Escapes the fingernail of envy.
And when evening comes, we shall rest,
We shall find the glory at the end of the quarry,18
And love will be there, seductive chimera!
Pouring its balm upon our distress.
Look at those immobile masses around us
Ignorant of the sweet embraces of love,
Or the fine transports of ambition,
Incomplete and crippled beings!
Do they not have more right than us to denounce
Heaven,
Those who, thrown naked on this arid road,
Pressing the empty cup to their fiery lips,
Encounter nothing but bile?
And you, you complain, when, full of youth,
You run free and strong, like a brave charger,
Of a few days of mourning that make you forget
The sweet kisses of a mistress.
What more do you ask, then, for your share?
Love, glory, amity will fall due to you in part,
Is that not enough to charm the voyage?
Fortune will only come in time!
Forward, forward! Be brave, Pierre!
Bear your heavy cross along wretched roads,
Without showing to others your hands and keens
Bruised by the edges of stones.
For glory is a bad mother to her poor children!
Bow down before the laureates of the world entire;
But it ought not to see the crown of thorns
That tears their burning foreheads.
Those verses bear the signature of a great artist who honors France; we would have liked to be able to publish it, but we are afraid of offending his modesty and of seeming too indiscreet in revealing the source of a naïve poetry that is utterly and confidentially intimate.
On comparing the two sides, one of abuse and the other of noble and friendly advice, one will see, in this as in all cases, that vile criticism only emerges from below.
This is all that we have been able to collect regarding the material life of Champavert; as for the history of his soul, its entirety is in his writings; we shall see it again, first in the present volume of stories, and then in the Rhapsodies, whose second edition will appear shortly. Finally, for details regarding his disgust for life and his suicide, we shall refer to the story entitled “Champavert,” which concludes this volume.
Monsieur Jean-Louis, his inconsolable friend, has been kind enough to confide all of Champavert’s manuscripts and papers of which he was the owner to us, in order that we could put them in order, and he has authorized us to publish any that seemed to us to be worthwhile; to begin with, we have selected and collected these unpublished stories from among many others. If the world gives them a good reception, we shall publish them all successively, as well as several novels and plays, which we also have in our hands.
Is the premature death of the young writer a real and regrettable loss for France? We cannot answer that ourselves; it is for France to judge. It is for France to assign his rank, for Lyon, his homeland, to redeem and secure the apotheosis of its young and excessively unfortunate poet. We think it only polite, however, to warn readers who seek out and like “lymphatic”19 literature to close this book again and go to another. If, however, they desire to have some notion of Champavert’s state of mind, they have only to read what follows.
On receipt of the letter in which Champaverrt informed him of his extreme determination, Monsieur Jean-Louis left immediately, hoping to arrive in time to deflect him from his fatal plan; he was too late. As soon as he arrived in Paris he went to Champavert’s domicile; he was told that he had gone away on a long voyage. He was unable to obtain any information in the city. That evening, however, while reading the Tribune in the Café Procope he found cruel and positive news. The next day, he collected his friend’s cadaver, which had been exposed in the Morgue for three days, and had it buried in Mont-Louis cemetery; close to the grave of Héloïse and Abelard, you can still see a broken mossy stone on which, by leaning over, one can, with difficulty, read these words: To Champavert. Jean-Louis.
Greatly moved by the suicide of that young heart, and touched—tears having escaped me during the tale that Jean-Louis told over coffee—he approached me and said: “Did you know him?”
“No, Monsieur; if I had known him, we would have died together.”
I acquired his friendship, and that worthy young man, before returning to Lachapelle in Vaudragon, made me a gift of the portfolio found on Champavert.
This is almost all that it contained: a few whimsical notes, scribbled at random in red pencil, almost totally illegible, and a few verses and letters.
To begin with, I deciphered these pensées on donkey-skin.
* * * *
It is always advisable for men not to do anything futile, of course; but one might as well tell them to kill themselves, for, to be honest, what is the good of living? Is there anything more futile than life? A useful thing is something whose objective is known; a useful thing must be advantageous in itself and in its result, to serve some purpose, at least potentially; in sum, it is a good thing. Does life meet even one of these conditions? Its objective is unknown, it is neither advantages in itself nor in its result; it does not serve, and cannot serve, any purpose; in sum, it is harmful. Let someone prove to me the utility of life, the necessity of life, and I shall live....
For myself, I am convinced of the opposite, and I often repeat, with Petrarch:
Che più giorno é la vita mortale
Nubil’e, brev’e, freddo e pien di noia;
Che pò bella parer, ma nulla vale.20
* * * *
The thought that has always pursued me bitterly, and thrown the greatest disgust into my heart, and this: that one only ceases to be an honest man on the day when the crime is discovered; that the vilest scoundrels, whose atrocities remain hidden, are honorable man, greatly enjoying favor and esteem; that men must often be laughing quietly inside when they hear themselves treated as good, just, honest, most serene highnesses!
Oh, that thought is heart-rending!
Thus, I am reluctant to shake the hands of people other than intimate friends; I shiver involuntarily at the idea, which never fails to assail me, that I might perhaps
