The Confession of a Child of the Century Part 4

THE next morning I rode through the Bois de Boulogne; the day was dark and threatening. At the Porte Maillot I dropped the reins on the back of my horse and abandoned myself to reverie, revolving in my mind the words spoken by Desgenais the evening before.

Suddenly I heard my name called. Turning my head I spied one of my mistress's most intimate friends in an open carriage. She called to me to stop, and, holding out her hand with a friendly air, invited me to dine with her if I had no other engagement.

This woman, Madame Leva.s.seur by name, was small, stout, and decidedly blonde; I had never liked her and my att.i.tude toward her had always been one of studied politeness. But I could not resist a desire to accept her invitation; I pressed her hand and thanked her; I was sure we would talk of my mistress.

She sent a servant to lead my horse and I entered her carriage; she was alone and we at once took the road to Paris. Rain began to fall, and the carriage curtains were drawn; thus shut up together we rode on in silence. I looked at her with inexpressible sadness; she was not only the friend of my faithless one but her confidante. She had often formed one of our party when I called on my mistress in the evening! With what impatience had I endured her presence. How often I counted the minutes that must elapse before she would leave! That was probably the cause of my aversion for her. I knew that she approved of our love; she even went so far as to defend me in our quarrels. In spite of the services she had rendered me, I considered her ugly and tiresome. Alas! now I found her beautiful! I looked at her hands, her clothes; every gesture went straight to my heart; all the past was a.s.sociated with her. She noticed the change in manner and understood that I was oppressed by sad memories of the past. Thus we rode on our way, I looking at her; she smiling at me. When we reached Paris she took my hand:

"Well?" she said.

"Well?" I replied, sobbing, "tell her if you wish." Tears rushed from my eyes.

After dinner we sat before the fire.

"But tell me," she said, "is it irrevocable? Can nothing be done?"

"Alas! madame," I replied, "there is nothing irrevocable except the grief that is killing me. My condition can be expressed in a few words: I can not love her, I can not love another, and I can not cease loving."

At these words she moved uneasily in her chair and I could see an expression of compa.s.sion on her face. For some time she seemed to be reflecting, as though pondering over my fate and seeking some remedy for my sorrow. Her eyes were closed and she appeared lost in reverie. She extended her hand and I took it in mine.

"And I, too," she murmured, "that is just my experience." She stopped, overcome by emotion.

Of all the sisters of love, the most beautiful is pity. I held Madame Leva.s.seur's hand as she began to speak of my mistress, saying all she could think of in her favor. My sadness increased. What could I reply?

Finally she came to speak of herself.

Not long since, she said, a man who loved her had abandoned her. She had made great sacrifices for him; her fortune was compromised as well as her honor and her name. Her husband, whom she knew to be vindictive, had made threats. Her tears flowed as she continued, and I began to forget my own sorrow in my sympathy for her. She had been married against her will; she struggled a long time; but she regretted nothing except that she had not been able to inspire a more sincere affection. I believe she even accused herself because she had not been able to hold her lover's heart, and because she had been guilty of apparent indifference.

When she had unburdened her heart she became silent.

"Madame," I said, "it was not chance that brought about our meeting in the Bois de Boulogne. I believe that human sorrows are but wandering sisters and that some good angel unites the trembling hands that are stretched out for aid. Do not repent having told me your sorrow. The secret you have confided to me is only a tear which has fallen from your eye, but has rested on my heart. Permit me to come again and let us suffer together."

Such lively sympathy took possession of me that without reflection I kissed her; it did not occur to my mind that it could offend her and she did not appear even to notice it.

