Still worse is the reverse of the medal! Truth! As though I had never given myself over to the power of falsehood, in spite of my pretence to be more truthful and sincere than others. I do not dwell on the petty falsehoods of childhood, which signify so little, occasioned as they mostly were by fear or the incapacity of distinguishing between fact and imagination, and because they were counterbalanced by punishments unjustly inflicted and based upon false accusations of my schoolfellows. But there are other falsehoods, and more serious ones because of the injurious consequences which evil example and excuse for grievous wrongdoing involve. For example, the untrue description in my autobiography, "The Son of a Servant," with regard to the crisis of puberty. When I wrote that youthful confession, the liberal tendency of that period seems to have induced me to use too bright colours with the pardonable object of freeing from fear young men who have fallen into precocious sin.
As I bring these bitter reflections to a close, the coin-cabinet contracts, the medal retreats to a distance, and diminishes to the size of a lead button,—and I see myself in a dormitory in a school for boys in the country on the bank of the Malar in 1861. Children born of unlawful unions, children of parents who had tied from their country, badly brought-up children who in too many families were in the way, live here together huddled in a loft, without oversight, tyrannising over and ill-treating each other, in order to revenge themselves for the cruelty of life. A hungry herd of little evil-doers, ill-clothed and ill-nourished, a terror to the country people and especially to the gardeners.
Pains of conscience follow immediately on a fall, and I see myself in the twilight of a summer evening sitting at a table in my night-dress with a prayer-book before me, stung by conscience and shame, although wholly unacquainted with the nature of sin. Innocent because I was ignorant, and yet a criminal. Led astray, and afterwards leading others astray, suffering remorse and relapsing, doubting the justice of my accusing conscience, and doubting the mercy of God who allows an innocent child to be exposed to the most terrible temptations. Unhappy victim without strength to stand first in the unequal strife with all-powerful Nature 1 Meanwhile the infernal fire is lit which will burn till the grave.
I burn with desire to accuse myself and to defend myself at the same time, but there is no judgment-seat and no judge, and I devour myself here in solitude.
As I cried out in my despair towards all quarters of heaven, I became enveloped in a dark mist, and when I began to see again clearly I found myself standing in the Fleurus Avenue with my head leant against a chestnut tree. It was the third tree counting from the entrance gate, and the avenue has forty-seven on each side. Nine seats are placed between the trees to rest on. Thus there are forty-four halting places for me before I reach the first Station.
For a moment I remain quite depressed, watching the path of tears stretch before me. Suddenly under the leafless trees a ball of light approaches, borne along by two birds' wings. It stops before me on a level with my eyes, and in the clear light which the ball radiates I see a white sheet of paper ornamented like a menu-card. At the top I read in smoke-coloured letters, "Eat!" Then in a second the record of my whole past life is enrolled like a micrographic reproduction on an enormous placard. Everything is there! All the horrors, the most secret sins, the most loathsome scenes in which I have played the chief part Alas! I could die with shame as I see those scenes depicted, which my eye, which seems to grow in size, takes in at once, without needing to read and interpret them.
I do not die, however. On the contrary, for a minute which is forty-eight years long, I review my whole life from early childhood to this day. My bones are dried up to the marrow, my blood ceases to circulate, and, consumed by fiery pangs of conscience, I fall to the ground with the cry, "Mercy! Mercy! I must cease to justify myself before the Eternal, and I must cease to accuse my neighbours."
When consciousness returned I found myself on the Rue de Luxembourg, and as I looked through the trellis-gate I saw the garden blooming, while a choir of little mocking-birds greeted me from the bushes and trees.
The next evening there was h knock at my door about six o'clock, and there stepped in the American painter whom, in my book Inferno, I have identified with Francis Schlatter. As we had parted from each other quite indifferently, without friendship or enmity, our meeting was quite cordial. I notice that the man is somewhat altered. He seems physically smaller than I remember him, and I cannot get him as before to smile at the vexations of life and at sorrows already endured, which are so easily borne when they are happily over. But he treats me with a surprising respect which contrasts strongly with his former cameraderie. Meanwhile this meeting rouses me from my lethargy, partly because I have some one to speak to who understands every word I say, partly because he forms a link with a period when the development of my life, belief, and growth was strongest. I feel as if the clock had been put back two years, and feel a wish to get free, to spend half a night on the Boulevard pavement in talk, with our glasses before us.
We agree to have our lunch at Montmartre, and take that direction. The noise of the street somewhat interrupts the current of conversation, and I notice in myself an unusual difficulty in hearing and understanding his words.