Claude's Confession and Other Early Novels of Émile Zola. Ðмиль ЗолÑ
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his mind fruitful, for long months he shuns the crowd, giving himself entirely to the love of the masterpiece which Heaven has confided to him.
Let him hide himself, and enjoy like a miser the anguish of production; tomorrow, in his pride, ha will come forth to demand caresses for the fruit of his mind.
I am poor; I should live alone. My pride would suffer from commonplace consolations, my hand wishes to press only those of my equals. I am ignorant of the world, but I feel that Want is so cold she must freeze the hearts around her, and that, being the sister of Vice, she is timid and ashamed when she is noble. I carry my head aloft and do not mean to lower it.
Poverty and Solitude, be you then my guests. Be my guardian angels, my muses, my companions with harsh but encouraging voices. Make me strong, give me the science of living, tell me the cost of my daily bread. May your vigorous caresses, so sharp that they seem like wounds, force me towards the good and the just. I will relight my lamp during these winter nights, and I will feel you both beside me, icy and silent, bending over my table, dictating to me the hard truth. When, weary of gloom and silence, I put by my pen and curse you, your melancholy smiles will, perhaps, make me doubt my dreams. Then your serene and sad peace will render you so beautiful that I will take you for my sweethearts. Our loves shall be as serene and deep as you; the lovers of sixteen will envy the bitter pleasure of our fruitful kisses.
But, nevertheless, brothers, it would be delightful to me to feel the purple upon my shoulders, not to drape myself with it before the crowd, but to live more generously beneath the rich and superb tissue. It would be delightful to me to be king of Asia, to dream night and day upon a bed of roses in one of those fairylike dwelling-places, harems of flowers and sultanas. The marble baths with perfumed fountains, the galleries of honeysuckles supported by silver trellises, the immense halls with ceilings sown with stars, do not these constitute the palace which the angels should build for each young man of twenty? Youth wishes at its festival all that sings, all that shines. When the first kiss is given, the fiancée should be covered with lace and jewels, and the nuptial couch, borne by four golden and marble fairies, should have a canopy of precious stones and sheets of satin.
Brothers, brothers, do not scold me, for I wish to be wise. I shall love my garret and think no more of my palaces. Oh! how fresh and passionate life would be in them!
CHAPTER III.
THE YOUNG HARVEST-GIRL.
I TOIL and hope. I pass the days seated at my little table, putting aside my pen for long hours to caress some ideal blonde whom the ink would soil. Then, I resume my work, decking my heroines with the rays of my dreams. I forget the snow and the empty closet. I live I know not where, perhaps in a cloud, perhaps amid the down of an abandoned nest. When I write a phrase sprucely and coquettishly draped, I imagine I see angels and hawthorns in bloom.
I have the holy gayety of toil. Ah! how foolish I was to be sad, and how deceived I was in thinking myself poor and alone! Yesterday my chamber was hideous; now it smiles upon me. I feel around me friends whom I cannot see, but who are legion and who all put out their hands to me. So great is their number that they hide from me the walls of my den.
Poor little table, when Despair shall touch me with her wing, I will always seat myself before you and bend over the white paper on which my dream fixes itself only after having given me a smile.
Alas! I must have, nevertheless, a shade of reality. I surprise myself sometimes uneasy, wishing for a joy that I cannot shape. Then, I hear something like a complaint from my heart: it tells me that it is always cold, always famished, and that a mad dream can neither warm nor satisfy it. I wish to content it. I will go out tomorrow, no longer isolating myself in myself, but gazing at the windows, telling it to make its choice from among the beautiful ladies. Then, from time to time, I will take it back beneath the chosen balcony. It will carry away from it a glance to feed on, and, for a week, will no longer feel the winter. When again it shall cry famine, a new smile shall appease it.
Brothers, have you never imagined that, on a certain autumn evening, you met amid the grain fields a brunette of sixteen? She smiled upon you as she flitted by, then was lost among the wheat heads. That night you dreamed of her, and, on the morrow, at the same hour, took the path from the town. The dear vision passed, smiled again, leaving you a new dream for your next sleep. Months, years elapsed. Every day your famished heart was satisfied with a smile and never desired more. An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.
CHAPTER IV.
TEMPTATION.
LAST evening, I had a bright fire on the hearth. I was rich enough to have two candles, and had lighted them both, regardless of the morrow.
I surprised myself singing, as I prepared for a night of toil. The mansarde laughed to find itself warm and luminous.
As I sat down, I heard on the stairway the sound of voices and hurried steps. Doors opened and shut. Then, amid the silence that ensued, stifled cries came up to me. I sprang to my feet, vaguely disturbed, and listened. The noise ceased. I was about to resume my chair, when some one ran upstairs and called out to me that a woman, my neighbor, had a nervous attack. My help was asked. I held the door open, but saw only the dark and gloomy stairway.
I put on a warmer coat and went down, forgetting even to take one of my candles. On the floor below I stopped, not knowing what room to enter. I did not hear a sound; I was surrounded by thick darkness. At last I saw a thin thread of light through a half-open door. I gave the door a push.
The chamber was the sister of mine: large, irregular and out of repair. But, as I had left my mansarde in a flood of flame and brightness, the gloom and cold of this place filled my heart with pity and sadness. Damp air struck against my face; a miserable candle, burning on one corner of the mantelpiece, flickered in the blast from the stairway, without permitting me at first to see the objects before me.
I had paused upon the threshold. Finally I distinguished the bed: the sheets, thrown off and twisted, had slipped to the floor; scattered garments lay about on the coverlet.
In the midst of these rags was stretched out a vague, white form. I should have thought I saw a corpse, if the candle had not given me occasional glimpses of a hand hanging out of the bed and agitated by rapid convulsions.
By the pillow was an old woman. Her unfastened gray hair fell in stiff locks over her forehead, her hastily put on dress showed her yellow and wasted arms. She had her back towards me, was holding the head and hid from me the face of the woman on the bed.
The quivering body, watched over by this horrible old woman, gave me a sudden feeling of disgust and fright. The motionlessness of their countenances gave them fantastic dimensions, their silence made one almost doubt that they were alive. I thought for an instant that I was witnessing one of those terrible scenes of the witches’ Sabbath, when the sorceresses suck the blood of young girls, and, throwing them ghastly and wrinkled into the arms of Death, rob them of their youth and freshness.
The noise I made at the door caused the old woman to turn her head. She let the body she was supporting fall heavily; then, she advanced towards me.
“Ah! Monsieur,” she said, “I thank you for having come. Old people fear the winter nights, and this room is so cold that, perhaps, I would not have been able to leave it in the morning. I have been watching a long while, and when one eats but little, one needs more sleep. Besides, the crisis is over. You will have to wait only until this girl awakens. Good night, Monsieur.”
The old woman went away, and I was alone. I shut the door, and, taking up the candle, approached the bed. The girl extended upon it seemed about twenty-four. She was plunged in that deep stupor which follows nervous convulsions. Her feet were drawn