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The Confession of a Child of The Century, a novel by Alfred de Musset |
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Part 1 - Chapter 8 |
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_ PART I 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. God 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 bloody apron, 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 passing 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 prostitutes! "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. And at times, when seated in the corner of some salon I watched the women as they danced, some rosy, some blue, and others white, their arms bare and hair clustered gracefully about their shapely heads, looking like cherubim drunk with light, floating in their spheres of harmony and beauty, I would think: "Ah, what a garden, what flowers to gather, to breathe! Ah! Marguerites, Marguerites! What will your last petal say to him who plucks it? A little, a little, but not all. That is the moral of the world, that is the end of your smiles. It is over this terrible abyss that you are walking in your flower-strewn gauze; it is on this hideous truth you run like gazelles on the tips of your little toes!" "But why take things so seriously?" said Desgenais. "That is something that is never seen. You complain because bottles become empty? There are many casks in the vaults, and many vaults in the hills. Make me a good fish-hook gilded with sweet words, with a drop of honey for bait, and quick! catch for me in the stream of oblivion a pretty consoler, as fresh and slippery as an eel; you will still have the hook when the fish shall have glided from your hands. Youth must pass away, and if I were you I would carry off the queen of Portugal rather than study anatomy." Such was the advice of Desgenais. I made my way home with swollen heart, my face concealed under my cloak. I kneeled at the side of my bed and my poor heart dissolved in tears. What vows! what prayers! Galileo struck the earth, crying: "Nevertheless it moves!" Thus I struck my heart. _ |
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