Octave Mirbeau Archive
Written: 1886.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
“Lirat! Ah, at last it is you! For a week I have been looking for you, have been writing to you, have been calling you, have been waiting for you.... Lirat, my dear Lirat, save me!”
“What? My God! What’s wrong?”
“I want to kill myself.”
“Kill yourself! Well, that’s an old story. Come, there is no danger.”
“I want to kill myself! I want to kill myself!...”
Lirat looked at me, blinked his eyes and paced up and down the study with long strides.
“My poor Mintié!” he said, “if you were a statesman, a stockbroker or.... Well, I don’t know ... say a grocer, an art critic, or a journalist, I would say to you: ‘You are unhappy and you have had enough of life, my boy! Go ahead, kill yourself!’ And with these words I would leave you. But here you have that rare opportunity of being an artist, you possess that divine gift of seeing, understanding, feeling things which others can’t see, can’t understand and can’t feel! There are harmonies in nature which exist only for you and which others will never hear ... you have all the real joys of life, the only joys, the noble, grand and pure ones, the joys which make you forget men and which render you almost Godlike. And because some woman has deceived you, you want to renounce all that? She has deceived you; it is evident that she has deceived you.... Well, what else did you expect her to do? And what concern is it of yours, even if she has?...”
“Please don’t jeer at me. You don’t know anything, Lirat. You don’t suspect anything. I am lost, dishonored!”
“Dishonored, my friend? Are you sure of it? Do you have unclean debts? You’ll pay them off!”
“It is not a question of that! I am dishonored! dishonored, do you understand? It has been four months since I have given Juliette any money ... four months! And here I live, I eat, have my amusements. Every evening ... before dinner ... late at night.... Juliette reenters the house. She is worn-out, pale, her hair disheveled. From what dens, what alcoves, what arms is she returning? Upon what pillows has her head reclined! Sometimes I see pieces of bed clothes insolently hanging on the top of her hair.... She no longer feels ashamed of it, she does not even take the trouble to lie about it ... one might think it had been arranged between us. She undresses, and I believe she takes a perverse delight in showing me her ill-fastened skirts, her unlaced corset, all the disorder of her rumpled clothes, of her loosened garments which come off, falling to the ground about her, and lie conspicuously on the floor, filling the bedroom with the breath of other people!
“I tremble with rage and want to sink my teeth into her body; my wrath is kindled to a frenzy and boils within me—I feel like killing her. And I say nothing! Often I even come up to her to embrace her ... but she pushes me away: ‘No, leave me alone, I am tired!’ At first, when this abominable life started, I used to beat her ... for you must know, Lirat, there isn’t a disgraceful act that I have not committed. I have exhausted every form of indecency—yes, I beat her! She bent her back ... and hardly uttered a complaint. One evening I seized her by the throat, I threw her to the ground. Oh! I had quite made up my mind to finish her. While I was strangling her, I turned my head away for fear that I might be moved to pity, fixed my gaze upon a flower design on the carpet, and in order to hear nothing, neither her wailing nor rattling, I shrieked out inarticulate words, like a possessed one. How long did it last? Soon she ceased struggling ... her muscles relaxed.... I felt her vitality giving out under my fingers ... a few more convulsions ... and that was the end.... She did not stir any more. And suddenly I saw her black-blue face, her contracted eyes, her mouth, large and wide open, her rigid body, her motionless arms. And like a madman I rushed into every room of the apartment, calling the servants: ‘Help, help, I have killed Madame! I have killed Madame!’
“I fled, tumbling down the stairway, without a hat, dashed into the caretakers: ‘Go upstairs quickly, I have killed Madame!’ Then I darted out on the street, in a frenzy. The whole night I was running without knowing whither, rushing along the boulevards, crossing bridges, dashing against benches in the parks and mechanically turning back toward the house. It seemed to me that through its closed shutters there penetrated the light of wax tapers; priests’ vestments, surplices, eucharists passed before me in confusion; it seemed to me that I could hear funeral chants, the rumble of organs, the noise of ropes rubbing against the wood of the coffin. I pictured Juliette stretched out on the bed, dressed in a white robe, her hands clasped, a crucifix on her breast and flowers about her. And I was surprised not to see black draperies on the door, or a hearse with flowers and wreaths at the entrance outside, or people in mourning fighting for a chance to be sprinkled with holy water.
