AN ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY
You complain of my silence; you are uneasy, and ask me what new sorrows
have made the pen fall from my fingers.
Brothers, my new sorrows are caused by the fact that our ridiculous
fancies of childhood are being dissipated one by one. This adieu to
early hopes has, in its salutary harshness, the most profound
bitterness. I feel myself becoming a man; I weep over my departing
weaknesses, taking, at the same time, a great pride in the strength I am
acquiring.
Ah! how silly youth would be, if it had not its beautiful simplicity!
The foolishness upon the lips of the child is an adorable ignorance by
which men are quietly amused. Scarcely a month ago, I was a simpleton;
I spoke to you innocently of the redemption of women. Verily, to have
heard me, an old man would at once have smiled his sweetest smile and
ironically shaken his head: he would have given the smile to the young
soul who had faith in entire perfection, and addressed the shake of the
head to the absurd youth who was boldly attempting the miracle which the
Saviour alone has the power to work.
Enough of deceptions! The brutal truth has strange delights for those
who are tormented by the problem of life; they are weary of those hopes
which mothers bequeath to their children, and which, slow to vanish,
abandon them one by one, lengthening their martyrdom. As for me, I
prefer, even should I suffer from having all my illusions torn from me
in a day, to see clearly into this world of dissipation to the depths of
which I have descended.
No doubt, some once sinful women who have sincerely repented are met
with. Women who have strayed from the right path have seen the error of
their ways, have reformed, have found husbands and have been pardoned.
But such things are miracles. The laws common to short-sighted humanity
seem to ordain that wretched women, who have once forgotten themselves,
shall be trodden under foot, torn to pieces, and their fragments so
scattered that they cannot be reunited at the final hour.
Listen, brothers: should a Magdalen crawl at your feet, cursing her past
errors, promising you a new youth of love, do not believe her. Heaven is
not lavish of prodigies. Providence rarely shackles human misfortunes.
Say to yourselves that evil is powerful, and that in this world of ours
falsehood is not changed into truth even to give relief to a poor,
suffering soul. Repulse the Magdalen, spurn her, laugh at her tears and
the pleading of her heart; rail against all redemption. Such is the
advice of what men call wisdom.
I feel that I am gaining experience in worldly matters.
Laurence is a soul forever lost, a stupefied intelligence, a creature so
hardened that nothing can awaken her from her sleep in the mud. I might
bruise her flesh, I might break her bones with a club, or I might lift
her drowsy eyelids with kisses, but she would still squat at my feet,
without a quiver, without a cry either of pain or joy. Sometimes, I am
tempted to cry out to her:
"Get up and let us fight; awake, shout, swear, and show me that you are
yet alive by making me suffer!"
She looks at me with her dull eyes; I recoil affrighted, not daring to
speak. Laurence is dead, dead in heart and in thought. I can do nothing
with such a corpse.
Brothers, I have no longer the slightest hope; I no longer wish to
trouble myself about this girl. She has refused my life of toil and I
cannot accept her life of dissipation. The dream was too lofty; the
reality seems to me like a bottomless pit. I have paused and am waiting.
For what? I do not know!
I have only to justify myself in your eyes. I know that you see clearly
into my soul, that you explain my acts to yourselves by thoughts of
justice and duty. You have more confidence in me than I myself dare to
have. At times I question myself, I judge myself as I am, no doubt,
judged by the passers whom I elbow in this life; I am afraid of the vice
which surrounds without corrupting me, of the woman who remains in my
presence without being my companion. Then, in utter despair, I am
tempted to do what others would do, to take Laurence by the shoulders
and push her back into the street from whence she came. Should I do
this, she would resume her old career as madly, as recklessly, as ever,
bearing upon her forehead the stamp of the same wretchedness and infamy
as before. And I would calmly close my door, having stolen nothing from
her, owing her nothing. Men's consciences are very elastic; there are
people who possess the science of remaining honest by becoming cowardly
and cruel.
Laurence has thrust herself upon my protection with all the strength of
her abandonment. She remains with me, tranquil and passive. I cannot,
however, drive her away. My poverty prevents me from paying her to go.
We are fatally bound one to the other by misfortune. As long as she
shall feel inclined to stay, I shall believe it my duty to accept her
presence.
Hence I am waiting, and, I repeat, I know not for what I am waiting.
Like Laurence, I am weighed down, I live in a sort of somnolence at once
mild and sad, without suffering too greatly, feeling in my heart only a
colossal fatigue. After all, I am not irritated against this girl; I
feel more pity than anger, more sadness than hatred.
I no longer struggle, I abandon myself; I find in the certainty of evil
a strange repose, a pacification of my entire being.