“Let go of me, Claude, you hurt me! What a strange idea to wake people by choking them!”
I knelt upon the floor, at the side of the bed, and stretched out my hands towards my tormentor.
“Laurence,” I murmured, in a gentle voice, “speak to me, love me. Why are you so cruel? What have I done that your lips and your heart maintain silence. Be frank; make me suffer all my sufferings in an hour, or cast yourself into my arms and let us live happily. Tell me all, give full scope to your thoughts and your affections. If you do not love me, strike a deadly blow, crush me and depart. If you love me, remain, remain, but remain upon my heart, close, close, and speak to me, speak to me constantly, for I am filled with fear when I see you mute and sad for entire days, staring at me with your dead eyes. I feel madness coming to me in this desert amid which you are dragging me; I grow dizzy as I lean over you, so full of deep obscurity, of silent horror. No, I cannot live another day in ignorance of your love or your indifference; I wish you to explain yourself at once, I wish you, at last, to make yourself known. My mind is weary of searching; it is filled with sad solutions which it has formed of the problem of your being. If you do not desire my heart and my head to burst, name yourself, tell me what you are, assure me that you are not dead, that you still have blood sufficient to love or to hate me. I am reckless. Listen: we will set out tomorrow for Provence. Do you remember the tall trees of Fontenay? In Provence, beneath the glowing sun, the trees are prouder, stronger. We will live a life of love on that ardent soil, which will restore you your youth and give you a dark, passionate beauty. You shall see. I know, in a ravine sown with fine grass, a small, retired house, all green on one side with ivy and honeysuckles; there is a hedge, as tall as a child, which hides the ten leagues of the valley, and one sees only the blue curtains of the sky and the green carpet of the path. It is in this ravine, this nest, that we will love each other; it shall be our universe, and we will forget there the life we have led in the gloomy depths of this miserable chamber. The past shall be obliterated; the present alone, with its broad sunlight, its fruitful nature, its strong and gentle loves, shall exist for our hearts. Oh! Laurence, in pity speak to me, love me, tell me that you wish to follow me!”
She remained sitting up in bed, tranquilly wiping her eyes heavy with sleep, straightening out her hair, stretching her limbs. She yawned. My words seemed to produce upon her only the effect of disagreeable music. I had uttered the last sentences with so many tears, with such desperation, that she ceased to yawn and stared at me with an air at once vexed and friendly. She heaped the covers upon her bare feet; then, she crossed her hands and said:
“My poor Claude, surely you are ill. You behave like a child, you demand things of me which are anything but droll. I wish you only knew how much you fatigue me with your continual embraces, with your strange questions! You nearly strangled me the other day, now you weep, you kneel before me, as if I were the Holy Virgin! I comprehend nothing of all this. I never knew a man in the slightest degree resembling you. You are always stifling me, asking me if I love you. Of course, I love you, but you would do better, instead of making yourself sick here, to look for some work which would enable us to eat a little oftener. Such, at least, is my opinion.”
She stretched herself out lazily, and turned her back to me, in order not to have in her eyes the light from the window which prevented her from going to sleep again. I remained on my knees, my forehead against the mattress, broken by the new burst of excitement which had just carried me away; it seemed to me that I had lifted myself too high and that, a hard and cold hand having pushed me, I had fallen headlong from the immensity of the heavens. Then, I remembered Jacques; but the remembrance appeared to me distant and vague: I would have sworn that years had elapsed since I had heard the terrible words of the practical man. My heart silently admitted to itself that this such was, perhaps, right in his selfishness: I felt a sudden temptation to take Laurence in my arms and carry her to the nearest street corner, there to throw down and leave her.
I could not remain thus between Jacques and Laurence, between my love and my sufferings. I needed pacification, resolution; I needed to complain and to question, to hear a voice answer me and give me certainty.
I ascended to Pâquerette’s room. I had never before entered the apartment of this woman. The chamber is on the eighth floor, immediately under the roof; it is a small mansarde and receives the light through a slanting window, the sash of which is lifted by means of an iron button. The wall paper hangs in blackish strips; the pieces of furniture — a bureau, a table and a bed of spun-yarn — lean one against another, in order not to fall. In a corner, there is a violet wood étagère, with threads of gold along the veneering, loaded with glassware and porcelain. The den is dirty, encumbered with damaged kitchen utensils full of greasy water; it exhales a strong odor of scraps of food and musk, mingled with a thousand other nameless and disgusting smells.
Pâquerette was gravely taking her ease in a red armchair, the covering of which, worn thin in spots, showed the wool with which the back and arms were stuffed. She was reading a little yellow book, full of stains, which she closed and placed upon the bureau when I made my appearance.
I took her hands, I wept. I seated myself on a stool, at her feet. In my despair, I was tempted to call her mother. I told her how I had passed the morning; I repeated to her the words of Jacques, those of Laurence; I emptied my heart, avowed my love and my jealousy, asked for advice. With clasped hands, sobbing, supplicating, I addressed myself to Pâquerette as to a good soul who knew life, who could save me from the mud into which I had blindly strayed.
She smiled as she listened to me, tapping me upon the cheeks with her withered and yellow fingers.
“Come, come,” said she, when emotion had choked my voice in my throat, “come, you have shed enough tears! I knew that one day or another you would climb up here to ask aid and succor of me. I expected you. You took all this much too seriously; you should have reached sobs gradually. Do you wish me to speak frankly to you?”
“Yes, yes,” I cried; “frankly, brutally.”
“Well, you fill Laurence with fear! In the past, I would have shown you the door at the second kiss: you embrace too strongly, my son. Laurence remains with you, because she cannot go elsewhere. If you wish to get rid of her, give her a new dress!” Pâquerette stopped with satisfaction at this phrase, she coughed, then pushed from her forehead a curl of gray hair which had just slipped over it.
“You ask advice from me, my son,” added she. “I will give you through friendship the advice which Jacques gave you through interest. He will willingly deliver you from Laurence.”
She laughed wickedly, and my pain became more intense.
“Listen,” said I, with violence: “I came here to be calmed. Do not overturn my reason. Jacques can’t love Laurence after the words he spoke to me this morning, it is impossible.”
“Ah! my son,” answered the old woman, “you are very innocent, very young. I know not what you mean by love, and I know not if Jacques loves Laurence. What I do know is that they embrace each other in out-of-the-way corners. In the past, how many kisses I gave without knowing why, how many kisses were given to me which came from I know not where! You are a strange fellow, who do nothing like the rest. You should not have thought of having a sweetheart. If you are wise, this is what you will do: you will accept things as they are, and quietly Laurence will depart. She is no longer young, she may become a charge to you. Think of that. If you retain her, you will repent of it later. You had better let her go, since she herself wishes to take her departure.”
I listened with stupor.
“But I love Laurence!” I cried.
“You love Laurence, my son; well, you will love her no longer! That is the whole of it. People unite and people quit each other. Such is life. But, great
