Complete Works of Emile Zola (4 page)

Then, when this knowledge has come, when they have in a kiss divined the law of the Omnipotent, what must be their delight to owe to each other this revelation, this infinitude of joy! They have participated in a common blessing: they have put on their white robes and now are clad like the cherubim. Mingling their very breath, smiling with the same smile, they repose in their union. Holy hour, in which hearts beat more freely, finding a heaven to which they can ascend. Sainted hour, in which ignorant love suddenly learns the full measure of its strength, believes itself the master of the universe and is intoxicated with its first flight. Brothers, may God keep for you that hour, the remembrance of which perfumes one’s entire life. It will never be mine.

Such is fate. It is rare that two pure hearts meet; nearly always one heart of any twain can no longer give its ecstasy in its flower. To-day, most young men of twenty like ourselves, who are eager to love, lacking the power to force the bars and bolts of honest houses, hasten to the wide open doors of boudoirs easier of access. When we ask upon what shoulders we shall lean our heads, fathers hide their daughters and push us into the gloom of the lanes. They cry out to us to respect their children, who will some day be our wives; they prefer for them, instead of our first caresses, those learned elsewhere.

Hence how few keep their early love for their brides, how few, in the desert of their youth, refuse the companions into whose society they are driven by the singular behavior of parents! Some, foolish and wicked lads, glory in their shame; they drag their ignoble flirtations before the public eye. Others, when the soul awakes at the first summons of the sweetheart, are filled with overwhelming sorrow on vainly interrogating the horizon and at not knowing where to find the rightful claimant of the heart. They go straight ahead, staring at the balconies, leaning towards each youthful visage: the balconies are deserted, the youthful visages remain veiled. Some night an arm is slipped within their own, a voice makes them start. Already weary and despairing, unable to discover the angel of love, they follow the spectre.

Brothers, I do not wish to make an excuse for my fault, but let me say that it is strange to cloister purity and permit dissipation to walk in the glare of the sun with uplifted head. Let me deplore this distrust of love, which creates a solitude around the lover, and this guarding of virtue by vice, which causes a young man to encounter shame before reaching the door of innocence. He who yields to temptation may well say to his bride: “I am unworthy of you, but why did you not come to my rescue? Why did you not meet me in the flowery fields, before all those by-ways, each nook of which has its priestess? Why were you not the first to greet my eyes, thus sparing yourself in sparing me?”

On returning home this evening, I found upon the stairway the old woman of the other night. She was toilsomely ascending in front of me, aiding herself with the cord and placing both feet on each step. She turned around.

“Well, Monsieur, is your patient better?” she asked. “She no longer shivers, I imagine, and you yourself do not seem to have suffered from the cold. Ah! I well knew that a young man could take better care of a handsome girl than an old woman.”

She laughed, showing her empty mouth. The politeness of this aged wretch who had led a gay life made me blush.

“You need not color so!” she added. “I have seen others as proud as yourself enter without shame and depart singing. Youth loves to laugh, and girls who play the wise one are fools. Ah! if I were only fifteen again!”

I had reached my door. She caught me by the arm as I was about to go in, and continued:

“I had flaxen hair then, and my cheeks were so fresh that my admirers nicknamed me Pâquerette. If you had seen me, you would have been astonished. I lived on the ground floor, in a nest of silk and gold. Now, I lodge under the eaves. I have only to descend to go to the cemetery. Ah! your friend Laurence is happy: she is as yet but in the fourth story.”

So the girl was called Laurence. I had been ignorant even of her name.

CHAPTER VI.

DESPAIR.

I RESUMED my work, but with repugnance, and was weary from the commencement. Now that I had lifted a corner of the veil, I had neither the courage to let it fall again nor the boldness to draw it away altogether. When I seated myself at my table, I leaned sadly on my elbows, letting the pen slip from my fingers and muttering: “What is the good!” My intelligence seemed worn out; I dare not re-read the few phrases I had written; I no longer felt that joy of the poet, whom a happy rhyme fills with unreasoning and childish laughter. Scold me, brothers, for limping verses are shorn of their power to keep me awake.

My slim resources are diminishing. I can calculate the hour when everything will be gone. I eat my bread, being almost in haste to finish it that I may no longer see it melt away at each meal. I am surrendering to want like a coward; the struggle for food terrifies me.

Ah! how they lie who assert that poverty is the mother of talent! Let them count those whom despair has made illustrious and those whom it has slowly debased. When tears are caused by a heart wound, the wrinkles they dig are beautiful and noble; but when hunger makes them flow, when every night a baseness or a brutish task drys them, they furrow the face frightfully, without imparting to it the sad serenity of age.

No; since I am so poor that I may, perhaps, die to-morrow, I cannot work. When the closet was full I had great courage. I felt the strength to gain my bread. Now it is nearly empty and I am given over to lassitude. It would be easier for me to endure hunger than to make the smallest effort.

I well know that I am cowardly and false to my vows. I know that I have not the right already to take refuge in defeat. I am only twenty: I cannot be weary of a world of which I am ignorant. Yesterday, I dreamed of it as sweet and good. Is it a new dream which makes me form a bad opinion of it to-day?

Oh! brothers, my first step has been unfortunate: I am afraid to advance. I will exhaust my suffering, shed all my tears, and my smiles will return. I will work with a gayer heart to-morrow.

CHAPTER VII.

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.