The Confession of a Child of the Century

by Alfred de Musset

During the fete, in particular, he was in such a state of nervous excitation that he acted like a schoolboy. He persuaded me to go out on foot with him one day, muffled in grotesque costumes, with masks and instruments of music. We promenaded gravely all night, in the midst of a most frightful din of horrible sounds. We found a driver asleep on his box and unhitched his horses; then pretending we had just come from the ball, set up a great cry. The coachman started up, cracked his whip and his horses started off on a trot, leaving him seated on the box. The same evening we passed through the Champs Elysees; Desgenais, seeing another carriage passing, stopped it after the manner of a highwayman; he intimidated the coachman by threats and forced him to climb down and lie flat on his stomach. He then opened the carriage door and found within a young man and lady motionless with fright. Whispering to me to imitate him, we began to enter one door and go out the other, so that in the obscurity the poor young people thought they saw a procession of bandits going through their carriage.

As I understand it, the men who say that the world gives experience ought to be astonished if they are believed. The world is merely a number of whirlpools, each one whirling independent of the others; they float about in groups like flocks of birds. There is no resemblance between the different quarters of the same city, and the denizen of the Chausee d'Antin has as much to learn at Marais as at Lisbon. It is true that these whirlpools are traversed, and have been since the beginning of the world, by seven personages who are always the same: the first is called hope; the second, conscience; the third, opinion; the fourth, desire; the fifth, sorrow; the sixth, pride; and the seventh, man.

We were, therefore, my companions and I, a flock of birds, and we remained together until springtime, sometimes singing, sometimes flying.

"But," the reader objects, "where are the women in all this? I see nothing of debauchery here."

O! creatures who bear the name of women and who have passed like dreams through a life that was itself a dream, what shall I say of you? Where there is no shadow of hope can there be memory? Where shall I seek for memory's meed? What is there more dumb in human memory? What is there more completely forgotten than you?

If I must speak of women I will mention two; here is one of them:

I ask what would be expected of a poor sewing-girl, young and pretty, about eighteen, with a romantic affair on her hands that is purely a question of love; with little knowledge of life and no idea of morals; eternally sewing near a window before which processions were not allowed to pass, by order of the police, but near which a dozen women prowled who were licensed and recognized by these same police; what could you expect of her, when, after having tired her hands and eyes all day long on a dress or a hat, she leans out of that window as night falls? That dress she has sewed, that hat she has trimmed with her poor and honest hands in order to earn a supper for the household, she sees passing along the street on the head or on the body of a public woman. Thirty times a day a hired carriage stops before the door and there steps out a prostitute, numbered as is the hack in which she rides, who stands before a glass and primps, taking off and putting on the results of many days' work on the part of the poor girl who watches her. She sees that woman draw from her pocket six pieces of gold, she who has but one a week; she looks at her feet and her head, she examines her dress, and eyes her as she steps into her carriage; and then, what could you expect? When night has fallen, after a day when work has been scarce, when her mother is sick, she opens her door, stretches out her hand and stops a passer-by.

Such was the story of a girl I have known. She could play the piano, knew something of accounts, a little designing, even a little history and grammar, and thus a little of everything. How many times have I regarded with poignant compassion that sad sketch made by nature and mutilated by society! How many times have I followed in the darkness the pale and vacillating gleam of a spark flickering in abortive life! How many times have I tried to revive the fire that smoldered under those ashes! Alas! her long hair was the color of ashes and we called her Cendrillon.

I was not rich enough to help her; Desgenais, at my request, interested himself in the poor creature; he made her learn over again all of which she had a slight knowledge. But she could make no appreciable progress. When her teacher left her she would fold her arms and for hours look silently across the public square. What days! What misery! One day I threatened that if she did not work she should have no money; she silently resumed her task and I learned that she stole out of the house a few minutes later. Where did she go? God knows. Before she left I asked her to embroider a purse for me. I still have that sad relic, it hangs in my room a monument of the ruin that is wrought here below.

But here is another case: