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 you are dragging me; I grow dizzy as I lean over you, so full of deep obscurity, of silent horror. No, I cannot live another day in ignorance of your love or your indifference; I wish you to explain yourself at once, I wish you, at last, to make yourself known. My mind is weary of searching; it is filled with sad solutions which it has formed of the problem of your being. If you do not desire my heart and my head to burst, name yourself, tell me what you are, assure me that you are not dead, that you still have blood sufficient to love or to hate me. I am reckless. Listen: we will set out tomorrow for Provence. Do you remember the tall trees of Fontenay? In Provence, beneath the glowing sun, the trees are prouder, stronger. We will live a life of love on that ardent soil, which will restore you your youth and give you a dark, passionate beauty. You shall see. I know, in a ravine sown with fine grass, a small, retired house, all green on one side with ivy and honeysuckles; there is a hedge, as tall as a child, which hides the ten leagues of the valley, and one sees only the blue curtains of the sky and the green carpet of the path. It is in this ravine, this nest, that we will love each other; it shall be our universe, and we will forget there the life we have led in the gloomy depths of this miserable chamber. The past shall be obliterated; the present alone, with its broad sunlight, its fruitful nature, its strong and gentle loves, shall exist for our hearts. Oh! Laurence, in pity speak to me, love me, tell me that you wish to follow me!”
She remained sitting up in bed, tranquilly wiping her eyes heavy with sleep, straightening out her hair, stretching her limbs. She yawned. My words seemed to produce upon her only the effect of disagreeable music. I had uttered the last sentences with so many tears, with such desperation, that she ceased to yawn and stared at me with an air at once vexed and friendly. She heaped the covers upon her bare feet; then, she crossed her hands and said:
“My poor Claude, surely you are ill. You behave like a child, you demand things of me which are anything but droll. I wish you only knew how much you fatigue me with your continual embraces, with your strange questions! You nearly strangled me the other day, now you weep, you kneel before me, as if I were the Holy Virgin! I comprehend nothing of all this. I never knew a man in the slightest degree resembling you. You are always stifling me, asking me if I love you. Of course, I love you, but you would do better, instead of making yourself sick here, to look for some work which would enable us to eat a little oftener. Such, at least, is my opinion.”
She stretched herself out lazily, and turned her back to me, in order not to have in her eyes the light from the window which prevented her from going to sleep again. I remained on my knees, my forehead against the mattress, broken by the new burst of excitement which had just carried me away; it seemed to me that I had lifted myself too high and that, a hard and cold hand having pushed me, I had fallen headlong from the immensity of the heavens. Then, I remembered Jacques; but the remembrance appeared to me distant and vague: I would have sworn that years had elapsed since I had heard the terrible words of the practical man. My heart silently admitted to itself that this such was, perhaps, right in his selfishness: I felt a sudden temptation to take Laurence in my arms and carry her to the nearest street corner, there to throw down and leave her.
I could not remain thus between Jacques and Laurence, between my love and my sufferings. I needed pacification, resolution; I needed to complain and to question, to hear a voice answer me and give me certainty.
I ascended to Pâquerette’s room. I had never before entered the apartment of this woman. The chamber is on the eighth floor,