Well! I have done many strange things in my day, and what I choose to do now is perhaps the strangest of all — to write the history of my life and thought; to strip my soul naked, as it were, to the wind of the world’s contempt. World’s contempt! A bagatelle! the world can have no more contempt for me, than I have contempt for the world!
Dear people of Paris, you want Realism, do you not? Realism in art, realism in literature, realism in everything? You Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, dancing on the edge of your own sepulchre — for the time is coming fast when France will no more be accounted a nation — you want to look at the loathsome worms and unsightly poisonous growths that attend your own decomposition and decay? You want life denuded of all poetical adornment that you may see it as it truly is? Well, so you shall, as far as I am concerned! I will hide nothing from you! I will tear out the very fibres of my being and lay them on your modern dissecting-table; nay, I will even assist you in the probing-work of the mental scalpel. Like you I hate all mysticism and sublime ideal things; we need them as little or as much as we need God.
Perhaps it is not often that you chance upon a human subject who is entirely callous? A creature in whose nerves you can thrust your steel hooks of inquisitorial research without his uttering so much as a smothered sob of pain? a being hard as flint, impressionless as adamant, and totally impervious to past, present, or future misery? Yet I am such an one! perchance you may find me a strange, even an interesting study!
Consider me well! — my heart has turned to stone, my brain to fire; I am conscious of no emotion whatever, save an all devouring dreadful curiosity — curiosity to know dark things forbidden to all but madmen, — things that society, afraid of its own wickedness, hastily covers up and hides from the light of day, feebly pretending they have no existence; things that make weak souls shudder and cry and wrestle with their mythical God in useless prayer, — these are the things I love; the things I drag out from the obscure corners and murky recesses of life, and examine and gloat upon, till I have learnt from them all they can teach me. But I never know enough; search as I may into the minutest details of our complex being, there is always something that escapes me, some link that I lose, some clue that I fancy might explain much that seems incomprehensible. I suppose others have missed this little unnameable something also, and that may be the reason why they have found it necessary to invent a God. But enough! I am here to confess myself, not as a conscience-stricken penitent confesses to a priest, but as a man may confess himself to his fellowmen. Let human nature judge me! I am too proud to make appeal to an unproven Diving. Already I have passed judgment on myself; — what can you say for, or against me, O world, that will alter or strengthen my own self-wrought condemnation and doom? I have lived fast, what then? Is it not the way to die quickly?
II.
IT is a familiar business to me, this taking up of the pen and writing down of thought. Long ago, when I was quite a young man, I used to scribble feuilletons and stray articles for the Paris papers and gain a few extra francs thereby. Once, too, I wrote a novel — very high-flown in style and full of romantic sentiment. It was about a girl all innocence and a man all nobleness, who were interrupted in the progress of their amours by the usual sort of villain so useful to the authors of melodrama. I saw the book for sale at a stall near the Palais Royale the other day, and should probably have bought it for mere idle curiosity’s sake, but that it cost two francs and I could not spare the money. I stood and looked at it instead, thinking how droll it was that I should ever have written it! And, little by little, I began to remember what I had been like at that time — the portrait of myself emerged out of the nebulous grey mist that always more or less obscures my vision, and I saw my face as it had appeared in youth — clear-complexioned, dark-eyed, and smiling — such a face as may be seen more frequently in Provence or Southern Italy than in the streets of Paris; a face that many were complaisant enough to call handsome, and that assuredly by none would have been deemed positively ill-looking. There was a promising intelligence I believe in my physiognomy, a certain deceptive earnestness and animation that led my over-sanguine relatives and friends to expect wonders of me — a few enthusiasts expressing their firm (and foolish) conviction that I should be a great man some day. Great! I? I laugh to think of it. I can see my own features as I write, in a cracked and blurred mirror opposite; I note the dim and sunken eyes, the discoloured skin, the dishevelled hair — a villainous reflection truly! I might be sixty from my looks — yet I am barely forty. Hard living? Well no — not what the practised boulevardier would understand by that term. I do not frequent places of amusement, I am not the boon-companion of ballet-dancers and café-chanteuses; I am too poor for that sort of revelry, inasmuch as I can seldom afford to dine. Yet I might have been rich, I might have been respectable, I might even have been famous — imagine it! for I know I once had a few glimmerings of the swift lightning called genius in me, and that my thoughts were not precisely like those of everyday men and women. But chance was against me, chance or fate; both terms are synonymous. Let none talk to me of opposing one’s self to fate; that is simply impossible. Fight as we may we cannot alter an evil destiny, or reverse a lucky one.
