It took me a long time to get used to this life which seemed to me the reverse of nature; and from the depths of this boiling hell my thoughts would often wander back to the peaceful fields way yonder which brought to my nostrils the delicious odor of dug up and fertile soil; back to the green retreats of the woods, where I heard only the light rustling of the leaves, and from time to time in the resonant depths, the dull blows of the ax and the almost human groans of the old oak trees. Nevertheless, curiosity often drove me out of my small room which I occupied on Rue Oudinot, and I sauntered along the streets, the boulevards, the river banks impelled by a feverish desire for walking, my fingers twitching from nervousness, my brains squashed, as it were, by the gigantic and intense activity of Paris, my senses in some way thrown out of balance by all these colors, odors, sounds, by the perversion and strangeness of the contact so new to me. The more I mingled with the crowds, the more intoxicated I became with this uproar, the more I saw multitudes of human lives pass by, brushing one another, indifferent to one another, without apparent attachment, and saw others surge forward, disappear and emerge again and so on forever—the more I felt the overwhelming sense of inexorable loneliness.
At Saint-Michel, although I was lonely, I at least knew some human beings and objects. Everywhere I had points of reference by which my spirit was guided; the back of a peasant bent over his glebe, the ruins of a building at the turn of the road, a ditch, a dog, a clay pit, a charming face—everything there was familiar to me, if not dear. At Paris everything was strange and unknown to me. In this frightful haste with which all seemed to be moving about, in the profound selfishness, in this giddy obliviousness to one another into which they were all precipitated, how could one retain even for a single moment the attention of these people, these phantoms; I don’t speak of the attention of tenderness or pity, but of that of simple notice! … One day I saw a man who killed another: he was admired and his name was soon on everybody’s lips; the next morning I saw a woman who lifted her skirt going through obscene motions: the crowd followed her.
Being awkward, ignorant of the ways of the world, very timid, I found it hard to make friends. I never even set foot in the homes where I was recommended, for fear of appearing ridiculous. I had been invited for dinner to the home of a cousin of my mother’s who was rich and kept a large retinue. The sight of the mansion, the footmen in the vestibule, the lights, the carpets, the heavy perfume of smothered flowers—all this frightened me and I fled, knocking down on the stairway a woman in a red cloak who got up and started to laugh at my bewildered look.
The noisy gayety of the young men, my school comrades, whom I had met at the lectures, at the restaurants, in the cafés, was not to my liking either. The coarseness of their pleasures hurt me, and the women, with their eyes colored with bistre, their overpainted lips, their cynicism and shameless speech and behavior did not tempt me at all. One evening, however, when my nerves were all wrought up, and I was driven by a sudden rutting of the flesh, I went into a house of ill-fame and left it burning with shame, despising myself, remorseful and with the sensation of filth on my skin. What! Was it from this slimy and loathsome act that men were born! From this time on I looked at women more frequently, but my look was no longer chaste, and fixed upon them as upon some impure images, it was searching for sex and stripping them under the folds of their clothes. I came to know their secret vices, which rendered me still more dejected, restless and out of sorts.
A kind of crapulous torpor settled down upon me. I used to stay in bed several days at a stretch, sunk in the brutishness of obscene dreams, awakened now and then by sudden nightmares, by painful attacks of heartache which caused my skin to perspire. In my room, behind drawn curtains, I was thus living like a corpse which was conscious of its death and which from the depth of its grave in the frightful night could hear the stamping of many feet and the rumble of the city about it. Sometimes, tearing myself loose from this dejection, I went out. But what was I going to do? Where could I go? I was indifferent to everything, and I had not a single desire or curiosity. With fixed gaze, with heavy drooping head and listless, I used to walk straight ahead, without purpose, and I would end by flinging myself on a bench in the Luxembourg, senilely shrunk into myself, lying motionless for many hours, without seeing anything, without hearing anything, without asking myself why there were children about me, why there were birds singing, why young couples passed. … Naturally I was not working and did not think of anything. …
Then war came, then defeat. … Despite the opposition of my father, despite the entreaties of old Marie, I enlisted.
II
Our regiment was what is called a march regiment, that is, one formed while on the march. It had been made up at Mans, after much trouble, of all the remains
