The Confession of a Child of the Century Part 27

"But who knows? You are still young. The more you trust in your heart, the farther astray you will be lead by your pride. To-day you stand before the first ruin you are going to leave on your route. If Brigitte dies to-morrow you will weep on her tomb; where will you go when you leave her? You will go away for three months perhaps, and you will travel in Italy; you will wrap your cloak about you, like a splenetic Englishman, and you will say some beautiful morning, sitting in your inn with your gla.s.ses before you, that it is time to forget in order to live again. You who weep too late, take care lest you weep more than one day.

Who knows? When the present, which makes you shudder, shall have become the past, an old story, a confused memory, may it not happen some night of debauchery that you will overturn your chair and recount, with a smile on your lips, what you witnessed with tears in your eyes? It is thus that one drinks away shame. You have begun by being good, you will become weak, and you will become a monster.

"My poor friend," said I, from the bottom of my heart, "I have a word of advice for you, and it is this: I believe that you must die. While there is still some virtue left, profit by it in order that you may not become altogether bad; while a woman you love lies there dying on that bed, and while you have a horror of yourself, strike the decisive blow; she still lives; that is enough; do not attend her funeral obsequies for fear that on the morrow you will not be consoled; turn the poignard against your own heart while that heart yet loves the G.o.d who made it. Is it your youth that makes you pause? And would you spare those youthful locks?

Never allow them to whiten if they are not white to-night.

"And then what would you do in the world? If you go away, where will you go? What can you hope for if you remain? Ah! in looking at that woman you seem to have a treasure buried in your heart. It is not merely that you lose her, it is less what has been than what might have been. When the hands of the clock indicated such and such an hour, you might have been happy. If you suffer, why do you not open your heart? If you love, why do you not say so? Why do you die of hunger clasping a priceless treasure in your hands? You have closed the door, you miser; you debate with yourself behind locks and bolts. Shake them, for it was your hand that forged them. O fool! who have desired, and have possessed your desire, you have not thought of G.o.d! You play with happiness as a child plays with a rattle, and you do not reflect how rare and fragile a thing you hold in your hands; you treat it with disdain, you smile at it and you continue to amuse yourself with it, forgetting how many prayers it has cost your good angel to preserve for you that shadow of daylight! Ah! if there is in heaven one who watches over you, what is he doing at this moment? He is seated before an organ; his wings are half folded, his hands extended over the ivory keys; he begins an eternal hymn; the hymn of love and immortal rest, but his wings droop, his head falls over the keys; the angel of death has touched him on the shoulder, he disappears into immensity!

"And you, at the age of twenty-two when a n.o.ble and exalted pa.s.sion, when the strength of youth might perhaps have made something of you! When after so many sorrows and bitter disappointments, a youth so dissipated, you saw a better time s.h.i.+ning in the future; when your life, consecrated to the object of your adoration, gave promise of new strength, at that moment the abyss yawns before you! You no longer experience vague desires, but real regrets; your heart is no longer hungry, it is broken!

And you hesitate? What do you expect? Since she no longer cares for your life, it counts for nothing! Since she abandons you, abandon yourself!

Let those who have loved you in your youth weep for you! They are not many. If you would live, you must not only forget love but you must deny that it exists; not only deny what there has been of good in you, but kill all that may be good in the future; for what will you do if you remember? Life for you would be one ceaseless regret. No, no, you must choose between your soul and your body; you must kill one or the other.

The memory of the good drives you to the evil; make a corpse of yourself unless you wish to become your own specter. O child, child! die while you can! May tears be shed over thy grave!"

I threw myself on the foot of the bed in such a frightful state of despair, that my reason fled and I no longer knew where I was or what I was doing. Brigitte sighed.

My senses stirred within me. Was it grief or despair? I do not know.

Suddenly a horrible idea occurred to me.

