Claude's Confession and Other Early Novels of Émile Zola. Эмиль Золя

Marie reached fourteen, an old woman, who had no right whatever to her, sold her. She allowed herself to be bought; she almost offered herself for sale, as she had offered her bouquets of violets. She still had rosy cheeks, and her laughter rang out gayly. She now had silk dresses and jewels; she accepted the silk and the gold as she would have accepted playthings, tearing, wasting everything. But Marie lived thus, because she did not know that one could live in any other way; she could not appreciate the value of luxury, and would have accepted with indifference either a hovel or a hôtel. It pleased her to live in idleness, to look at the walls; suffering, which had already bent her, made her love repose, a sort of vague reverie, on coming out of which she seemed uneasy and agitated. When one interrogated her, asking her what she had seen, she responded in a bewildered tone: “I do not know!”

      She lived thus for nearly a year, running about among the furnished lodging houses, sometimes living in one, sometimes in another, without losing anything of her serenity. As I showed some surprise and could not vanquish all the disgust with which such an existence tilled me, she was greatly amazed and did not in the least understand my feelings.

      One evening, poverty returned to her, and Marie was on her way back to the garret at the Fontainebleau gate, when she met Jacques. She told me of this meeting in a voice which I shall never forget, with a stony look in her eyes and noisy laughter upon her lips. It was she who spoke to Jacques, asking him for his arm because it was dark and the pavement was slippery. She had no other thought than to obtain his aid for the moment. Jacques questioned her, drew her story from her and took pity on her. He offered her a shelter more suitable for her than that to which she was going, and took her to the house in which he lived. She made no objection, maintaining her usual calmness. She would not, perhaps, have asked any one for a bed, for she had thought only of the straw in the garret at the Fontainebleau gate, but she accepted the feathers and white sheets, which had fallen from the sky, without either joy or repugnance. From that time, she had lived as much as possible on the sofa.

      I can easily imagine that Jacques thought he had made a good acquisition, in offering his protection to Marie. She was in every way suited to become his companion. She was of a weak and calm nature, and would not trouble him in his indifference; she was a careless girl of whom he could easily disembarrass himself, a woman charming in her pallor, who had all the grace of youth without having either its caprices or its inconsistency. Besides, Marie, though sometimes suffering, has her days of life and gayety; she is not yet nailed to a mattress, and, when she laughs in the sunshine, among her flaxen curls, she glows with enough beauty to make Jacques himself dream.

      It pleased me, brothers, to talk to you of Jacques and Marie.

      I remained two or three hours with them, forgetting my sufferings, and I wished to forget them still longer in describing to you my visit. It will give you a glimpse of a world of which you are ignorant. That world is touching; the study of it is biting, full of vertigo. I would penetrate into its hearts and souls; I am attracted by these women and men who live around me. Perhaps, when I analyze them, I shall be discouraged at the result, but I love to analyze, nevertheless. These people live a life so strange, that I believe myself always to be upon the point of discovering in them new truths.

      CHAPTER XV.

      Table of Contents

      BITING POVERTY.

      WE eat from day to day, selling old books or a few old clothes to get money. My poverty is such that I no longer have any comprehension of it, and that I go to sleep at night almost satisfied when I have twenty sous remaining with which to purchase the two meals of the morrow.

      I have been to many offices to solicit employment. I have always been received with roughness; I comprehend that I was guilty of the sin of being poorly clad. I wrote a bad hand, they said; I was good for nothing. I believed their words and retired, ashamed of having had, for an instant, the thought of robbing these honest people by putting my intelligence and will at their service.

      I am good for nothing — such is the truth that I have learned by my attempts. I am good for nothing, except to suffer, to sob, to weep over my youth and my heart. Hence, behold me alone in the world, repulsed and miserable, not daring to beg, and feeling myself more famished than the poor wretch who holds out his hand for alms. I came to Paris, plunged in a dream of glory and fortune; I have awakened in the midst of mud and distress.

      Happily, Heaven is kind and good. There is in want a sort of heavy intoxication, a pleasurable somnolence, which puts to sleep the conscience, the flesh and the mind. I do not clearly feel my degree of indigence and infamy; I suffer little from my destitution; I doze in my hunger and grovel in my idleness.

      This is my life:

      In the morning, I rise late. The mornings are foggy, cold and wan; the light enters, gray and sad, through the curtainless window; it lies about in a melancholy way upon the floor and walls. I experience a sensation of comfort in feeling the agreeable warmth of the garments I heap upon the bed. Laurence sleeps a sleep of lead, her face thrown back and expressionless. As for me, with open eyes, the covers drawn to my chin, I stare at the dingy ceiling which is crossed by a long chink. I fall into an ecstasy before this chink; I study it, I follow delightedly with my glance its broken lines; I contemplate it for hours at a time, without thinking of anything.

      This is the best period of the day. I am warm and half asleep. My flesh is satisfied, my mind strays gently through that beautiful land of partial slumber in which life has all the pleasures of death. Then, sometimes, when I am completely awakened, I abandon myself to the sway of some dream. Brothers, what a child my poor heart must be that I can still lie to it! Ah! yes, I dream constantly, I yet have that strange power of escaping from reality, of creating from its wrecks a better world and better beings.

      There, between two dirty sheets, in the immediate vicinity of a woman hideous and wretched in her degradation, in the midst of a gloomy chamber, I often see a palace, all marble and silver, and a spotless, beautiful sweetheart, who stretches out her arms to me and summons me to quit my miserable retreat and its shameful surroundings.

      Eleven o’clock strikes and I leap from bed. The damp cold of the floor, which suddenly chills the soles of my feet, draws me from my dream. I shiver and dress myself. Then I walk about the room, going from the window to the door, glancing at the wall which bounds my horizon, and returning to stare at Laurence without seeing her. I smoke, yawn and try to read. I am cold and weary.

      Laurence awakes. Then begins the chapter of suffering. We must eat. We talk the matter over. We search the chamber for some object to sell. Often we give up the idea of breakfasting, when the problem is too difficult to solve and all is said. When we have happened to find some old rag, some piece of paper, no matter what, Laurence dresses herself and goes to offer the deplorable merchandise to a secondhand dealer, who gives her eight or ten sous. She brings back bread and a little pork which we eat as we stand, without talking to each other.

      The days are long for the wretched. When it is too cold and we have no fire, I go to bed again. When the weather is milder I strive to toil, giving myself a fever in trying to carry on work which does not desire me any longer.

      Laurence throws herself into a chair or walks about with slow steps. She drags along her blue silk dress, which seems to weep as it rustles past the furniture. This rag is all yellow with grease, all torn, ripped at the seams and worn at the folds. Laurence lets it get soiled and tattered, without either cleaning or mending it. She puts it on in the morning, having nothing else to wear, and walks in it the whole day about this miserable chamber, with disheveled locks, the low-necked ball dress displaying her back and throat. And this dress, this soft silk of a pale blue color, which still shines in spots, is an infamous, twisted, faded and lamentable rag. I experience I know not what keen anguish on seeing these shreds of rich tissue, this luxury dragged about in the midst of want, this woman’s bare shoulders reddened by the cold. I shall always remember Laurence walking about, thus clad, in the den sacred to my twentieth year.

      In the evening, the question of bread returns, terrible and pressing. We eat or we do not eat. Then, we retire, weary