Resist temptation! cry the preachers. Very good! but suppose you cannot resist? Suppose you see no object whatever in making resistance? For example, point out to me if you can, what use it would be to any one living that I should reform my ways? Not a soul would care! I should starve on just as I starve now, only without any sort of comfort; I should seek help, work, sympathy, and find none; and I should perish in the end just as surely and as friendlessly as I shall perish now. We know how the honest poor are treated in this best of worlds — pushed to the wall and trampled upon to make room for the rich to ride by. We also know what the much-prated-of rewards of virtue are; the grudging thanks and reluctant praise of a few obscure individuals who make haste to forget you as soon as you are dead; think you that such reward is worth the trouble of winning? In the present advanced condition of things it is really all one whether we are virtuous or vicious, for who cares very much about morality in this age? Morality has always seemed to me such an ambiguous term. I asked my father to define it once, and he answered me thus —
“Morality is a full and sensible recognition of the responsibilities of one’s being, and a steadfast obedience to the laws of God and one’s country.”
Exactly! but how does this definition work, when by the merest chance you discover that you have no actual responsibilities, and that it does not matter in the least what becomes of you? Again, that the laws of God and country are drawn up, after much violent dispute and petty wrangling, by a few human individuals nearly, if not quite, as capricious and unreasonable as yourself? What of morality, then? Does it not resolve itself into a myth, like the Creed the churches live by?
A truce, I say, to such fair-seeming hypocritical shows of good, in a world which is evil to its very core! Let us know ourselves truly for what we are, let us not deceive our minds with phantasms of what we cannot be. We are mere animals — we shall never be angels — neither here nor hereafter. As for me, I have done with romances; love, friendship, ambition, fame; in past days it is true I set some store by these airy cheats — these vaporous visions; but now — now they count to me as naught; I possess a dearer joy, more real, more lasting than they all!
Would you learn what thing it is that holds me, wretched as I seem, to life? what link binds my frail body and frailer soul together? and why, with no friends and no fortune, I still contrive to beat back death as long as possible? Would you know the single craving of my blood — the craving that burns in me more fiercely than hunger in a starving beast of prey — the one desire, to gratify which, I would desperately dare and defy all men? Listen, then! A nectar, bitter-sweet — like the last kiss on the lips of a discarded mistress — is the secret charm of my existence; green as the moon’s light on a forest pool it glimmers in my glass; eagerly I quaff it, and, as I drink, I dream.
Not of foolish things. No! Not of dull saints and smooth landscapes in heaven and wearisome prudish maids; but of glittering bacchantes, nude nymphs in a dance of hell, flashing torrents and dazzling mountain-peaks, of storm and terror, of lightning and rain, of horses galloping, of flags flying, of armies marching, of haste and uproar and confusion and death! Aye! even at times I have heard the trumpets blare on the field of battle, and the shout “La revanche! la revanche!” echoing wildly in my ears, and I have waded deep in the blood of our enemies, and wrested back from their grasp Alsace-Lorraine!...
Ah, fool that I am! What! raving again? I torture myself with absurd delusions; did I not but lately say I loved France no longer?... France! Do I not love thee? Not now, — oh, not now let my words be accepted concerning thee; not now, but later on, when this heavy weight is lifted from my heart; when this hot pulsation is stilled in my brain; when the bonds of living are cut asunder and I wander released, a shadow among shades; then, it may be, I shall find tears to shed, tears of passionate tenderness and wild remorse above thy grave, poor France, thou beaten and discrowned fair empress of nations; thou whom I, and others such as I am, might yet help to rescue and reinvest with glory if — if only we could be roused — roused to swift action in time, before it is too late!...
There! the agony is over, and I am calm once more.
I do not often yield to my own fancies; I know their power, how they drag at me, and strive to seize and possess me with regrets for the past; but they shall not succeed. No wise man stops to consider his bygone possibilities. The land of Might-Have-Been is, after all, nothing but a blurred prospect, a sort of dim and distant landscape, where the dull clouds rain perpetual tears!
Of course the beginning of my history is — love. It is the beginning of every man and every woman’s history, if they are only frank enough to admit it. Before that period, life is a mere series of smooth and small events, monotonously agreeable or disagreeable, according to our surroundings; a time in which we learn a few useful things and a great many useless ones, and are for the most part in a half-awakened pleasing state of uncertainty and wonder about the world in general. Love lights upon us suddenly like a flame, and lo! we are transformed, we are for the first time alive, and conscious of our beating pulses, our warm and hurrying blood; we feel, we know; we gain a wisdom wider and sweeter than any to be found in books, and we climb step by step up the height of ecstasy, till we stand in so lofty an altitude that we seem to ourselves to dominate both earth and heaven! It is only a fool’s paradise we stumble into, after all; but, then, everything is more or less foolish in this world; if we wish to avoid folly we must seek a different planet.
