BITING POVERTY
We eat from day to day, selling old books or a few old clothes to get
money. My poverty is such that I no longer have any comprehension of it,
and that I go to sleep at night almost satisfied when I have twenty sous
remaining with which to purchase the two meals of the morrow.
I have been to many offices to solicit employment. I have always been
received with roughness; I comprehend that I was guilty of the sin of
being poorly clad. I wrote a bad hand, they said; I was good for
nothing. I believed their words and retired, ashamed of having had, for
an instant, the thought of robbing these honest people by putting my
intelligence and will at their service.
I am good for nothing--such is the truth that I have learned by my
attempts. I am good for nothing, except to suffer, to sob, to weep over
my youth and my heart. Hence, behold me alone in the world, repulsed and
miserable, not daring to beg, and feeling myself more famished than the
poor wretch who holds out his hand for alms. I came to Paris, plunged in
a dream of glory and fortune; I have awakened in the midst of mud and
distress.
Happily, Heaven is kind and good. There is in want a sort of heavy
intoxication, a pleasurable somnolence, which puts to sleep the
conscience, the flesh and the mind. I do not clearly feel my degree of
indigence and infamy; I suffer little from my destitution; I doze in my
hunger and grovel in my idleness.
This is my life:
In the morning, I rise late. The mornings are foggy, cold and wan; the
light enters, gray and sad, through the curtainless window; it lies
about in a melancholy way upon the floor and walls. I experience a
sensation of comfort in feeling the agreeable warmth of the garments I
heap upon the bed. Laurence sleeps a sleep of lead, her face thrown back
and expressionless. As for me, with open eyes, the covers drawn to my
chin, I stare at the dingy ceiling which is crossed by a long chink. I
fall into an ecstasy before this chink; I study it, I follow delightedly
with my glance its broken lines; I contemplate it for hours at a time,
without thinking of anything.
This is the best period of the day. I am warm and half asleep. My flesh
is satisfied, my mind strays gently through that beautiful land of
partial slumber in which life has all the pleasures of death. Then,
sometimes, when I am completely awakened, I abandon myself to the sway
of some dream. Brothers, what a child my poor heart must be that I can
still lie to it! Ah! yes, I dream constantly, I yet have that strange
power of escaping from reality, of creating from its wrecks a better
world and better beings. There, between two dirty sheets, in the
immediate vicinity of a woman hideous and wretched in her degradation,
in the midst of a gloomy chamber, I often see a palace, all marble and
silver, and a spotless, beautiful sweetheart, who stretches out her arms
to me and summons me to quit my miserable retreat and its shameful
surroundings.
Eleven o'clock strikes and I leap from bed. The damp cold of the floor,
which suddenly chills the soles of my feet, draws me from my dream. I
shiver and dress myself. Then I walk about the room, going from the
window to the door, glancing at the wall which bounds my horizon, and
returning to stare at Laurence without seeing her. I smoke, yawn and try
to read. I am cold and weary.
Laurence awakes. Then begins the chapter of suffering. We must eat. We
talk the matter over. We search the chamber for some object to sell.
Often we give up the idea of breakfasting, when the problem is too
difficult to solve and all is said. When we have happened to find some
old rag, some piece of paper, no matter what, Laurence dresses herself
and goes to offer the deplorable merchandise to a second-hand dealer,
who gives her eight or ten sous. She brings back bread and a little pork
which we eat as we stand, without talking to each other.
The days are long for the wretched. When it is too cold and we have no
fire, I go to bed again. When the weather is milder I strive to toil,
giving myself a fever in trying to carry on work which does not desire
me any longer.
Laurence throws herself into a chair or walks about with slow steps. She
drags along her blue silk dress, which seems to weep as it rustles past
the furniture. This rag is all yellow with grease, all torn, ripped at
the seams and worn at the folds. Laurence lets it get soiled and
tattered, without either cleaning or mending it. She puts it on in the
morning, having nothing else to wear, and walks in it the whole day
about this miserable chamber, with dishevelled locks, the low-necked
ball dress displaying her back and throat. And this dress, this soft
silk of a pale blue color, which still shines in spots, is an infamous,
twisted, faded and lamentable rag. I experience I know not what keen
anguish on seeing these shreds of rich tissue, this luxury dragged about
in the midst of want, this woman's bare shoulders reddened by the cold.
I shall always remember Laurence walking about, thus clad, in the den
sacred to my twentieth year.
In the evening, the question of bread returns, terrible and pressing. We
eat or we do not eat. Then, we retire, weary and sleepy. On the morrow,
the same life begins again, but sharper and more biting every day.
I have not been out of doors for a week past. One evening--we had not
eaten the previous day--I took off my coat on the Place du Panthéon,
and Laurence went to sell it. It was freezing. I went home on a run,
sweating great beads from fear and suffering. Two days afterwards my
pantaloons followed the coat. I no longer have clothes to wear. I wrap
myself up in a coverlet, I cover myself as I can and take thus the most
exercise possible to prevent my joints from stiffening. When any one
comes to see me, I hurry to bed and pretend to be a trifle indisposed.
Laurence appears to suffer less than I do. She feels no shock, she does
not try to escape from the existence we lead. I cannot comprehend this
woman. She tranquilly accepts my poverty. Is it devotion or necessity?
As for me, brothers, as I have told you, I am comfortable, I am plunged
in lethargy. I feel my being melting away; I abandon myself to that
gentle prostration of dying men, who ask for pity in a weak and
caressing tone. I have no desire whatever, except to eat more
frequently. I would also be pitied, caressed and loved. I have need of a
heart.
* * * * *
Oh! brothers, I suffer, I suffer. I dare not speak; I feel shame close
my lips, and I can only weep, without taking from my breast the crushing
weight which is upon it.
Poverty is mild and infamy light. And now Heaven is punishing me, bowing
me beneath a terrible hurricane, beneath an implacable wound.
At last, brothers, you can give up all hope of me: I have no more steps
to descend, for I am at the bottom of the ladder; I am about to abandon
myself to the gulf--I am lost forever.
Do not question me. I allow my cries to float to your ears, for grief is
too bitter for me to succeed in stifling its groans. But I restrain the
words upon my lips; I wish neither to frighten you nor to sadden you
with the recital of the terrible history of my heart.
Say to yourselves that Claude is dead, that you will never see him more,
that all is, indeed, over. I prefer to suffer alone, even if I should
die of my suffering, to troubling your holy tranquillity by tearing
myself open before you, by showing you my bleeding wound.
No, you will suffer from the revelation, but it is impossible for me to
maintain silence. I will find some consolation in imparting to you all
my thoughts and actions; I will be quieted when I know that you are
sobbing with me.
Brothers, I love Laurence!