Our conversation continued in this tone of great friends.h.i.+p. She told me her sorrows, I told her mine, and between those two experiences which touched each other, I felt arise a sweetness, as of a celestial accord born of two voices in anguish. All this time I had seen nothing but her face. Suddenly I noticed that her dress was in disorder. It appeared singular to me that, seeing my embarra.s.sment, she did not rearrange it, and I turned my head to give her an opportunity. She did nothing. Finally meeting her eyes and seeing that she was perfectly aware of the state she was in, I felt as though I had been struck by a thunderbolt, for I clearly understood that I was the plaything of her monstrous effrontery, that grief itself was for her but a means of seducing the senses. I took my hat without a word, bowed profoundly and left the room.

CHAPTER VII

UPON returning to my apartments I found a large box in the center of the room. One of my aunts had died and I was one of the heirs to her fortune, which was not large. The box contained, among other things, a number of musty old books. Not knowing what to do and being affected with ennui, I began to read one of them. They were for the most part romances of the time of Louis XV; my pious aunt had probably inherited them herself and never read them, for they were, so to speak, catechisms of vice.

I was singularly disposed to reflect on everything that came to my notice, to give everything a mental and moral significance; I treated events as pearls in a necklace which I tried to string together.

It struck me that there was something significant about the arrival of these books at this time. I devoured them with a bitterness and a sadness born of despair. "Yes, you are right," I said to myself, "you alone possess the secret of life, you alone dare to say that nothing is true and real but debauchery, hypocrisy and corruption. Be my friends, throw on the wound in my soul your corrosive poisons, teach me to believe in you."

While buried in these shadows I allowed my favorite poets and text-books to acc.u.mulate dust. I even ground them under my feet in excess of wrath.

"You wretched dreamers," I said to them; "you who teach me only suffering, miserable shufflers of words, charlatans if you knew the truth, fools if you speak in good faith, liars in either case, who make fairy tales of the human heart, I will burn every one of you!"

Then tears came to my aid and I perceived that there was nothing real but my grief. "Very well," I cried, in my delirium, "tell me, good and bad genii, counsellors for good or evil, tell me what to do! Choose an arbiter and let him speak."

I seized an old Bible which lay on my table and read the first pa.s.sage that caught my eye.

"Reply to me, thou book of G.o.d," I said, "what word have you for me?" My eye fell on this pa.s.sage in Ecclesiastes, chapter ix:

I pondered all these things in my heart, and I sought diligently for wisdom. There are just and wise men and their works are in the hands of G.o.d; nevertheless man does not know whether he is worthy of love or hatred.

And the future is unknown, for there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and him that sacrificeth not. The righteous is treated as the sinner and the perjurer as him who speaks the truth.

There is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, and there is one event to all. Therefore the hearts of the children of men are full of evil and madness while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

When I read these words I was astounded; I did not know that there was such a sentiment in the Bible. "And thou, too, as all others, thou book of hope!"

What do the astronomers think when they predict at a given hour and place the pa.s.sage of a comet, that most eccentric of celestial travelers? What do the naturalists think when they reveal the myriad forms of life concealed in a drop of water? Do they think they have invented what they see and that their microscopes and lenses make the law of nature? What did the first lawgiver think when, seeking for the corner-stone in the social edifice, angered doubtless by some idle importunity, he struck the tables of bra.s.s and felt in his bowels the yearning for a law of retaliation? Did he then invent justice? And the first who plucked the fruit planted by his neighbor and who fled cowering under his mantle, did he invent shame? And he who, having overtaken that same thief who had robbed him of the product of his toil, forgave him his sin, and instead of raising his hand to smite him, said, "Sit thou down and eat thy fill"; when after having thus returned good for evil he raised his eyes toward Heaven and felt his heart quivering, tears welling from his eyes, and his knees bending to the earth, did he invent virtue? Oh! Heaven! here is a woman who speaks of love and who deceives me, here is a man who speaks of friends.h.i.+p, and who counsels me to seek consolation in debauchery; here is another woman who weeps and would console me with the flesh; here is a Bible that speaks of G.o.d and says: "Perhaps; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked."

I ran to the open window: "Is it true that you are empty?" I cried, looking up at the pale expanse of sky which spread above me. "Reply, reply! Before I die grant that I may clasp in these arms of mine something more than a dream!"

