THE INFAMY OF BEING HAPPY
"I now see _distinctly_," he said, "what
manner of people these maskers are."
Poe: _Hop-Frog_
Solange's pessimism was practical: he perseveringly endeavored to
make his life wretched by all sorts of very simple, yet ingenious
combinations.
First of all, principles: Men lie and women deceive. There are but two
motives to human acts--lucre and lust. All women with pleasant faces
conceal objectionable defects. Men who are not wicked are stupid.
Other principles: All food is tainted or adulterated; it is useless
to seek anything better than the bad. All streets are hideous, full
of vile women, rubbish, drains and filth. All apartments lack air and
light. And so on.
Consequently, and as he could not take pleasure in principles, Gaetan
Solange had taken lodgings in a foul quarter, at the end of a damp
court, in two or three little dark rooms. They were the most agreeable
rooms he could find after years of patient search.
When he returned to his rooms, in the evening, it was amid the
repugnant attacks of an army of wretched women; and sometimes a drunken
vagrant barred his way through the narrow alley with insults and
threats. Solange was satisfied, for this proved that the police were
lax, that nobody could return to his dwelling after ten o'clock without
risking his life.
A spongy cutlet, a woody cigar, bitter beer, a spotted table-cloth gave
his visible satisfaction. It was thus: "What would you? If you wish to
live, you must accept the inconveniences of life."
He liked to be plagued by a woman who, penniless, became refractory to
all caresses--as in _Un Dilemme_--and the friends who had abused his
confidence, wittingly ill-placed, were dear to him as the orthographic
faults of a literary master: this proved once more the absolute rules
of his grammar.
He only read newspapers, and the vilest of them, so that nothing might
disturb his belief that no one wrote save to earn money, and that the
viler and more lying any literature is, the more it entertains the
public--all the public.
Entragues paused in his work and reflected: "We are almost in accord,
yes, for if I detest to lull myself in joy and in the contentment of
my heart, it is not through a desired and coddled impotence. I do not
disdain life, I have never disowned its pleasures. It is neither bad
nor good, it is indifferent, it is the conditional state of dreams, and
that is all. To demand of life a little happiness is to give too much
importance to the mechanism of the senses and to make oneself conform
with corporeal invitations and with the rules of matter, whereas the
will should aim towards emancipation.
"But I know the perils of asceticism and its infamies; and were I
happy, I would experience astonishment rather than shame. I have never
believed that this was written in my destiny. This attitude is proper,
for I cannot, like a fool, believe that "this was due me," and despite
some gleams of Christian humility, my pride is so superb that I cannot
for any length of time admit the frailty of my merits. No person,
doubtless, was ever worthy of happiness; but unless I am a Pharisee,
I should not deem myself below average humanity: such a posture of
kneeling would partake of weakness and cowardice. It is permitted
me, without any disturbing in the order of my essential idealism, to
moisten my lips from the cup which this charming woman offers me;
then I shall make her drink it; then, emboldened, we shall quench our
thirsts together, inhaling, like harvesters leaning over the clear
spring, the delights of cooling refreshments.
"I leave to Solange his shame; he is a madman whose crippled
understanding is blind to this idea: that only those who suffer from
the refinements of their sensitiveness are permitted to toy ironically
with the cankers that life is soiled with, and not those who delight in
breathing, without disgust, the sordid purulence."
He continued to muse, without writing:
"Solange is a rather good fellow although a little uncultured, with
coarse clothes and ugly shoes. At a marriage which he was obliged to
attend, he met a young girl who fell in love with him, discreetly and
with reserve, but seriously. She watched him, blushing under his glance
in quest of defects; she lowered her eyes. When she passed near him
she felt a strange fear come over her--the fear of being arrested by
his arm and the fear of a banal bow. Naturally the young girl's mother
introduced Solange to her; he was asked some favor, a very skillful
maternal snare, since he would have to bring the information in a
short while. He came, he returned, ever drawn by adroit combinations;
finally, he returned for his own pleasure and found himself enmeshed
before he had time to reflect. Besides, he thought of nothing, he let
himself go, conquered and captive.
"They were married. Their moderate fortunes joined together became, in
the hands of the intelligent young woman, a source of honest and almost
luxurious comfort. Their apartment was large, light and sunny, the food
carefully chosen; and instead of looking forward to the ennui of a
lonely single bed, he enjoyed the constant presence of a beloved being
who tinted with rose and blue the hours formerly gloomy with lonely
awakenings.
"He no longer had time to scorn men or to relish their low greediness;
pleasure of love, enjoyed in full naïveté, evoked no lewd images in
his desires, no horror of self or of others; what others?
"In fine, he was happy!
"Happy! He! He the stubborn pessimist, he whose aversion to every ideal
had astonished the most impotent! Happy! what a shame! He plunged to
the depths of the abyss in which this adventure had overwhelmed his
principles; he brought them back one by one; ah! they were rotting; all
was ended and with them all joy of living--for he had just understood
how much the wretchedness of a mediocre existence, how much the
sentiment of the universal dunghill, was necessary to his happiness!"