“Oh, Lirat, what a night that was! How did I ever manage not to throw myself under the wheels of the carriages, crash my head against the housewall, or plunge into the Seine. I don’t know!... Day came.... I had a notion to surrender to the police. I wanted to go up to a policeman on the street and say to him: ‘I have killed Juliette.... Arrest me!’ But thoughts, each wilder than the other, came to my mind, clashed and yielded to others. And I ran and ran as if pursued by a pack of barking hounds.... It was Sunday, I remember. There were many people on the streets flooded with sunshine. I was sure that all looked at me, that these people, seeing me run, cried out in horror: ‘Here is Juliette’s murderer!’
“Toward evening, worn out, on the verge of collapsing on the sidewalk, I met Jesselin! ‘I say,’ he exclaimed, ‘you have done a nice thing, you have!’ ‘Do you already know it?’ ‘Why, all Paris knows it, dear friend. A little while ago, at the races, Juliette showed us her neck and the marks which your fingers had left on it. She said: “Jean did this to me.” Why, man you are getting on fine!’ And while parting, he added: ‘For the rest, she has never been more beautiful. And such a success!’ And so you see that while I believed her to be dead, she was promenading at the racetrack. I had left the house and she could have thought that I would never come back again, and yet she went to the races ... prettier than ever!”
Lirat gravely listened to me. He was not pacing about any more; he seated himself and shook his head.
“What do you want me to tell you? You must go away.”
“Go away?” I rejoined. “I should go away? But I don’t want to! An adhesive force like glue which is getting thicker every day holds me fast to her carpets, a chain growing heavier every day holds me riveted to her walls. I can’t leave her! Look, at this very moment I am dreaming of committing all sorts of mad, heroic acts. To cleanse myself of all this baseness, I am ready to throw myself in front of the fire-spitting muzzles of a hundred cannons. I feel myself strong enough to crush whole formidable armies single handed. When I walk on the street I look for runaway horses, fires or any other dangerous adventure where I can sacrifice my life. There is not a perilous or superhuman deed that I have not the courage to perform. But, that! I can not do!
“At first I offered myself the most ridiculous excuses, I gave myself the most illogical reasons for not leaving her. I said to myself that if I left her, Juliette would sink to even lower depths; that my love for her had in some manner been her last vestige of decency which I should finally succeed in restoring by saving her from the mire in which she wallowed. Truly I had been repaid by the luxury of pity and self sacrifice. But I was lying! I simply can’t leave her! I can’t because I love her, because the more depraved she is the more I love her. Because I want her, do you hear, Lirat? And if you only knew what it means to me, this love, what frenzies, what shame, what tortures? If you only knew to what depths of Hell passion can sink, you would be horrified! At night when she is asleep, I prowl about in her dressing room, opening drawers, digging among the cinders of the fire place, putting together pieces of torn letters, smelling the linens which she has just removed, devoting myself to the vilest spying, to the most shameful searching! It was not enough for me to know; I had to see as well! I have no longer a mind, a heart, or anything. I am just the embodiment of disordered, raving, famished sex, which demands its share of living flesh, like the fallow-deer that howl in their frenzy on rutting nights.”
I was exhausted ... the words came out of my throat with a hissing sound ... still I continued.
“Ah! It is beyond all comprehension! Sometimes it happens that Juliette is sick. Her members, overstrained by pleasure, refuse to obey her; her constitution, worn out by nervous shocks, revolts. She takes to her bed. If you could only see her then? A child, Lirat, a sweet and touching child! She dreams only of the country, little brooks, green prairies, simple joys: ‘Oh, my dear, she exclaims, ‘with ten thousand francs of income, how happy we should be!’ She makes all sorts of Virgilian and charming plans. ‘We ought to go far, far away, to live in a house surrounded by tall trees. She will raise chickens which will lay eggs she herself will take out of the hatching place every morning; she will make cream, cheese; and she will wear aprons like this and straw hats like that, jogging along pathways astride a donkey that she will call Joseph. Geeho! Joseph, Geeho! Ah, how nice it will be!’