Profound silence reigned. As I stood with arms outstretched, eyes lost in s.p.a.ce, a swallow uttered a plaintive cry; in spite of myself I followed it with my eyes; while the swallow disappeared from sight like a flash, a little girl pa.s.sed, singing.

CHAPTER VIII

YET I was not willing to yield. Before taking life on its pleasant side after having seen its evil side so dearly, I resolved to test everything.

I remained thus for some time a prey to countless sorrows, tormented by terrible dreams.

The great obstacle to my cure was my youth. Wherever I happened to be, whatever my occupation, I could think of nothing but women; the sight of a woman made me tremble.

I had been so fortunate as to give to love my virginity. But the result of this was that all my senses were united in the idea of love; there was the cause of my unhappiness. For not being able to think of anything but women, I could not help turning over in my head, day and night, all the ideas of debauchery, of false love and of feminine treason with which my mind was filled. To possess a woman was for me to love her; for I thought of nothing but women and I did not believe in the possibility of true love.

All this suffering inspired me with a sort of rage, and at times I was tempted to imitate the monks and murder myself in order to conquer my senses; at times I felt like going out into the street and throwing myself at the feet of the first woman I met and vowing eternal love.

G.o.d is my witness that I did all in my power to cure myself. Preoccupied from the first with the idea that the society of men was the haunt of vice and hypocrisy, where all were like my mistress, I resolved to separate myself from them and live in complete isolation. I resumed my neglected studies, I plunged into history, poetry, and anatomy. There happened to be on the fourth floor of the same house an old German who was well versed in lore. I determined to learn his tongue; the German was poor and friendless and willingly accepted the task of instructing me. My perpetual state of distraction worried him. How many times seated near him with a smoking lamp between us, he waited in patient astonishment while I sat with my arms crossed on my book, lost in reverie, oblivious of his presence and of his pity.

"My dear sir," said I to him one day, "all this is useless, but you are the best of men. What a task you have undertaken! You must leave me to my fate; we can do nothing, neither you nor I."

I do not know that he understood my meaning, but he grasped my hand and there was no more talk of German.

I soon realized that solitude instead of curing me was doing me harm, and so completely changed my system. I went to the country and galloped through the woods with the huntsmen; I rode until I was out of breath, I tried to break myself with fatigue, and when after a day of sweat in the fields, I reached my bed in the evening smelling of powder and the stable, I buried my head in the pillow, I rolled about under the covers and I cried: "Fantom, fantom! are you not tired? Will you leave me for one night?"

But why these vain efforts? Solitude sent me to nature, and nature to love. When I stood in the street of Observation I saw myself surrounded by corpses, and, drying my hands on my b.l.o.o.d.y ap.r.o.n, stifled by the odor of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and I saw floating before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields and the pensive harmony of the evening. "No," I said, "science can not console me; I can not plunge into dead nature, I would die there myself and float about like a livid corpse amidst the debris of shattered hopes. I would not cure myself of my youth; I will live where there is life, or I will at least die in the sun." I began to mingle with the throngs at Sevres and Chaville; I lay down in the midst of a flowery dale, in a secluded part of Chaville.

Alas! all these forests and prairies cried to me:

"What do you seek here? We are green, poor child, we wear the colors of hope."

Then I returned to the city; I lost myself in its obscure streets; I looked up at the lights in all its windows, all those mysterious family nests; I watched the pa.s.sing carriages; I saw man jostling against man.

Oh! what solitude! How sad the smoke on those roofs! What sorrow in those tortuous streets where all are hurrying hither and thither, working and sweating, where thousands of strangers rub against your elbows; a cloaca where there is only society of bodies, while souls are solitary and alone, where all who hold out a hand to you are prost.i.tutes! "Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man; it is written with charcoal on city walls, on its streets with mud, on its faces with extravasated blood.