“Listen,” she said, suddenly: “I am without bread and without a shelter. You are young; you cannot conceive the extent of our perpetual distress, even amid luxury and gayety. The street is our sole domicile; elsewhere we are not at home. We are shown the door and we depart. Do you wish me to depart? You have the right to drive me away, and I the resource of going to sleep under some bridge.”
“I do not wish to drive you away. I tell you only that you have ill-chosen your refuge. You can never accustom yourself to my sadness and want.”
“Chosen! Ah! you think that we are permitted to choose! You may not believe it, but I came here because I knew not where else to go. I climbed the stairs furtively to pass the night upon a step. I leaned against your door, and then it was that I thought of you. You have only hard bread; I have not eaten anything since yesterday, and my smile is so faint that it will not bring me a meal tomorrow. You see that I can remain. I had just as well die here as in the street — besides, it is less cold.”
“No; look further; you will find some one richer and gayer than I. Later you will thank me for not having received you.”
Laurence arose. Her countenance had assumed an indescribable expression of bitterness and irony. Her look was not supplicating: it was insolent and cynical. She crossed her arms and stared me in the face.
“Come,” said she, “be frank: you do not want me. I am too ugly, too miserable. I displease you, and you wish to get rid of me. You have no money, and yet you want a pretty sweetheart. I was a fool not to think of that. I ought to have said to myself that I was not worth even the attention of poverty and that I must descend a round of the ladder. I am thirsty, but I can drink from the gutters; I am hungry, but theft, perhaps, will afford me nourishment. I thank you for your advice.”
She gathered her dress about her and walked towards the door.
“Do you know,” hissed she, “that we wretches are better than you honest folks?”
And she talked for a long while in a sharp voice. I cannot reproduce the brutal force of her language. She said that she was the slave of our caprices, that she laughed when we told her to laugh, and that we turned our backs upon her later when we met her. Who forced us to seek her, who pushed us into her company in the darkness, that we should show so much contempt for her in broad day? I had once paid her a visit — why did I not want to see her now? Had I forgotten that she was a woman and as such was entitled even to my protection? The weak should always be protected and sheltered by the strong. Now that she was famished, I took a cruel delight in telling her that I had nothing for her to eat. Now that she was houseless, I gloried in telling her that I refused to give her a refuge. Because she was miserable I deemed it incumbent upon me to make her more miserable still, for the truth was that I could do so with impunity. I was afraid of her. She recalled the past too vividly. I wished to deny her very existence. I was, indeed, a man to be admired, a man with a noble, generous heart.
She was silent for an instant. Then she resumed, with more energy:
“You came to me and I received you as my husband. Now you deny that I have any rights. You lie. I have all the rights of a wife. You gave them to me, and you cannot undo what is done. You are mine and I am yours. You repudiate me and you are a coward!”
Laurence had opened the door. She hurled insults at me as she stood upon the threshold, pale with anger. I leaped from the bed and caught her by the arm.
“You can remain,” I said. “You are like ice. Lie down, cover yourself up, and get warm.”
Will you believe, brothers, that I was weeping! It was not pity. The tears flowed of themselves down my cheeks, though I felt only an immense and vague sadness.
The girl’s words had made a deep impression on me. Her argument, the force of which, doubtless, escaped her, seemed to me just and true. I realized so perfectly that she had her rights, that I could not have driven her away without thinking myself the incarnation of injustice. She was a woman still, and I could not treat her like a lifeless object which contempt and abandonment cannot affect. Setting all else aside, humanity demanded that I should help her. The pure and the guilty are both liable to come to us, some winter night, to tell us that they are cold, that they are hungry, that they have need of us. Alas! we often receive the one and thrust the other into the gloomy and inhospitable street!
This is because we have the cowardice of our vices. It is because we would be terrified to have beside us a living remembrance and remorse. It pleases us to live honored, and when we blush at the call of some wretched creature, we deny her to explain our blushes by her impudence. And we do this without deeming ourselves culpable, without asking ourselves what justice this creature demands. Custom has made us consider her a disgrace, and we are astonished that this disgrace speaks and calls itself a woman.
My friends, I trembled before the truth. I understood and I wept. The question seemed to me simple, clear and self-evident. Laurence’s words had frightened without disgusting me. I had not dreamed of her coming; but she came and I received her. I cannot, brothers, explain to you what were my feelings. My mind of twenty years had accepted in their absolute sense those words which admitted of no hesitation: “You are mine and I am yours!”
The next morning, when I awoke and found Laurence in my room, I felt my heart ready to burst with anguish. The scene of the past night was effaced. I no longer heard the true and rude words which had made me receive the girl. The brutal fact alone remained.
I looked at her as she slept. I saw her for the first time by daylight, without her face having the strange beauty of suffering or despair. When she thus appeared to me, ugly and prematurely old, plunged into a heavy, brutish slumber, I trembled before that faded and common countenance which I did not recognize. I could not comprehend how it was that I had awakened in such company. I seemed as if I had come out of a dream, and the reality proved so horrible that I had forgotten what had made me accept it.
But what difference did it make whether it was pity, justice or mercy. The girl was there. Ah! brothers, can I shed enough tears, and will you have sufficient courage to dry them!
CHAPTER VIII.
A MISSION FROM ON HIGH.
YES, I think as you do; I wish still to hope, I wish to make this fatal union a source of noble aspirations.
Formerly, when our thoughts drifted, towards such unfortunate creatures as Laurence, we felt only mercy and pity for them. We discerned the holy task of redemption. We asked God to send us a dead soul, that we might, by kindly and gentle ways, restore it to youth and purity.
The faith of our sixteenth year, we thought, ought to make sinners believe and bow the head.
Then, we were Didier, pardoning Marion and acknowledging her as a wife at the foot of the scaffold. We lifted the sinner to the height of our tenderness.
Well, now I can be Didier. Marion, as sinful as the day he pardoned her, is here. She needs the white robe of purity, a hand to guide her wavering steps aright, to steady her in the narrow and difficult path which leads to the happiness of innocence. Her pale face requires a pure atmosphere to restore to it the glow of youthful health. What we wished for in our sainted hallucinations I have found without searching for it.
Since Laurence has come to me, I wish to erase all the evil instincts of her heart, to give it the healthful tone and freshness of mine. I will be a priest for this poor wretch: I will lift her up, console and pardon her.
Who knows, brothers, but that this is a supreme trial, an appointed task, that God has sent me! Perhaps, it is His wish, in charging me with a soul, to develop all the latent strength of mine. Perhaps, He has reserved for me the office of the strong, and does not fear to entrust me with the reformation of a human being. I will be worthy of His choice.
CHAPTER IX.