Let me think; where did I see her first? At her mother’s house, it must have been. Yes! the picture floats back to me across a hazy sea of memories, and suspends itself, mirage-like, before my half-bewildered gaze. She had just returned to Paris from her school at Lausanne in Switzerland. The Swiss wild-roses had left their delicate hues on her cheeks, the Alpine blue gentians had lost their little hearts in her eyes. She was dressed that night in quaint empire fashion — a simple garb of purest white silk, with a broad sash drawn closely under the bosom — her rich curls of dark brown hair were caught up in high masses and tied with a golden ribbon. A small party was being held in honour of her home-coming. Her father, the Comte de Charmilles, a stern old royalist whose allegiance to the Orleans family was only equalled by his fanatical devotion to the Church, led her through the rooms leaning gracefully on his arm, and formally introduced her, in his stately old-fashioned way, to all the guests assembled. I was among the last of these, yet not the least, for my father and the Comte had been friends from boyhood, and there was an especially marked kindness in his voice and manner, when, pausing at my side, he thus addressed me —
“Monsieur Beauvais, permit me to present to you my daughter Pauline. Pauline, my child, this is M. Gaston Beauvais, the son of our excellent friend M. Charles Beauvais, the banker, who has the beautiful house at Neuilly, and who used to give thee so many marrons glacés when thou wert a small, dear, greedy baby; dost thou remember?”
A charming smile parted her lovely lips, and she returned my profound bow with the prettiest sweeping curtsey imaginable.
“Helas!” she said playfully, shrugging her shoulders. “I must confess that the days of the marrons glacés are not yet past! I am a greedy baby still, am I not, my good papa? Can you believe it, Monsieur Beauvais, those marrons glacés were the first luxuries I asked for when I came home! they are so good! everything is so good in Paris! My dear, beautiful Paris! I am so glad to be back again! You cannot imagine how dull it is at Lausanne! A pretty place? Oh yes! but so very dull! There are no good bon-bons, no délices of any kind, and the people are so stupid they do not even know how to make an éclair properly! Ah, how I used to long for éclairs! I saw some one afternoon in a little shop-window, and went in to try what they were like; mon Dieu! they were so very bad, they tasted of cheese! Yes, truly! so many things in Switzerland taste of cheese, I think! Par exemple, have you ever been to Vevey? No? ah! when you do go there, you will taste cheese in the very air!”
She laughed, and heaved a comical little sigh over the one serious inconvenience and unforgettable disadvantage of her past school-life, namely, the lack of delectable éclairs and marrons glacés, while I, who had been absorbed in a fascinated study of her eyes, her hair, her pretty figure, her small hand that every now and then waved a white fan to and for with a lazy grace that reminded me of the flashing of a sea-bird’s pinion, thought to myself what a mere child she was for all the dignity of her eighteen years; a child as innocent and fresh as a flower just bursting into bloom, with no knowledge of the world into which she was entering, and with certainly no idea of the power of her own beauty to rouse the passions of man. I listened to her soft and trifling chatter with far deeper interest than I should probably have felt in the conversation of the most astute diplomat or learned philosopher, and as soon as I saw my opportunity I made haste to offer her my arm, first, however, as in duty bound, glancing expressively at her father for permission to do so — permission which he instantly and smilingly accorded. Old fool! why did he throw us together? why did he not place obstacles in the way of our intercourse? Because, royalist and devotee as he was, he understood the practical side of life as well, if not better than any shrewd republican going: — he knew that my father was rich, and that I was his only heir, and he laid his plans accordingly. He was like all French fathers; yet why should I specify French fathers so particularly? English fathers are the same; all fathers of all nations nowadays look to the practical-utility advantages of marriage for their children — and quite right too! One cannot live on air-bubbles of sentiment.
Pauline de Charmilles was not a shy girl, but by this I do not mean it to be in the least imagined that she was bold. On the contrary, she had merely that quick brightness and esprit which is the happy heritage of so many Frenchwomen, none of whom think it necessary to practise or assume the chilly touch-me-not diffidense and unbecoming constraint which makes the young English “mees” such a tame and tiresome companion to men of sense and humour. She was soon perfectly at her ease with me, and became prettily garrulous and confidential, telling me stories of her life at Lausanne, describing the loveliness of the scenery on Lake Leman, and drawing word portraits of her teachers and schoolmates, with a facile directness and point that brought them at once before the mind’s eye as though they were actually present. We sat together for some time on a window-seat from which we could command a charming little glimpse of the Bois de Boulogue, for M. de Charmilles would not live far away from this, his favorite promenade in all weathers, and talked of many things, particularly of life in Paris, and the gaieties that were foretold for the approaching winter season. Réunions, balls, receptions, operas, theatres, all such festivities as these, this ingenuous worshipper of the “marron glacé” looked forward to with singular vivacity, and it was only after she had babbled sweetly about fa
shion and society for several minutes that she suddenly turned upon me with a marvellously brilliant penetrating glance of her dark blue eyes, a glance such as I afterwards found out was common to her, but which then startled me as much as an unexpected flash of lightning might have done, and said —
“And you? What are you going to do? How do you amuse yourself?”
“Mademoiselle, I work!”
“Ah yes! You are in your father’s business.”
“I am his partner.”
“You have difficult things to think about? You labour all the day?”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 204