“When I hear her say that, I feel hope returning and I let myself be taken in by that impossible dream of a rustic life with Juliette disguised as a shepherdess. Quiet landscapes like places of refuge, enchanting like a paradise, unroll before us ... and we grow exalted and enthusiastic. Juliette cries: ‘My poor little thing, I have caused you suffering, but now it’s all over. I promise you. And then I am going to have a trained ram, am I not? A beautiful ram, very big, all white, around whom I shall tie a bow of red ribbon, and who will follow me everywhere together with Spy, not so, dear?’ She insists that I have my dinner in front of her bed, on a little table, and she coddles me like a nurse and caresses me like a mother; she makes me eat as one does a child, repeating without end and with agitation in her voice: ‘My poor little thing!’
“At other moments she becomes thoughtful and grave: ‘My dear, I would like to ask you something that has been worrying me for a long time; promise that you’ll tell me.’ I promise. ‘Well, when one is dead, in the coffin, is it true that one’s feet rest against the board?’ ‘What an idea! Why do you speak of it?’ ‘Tell me, please tell me!’ ‘But I don’t know, my dear Juliette!’ ‘Don’t you know? Although it is true that you never know anything when I am serious ... because ... you see?... I don’t want my feet to rest against the board. When I am dead ... you shall put a cushion inside and my white dress ... you know the one with pink flowers ... the dress for which I won the first prize! You’ll be very sorry, my poor little thing, won’t you? Embrace me! Come over here, closer to me, still closer. I adore you!’
“And I used to wish that Juliette were sick all the time! But as soon as she recovers she does not remember anything; her promises, her resolutions are gone and our life of hell begins again, more violent and exasperating than ever. And from that little bit of heaven to which I have held on for a while, I tumble down again into the filth and crime of this love even more frightfully maimed in spirit! Ah! that is not all, Lirat! I should have stayed in that apartment to brood over my shame, don’t you think! I should have withdrawn into obscurity and oblivion sufficient to make people believe that I am dead. And instead of that! Well! Go to the Bois and you see me there every day. At the theater it is I whom you will find in the stage box, in a dress suit, with a flower in my buttonhole, always I! Juliette is resplendent amid flowers, plumes and gems. She is exquisite, she has a new dress which everyone admires, a stock of smiles each more modest than the other, and the string of pearls, for which I have not paid, which she toys gracefully with the tips of her fingers and without the least remorse. And here I have not a sou, not a sou! And I am at the end of my rope, having exhausted all my swindling tricks and crooked schemes! Often I tremble. It seems to me that the heavy hand of a gendarme is bearing down upon me. Already I hear the painful whisper, I catch the stealthy looks of contempt.
“Little by little emptiness broadens and recedes all around me as around a pestiferous person. Old friends pass by, turn their heads away, avoid me in order not to greet me.... And unwillingly I assume the sly and servile manner of disreputable people who walk with eyes asquint and cringing back in search of an outstretched hand! The horrible thing about it, you see, is that I am perfectly conscious of the fact that it is Juliette’s beauty that protects me. It is the desire which she awakens, it is her mouth, it is the mystery of her nude and defiled body which in this pleasure-seeking world shields me with a false esteem, with a lying semblance of respect. A handshake, a grateful look seems to say: ‘I have been with your Juliette, and I owe that to you. Perhaps you prefer money? Do you want it?’ Yes, just let me quit Juliette and with one kick I shall even be thrown out of this crowd, this facile, fawning and perverted crowd and shall be reduced to sordid association with gamblers and pimps!”
I burst out sobbing. Lirat did not stir, did not raise his head. Motionless, with clasped hands he was looking at something I knew not what ... nothing, I suppose. After a few moments of silence I continued:
“My good Lirat, do you remember our talks in your studio! I used to listen to you, and what you told me was so beautiful! Without suspecting it, perhaps, you awoke noble desires and sublime raptures in me. You breathed into me a little of the belief, ambition and lofty flights of your soul. You taught me how to read nature, to understand her passionate tongue, to feel the emotions latent in things. You proved to me the existence of immortal beauty. You said to me: ‘Love, why it is in the earthenware pitcher, it is in the verminous rags which I paint. To take a feeling, a joy, a moment of suffering, of palpitation, a vision, a shudder—anything, no matter how fugitive an experience of life it may be—and recreate it, fix it in colors, in words or sounds, means to love! Love is a man’s yearning to create!’
