Hence how few keep their early love for their brides, how few, in the desert of their youth, refuse the companions into whose society they are driven by the singular behavior of parents! Some, foolish and wicked lads, glory in their shame; they drag their ignoble flirtations before the public eye. Others, when the soul awakes at the first summons of the sweetheart, are filled with overwhelming sorrow on vainly interrogating the horizon and at not knowing where to find the rightful claimant of the heart. They go straight ahead, staring at the balconies, leaning towards each youthful visage: the balconies are deserted, the youthful visages remain veiled. Some night an arm is slipped within their own, a voice makes them start. Already weary and despairing, unable to discover the angel of love, they follow the spectre.
Brothers, I do not wish to make an excuse for my fault, but let me say that it is strange to cloister purity and permit dissipation to walk in the glare of the sun with uplifted head. Let me deplore this distrust of love, which creates a solitude around the lover, and this guarding of virtue by vice, which causes a young man to encounter shame before reaching the door of innocence. He who yields to temptation may well say to his bride: “I am unworthy of you, but why did you not come to my rescue? Why did you not meet me in the flowery fields, before all those by-ways, each nook of which has its priestess? Why were you not the first to greet my eyes, thus sparing yourself in sparing me?”
On returning home this evening, I found upon the stairway the old woman of the other night. She was toilsomely ascending in front of me, aiding herself with the cord and placing both feet on each step. She turned around.
“Well, Monsieur, is your patient better?” she asked. “She no longer shivers, I imagine, and you yourself do not seem to have suffered from the cold. Ah! I well knew that a young man could take better care of a handsome girl than an old woman.”
She laughed, showing her empty mouth. The politeness of this aged wretch who had led a gay life made me blush.
“You need not color so!” she added. “I have seen others as proud as yourself enter without shame and depart singing. Youth loves to laugh, and girls who play the wise one are fools. Ah! if I were only fifteen again!”
I had reached my door. She caught me by the arm as I was about to go in, and continued:
“I had flaxen hair then, and my cheeks were so fresh that my admirers nicknamed me Pâquerette. If you had seen me, you would have been astonished. I lived on the ground floor, in a nest of silk and gold. Now, I lodge under the eaves. I have only to descend to go to the cemetery. Ah! your friend Laurence is happy: she is as yet but in the fourth story.”
So the girl was called Laurence. I had been ignorant even of her name.
CHAPTER VI.
DESPAIR.
I RESUMED my work, but with repugnance, and was weary from the commencement. Now that I had lifted a corner of the veil, I had neither the courage to let it fall again nor the boldness to draw it away altogether. When I seated myself at my table, I leaned sadly on my elbows, letting the pen slip from my fingers and muttering: “What is the good!” My intelligence seemed worn out; I dare not re-read the few phrases I had written; I no longer felt that joy of the poet, whom a happy rhyme fills with unreasoning and childish laughter. Scold me, brothers, for limping verses are shorn of their power to keep me awake.
My slim resources are diminishing. I can calculate the hour when everything will be gone. I eat my bread, being almost in haste to finish it that I may no longer see it melt away at each meal. I am surrendering to want like a coward; the struggle for food terrifies me.
Ah! how they lie who assert that poverty is the mother of talent! Let them count those whom despair has made illustrious and those whom it has slowly debased. When tears are caused by a heart wound, the wrinkles they dig are beautiful and noble; but when hunger makes them flow, when every night a baseness or a brutish task drys them, they furrow the face frightfully, without imparting to it the sad serenity of age.
No; since I am so poor that I may, perhaps, die tomorrow, I cannot work. When the closet was full I had great courage. I felt the strength to gain my bread. Now it is nearly empty and I am given over to lassitude. It would be easier for me to endure hunger than to make the smallest effort.
I well know that I am cowardly and false to my vows. I know that I have not the right already to take refuge in defeat. I am only twenty: I cannot be weary of a world of which I am ignorant. Yesterday, I dreamed of it as sweet and good. Is it a new dream which makes me form a bad opinion of it to-day?
Oh! brothers, my first step has been unfortunate: I am afraid to advance. I will exhaust my suffering, shed all my tears, and my smiles will return. I will work with a gayer heart tomorrow.
CHAPTER VII.
LAURENCE.
YESTERDAY afternoon, I went to bed at five o’clock, in broad day, forgetting the key in the lock.
About midnight, as I saw in a dream a young blonde stretch out her arms to me, a sound which I had heard in my sleep made me suddenly open my eyes. My lamp was lighted. A woman, standing at the foot of the bed, was looking at me. Her back was towards the light, and I thought, in the confusion of awaking, that God had taken pity on me and transformed one of my visions into reality.
The woman approached. I recognized Laurence — Laurence with bare head, wearing her handsome blue silk dress. Her uncovered shoulders were purple with cold. Laurence had come to me.
“My friend,” said she, “I owe the landlord forty francs. He has just refused me the key of my door and told me to seek shelter elsewhere. It was too late to go out, and I thought of you.”
She sat down to unlace her boots. I did not understand, I did not wish to understand. It seemed to me that this girl had stolen into my garret to destroy me. The lamp, lighted I knew not how, the scantily-clad woman in the middle of the icy chamber, terrified me. I was tempted to shout for help.
“We will live as you like,” continued Laurence. “I am not embarrassing.”
I sat up to awaken myself completely. I began to understand, and what I understood was horrible. I restrained a harsh word which had arisen to my lips: abuse is repugnant to me, and I suffer when I insult any one.
“Madame,” I simply said, “I am poor.”
Laurence burst into a torrent of laughter.
“You call me Madame!” she resumed. “Are you angry? What have I done to you? I know you are poor — you showed me too much respect to be rich. Well, we will be poor.”
“I can give you neither gewgaws nor enticing meals.”
“Do you think that they have often been given to me? People are not so kind to poor girls! We roll in carriages only in novels. For one who finds a dress ten die of hunger.”
“I eat but two very meagre meals a day; together, we could only have one, and that of bread dried that we might consume less of it, with simply water to drink.”
“You wish to frighten me. Have you not a father, in Paris or elsewhere, who sends you books and clothes which you afterwards sell? We will eat your hard bread and go to the ball to drink champagne.”
“No, I am alone in the world; I work for my living. I cannot associate you with my poverty.”
Laurence