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The Confession of a Child of The Century, a novel by Alfred de Musset |
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Part 2 - Chapter 2 |
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_ PART II CHAPTER II THE apprenticeship to debauchery resembles vertigo, for one feels at first a sort of terror mingled with sensuous delight as though peering down from some dizzy height. While shameful secret dissipation ruins the noblest of men, in frank and open irregularities there is some palliation even for the most depraved. He who goes at nightfall, muffled in his cloak, to sully his life incognito, and to clandestinely shake off the hypocrisy of the day, resembles an Italian who strikes his enemy from behind, not daring to provoke him to open quarrel. There are assassinations in the dark corners of the city under shelter of the night. He who goes his way without concealment says: "Every one does it and conceals it; I do it and do not conceal it." Thus speaks pride, and once that cuirass has been buckled on, it glitters with the refulgent light of day. It is said that Damocles saw a sword suspended over his head. Thus libertines seem to have something over their heads which says "Go on, but I hold the thread." Those masked carriages that are seen during carnival are the faithful images of their life. A dilapidated open wagon, flaming torches lighting up painted faces; such laugh and sing. Among them you see what appears to be women; they are in fact the remains of women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. All that floats and staggers under the flaming torch in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is said, a god watches. But if the first impression is astonishment, the second is horror, and the third pity. There is displayed there so much force, or rather such an abuse of force, that it often happens that the noblest characters and the strongest constitutions are ruined. It appears hardy and dangerous to these; they would make prodigies of themselves; they bind themselves to debauchery as did Mazeppa to his horse; they gallop, they make Centaurs of themselves, and they see neither the bloody trail that the shreds of their flesh leave, nor the eyes of the wolves that gleam in hungry pursuit, nor the desert, nor the vultures. Launched into that life by the circumstances that I have recounted, I must now describe what I saw there. The first time I had a close view of one of those famous gatherings called theatrical masked balls I heard the debauchery of the Regency spoken of, and the time when a queen of France was disguised as a flower merchant. I found there flower merchants disguised as camp-followers. I expected to find libertinism there, but in fact I found none at all. It is only the scum of libertinism, some blows and drunken women lying in deathlike stupor on broken bottles. The first time I saw debauchery at table I heard of the suppers of Heliogabalus and of the philosophy of Greece which made the pleasure of the senses a kind of religion of nature. I expected to find oblivion or something like joy; I found there the worst thing in the world, ennui trying to live, and an Englishman who said: "I do this or that, therefore I amuse myself. I have spent so many pieces of gold, therefore I experience so much pleasure." And they wear out their life on that grindstone. The first time I saw courtesans I heard of Aspasia who sat on the knees of Alcibiades while discussing philosophy with Socrates. I expected to find something bold and insolent, but gay, free, and vivacious, something of the sparkle of champagne; I found a yawning mouth, a fixed eye and hooked hands. The first time I saw titled courtesans I read Boccaccio and Andallo; tasting of everything, I read Shakespeare. I had dreamed of those beautiful triflers; of those cherubim of hell. A thousand times I had drawn those heads so poetically foolish, so enterprising in audacity, heads of harebrained mistresses who spoil a romance with a glance and who walk through life by waves and by shocks like the undulating sirens; I thought of the fairies of the modern tales who are always drunk with love if not with wine. I found, instead, writers of letters, arrangers of precise hours who practise lying as an art and cloak their baseness under hypocrisy, whose only thought is to give themselves and forget. The first time I looked on the gaming table I heard of floods of gold, of fortunes made in the quarter of an hour, and of a lord of the court of Henry IV who won on one card a hundred thousand _louis_. I found a narrow room where workmen who had but one shirt, rented a suit for the evening for twenty _sous_, police stationed at the door and starving wretches staking a crust of bread against a pistol-shot. The first time I saw an assembly, public or other, open to one of those thirty thousand women who are permitted to sell themselves in Paris, I heard of the saturnalia of all times, of every imaginable orgy, from Babylon to Rome, from the temple of Priapus to the _Parc-aux-Cerfs_, and I have always seen written on the sill of that door the word, "Pleasure." I found nothing suggestive of pleasure but in its place the word, "Prostitution;" and it has always appeared ineffaceable, not graven in that metal that takes the sun's light, but in the palest of all, that of the cold light whose colors seem tinted by the somber hues of night, silver. The first time I saw the people--it was a frightful morning of Ash Wednesday, near Courtille. A cold fine rain had been falling since the evening before; the streets were covered with pools of water. Masked carriages filed hither and thither, crowding between hedges of hideous men and women standing on the sidewalks. That sinister wall of spectators had tiger eyes, red with wine, gleaming with hatred. The carriage wheels splashed mud over this wall, but it did not move. I was standing on the front seat of an open carriage; from time to time a man in rags would step out from the wall, hurl a torrent of abuse at us, then cover us with a cloud of flour. Mud would soon follow; yet we kept on our way toward the Isle of Love and the pretty wood of Romainville consecrated by so many sweet kisses. One of my friends fell from his seat into the mud, narrowly escaping death on the paving. The people threw themselves on him to overpower him and we were obliged to hasten to his assistance. One of the trumpeters who preceded us on horseback was struck on the shoulder by a paving stone; the flour had given out. I had never heard of anything like that. I began to understand the time and comprehend the spirit of the age. _ |
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