“And I dreamed of becoming a great artist! Ah! my dreams, my delights in being able to perceive things, my doubts, my sacred agonies, do you remember them? Look what I have done with all that! I wanted to love and I went to a woman who kills love. I started with wings, drunk with the air, with the azure, with light! And now I am nothing but a dirty hog, sunk in its filth, with greedy snout and sides shaking with impure rutting. You can see for yourself, Lirat, that I am lost, lost, lost! ... and that I must kill myself.”
Then Lirat approached and put both hands on my shoulders:
“You say you are lost! Let us see now; when one is of your stock, can one say that a man’s life is lost? You say you must kill yourself? Does a man who has typhoid fever say: ‘I must kill myself?’ He says: ‘I must cure myself!’ You have typhoid fever, my poor child ... cure yourself. Lost! Why, there is not a crime, do you hear me, there is not a crime, no matter how monstrous and vile, that can not be redeemed by forgiveness. I don’t mean God’s forgiveness or man’s forgiveness, but one’s own forgiveness, which is much more difficult and more worth while to obtain. Lost! I was listening to you, my dear Mintié, and do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking that you had the noblest and most beautiful soul that I ever knew. No, no ... a man who accuses himself as you do ... who puts into his confession of sin the heart-rending accents which you have put in yours just now ... why no—that man is never lost. On the contrary, he finds himself again and he is near redemption. Love has passed over you and has left all the more filth in its wake because of your extremely delicate nature. Well! You must wash this filth off—and I know where the water is that will wash it off. You are going to leave this place ... leave Paris.”
“Lirat!” I entreated, “don’t ask me to leave! I have tried it twenty times and I cannot do it.”
“You are going away,” repeated Lirat, whose face suddenly darkened. “Or else I am mistaken about you, and you are a scamp!”
He resumed:
“In the heart of Brittany there is a fishing village, which is called Le Ploch. The air there is pure, nature is superb, man rugged and kind. It is there that you are going to live three months, six months, a year if necessary. You will walk along the sandy shore, across the heath, through pine forests, over rocks; you will dig the soil, you will catch sea wrack, you will lift logs, you will shout in the wind. There, at last, you will subdue this poisoned body insane with love. In the beginning it will be hard for you and you will perhaps feel homesick ... you will rebel, you will be seized with passionate desires to return. Don’t be discouraged, I beseech you. On days especially hard to bear, walk all the more ... spend nights out on the sea with the brave people of the place ... and when your heart is heavy, weep, weep. Above all, keep from leading an indolent life, from dreaming, from reading, from carving your name on the rocks and tracing it on the sand. Don’t think of anything, don’t think at all! On such occasions, literature and art are poor counselors, they are apt to bring you back to love again. Incessant activity of your body, hard physical labor, your flesh worn out by crushing fatigue, your head lashed and made giddy by the wind, by the rain, by storms! I tell you, you will come back from that place not only cured but stronger than ever and better armed for struggle. And you shall have paid your debt to that monster. You say, you shall have paid it with your fortune? Well what of it, that’s nothing. Why, I envy you and wish I could go with you. Come, my dear Mintié, a little courage! Go!”
“Yes, Lirat, you are right. I must go away.”
“Well go then!”
“I am going away tomorrow, I swear!”
“Tomorrow? Ah, tomorrow! She is going to come back, isn’t that the idea? And you will throw yourself in her arms again. No, go now!”
“Let me write to her. I can’t leave her like this, without a word, without saying good bye to her. Lirat just think! In spite of all this suffering, in spite of all this shame, there still are happy memories, blissful hours. She is not wicked ... she simply does not know ... that’s all ... but she loves me. I shall go away, I promise you I shall. But give me just one more day! One more day! One day is not much, especially since I shall not see her any more! Ah, one more day!”
“No, go now!”
“Lirat! My good Lirat!”
“No!”
“But I have no money! How do you expect me to go without money?”
“I have enough left to last you over the trip; I’ll send it to you there. Go!”
“At least let me get my things ready!”
