Complete Works of Emile Zola (17 page)

I pressed my hands against my forehead; I said to myself that all this filth could not exist, that I dreamed at will of infamy. I had come out of a horrible nightmare; still shaken by the vision, I smiled as I thought it was only an illusion and that I was about to resume my calm life in the sunshine.  I refused to entertain my recollections, I revolted, I denied. I had the indignation of honor.

No, it was impossible that I should suffer to this point, that life should be so wretched, so shameful; it was impossible that there existed such disgraces and such griefs.

I arose softly, and went to the window to breathe the morning air with all my strength. I saw Jacques below me; he was whistling tranquilly and gazing out into the courtyard. Then, the idea entered my mind to go down-stairs, to question him; he was a cold and just man who would calm my excitement, an honest man who would answer my questions with candor, who would tell me if he loved Laurence and what were his relations with her. By adopting this course, I might, perhaps, be cured. I would no longer feel that terrible warmth which was devouring my breast, I would trust Laurence, I would decide on a wise line of conduct which should release both her and myself from the desperate and wounding love into which circumstances had plunged us.

You see, brothers, that, though near the terrible dénouement, I still was hopeful. Oh! my poor heart, you are only a big child whom each hurt makes younger and warmer! As I passed Laurence, on my way to Jacques’ apartment, I gazed for an instant at that slumbering girl, and, after so many tears, I again hoped to accomplish her reformation.

I found Jacques at work. He offered me his hand loyally, with a bright, frank smile upon his lips. I looked him straight in the face; I did not see in his peaceful features the treason I was searching for there. If this young man were deceiving me, he knew not that he was making my heart bleed.

“What!” cried he, with a hearty laugh, “are you no longer lazy? It is good for me, serious man that I am, to get up at six o’clock in the morning!”

“Listen, Jacques,” I answered: “I am sick, and have come here to cure myself. I have lost consciousness of what surrounds me. I have lost consciousness of myself. This morning, on awaking, I realized that the sense of life was escaping from me, I felt myself lost in vertigo and blindness. This is why I have come down-stairs to grasp your hand, and to ask aid and advice from you.”

I watched Jacques’ face narrowly to note the effect of my words. He grew grave and lowered his eyes. He had not the attitude of a culprit, he had almost that of a judge.

I added, in a vibrating voice:

“You live beside me, you know the life I lead. I had the misfortune to meet, at the commencement of my career, a woman who has weighed me down and crushed me. I have kept this woman with me for a long while out of pity and justice. To-day, I love Laurence, I keep her beside me because I am madly, recklessly, devoted to her. I have not come here to ask you to employ your wisdom to effect a separation between her and me; I wish, if possible, for you to give me a last ray of hope by calming my fever, by making me see that everything in me is not shame. Do me the service of searching my being, of spreading it out bleeding before my eyes. If nothing good remains in me, if both my heart and my flesh are stained, I have fully resolved to sink myself, to drown myself, in the mud. If, on the contrary, you succeed in giving me a hope of redemption, I will make new efforts to get back to the light.”

Jacques listened to me, shaking his head sorrowfully. I continued, after a brief silence:

“I do not know if you thoroughly understand me. I love Laurence with the utmost fury, I exact that she shall follow me in the light or in the mud. I should die of fear, if she left me alone in the depths of shame and misery; my heart will burst when I learn that, in her abasement, she has found other kisses than mine. She belongs to me in all her wretchedness, in all her ugliness. Nobody else would want the poor, abandoned and unfortunate creature. This thought makes her dearer, more precious to me; she is unworthy of anybody, I alone accept her; if I knew that another possessed my sad courage, my jealous rage would be all the greater because more love, more devotion, would be needed from him who stole Laurence from me. Therefore, do not argue with me, Jacques; I have nothing to do with your ideas in regard to life, with your wishes and your duties. I am too high or too low to follow you in your path. You have a healthful mind; try only to assure me that Laurence loves me, that I love Laurence, that I ought to love her.”

I had grown animated while speaking; I trembled, I felt madness growing upon me. Jacques, becoming graver and graver, sadder and sadder, looked at me and said, in a low tone:

“Child! poor child!”

Then he took my hands and held them in his, thinking, maintaining silence. My flesh burned, his was cool; I felt my visage contract, and I searched vainly in his, which remained grave and strong.