"What!" I muttered, "leave that for another! Die, descend into the ground, while that bosom heaves with the air of heaven? Just G.o.d! another hand than mine on that fine, transparent skin! Another mouth on those lips, another love in that heart! Brigitte happy, loving, adored, and I in a corner of the cemetery, crumbling into dust in a ditch! How long will it take her to forget me if I cease to exist to-morrow? How many tears will she shed? None, perhaps! Not a friend who speaks to her but will say that my death was a good thing. Who will not hasten to console her, who will not urge her to forget me! If she weeps, they will seek to distract her attention from her loss; if memory haunts her, they will take her away; if her love for me survives me, they will seek to cure her as though she had been poisoned; and she herself, who will perhaps at first say that she desires to follow me, will a month later turn aside to avoid the weeping-willow planted over my grave! How could it be otherwise? Who as beautiful as she wastes life in idle regrets? If she should think of dying of grief that beautiful bosom would urge her to live, and her gla.s.s would persuade her; and the day when her exhausted tears give place to the first smile, who will not congratulate her on her recovery? When, after eight days of silence, she consents to hear my name p.r.o.nounced in her presence, then she will speak of it herself as though to say: 'Console me;' then little by little she will no longer refuse to think of the past but will speak of it, and she will open her window some beautiful spring morning when the birds are singing in the garden; she will become pensive and say: 'I have loved!' Who will be there at her side? Who will dare to tell her that she must continue to love? Ah! then I will be no more! You will listen to him, faithless one! You will blush as does the budding rose and the blood of youth will mount to your face.

While saying that your heart is sealed, you will allow it to escape through that fresh aureole of beauty, each ray of which allures a kiss.

How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more! And why should that astonish you? You are a woman; that body, that spotless bosom, you know what they are worth; when you conceal them under your dress you do not believe, as do the virgins, that all are alike, and you know the price of your modesty. How can the woman who has been praised resolve to be praised no more? Does she think she is living when she remains in the shadow and there is silence round about her beauty? Her beauty itself is the admiring glance of her lover. No, no, there can be no doubt of it; who has loved, can not live without love; who has seen death, clings to life. Brigitte loves me and will perhaps die of love; I will kill myself and another will have her."

"Another, another!" I repeated, bending over her until my head touched her shoulder. "Is she not a widow? Has she not already seen death? Have not these little hands prepared the dead for burial? Her tears for the second will not flow as long as those shed for the first. Ah! G.o.d forgive me! While she sleeps why should I not kill her? If I should awaken her now and tell her that her hour had come and that we were going to die with a last kiss, she would consent. What does it matter? Is it certain that all does not end with that?"

I found a knife on the table and I picked it up.

"Fear, cowardice, superst.i.tion! What do they know about it who talk of something else beyond? It is for the ignorant, common people that a future life has been invented, but who really believes in it? What watcher in the cemetery has seen Death leave his tomb and hold consultation with a priest? In olden times there were fantoms; they are interdicted by the police in civilized cities and no cries are now heard issuing from the earth except from those buried in haste. Who has silenced death if it has ever spoken? Because funeral processions are no longer permitted to enc.u.mber our streets, does the celestial spirit languish? To die, that is the final purpose, the end. G.o.d has established it, man discusses it; but over every door is written: 'Do what thou wilt, thou shalt die.' What will be said if I kill Brigitte? Neither of us will hear. In to-morrow's journal would appear the intelligence that Octave de T----- had killed his mistress, and the day after no one would speak of it. Who would follow us to the grave? No one who, upon returning to his home, could not enjoy a hearty dinner; and when we were extended side by side in our narrow bed, the world could walk over our graves without disturbing us. Is it not true, my well-beloved, is it not true that it would be well with us? It is a soft bed, that bed of earth; no suffering can reach us there; the occupants of the neighboring tombs will not gossip about us; our bones will embrace in peace and without pride, for death is solace, and that which binds does not also separate. Why should annihilation frighten thee, poor body, destined to corruption? Every hour that strikes drags thee on to thy doom, every step breaks the round on which thou hast just rested; thou art nourished by the dead; the air of heaven weighs upon and crushes thee, the earth on which thou treadest attacks thee by the soles of thy feet. Down with thee! Why art thou affrighted? Dost thou tremble at a word? Merely say: 'We will not live.'

Is not life a burden that we long to lay down? Why hesitate when it is merely a question of a little sooner or a little later? Matter is indestructible, and the physicists, we are told, grind to infinity the smallest speck of dust without being able to annihilate it. If matter is the property of chance, what harm can it do to change its form since it can not cease to be matter? Why should G.o.d care what form I have received and with what livery I invest my grief? Suffering lives in my brain; it belongs to me, I kill it; but my bones do not belong to me and I return them to Him who lent them to me: may some poet make a cup of my skull from which to drink his new wine What reproach can I incur and what harm can that reproach do me? What stern judge will tell me that I have done wrong? What does he know about it? Was he such as I? If every creature has his task to perform and if it is a crime to s.h.i.+rk it, what culprits are the babes who die on the nurse's breast! Why should they be spared?

