THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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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 upstairs; 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 upstairs, 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