The Confession of a Child of the Century

by Alfred de Musset

"I, in the street bathed in tears, in despair; and during that time that encounter within! What! that very night! Mocked by her! Surely Desgenais you are dreaming. Is it true? Can it be possible? What do you know about it?"

Thus talking at random, I lost my head, and an irresistible feeling of wrath began to rise within me. Finally I sat down exhausted.

"My friend," said Desgenais, "do not take the thing so seriously. The solitary life you have been leading for the last two months has made you ill, I see you have need of distraction. Come to supper with me this evening, and to-morrow morning we will go to the country."

The tone in which he said this hurt me more than anything else; in vain I tried to control myself. "Yes," I thought, "deceived by that woman, poisoned by horrible suggestions, having no refuge either in work or in fatigue, having for my only safeguard against despair and ruin, a sacred but frightful grief. O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my sorrow that has just crumbled in my hands! It is no longer my love, it is my despair that is insulted. Mockery! She mocks at me as I weep!" That appeared incredible to me. All the memories of the past clustered about my heart when I thought of it. I seemed to see, one after the other, the specters of our nights of love; they hung over a bottomless eternal abyss, black as chaos, and from the bottom of that abyss there burst forth a shriek of laughter, sweet but mocking, that said: "Behold your reward!"

If I had been told that the world mocked at me I would have replied: "So much the worse for it," and I would not be angry; but at the same time I was told that my mistress was a shameless wretch. Thus, on one side, the ridicule was public, vouched for, stated by two witnesses who, before telling what they knew, must have felt that the world was against me; and, on the other hand, what reply could I make? How could I escape? What could I do when the center of my life, my heart itself, was ruined, killed, annihilated. What could I say when that woman for whom I had braved all, ridicule as well as blame, for whom I had borne a mountain of misery, when that woman whom I loved and who loved another, of whom I demanded no love, of whom I desired nothing but permission to weep at her door, no favor but that of vowing my youth to her memory and writing her name, her name alone, on the tomb of my hopes! Ah! when I thought of it, I felt the hand of death heavy upon me; that woman mocked me, it was she who first pointed her finger at me, singling me out to the idle crowd which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips so many times pressed to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood, it was from that source the injury came; yes, the last of all, the most cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh that spits in the face of grief.

The more I thought of it the more enraged I became. Did I say enraged? I do not know what passion controlled me. What I do know is that an inordinate desire for vengeance took possession of me. How could I revenge myself on a woman? I would have paid any price for a weapon that could be used against her. But I had none, not even the one she had employed; I could not pay her in her own coin.

Suddenly I noticed a shadow moving behind the curtain before the closet.
I had forgotten her.

"Listen to me!" I cried, rising. "I have loved, I have loved like a fool. I deserve all the ridicule you have subjected me to. But, by Heaven! I will show you something that will prove to you that I am not such a fool as you think."

With these words I pulled aside the curtain and exposed the interior of the closet. The girl was trying to conceal herself in a corner.

"Go in, if you choose," I said to Desgenais; "you who call me a fool for loving a woman, see how your teaching has affected me. Do you think I passed last night under the windows of ——-? But that is not all," I added, "that is not all I have to say. You give a supper to-night, and to-morrow go to the country; I am with you, and shall not leave you from now on. We shall not separate, but pass the entire day together. Are you with me? Agreed! I have tried to make of my heart the mausoleum of my love, but I will bury my love in another tomb."