Who will be instructed by the lessons which are taught after death? Must heaven be a desert in order that man may be punished for having lived? Is it not enough to have lived? I do not know who asked that question, unless it was Voltaire on his death-bed; it is a cry of despair worthy of a helpless old atheist. But to what purpose? Why so many struggles? Who is there above us who delights in so much agony? Who amuses himself and whiles away an idle hour watching this spectacle of creation, always renewed and always dying, seeing the work of man's hands rising, the gra.s.s growing; looking upon the planting of the seed and the fall of the thunderbolt; beholding man walking about upon his earth until he meets the beckoning finger of death; counting tears and watching them dry upon the cheek of pain; noting the pure profile of love and the wrinkled face of age; seeing hands stretched up to him in supplication, bodies prostrate before him, and not a blade of wheat more in the harvest! Who is it then who has made so much for the pleasure of knowing that it all amounts to nothing! The earth is dying; Hersch.e.l.l says it is of cold; who holds in his hand the drop of condensed vapor and watches it as it dries up, as an angler watches a grain of sand in his hand? That mighty law of attraction that suspends the world in s.p.a.ce, torments it and consumes it in endless desire; every planet carries its load of misery and groans on its axle; they call to each other across the abyss and each wonders which will stop first. G.o.d controls them; they accomplish a.s.siduously and eternally their appointed and useless task; they whirl about, they suffer, they burn, they become extinct and they light up with new flame; they descend and they reascend, they follow and yet they avoid each other, they interlace like rings; they carry on their surface thousands of beings who are ceaselessly renewed; the beings move about, cross each other's paths, clasp each other for an hour, and then fall and others rise in their place; where life fails, life hastens to the spot; where air is wanting, air rushes; no disorder, everything is regulated, marked out, written down in lines of gold and parables of fire, everything keeps step with the celestial music along the pitiless paths of life; and all for nothing! And we, poor nameless dreams, pale and sorrowful apparitions, helpless ephemera, we who are animated by the breath of a second, in order that death may exist, we exhaust ourselves with fatigue in order to prove that we are living for a purpose, and that something indefinable is stirring within us. We hesitate to turn against our b.r.e.a.s.t.s a little piece of steel, or blow out our brains with a little instrument no larger than our hand; it seems to us that chaos would return again; we have written and revised the laws both human and divine and we are afraid of our catechisms; we suffer thirty years without murmuring and imagine that we are struggling; finally suffering becomes the stronger, we send a pinch of powder into the sanctuary of intelligence, and a flower pierces the soil above our grave."

As I finished these words I directed the knife I held in my hand against Brigitte's bosom. I was no longer master of myself, and in my delirious condition I know not what might have happened; I threw back the bedclothing to uncover the heart, when I discovered on her white bosom a little ebony crucifix.

I recoiled, seized with sudden fear; my hand relaxed, my weapon fell to the floor. It was Brigitte's aunt who had given her that little crucifix on her death-bed. I did not remember ever having seen it before; doubtless, at the moment of setting out she had suspended it about her neck as a preserving charm against the dangers of the journey. Suddenly I joined my, hands and knelt on the floor.

"O, Lord my G.o.d," I said in trembling tones, "Lord, my G.o.d, thou art there!"

Let those who do not believe in Christ read this page; I no longer disbelieved in him. Neither as a child, nor at school, nor as a man, have I frequented churches; my religion, if I had any, had neither rite nor symbol, and I believed in a G.o.d without form, without a cult, and without revelation. Poisoned, from youth, by all the writings of the last century, I had sucked, at an early hour, the sterile milk of impiety.

Human pride, that G.o.d of the egoist, closed my mouth against prayer, while my affrighted soul took refuge in the hope of nothingness. I was as though drunken or insensate when I saw that effigy of Christ on Brigitte's bosom; while not believing in him myself I recoiled, knowing that she believed in him. It was not vain terror that arrested my hand.

