you showed me too much respect to be rich.
Well, we will be poor."
"I can give you neither gewgaws nor enticing meals."
"Do you think that they have often been given to me? People are not so
kind to poor girls! We roll in carriages only in novels. For one who
finds a dress ten die of hunger."
"I eat but two very meagre meals a day; together, we could only have
one, and that of bread dried that we might consume less of it, with
simply water to drink."
"You wish to frighten me. Have you not a father, in Paris or elsewhere,
who sends you books and clothes which you afterwards sell? We will eat
your hard bread and go to the ball to drink champagne."
"No, I am alone in the world; I work for my living. I cannot associate
you with my poverty."
Laurence stopped unlacing her boots. She sat still and thought.
"Listen," she said, suddenly: "I am without bread and without a shelter.
You are young; you cannot conceive the extent of our perpetual distress,
even amid luxury and gayety. The street is our sole domicile; elsewhere
we are not at home. We are shown the door and we depart. Do you wish me
to depart? You have the right to drive me away, and I the resource of
going to sleep under some bridge."
"I do not wish to drive you away. I tell you only that you have
ill-chosen your refuge. You can never accustom yourself to my sadness
and want."
"Chosen! Ah! you think that we are permitted to choose! You may not
believe it, but I came here because I knew not where else to go. I
climbed the stairs furtively to pass the night upon a step. I leaned
against your door, and then it was that I thought of you. You have only
hard bread; I have not eaten anything since yesterday, and my smile is
so faint that it will not bring me a meal to-morrow. You see that I can
remain. I had just as well die here as in the street--besides, it is
less cold."
"No; look further; you will find some one richer and gayer than I. Later
you will thank me for not having received you."
Laurence arose. Her countenance had assumed an indescribable expression
of bitterness and irony. Her look was not supplicating: it was insolent
and cynical. She crossed her arms and stared me in the face.
"Come," said she, "be frank: you do not want me. I am too ugly, too
miserable. I displease you, and you wish to get rid of me. You have no
money, and yet you want a pretty sweetheart. I was a fool not to think
of that. I ought to have said to myself that I was not worth even the
attention of poverty and that I must descend a round of the ladder. I am
thirsty, but I can drink from the gutters; I am hungry, but theft,
perhaps, will afford me nourishment. I thank you for your advice."
She gathered her dress about her and walked towards the door.
"Do you know," hissed she, "that we wretches are better than you honest
folks?"
And she talked for a long while in a sharp voice. I cannot reproduce the
brutal force of her language. She said that she was the slave of our
caprices, that she laughed when we told her to laugh, and that we turned
our backs upon her later when we met her. Who forced us to seek her, who
pushed us into her company in the darkness, that we should show so much
contempt for her in broad day? I had once paid her a visit--why did I
not want to see her now? Had I forgotten that she was a woman and as
such was entitled even to my protection? The weak should always be
protected and sheltered by the strong. Now that she was famished, I took
a cruel delight in telling her that I had nothing for her to eat. Now
that she was houseless, I gloried in telling her that I refused to give
her a refuge. Because she was miserable I deemed it incumbent upon me to
make her more miserable still, for the truth was that I could do so with
impunity. I was afraid of her. She recalled the past too vividly. I
wished to deny her very existence. I was, indeed, a man to be admired, a
man with a noble, generous heart.
She was silent for an instant. Then she resumed, with more energy:
"You came to me and I received you as my husband. Now you deny that I
have any rights. You lie. I have all the rights of a wife. You gave them
to me, and you cannot undo what is done. You are mine and I am yours.
You repudiate me and you are a coward!"
Laurence had opened the door. She hurled insults at me as she stood upon
the threshold, pale with anger. I leaped from the bed and caught her by
the arm.
"You can remain," I said. "You are like ice. Lie down, cover yourself
up, and get warm."
Will you believe, brothers, that I was weeping! It was not pity. The
tears flowed of themselves down my cheeks, though I felt only an immense
and vague sadness.
The girl's words had made a deep impression on me. Her argument, the
force of which, doubtless, escaped her, seemed to me just and true. I
realized so perfectly that she had her rights, that I could not have
driven her away without thinking myself the incarnation of injustice.
She was a woman still, and I could not treat her like a lifeless object
which contempt and abandonment cannot affect. Setting all else aside,
humanity demanded that I should help her. The pure and the guilty are
both liable to come to us, some winter night, to tell us that they are
cold, that they are hungry, that they have need of us. Alas! we often
receive the one and thrust the other into the gloomy and inhospitable
street!
This is because we have the cowardice of our vices. It is because we
would be terrified to have beside us a living remembrance and remorse.
It pleases us to live honored, and when we blush at the call of some
wretched creature, we deny her to explain our blushes by her impudence.
And we do this without deeming ourselves culpable, without asking
ourselves what justice this creature demands. Custom has made us
consider her a disgrace, and we are astonished that this disgrace speaks
and calls itself a woman.
My friends, I trembled before the truth. I understood and I wept. The
question seemed to me simple, clear and self-evident. Laurence's words
had frightened without disgusting me. I had not dreamed of her coming;
but she came and I received her. I cannot, brothers, explain to you what
were my feelings. My mind of twenty years had accepted in their absolute
sense those words which admitted of no hesitation: "You are mine and I
am yours!"
The next morning, when I awoke and found Laurence in my room, I felt my
heart ready to burst with anguish. The scene of the past night was
effaced. I no longer heard the true and rude words which had made me
receive the girl. The brutal fact alone remained.
I looked at her as she slept. I saw her for the first time by daylight,
without her face having the strange beauty of suffering or despair. When
she thus appeared to me, ugly and prematurely old, plunged into a heavy,
brutish slumber, I trembled before that faded and common countenance
which I did not recognize. I could not comprehend how it was that I had
awakened in such company. I seemed as if I had come out of a dream, and
the reality proved so horrible that I had forgotten what had made me
accept it.
But what difference did it make whether it was pity, justice or mercy.
The girl was there. Ah! brothers, can I shed enough tears, and will you
have sufficient courage to dry them!