“Claude,” said he to me, at last, “you are dreaming; you are beyond life, my friend, in the realms of nightmare and delusion. You have fever, delirium; your heart and your body both are sick. Amid your sufferings, you no longer see the things of this earth as they are. You give monstrous dimensions to gravel stones, you lessen the size of the mountains; your horizon is the horizon of vertigo, peopled by terrifying visions which are but shadows and reflections. I swear to you that your senses and your soul deceive themselves, that you see, that you love, what does not exist. My poor friend, I understand your disease, I even know the cause of it. You were born for a world of purity, of honor; you came to us without protection, without a guiding rule, your heart open, your mind free; you took immense pride in believing in the power of your tenderness, in the justice, the truth of your reasoning. Elsewhere, amid worthy surroundings, you would have increased in dignity. Among us, your virtues have hastened your fall. You have loved when you should have hated; you have been gentle when you should have been cruel; you have listened to your conscience and your heart when you should have listened only to your pleasure and your interest. And this is why you are infamous. The story is painful; you should consider yourself well punished for your pride, which urged you to live in defiance of the opinions of the crowd. To-day, your wound is bleeding, increased, irritated, by your own hands which tear it. You have maintained in your fall the impetuosity of your character: you desired to lose yourself utterly as soon as you felt the tip of your foot enter into evil. Now, you wallow, with holy horror, with the fury of bitter joy, in the ignoble bed upon which you have thrown yourself. I know you, Claude: you have been badly beaten, you do not wish to remain half conquered. Will you permit me, the practical man, the man without a heart, to endeavor to cure you by cauterizing your wound with a red hot iron?”

I made a gesture of impatience, opening my lips.

“I know what you are going to say to me,” resumed Jacques, with more vivacity. “You are going to say to me that you do not wish to be cured, and that my red hot iron will not even make your already too much bruised flesh cry out. I know, besides, what you think, for I see your anger and your disdain. You think that we are worth less than you, we who do not love, who do not weep; you think that we have made this world, this woman who causes you to suffer, that we are cowardly, cruel, and that our way of being young is more shameful than your love and your abasement. You are on the point of crying out to me, to me who live tranquilly in the same mud as yourself, that you are dying of shame, that I lack soul if I do not die with you. You are, perhaps, right: I ought to sob, to twist my arms. But I do not feel the need of weeping; I have not your woman’s nerves, your violence or your delicacy of sensation. I comprehend that you suffer through me, through the rest, through all those who love without love, and I pity you, poor, grown-up infant, because you appear to me to suffer so much from an affliction I know nothing about. If I cannot ascend to you, cannot expose myself to your shame and pain arising from excess of soul and excess of justice, I wish, at least, in order to cure you, to give you our cowardice and our cruelty, to tear out your heart and leave your breast empty. Then, you will walk upright in the path of youth.”

He had raised his voice; he grasped my hands strongly, almost with anger. This must be all Jacques’ passion: a soulless passion, made up of logic and duty. Pale before him, my head half turned away, I smiled in contempt and anguish.

“Your Laurence,” he continued, with energy, “your Laurence is a living disgrace! She is ugly, she is prematurely old, she is dangerous. Go up to your room and throw her into the street; she is ripe for expulsion! For more than a year, this girl has been a crushing burden to you; it is time that you had sent her off, that you had freed yourself, that you had washed your hands of her. I understand the weakness of pity; I might have sheltered Laurence for a time, if she had come to me begging for an asylum; but, on discovering the blackness of her heart, I would have returned to the sidewalk what belonged to the sidewalk, and I would have burned sugar in my chamber. Go up-stairs; throw her out of the window if she does not go quickly enough out of the door. Be cruel, be cowardly, be unjust, commit a crime. But, for the love of God, do not shelter a Laurence any longer. Such women are the cause of nine tenths of all the unhappiness in this world; they are makers of desolation and should be left to the mercy of the crowd; they deserve punishment, and it is not just to shield them from it. Do not persist longer in giving an asylum to this wicked wretch. You see that I am seeking some insult to exasperate you; I would render you worthy of your age by teaching you how to treat a Laurence, how to act like a practical man. For a year past, what have you done, except to weep? You are dead to work, you have lost caste, you do not look forward to the future. Laurence is the evil angel who has killed your intelligence and your hopes. You must kill Laurence. Hold, I have a last infamy to hurl in your face. You have not the right to live in poverty that you may shelter this woman; if you toiled, if you struggled, alone, you might die of hunger, but there would be a certain grandeur about your death. The few friends whom you had have left you; you saw them depart one by one, with coldness. Do you know what they say? They say that they cannot explain to themselves your manner of existence, that they cannot understand how you manage to shelter Laurence amid your poverty; the rich, when they give alms, say the same thing of the poor who have a dog. They say, those friends, that there is a method in what you do, and that you eat the bread which Laurence earns.”