“I have some wool stockings and caps; that’s what you need. Go!”
He hurried me away. Without seeing anything, without realizing anything, I went through the apartment, bumping into pieces of furniture. I did not feel any pain, for I was insensible to everything; I was walking behind Lirat with the heavy step and the passive gait of a beast led to slaughter.
“Well where is your hat?”
“That’s right! I went out without a hat. I did not think that I was abandoning, that I was leaving behind anything that was a part of me; that the things which I saw, in the midst of which I lived, were dying one after another as soon as I passed by them.”
The train left at eight o’clock in the evening. Lirat did not leave me all day. Wishing, no doubt, to occupy my mind and to keep my will power at its highest pitch, he spoke to me with broad gestures; but I did not hear anything except a confused noise, annoying me and buzzing about my ears like pestering flies. We dined in a restaurant near the Mont Parnasse railroad station. Lirat continued to talk, stupefying me with gestures and words, tracing strange geographic lines with his knife on the table.
“Look, there’s where it is! Then you will follow this side ... and ...”
I believe he was giving me instructions about my trip to the place of exile I was bound for ... told me the names of villages, persons. The word ‘sea’ recurred again and again with the rumble of pebbles, washed by the waves and rubbing against one another.
“Will you remember?”
And without knowing exactly what he referred to, I answered:
“Yes, yes, I’ll remember.”
It was only at the station, this vast building, filled with noise and bustle, that I realized my situation. I felt terribly downhearted. And so I was going away! It’s all over then! Never again shall I see Juliette, never again! At this moment I forgot all my suffering, my shame, my ruin, the irreparable conduct of Juliette and remembered only our brief moments of happiness, and I rebelled against the injustice of being separated from my well-beloved. Lirat meantime was saying:
“And then, if you only knew what a bliss it is to live among the lowly, to study their poor but worthy life, their resignation of martyrs, their....”
I had a notion to escape his surveillance, to flee then and there. A foolish hope kept me from doing that. I said to myself: ‘Celestine will no doubt bring word to Juliette that Lirat has been at the house, that he has led me away by force; she will understand at once that something horrible is happening, that I am at this station, that I am going to leave. And she will come running.’ I really believed she would. So strong was my faith that through the large open windows, I watched the people who were entering; I searched among the various groups, examined closely the dense crowd of passengers standing in front of the track gate. And whenever some elegant lady appeared I gave a start, ready to dart toward her. Lirat went on:
“And to think that there are some people who consider them brutes, these heroes! Ah! you will see those magnificent brutes with their horny hands, their eyes full of infinitude, and their backs which make one weep.”
Even on the platform I was still hoping for Juliette’s arrival. Surely in a second she will be here, pale, vanquished, suppliant, with outstretched arms: “My Jean, my Jean, I was a bad woman, forgive me! Don’t bear me ill-will on account of that, don’t forsake me. What do you expect me to become, without you? Oh, come back, my Jean, or else take me along!” And silhouettes flitted and disappeared in the cars; fantastic shadows crept along and split against the walls; long whitish columns of smoke spread out under the vaulted roof....
“Embrace me, my dear Mintié. Embrace me!”
Lirat drew me close to his breast. He was crying. “Write to me as soon as you get there. Good bye!”
He pushed me into a car and drew the door curtain.
“Good bye!”
A whistle, then a dull rolling ... then lights chasing one another ... things receding somewhere ... then nothing ... except black night. Why did Juliette not come? Why? And in the midst of rumpled skirts on the carpets, in her dressing room, in front of her looking glass, I clearly see her, bare-shouldered, applying rice powder to her face. Celestine with her soft flaccid fingers is sewing on a band of crepe at the bottom of the low cut waist, and a man whom I don’t know, reclining on the sofa, with crossed legs, watches Juliette with eyes in which desire is gleaming. The gas is burning, candle lights are blazing, a bouquet of roses which someone has just brought, mingles its more delicate perfume with the violent odors of dresses! And Juliette takes a rose, twists its stem, straightens out its petals and sticks it in the buttonhole of the man with a tender smile. A bonnet with hanging strings is perched on top of a chandelier....
And the train is moving on, puffing, panting. The night is ever black, and I am plunging into nothingness....