THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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arose; we opened the door and the window. A current of coolness entered, bearing into the chamber all the odors of the delightful country. The acacias, planted almost at the threshold, exhaled a milder and sweeter perfume than on the preceding evening. The purity of dawn rested upon the sky and upon the earth.
Laurence drank a cup of milk, and, before returning to Paris, I expressed a desire to climb to the wood of Verrières, in order to carry back with me, in my heart, a breath of the pure air of the morning. Above, in the wood, we walked with lingering steps along the verdant paths. The forest was like a beautiful bride on the day after the wedding; it had delicious tears, a youthful languor, a damp coolness, lukewarm and penetrating perfumes. The sunlight at the horizon slipped along obliquely, between the trees, in broad sheets; there was I know not what mildness in those golden rays which rolled down to earth like supple and dazzling silken veils. And, amid the coolness, we heard the stir of the awakening wood, those thousands of little sounds which bear witness to the life of the springs and of the plants; above our heads floated the songs of birds, beneath our feet were the murmurs of insects; all around us were sudden cracklings, the gurgling noises of flowing waters, deep and mysterious sighs which seemed to issue from the knotty sides of the oak trees. We advanced slowly, feeling an intense and indescribable delight in lingering amid sunlight and shadow drinking in the fresh air, striving to seize the confused words which the hawthorns seemed to address to us as we passed by them. Oh! the gentle and smiling morning, all soaked with happy tears, all softened with joy and youth! The country had reached that adorable age when old Nature has for a few days the delicate grace of infancy.
I returned to Paris with Laurence on my arm, young and strong, intoxicated with light and spring, my heart full of dew and love. I loved worthily, as a true man should, and I believed that I was so loved in return.
CHAPTER XX.
A BITTER AVOWAL.
SPRING has vanished; I have awakened from my dream.
I know not the limit of my pitiful childishness; I know not what miserable soul dwells within me. The reality penetrates me, shakes me; my flesh is either acutely tortured or wildly delighted by what is; I am like a body of exquisite sonorousness, which vibrates at the slightest sensation; I have a sharp and clear perception of the society which surrounds me. And my soul is pleased to refuse the truth; it escapes from my flesh, it disdains my senses, it lives elsewhere amid deception and hope. It is thus that I walk through life. I know and I see, I blind myself and I dream. While I advance beneath the rain, in the midst of the mud, while I am profoundly conscious of all the cold, of all the dampness, I can, by means of a strange faculty, make the sun shine, be warm, create for myself a mild and delicate sky, without ceasing to feel the gloomy sky which presses down upon my shoulders. I do not ignore anything, I do not forget anything. I live doubly. I carry into my dreams the same frankness which I carry into real sensations. I have thus two parallel existences, equally alive, equally intense — one which passes here below, in my poverty, another which passes above, in the immense and deep purity of the blue sky.
Yes, such is, without doubt, the explanation of my being. I comprehend my flesh, I comprehend my heart; I am conscious of my innocence and of my infamy, of my love for illusion and of my love for truth. I am a delicate machine made up of sensations — sensations of the soul and sensations of the body. I receive and give back, quiveringly, the slightest ray, the slightest odor, the slightest tenderness. I live on too lofty a plane, crying out my sufferings, stammering forth my ecstasies, in heaven and amid the mud, more crushed after each new bound, more radiant after each new fall.
The other day, amid the cool air, beneath the tall trees of Fontenay, my flesh was softened, my heart had the mastery. I loved and I believed myself loved in my turn. The truth escaped from me; I saw Laurence clothed in white, young and pure; her kiss appeared to me to have so much sweetness that it seemed to come from her soul. Now, Laurence is here, seated upon the edge of the bed; to see her, pale and sorrowful, in her soiled dress, makes my flesh quiver, my heart leap with indignation. The spring time has flown; Laurence has grown old, she does not love me. Oh! what a miserable child I am! I deserve to weep, for I cause my own tears.
What do I care for Laurence’s ugliness, her infamy and her weariness! Let her be uglier, more infamous and more weary, but let her love me! I wish her to love me.
I regret neither the graces of her fifteenth year nor her youthful smile of the other day, when she ran about beneath the trees and was the good fairy of my youth. No, I regret neither her beauty nor her freshness; I regret the dream which led me to believe that her heart was in her caresses.
She is here, deplorable, crushed. I have, indeed, the right to exact that she shall love me, that she shall give herself to me. I accept her entire being, I want her as she is, asleep and weary, but I want her, I want her, with all my will, with all my strength.
I remember that I dreamed of reforming Laurence, that I wished her to possess more reason, more reserve. What do I care for reserve, what do I care for reason? I have no business with them now. I demand love, mad and lasting love. I am eager to have my love returned, I do not wish longer to love all alone. Nothing wearies the heart like caresses which are not returned. I gave this woman my youth, my hopes; I shut myself up with her in suffering and abjection; I forgot everything in the depths of our gloom, even the crowd and its opinions. I can, it seems to me, demand in exchange from this woman that she shall unite herself with me, that she shall join her destiny to mine amid the desert of poverty and abandonment in which we live.
Spring is dead, I tell you. I dreamed that the young foliage was growing green in the sunlight, that Laurence laughed madly amid the tall grass. I find myself in the damp darkness of my chamber, opposite Laurence who is sleeping; I have not quitted the wretched den, I have not seen either the eyes or the lips of this girl open. Everything is deception. In this crumbling of the true and the false, in this confused noise which life causes within me, I feel but a single need, a sharp and cruel need: to love, to be loved, no matter where, no matter how, that I may plunge headlong into an abyss of devotion.
Oh! brothers, later, if ever I emerge from the black night which holds me captive, and the caprice should seize upon me to relate to the crowd the story of my far off loves, I will, without doubt, imitate those weepers, those dreamers, who deck with golden rays the demons of their twentieth year and put wings upon their shoulders. We call the poets of youth those liars who have suffered, who have shed all their tears, and who, to-day, in their recollections, have no longer anything but smiles and regrets. I assure you that I have seen their blood, that I have seen their bare flesh, torn and full of pain. They have lived in suffering, they have grown up in despair. Their sweethearts were vile creatures, their love affairs had all the horrors of the love affairs of a great city. They have been deceived, wounded, dragged in the mud; never did they encounter a heart, and each one of them has had his Laurence, who has made of his youth a desolate solitude. Then, the wound healed, age came on, remembrance imparted its caressing charm to all the infamy of the past, and they wept over their morbid love affairs. Thus they have created a false world of sinful young women, of girls adorable in their carelessness and their triviality. You know them all — the Mirai Pinsons and the Musettes — you dreamed about them when you were sixteen, and, perhaps, you have even sought for them. Their admirers were prodigal; they accorded them beauty and freshness, tenderness and frankness; they have made them shining types of unselfish love, of eternal youth; they have thrust them upon our hearts, they have taken delight in deceiving themselves. They lie! they lie! they lie!
I will imitate them. Like them, without doubt, I shall deceive myself, I shall believe in good faith the falsehoods which my recollections will relate to me; like them, perhaps, I shall have cowardice and timidity which will induce me not to speak loudly and frankly, telling what were my love affairs and how utterly miserable they were. Laurence will become Musette or Mimi; she will have youth, she will have beauty; she will no longer be the mute, wretched woman who is now in my company — she will be a giddy young girl, loving thoughtlessly, but thoroughly alive, rendered more youthful and more adorable by her caprices. My den will be transformed into a gay mansarde, blooming, white with sunlight; the blue silk dress will be changed into a neat and graceful calico; my poverty will