Who saw me? I was alone and it was night. Was it prejudice? What prevented me from hurling out of my sight that little piece of black wood? I could have thrown it into the fire, but it was my weapon I threw there. Ah! what an experience that was, and still is, for my soul! What miserable wretches are men who mock at that which can save a human being!

What matters the name, the form, the belief? Is not all that is good sacred? How dare any one touch G.o.d?

As at a glance from the sun the snows descend the mountains and the glaciers that threatened heaven melt into streams in the valley, so there descended into my heart a stream that overflowed its banks. Repentance is a pure incense; it exhaled from all my suffering. Although I had almost committed a crime when my hand was arrested, I felt that my heart was innocent. In an instant calm, self-possession, reason returned; I again approached the bed; I leaned over my idol and kissed the crucifix.

"Sleep in peace," I said to her, "G.o.d watches over you! While your lips were parting in a smile, you were in greater danger than you have ever known before. But the hand that threatened you will harm no one; I swear by the faith you profess, I will not kill either you or myself! I am a fool, a madman, a child who thinks himself a man. G.o.d be praised! You are young and beautiful. You live and you will forget me. You will recover from the evil I have done you, if you can forgive me. Sleep in peace until day, Brigitte, and then decide our fate; whatever sentence you p.r.o.nounce, I will submit without complaint. And thou, Lord, who hast saved me, grant me pardon. I was born in an impious century, and I have many crimes to expiate. Thou Son of G.o.d, whom men forget, I have not been taught to love Thee. I have never wors.h.i.+ped in Thy temples, but I thank heaven that where I find Thee, I tremble and bow in reverence. I have at least kissed with my lips a heart that is full of Thee. Protect that heart so long as life lasts; dwell within it, Thou Holy One; a poor unfortunate has been brave enough to defy death at the sight of Thy suffering and Thy death; though impious, Thou hast saved him from evil; if he had believed, Thou wouldst have consoled him. Pardon those who have made him incredulous since Thou hast made him repentant; pardon those who blaspheme! When they were in despair they did not see Thee! Human joys are a mockery; they are scornful and pitiless; O Lord! the happy of this world think they have no need of Thee! Pardon them. Although their pride may outrage Thee, they will be, sooner or later, baptized in tears; grant that they may cease to believe in any other shelter from the tempest, than Thy love, and spare them the severe lessons of unhappiness. Our wisdom and skepticism are in our hands but children's toys; forgive us for dreaming that we can defy Thee, Thou who smilest at Golgotha. The worst result of all our vain misery is that it tempts us to forget Thee.

But Thou knowest that it is all but a shadow, which a glance from Thee can dissipate. Hast not Thou Thyself been a man? It was sorrow that made Thee G.o.d; sorrow is an instrument of torture by which Thou hast mounted to the very throne of G.o.d, Thy Father, and it is sorrow that leads us to Thee as it led Thee to Thy Father; we come to Thee with our crown of thorns and kneel before Thy mercy-seat; we touch Thy bleeding feet with our bloodstained hands, and Thou hast suffered martyrdom for being loved by the unfortunate."

The first rays of dawn began to appear: man and nature were rousing themselves from sleep and the air was filled with the confusion of distant sounds. Weak and exhausted I was about to leave Brigitte, and seek a little repose. As I was pa.s.sing out of the room, a dress thrown on a chair slipped to the floor near me, and in its folds I spied a piece of paper. I picked it up; it was a letter, and I recognized Brigitte's hand.

The envelope was not sealed. I opened it and read as follows:

23 December, 18--

"When you receive this letter I shall be far away from you, and shall perhaps never see you again. My destiny is bound up with that of a man for whom I have sacrificed everything; he can not live without me and I am going to try to die for him. I love you; adieu, and pity us."

I turned the letter over when I had read it, and saw that it was addressed to "M. Henri Smith, N-----, _poste restante_."

