When my voice failed me, when I despaired of ever animating Laurence, I laid my head upon her breast, my ear against her heart. There, leaning on this woman, my eyes open, staring at the wick of the candle which was burning to a coal, I spent the night in thinking. I heard the rattle in Marie’s throat, broken by fits of coughing, which came to me through the partition, lulling my thoughts.
I thought. I listened to the regular beating of Laurence’s heart. I knew that nothing was there but a wave of blood; I said to myself that I was following in their rhythm the sounds of a well regulated machine, and that the voice which reached me was only the ticking of an unconscious clock, obeying a mere spring. And, nevertheless, I was disturbed; I would have liked to take the machine apart, to search out and study its most minute pieces; I thought seriously, in my delirium, of opening the breast upon which my head reposed, of removing the heart that I might see why it beat so gently and so regularly.
Marie’s rattle continued, and Laurence’s heart beat almost in my head. On hearing these two sounds, which were sometimes mingled together and made but one, I thought of life.
I know not why an insatiable longing for innocence pursues me in my abasement. I have constantly in my brain the thought of immaculate purity, lofty, inaccessible, and this thought awakens more biting in the depths of each of my fits of despair.
While I leaned my head upon Laurence’s faded bosom, I said to myself that woman was born for a single love.
There is the truth, the only possible marriage. My soul is so exacting that it wishes all the creature it loves, in her infancy, in her sleep, in her entire life. It goes so far as to accuse dreams, so far as to declare that a sweetheart is guilty who has received in a vision the kiss of a shadowy adorer.
All young girls, even the purest and most sincere, have been the recipients of attentions from the phantom lovers of their dreams; those demons have held them in their arms, have made their innocent flesh quiver, have given them the first caresses. Hence, when they find husbands, they are no longer innocent, they no longer possess holy ignorance.
As for me, I wished my bride to come to me as she had left the hands of God; I wished her spotless, refined, not yet alive, and I would awaken her. She would live in me, she would know me alone, she would have no recollections save those which came to her through me. She would realize the divine dream of an eternal marriage of the soul and body, drawing everything from itself. But when a woman’s lips have known other lips, when she has trembled like a leaf at the kisses of others, love can be nothing but daily anguish, hourly jealousy. Laurence does not belong to me, she belongs to her remembrances; she twists in my arms, thinking, perhaps, of former tendernesses; she is constantly escaping from me; she has a whole life which has not been mine; she and I are not one flesh. I love her and tear myself; I sob at the sight of this creature whom I do not possess, whom I can no longer possess in her entirety.
The candle smoked, the chamber was full of thick, yellowish air. I heard the rattling in Marie’s throat, now coming to me through the partition in jerky sounds. I listened to Laurence’s heart, but could not understand its language. This heart spoke, without doubt, an unknown tongue; I held my breath, I gave my intelligence altogether to it, but I utterly failed to grasp its meaning. Perhaps it was relating to me the past of my wretched and treacherous companion, her story of shame and misery. It beat slowly and ironically, letting the syllables fall from it with an effort; it made no haste to finish, it seemed to take delight in the recital of the horrible tale. I divined at times what it might be saying. I had ignored the past, I had refused to become acquainted with it, I had striven to forget it; but it voluntarily evoked itself, it presented itself to my mind such as it must have been. I knew what infamies it was necessary for me to imagine; but, amid the ignorance in which I had shut myself up, I, without doubt, went beyond the real and fell into a nightmare, exaggerating the evil. At this hour, I wished to know everything, to obtain a complete revelation of the truth in all its horror. I listened with the utmost attention to the cynical and heavy heart, which was narrating to me in a low voice and an unknown language the long and doleful story, but I could not follow the thread of the narrative, I could only imagine a few words which I thought I distinguished amid the unintelligible confusion of sounds.
Then, suddenly, Laurence’s heart changed its language. It spoke of the future, and I understood it. It beat distinctly, talking more rapidly, with more violence, more irony. It said that it was going to the gutter and that it was in haste to arrive there. Laurence would quit me on the morrow, she would resume her life of chance; she would belong to the crowd, she would descend the few steps which yet separated her from the bottom of the sewer. Then, she would be a brute, she would no longer feel anything, and she would declare herself perfectly happy and contented. She would die some night upon the sidewalk, drunken and worn out. The heart told me that the body would go to the dissecting-room, and that the physicians would cut it to pieces to discover what bitter and nauseous things it contained. At these accursed words, I saw Laurence turned blue, dragged through the mud, covered with infamous stains, stretched out, cold and stiff, upon the white marble slab of the dissecting-table. The physicians were plunging sharp knives into the bosom of her I loved so much as to be ready to lay down my life for her, into the breast of the woman whom I held in my arms with the clutch of desperation.
The vision enlarged its scope; the chamber became filled with phantoms. A world of dissipation passed before me in a long, desolate procession. Life, with all its horrors and shames, presented itself to my eyes in a succession of frightful pictures. All the wretchedness of humanity arose before me, draped in silk, covered with rags, young and beautiful, old and bony. The parade of these men and these women, going to destruction, lasted a long while and filled me with terror.
The heart beat, beat. It said to me now, in anger:
“I came from the darkness of sin and shall return to it. You love me, but I shall never love you, for I am a dead heart and utterly worthless. You have striven vainly to make yourself infamous; you wish to descend to the mud, but the mud cannot ascend to yon. You interrogate the silence, you endeavor to obtain light from darkness; you are trying to resuscitate an unknown corpse, which you would do better to carry immediately to the dissecting-table!”
I knew nothing further. The heart ceased to beat audibly, the burning wick of the candle was extinguished amid a flood of tallow. I remained leaning upon Laurence’s bosom, fancying myself in the depths of some great black cavern, damp and deserted.
I still heard the rattle in Marie’s throat.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PRACTICAL ADVICE.
THIS morning, on awaking, I had in me a glimmer of dolorous hope.
The window had remained open, and I was as cold as ice.
I pressed my hands against my forehead; I said to myself that all this filth could not exist, that I dreamed at will of infamy. I had come out of a horrible nightmare; still shaken by the vision, I smiled as I thought it was only an illusion and that I was about to resume my calm life in the sunshine. I refused to entertain my recollections, I revolted, I denied. I had the indignation of honor.
No, it was impossible that I should suffer