The Confession of a Child of the Century

by Alfred de Musset

When Smith came, I knew no repose from the time he entered the room. How is it that we frequently seem to enjoy unhappiness?

One day a word, a flush, a glance, made me shudder; another day, another glance, another word, threw me into uncertainty. Why are they both so sad? Why am I as motionless as a statue where I had formerly been violent? Every evening I sat on my bed and said to myself: "Let me see; let me think that over." Then I sprang to my feet crying: "Impossible!" The next day, I did the same thing.

In Smith's presence, Brigitte treated me with more tenderness than when we were alone. It happened one evening that some hard words escaped us; when she heard his voice in the hall, she came and sat on my knees. As for him, it seemed to me he was always making an effort to control himself. His gestures were carefully regulated; he spoke slowly and prudently, so that his occasional moments of forgetfulness seemed all the more striking.

Was it curiosity that tormented me? I remember that one day I saw a man drowning near Pont Royale. It was midsummer and we were rowing on the river; some thirty boats were crowded together under the bridge when, suddenly, one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft.

I shall never forget my experience as I was diving for that man. I opened my eyes under the water and searched painfully here and there in the dark corners about the pier; then I returned to the surface for breath, then resumed my horrible search. I was filled with hope and terror; the thought that I might feel myself seized by convulsive arms, allured me and, at the same time, thrilled me with horror; when I was exhausted with fatigue, I climbed back into my boat.

Unless a man is brutalized by debauchery, eager curiosity is one of his marked traits. I have already remarked that I felt it on the occasion of my first visit to Desgenais. I will explain my meaning.

The truth, that skeleton of appearances, ordains that every man, whatsoever he be, shall come, in his day and hour, to touch the bones that lie forever at the bottom of some chance experience. It is called knowing the world, and experience is purchased at that price. It happens that some recoil in terror before that test, others, feeble and affrighted, vacillate like shadows. Some, the best perhaps, die at once. The large number forget, and thus, all float on to death.

But there are some men, who, at the fell stroke of misfortune, neither die nor forget; when it comes their turn to touch misfortune, otherwise called truth, they approach it with a firm step and outstretched hand, and horrible to say! they mistake love for the livid corpse they have found at the bottom of the river. They seize it, feel it, clasp it in their arms; behold them, drunk with the desire to know; they no longer look with interest upon things, except to see them pass; they do nothing except doubt and test; they ransack the world as though they were God's spies; they sharpen their thoughts into arrows, and they give birth to a monster.

The debauchees, more than all others, are exposed to that fury, and the reason is very simple: ordinary life is the limpid surface; the debauchees, the rapid current turning over and over, and, at times, touching the bottom. Coming from a ball, for instance, where they have danced with a modest girl, they seek the company of bad characters, and spend the night in riotous feasting. The last words they addressed to a beautiful and virtuous woman are still on their lips; they repeat them and burst into laughter. Shall I say it? Do they not raise, for some pieces of silver, the vesture of chastity, that robe so full of mystery, that seems to respect the being it embellishes and surrounds without touching? What idea can they have of the world? They are like comedians in the greenroom. Who, more than they, is skilled in that research at the bottom of things, in that groping, profound and impious? See how they speak of everything; always in terms the most barren, the most crude and abject; such words appear true to them; all the rest is only parade, convention, prejudice. Let them tell a story, let them recount some experience, they will always use the same dirty and material expression, always the letter, always death! They do not say "That woman loved me;" they say: "I have possessed that woman;" they do not say: "I love;" they say: "I desire;" they never say: "If God wills;" they say: "If I will." I do not know what they think of themselves and such monologues as these.

Hence, of a necessity, either idleness or curiosity; for while they strive to find what there is of evil, they do not understand that others still believe in the good. Therefore, they are either so nonchalant that they stop their ears, or the noise of the rest of the world suddenly startles them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but a stage. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and sees what has taken place in him during an hour passed in the society of brutal reality! He says to himself: "My sister is not like that creature I have just left!" And from that day he is disturbed and uneasy.