CHAPTER VII

ON the morrow, a clear December day, a young man and a woman who rested on his arm, pa.s.sed through the garden of the Palais-Royal. They entered a jeweler's store where they chose two similar rings which they smilingly exchanged. After a short walk they took breakfast at the Freres-Provencaux, in one of those little rooms which are, all things considered, one of the most beautiful spots in the world. There, when the garcon had left them, they sat near the windows, hand in hand. The young man was in traveling dress; to see the joy which shone on his face, one would have taken him for a young husband showing his young wife the beauties and pleasures of Parisian life. His happiness was calm and subdued, as true happiness always is. The experienced would have recognized in him the youth who merges into manhood. From time to time he looked up at the sky, then at his companion, and tears glittered in his eyes, but he heeded them not, and smiled as he wept. The woman was pale and thoughtful, her eyes were fixed on the man. On her face were traces of sorrow which she could not conceal, although evidently touched by the exalted joy of her companion. When he smiled, she smiled too, but never alone; when he spoke, she replied and she ate what he served her; but there was about her a silence which was only broken at his instance. In her languor could be clearly distinguished that gentleness of soul, that lethargy of the weaker of two beings who love, one of whom exists only in the other and responds to him as does the echo. The young man was conscious of it and seemed proud of it and grateful for it; but it could be seen even by his pride that his happiness was new to him. When the woman became sad and her eyes fell, he cheered her with his glance; but he could not always succeed, and seemed troubled himself. That mingling of strength and weakness, of joy and sorrow, of anxiety and serenity could not have been understood by an indifferent spectator; at times they appeared the most happy of living creatures, and the next moment the most unhappy; but although ignorant of their secret, one would have felt that they were suffering together, and, whatever their mysterious trouble, it could be seen that they had placed on their sorrow a seal more powerful than love itself--friends.h.i.+p. While their hands were clasped their glances were chaste; although they were alone, they spoke in low tones.

As though overcome by their feelings they sat face to face, although their lips did not touch. They looked at each other tenderly and solemnly. When the clock struck one, the woman heaved a sigh and said:

"Octave, are you sure of yourself?"

"Yes, my friend, I am resolved. I will suffer much, a long time, perhaps forever; but we will cure ourselves, you with time, I with G.o.d."

"Octave, Octave," repeated the woman, "are you sure you are not deceiving yourself?"

"I do not believe we can forget each other; but I believe that we can forgive and that is what I desire even at the price of separation."

"Why could we not meet again? Why not some day--you are so young!"

Then she added with a smile: "We could see each other without danger."

"No, my friend, for you must know that I could never see you again without loving you. May he to whom I bequeath you be worthy of you! Smith is brave, good and honest, but however much you may love him, you see very well that you still love me, for if I should decide to remain, or to take you away with me, you would consent."

"It is true," replied the woman.

"True! true!" repeated the young man, looking into her eyes with all his soul. "Is it true that if I wished it you would go with me?"

Then he continued softly: "That is the reason I must never see you again.

There are certain loves in life that overturn the head, the senses, the mind, the heart; there is among them all but one that does not disturb, that penetrates, and that dies only with the being in which it has taken root."

"But you will write to me?"

"Yes, at first, for what I have to suffer is so keen that the absence of the habitual object of my love would kill me. When I was unknown to you, I gradually approached closer and closer to you until--but let us not go into the past. Little by little my letters will become less frequent until they cease altogether. I will thus descend the hill that I have been climbing for the past year. When one stands before a fresh grave, over which are engraved two cherished names, one experiences a mysterious sense of grief, which causes tears to trickle down one's cheeks; it is thus that I wish to remember having once lived."

At these words the woman threw herself on the couch and burst into tears.

The young man wept with her, but he did not move and seemed anxious to appear unconscious of her emotion. When her tears ceased to flow, he approached her, took her hand in his and kissed it.

"Believe me," said he, "to be loved by you, whatever the name of the place I occupy in your heart, will give me strength and courage. Rest a.s.sured, Brigitte, no one will ever understand you better than I; another will love you more worthily, no one will love you more truly. Another will be considerate of those feelings that I offend, he will surround you with his love; you will have a better lover, you will not have a better brother. Give me your hand and let the world laugh at a word that it does not understand: Let us be friends; and adieu forever. Before we became such intimate friends there was something within that told us that we were destined to mingle our lives. Let that part of us which is still joined in G.o.d's sight never know that we have parted upon earth; let not the paltry chance of a moment undo the union of our eternal happiness!"

He held the woman's hand; she arose, tears streaming from her eyes, and, stepping up to the mirror with a strange smile on her face, she cut from her head a long tress of hair; then she looked at herself, thus disfigured and deprived of a part of her beautiful crown, and gave it to her lover.

The clock struck again; it was time to go; when they pa.s.sed out they seemed as joyful as when they entered.

"What a glorious sun," said the young man.