that bed, a girl of the gutter, asleep and half clad!
The unfortunate creature was evidently under the caressing wing of a dream; gentle and regular breath escaped from her lips; over her languidly closed eyelids at times ran a faint quiver. I leaned upon the bed; my glance could not loosen itself from that pale face, beautiful with a strange beauty. I know not what fascination was exerted upon me by this peaceful sleep of vice, these faded features, stamped in their repose with an angelic mildness. I said to myself that this slumbering girl was receiving a visit from her sixteenth year, and that thus purity itself was before me. This thought filled my mind; if any other mingled with it I did not know it. I no longer felt the cold, but I trembled. My veins throbbed with an unknown fever. My reverie rambled on, more uneasy and more sorrowful.
The girl uttered a sigh, and turned over. She threw back the coverlet, exposing her bust.
My dreams had shown me only chaste statues, always veiled by dazzling brightness. I had seen but the arms of washerwomen, gayly beating their linen. Sometimes, perhaps, my glance had strayed over the white and delicate neck of a danseuse, when, getting the better of my heart, I had felt my thoughts troubled by the sweep of her flaxen tresses.
This roughly uncovered bust made me blush, and filled me with such anguish that I was on the point of weeping. I was ashamed for the young woman’s sake; I felt my purity departing as I gazed at her. Nevertheless, I could not turn away my eyes; I followed the gentle undulations of her breast, and was dazzled by its whiteness. My senses were still silent; my mind alone was intoxicated. My impressions had a charm so strange that I can now compare them only to the holy horror that shook me the day I beheld a corpse for the first time. My imagination had represented death to me. But when I saw that bluish face, that black and open mouth, when destruction showed itself in its energetic grandeur, I could not withdraw my glances from the dead, for I was quivering with a sorrowful delight, I was attracted by I know not what glimmer of reality.
Thus, the first bare throat held me palpitating with an emotion I am unable to define.
And it was a bust bruised by harsh caresses upon which my eyes rested! Ah! when I now think of it, of that frightened ecstasy which restrained my breath, when I again see myself bent over that infamous couch, uneasy and blushing, I ask myself with anguish who will restore to me that first glance that I may bend and blush over the couch of purity! I ask myself who will restore to me the instant when the veil falls from the shoulders of the bride, when the bridegroom comprehends that the choicest gift of Heaven is his and bows his head, dazzled by the knowledge! I have drunk to intoxication from a perilous cup; I shall never realize what splendor a bride has in the eyes of a young and innocent husband.
The girl awoke and smiled, without seeming astonished to find me near her. Her smile was vague, as if addressed to a crowd, as if weary of being upon her lips. She did not speak, but put out her arms towards me.
In the morning, when I returned to my garret, I found my candles entirely burned away and the fire on my hearth long dead. The chamber was cold and sombre: I no longer had either flame or brightness.
CHAPTER V.
PAQUERETTE.
BROTHERS, where is the sweetheart, queen of the lakes and clouds, or the harvest brunette whose glance is so deep as to suffice for a life of love?
Well, all is over: I have belied my youth; I am the fiancé of vice. The remembrance of my first hour of love is closely bound to that of an infamous den, of a couch over which strange kisses float. When, during the May nights, I shall evoke my fiancée, I shall see arise a half-clad, cynical girl, awaking and putting out her arms towards me. This pale and stained spectre will be a participant in all my love-affairs. It will stand between my mouth and that of my bride, claiming the kisses of my soiled lips. When I am asleep, it will visit me in a horrible dream. When my sweetheart shall whisper in my ear some delicious word, it will be there to tell me that it was the first to talk thus to me. When I shall lean my head upon the shoulder of my bride, it will present to me its shoulder on which I once reposed. Thus it will ever freeze my heart with the accursed remembrance of our betrothal.
Yes, that night has sufficed to deprive me of supreme peace. My first kiss has not awakened a soul. I have not felt the holy ignorance of pure caresses, my timid lips have not found lips as timid as themselves. I shall never experience that simple playfulness, that innocence of a couple who know not the ways of the world. They tremble, embrace, and weep for joy. But, as they kiss each other, hesitatingly, they realize that they are one, that their hearts beat in unison, and that God has joined them for the voyage of life.
Then, when this knowledge has come, when they have in a kiss divined the law of the Omnipotent, what must be their delight to owe to each other this revelation, this infinitude of joy! They have participated in a common blessing: they have put on their white robes and now are clad like the cherubim. Mingling their very breath, smiling with the same smile, they repose in their union. Holy hour, in which hearts beat more freely, finding a heaven to which they can ascend. Sainted hour, in which ignorant love suddenly learns the full measure of its strength, believes itself the master of the universe and is intoxicated with its first flight. Brothers, may God keep for you that hour, the remembrance of which perfumes one’s entire life. It will never be mine.
Such is fate. It is rare that two pure hearts meet; nearly always one heart of any twain can no longer give its ecstasy in its flower. To-day, most young men of twenty like ourselves, who are eager to love, lacking the power to force the bars and bolts of honest houses, hasten to the wide open doors of boudoirs easier of access. When we ask upon what shoulders we shall lean our heads, fathers hide their daughters and push us into the gloom of the lanes. They cry out to us to respect their children, who will some day be our wives; they prefer for them, instead of our first caresses, those learned elsewhere.
Hence how few keep their early love for their brides, how few, in the desert of their youth, refuse the companions into whose society they are driven by the singular behavior of parents! Some, foolish and wicked lads, glory in their shame; they drag their ignoble flirtations before the public eye. Others, when the soul awakes at the first summons of the sweetheart, are filled with overwhelming sorrow on vainly interrogating the horizon and at not knowing where to find the rightful claimant of the heart. They go straight ahead, staring at the balconies, leaning towards each youthful visage: the balconies are deserted, the youthful visages remain veiled. Some night an arm is slipped within their own, a voice makes them start. Already weary and despairing, unable to discover the angel of love, they follow the spectre.
Brothers, I do not wish to make an excuse for my fault, but let me say that it is strange to cloister purity and permit dissipation to walk in the glare of the sun with uplifted head. Let me deplore this distrust of love, which creates a solitude around the lover, and this guarding of virtue by vice, which causes a young man to encounter shame before reaching the door of innocence. He who yields to temptation may well say to his bride: “I am unworthy of you, but why did you not come to my rescue? Why did you not meet me in the flowery fields, before all those by-ways, each nook of which has its priestess? Why were you not the first to greet my eyes, thus sparing yourself in sparing me?”
On returning home this evening, I found upon the stairway the old woman of the other night. She was toilsomely ascending in front of me, aiding herself with the cord and placing both feet on each step. She turned around.
“Well, Monsieur, is your patient better?” she asked. “She no longer shivers, I imagine, and you yourself do not seem to have suffered from the cold. Ah! I well knew that a young man could take better care of a handsome girl than an old woman.”
She laughed, showing her empty mouth. The politeness of this aged wretch who had led a gay life made me blush.
“You need not color so!” she added. “I have seen others as proud as yourself enter without shame and depart singing. Youth loves to laugh, and girls who play the wise one are fools. Ah! if I were only fifteen again!”
I had reached my door. She caught me by the arm as I was about to go in, and continued:
“I had flaxen