Have you ever met a poor creature huddled up behind the door on some wintry day, a wretched human being with chapped lips and chattering teeth, shivering in his tattered rags? … And when you met him, were you not carried away by a feeling of keen pity, and did you not have a desire to take him and warm him against your breast, give him something to eat, cover his shivering body with warm clothes? … That is how I loved Juliette; I loved her with an immense pity … ah, don’t laugh, with a mother’s pity, with an endless pity! …
“Aren’t we going out, my dear? It would be so nice to take a stroll through the Bois.”
And casting her eyes on the blank sheet of paper on which I had not written a line:
“Is that all you wrote? … Well! … You do not seem to have worked very hard. … And here I have been sitting around all this time to inspire you to work! … Oh, well, I know you won’t get anywhere. … You are too lazy!”
Ere long we began going out every day and every evening. I did not resist any longer, almost happy to escape from the deadly aversion and despondent thoughts with which our apartment inspired me, escape from the symbolic vision of the old man, from myself. … Ah, above all from myself. In a crowd, in the tumult, in this feverish haste of a pleasure-hunting life I hoped to find forgetfulness, to be able to dull my feeling, to subdue my rebellious spirit, to suppress the voice of my past which I heard grumbling within me. And since I could not raise Juliette to my level I lowered myself down to her own.
Ah, those serene heights where the sun was reigning and toward which I had been climbing slowly with such terrific effort! … I must descend into the pit at one dash, in a single, instantaneous, inevitable downfall, even if I crushed my head against the rocks or disappeared in the bottomless mire. With me it was no longer a question of escape. If occasionally the idea did pierce the haze of my mind, if, in the errings of my willpower, I sometimes did perceive a distant way out where duty seemed to call me, I, in order to break away from the idea, in order not to rush hastily toward that end, clung tenaciously to the false pretenses of honor. … Could I leave Juliette! I who insisted that she leave Malterre! … What will become of her when I am gone? … Why no, no!—I was lying to myself. … I did not want to leave her because I loved her, because I pitied her, because. … But was it not myself that I loved, myself that I pitied? … Ah, I no longer knew! I no longer knew!
And then again you should not think that the abyss into which I had fallen was a sudden revelation to me. … Don’t you believe it! I saw it from afar, I saw its black opening yawning fearfully, and I ran toward it. I leaned over the edge to inhale the infected odor of its filth, I said to myself: “There is where wasted lives and corrupted beings are dashed and swallowed up. … Here one can never come up again, never!” And I plunged into it. …
Despite the threatening sky overcast with clouds, the balcony of the café is crowded with people. There is not a vacant table, the cabarets, the circus shows, the theatres have poured forth the scum of their habitués here. Everywhere are bright-colored dresses and black frock coats, ladies adorned with plumes like horses in a parade, weary, sick looking and sallow; flurried fops with heads drooped upon their buttonholes without flowers, and nibbling the ends of their canes with apelike gestures. Some of them with legs crossed in order to show their black silk socks embroidered with red flowerets, hats pushed over slightly toward the back, are whistling the latest hit—the air which has just now been sung at the Ambassadeur, to the accompaniment of the creaking of seats, the clatter of glasses and bottles.
The last of the lights in front of the opera has been extinguished. But all around it the windows of the clubhouses and brothels are a red blaze, like openings into hell. On the street, parked near the curb, are worn-out and dilapidated open coaches strung out in triple file. Some of the drivers are drowsing in their seats; others gathering into small groups which present a comical appearance in their ill-fitting liveries, are munching cigar stubs, and talking with loud bursts of laughter, telling salacious stories about their clients. One incessantly hears the shrill voice of the newspaper vendors who run back and forth shouting, in the midst of their crisp outcries, the name of some well-known woman, or some scandalous piece of news, while street arabs, gliding between the tables, cunning as cats, are selling obscene pictures, half revealed, to awaken dormant passions, to stir up curiosities gone to sleep. And little girls whose premature depravity has already blighted their gaunt, childish faces are offering for sale bouquets of flowers, smiling with a dubious smile, charging their glances with the ripe and hideous immodesty of old prostitutes. Inside the cabaret all the tables are taken. … There is not a single vacant place. … People are drinking champagne without really wanting it and munching sandwiches without in the least caring for them. Occasionally curious people enter the place, before going to their clubs or to bed, by force of habit or from a mere desire to show off or to see if there is “anything doing” there. Slowly and slouching in their walk, they slink about the groups of guests, stopping to chat with their friends here and there and, waving their hands in greeting to someone at a distance, look at themselves in
