“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 I should have withdrawn into obscurity and oblivion sufficient to make people believe that I am dead.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 theatre 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 amidst 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,
