The Confession of a Child of the Century — Complete

by Alfred de Musset

“Very well,” said Brigitte, “we will pass the night here, as I am rather tired. This rock will make a hard bed, but we can cover it with dry leaves. Let us sit down and make the best of it.”

The night was superb; the moon was rising behind us; I looked at it over my left shoulder. Brigitte was watching the lines of the wooded hills as they began to outline themselves against the background of sky. As the light flooded the copse and threw its halo over sleeping nature, Brigitte’s song became more gentle and more melancholy. Then she bent over, and, throwing her arms around my neck, said:

“Do not think that I do not understand your heart or that I would reproach you for what you make me suffer. It is not your fault, my friend, if you have not the power to forget your past life; you have loved me in good faith and I shall never regret, although I should die for it, the day I gave myself to you. You thought you were entering upon a new life, and that with me you would forget the women who had deceived you. Alas! Octave, I used to smile at that precocious experience which you said you had been through, and of which I heard you boast like a child who knows nothing of life. I thought I had but to will it, and all that there was that was good in your heart would come to your lips with my first kiss. You, too, believed it, but we were both mistaken.

“Oh, my child! You have in your heart a plague that can not be cured; that woman who deceived you, how you must have loved her! Yes, more than you love me, alas! much more, since with all my poor love I can not efface her image; she must have deceived you most cruelly, since it is in vain that I am faithful!

“And the others, those wretches who then poisoned your youth! The pleasures they sold must have been terrible since you ask me to imitate them! You remember them with me! Alas! my dear child, that is too cruel. I like you better when you are unjust and furious, when you reproach me for imaginary crimes and avenge on me the wrong done you by others, than when you are under the influence of that frightful gayety, when you assume that air of hideous mockery, when that mask of scorn affronts my eyes.

“Tell me, Octave, why that? Why those moments when you speak of love with contempt and rail at the most sacred mysteries of love? What frightful power over your irritable nerves has that life you have led, that such insults should mount to your lips in spite of you? Yes, in spite of you; for your heart is noble, you blush at your own blasphemy; you love me too much, not to suffer when you see me suffer. Ah! I know you now. The first time I saw you thus, I was seized with a feeling of terror of which I can give you no idea. I thought you were only a roue, that you had deliberately deceived me by feigning a love you did not feel, and that I saw you such as you really were. O my friend! I thought it was time to die; what a night I passed! You do not know my life; you do not know that I who speak to you have had an experience as terrible as yours. Alas! life is sweet only to those who do not know life.

“You are not, my dear Octave, the only man I have loved. There is hidden in my heart a fatal story that I wish you to know. My father destined me, when I was quite young, for the only son of an old friend. They were neighbors and each owned a little domain of almost equal value. The two families saw each other every day, and lived, so to speak, together. My father died; my mother had been dead some time. I lived with the aunt whom you know. A journey she was compelled to take forced her to confide me to the care of my future father-in-law. He called me his daughter, and it was so well known about the country that I was to marry his son that we were allowed the greatest liberty together.

“That young man, whose name you need not know, appeared to love me. What had been friendship from infancy became love in time. He began to tell me of the happiness that awaited us; he spoke of his impatience, I was only one year younger than he; but he had made the acquaintance of a man of dissipated habits who lived in the vicinity, a sort of adventurer, and had listened to his evil suggestions. While I was yielding to his caresses with the confidence of a child, he resolved to deceive his father, and to abandon me after he had ruined me.

“His father called us into his room one evening and, in the presence of the family, set the day of our wedding. The very evening before that day he had met me in the garden and had spoken to me of love with more force than usual; he said that since the time was set, we were just the same as married, and for that matter had been in the eyes of God, ever since our birth. I have no other excuse to offer than my youth, my ignorance, and my confidence in him. I gave myself to him before becoming his wife, and eight days afterward he left his father’s house. He fled with a woman his new friend had introduced to him; he wrote that he had gone to Germany and that we should never see him again.

“That is, in a word, the story of my life; my husband knew it as you now know it. I am proud, my child, and I have sworn that no man shall ever make me again suffer what I suffered then. I saw you and forgot my oath, but not my sorrow. You must treat me gently; if you are sick, I am also; we must care for each other. You see, Octave, I, too, know what it is to call up memories of the past. It inspires me at times with cruel terror; I should have more courage than you, for perhaps I have suffered more. It is my place to begin; my heart is not sure of itself, I am still very feeble; my life in this village was so tranquil before you came! I had promised myself that it should never change! All this makes me exacting.