I escaped to my feet with a sudden movement, my arms closely locked against my breast. The insult had hit me full in the face; I felt a cold sweat cover my visage; I was stiff and icy; I no longer knew whether I was suffering or not. I had not believed that I had already fallen to this degree of abasement in the opinion of the crowd; I had desired a voluntary shame, but I had not desired insult. I drew back, step by step, towards the door, staring at Jacques, who also had arisen, and who was contemplating me with superb violence. When I stood upon the threshold, he said to me:

“Listen: you are going away without grasping my hand; I see that you will never forgive me for the wound I have just given you. While I am cowardly and cruel, I have something to propose to you. As I have tortured you, as I have excited your disgust, I must cure you. Send Laurence to me. I feel sufficiently courageous to separate her from you; tomorrow, your tenderness will be dead, you will then tell this woman she can no longer remain under the same roof with you. If you must have another love affair to hasten the work of consolation, go up-stairs, kneel beside Marie’s bed and love her. She will not long be a burden to you.”

He spoke with a cold anger, a lofty and disdainful conviction; he seemed to tread all love under foot, to walk over those women whom he entertained through capriciousness and custom; he looked straight before him, as if he saw his mature age congratulating him upon the logical shames of his youth.

So Jacques, the practical man, agreed with Pâquerette; both of them recommended to me an ignoble exchange, a remedy more distressing, more bitter, than the disease. I closed the door violently, and went upstairs again, almost calm, stupid with grief.

There is, in the midst of despair, an instant when the intelligence escapes, when the events which succeed each other mingle together in dire confusion and no longer have any meaning. When I found myself once more before Laurence, who was still asleep, I forgot that I had just seen Jacques, I forgot both his advice and his insults; the heart and the mind of this man seemed to me gloomy abysses into which I could not descend. I was alone, face to face with my love, as yesterday, as ever; I had now but a single thought: to awaken Laurence, to clasp her in my arms, to compel her to accept life and kisses.

I awoke her, I took her with fury in my arms, I clasped her with such force as to make her cry out. I had a dumb rage, an implacable will. I was weary of being a stranger to Laurence, of being ignorant of what was passing through her brain; I desired to know the secrets of her soul. I said to myself that then I should no longer be tormented by suspicions, that I would force her to love me by warming her heart with my caresses.

Laurence had not spoken to me for two whole days. Pain unlocked her lips. She struggled and cried out to me, in a sullen tone:

“Let go of me, Claude, you hurt me! What a strange idea to wake people by choking them!”

I knelt upon the floor, at the side of the bed, and stretched out my hands towards my tormentor.

“Laurence,” I murmured, in a gentle voice, “speak to me, love me. Why are you so cruel? What have I done that your lips and your heart maintain silence. Be frank; make me suffer all my sufferings in an hour, or cast yourself into my arms and let us live happily. Tell me all, give full scope to your thoughts and your affections. If you do not love me, strike a deadly blow, crush me and depart. If you love me, remain, remain, but remain upon my heart, close, close, and speak to me, speak to me constantly, for I am filled with fear when I see you mute and sad for entire days, staring at me with your dead eyes. I feel madness coming to me in this desert amid which you are dragging me; I grow dizzy as I lean over you, so full of deep obscurity, of silent horror. No, I cannot live another day in ignorance of your love or your indifference; I wish you to explain yourself at once, I wish you, at last, to make yourself known. My mind is weary of searching; it is filled with sad solutions which it has formed of the problem of your being. If you do not desire my heart and my head to burst, name yourself, tell me what you are, assure me that you are not dead, that you still have blood sufficient to love or to hate me. I am reckless. Listen: we will set out to-morrow for Provence. Do you remember the tall trees of Fontenay? In Provence, beneath the glowing sun, the trees are prouder, stronger. We will live a life of love on that ardent soil, which will restore you your youth and give you a dark, passionate beauty. You shall see. I know, in a ravine sown with fine grass, a small, retired house, all green on one side with ivy and honeysuckles; there is a hedge, as tall as a child, which hides the ten leagues of the valley, and one sees only the blue curtains of the sky and the green carpet of the path. It is in this ravine, this nest, that we will love each other; it shall be our universe, and we will forget there the life we have led in the gloomy depths of this miserable chamber. The past shall be obliterated; the present alone, with its broad sunlight, its fruitful nature, its strong and gentle loves, shall exist for our hearts. Oh! Laurence, in pity speak to me, love me, tell me that you wish to follow me!”