Enveloped in an old wrapper, with her feet drawn up under her and her hands clasped in front of her knees, she indulged in loud bursts of laughter, throwing her head backwards. She seemed to be in haste to throw off all the words, all the gayety, she had amassed. For nearly a whole hour she entertained me with a recital of the thousand incidents of the ball. She had seen everything, heard everything. She gave vent to exclamations without end, sudden joys, hurried and tumultuous reminiscences. A man had slipped in such a way, a woman had sworn in such another way; Jeanne wore a milkmaid's costume which became her marvellously; Louise looked hideous as a Scotch lassie; as to Edouard, he had certainly pawned his watch that very morning. And she rattled on, always finding some new detail, repeating the same circumstance ten times rather than pause. Then, shivering with cold, she finally went to bed. She asserted that she had never before been so much amused at a ball, and made me promise to take her to another as soon as I possibly could. She fell asleep thus, while still talking to me, laughing amid her slumber.
This sudden awakening to life, this flood of feverish words, strangely astonished me. I could not then and I cannot now explain to myself the coldness and indolence of this girl amid the tumult of the night, and her bursts of gayety, her chatter of the morning in our sad and silent chamber. Why had she torn from me the promise to take her as soon and as often as possible to these balls, where she laughed so little and did not dance at all? Besides, if she were acting in good faith, what was that singular joy which had manifested itself by silence and ill-humor during the soirée, and, later, had broken out in thick and delighted laughter?
Oh! what an unknown world is that of the flesh and dissipation, in which I find food for amazement at every step! I dare not as yet critically examine all this wretchedness, the motives of this puzzling woman, cold in her feelings, weary and half asleep amid her joys! I took her to the ball to save her, but she had come back from it more terrible, more impenetrable than ever!
CHAPTER XIII
[AN ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY]
You complain of my silence; you are uneasy, and ask me what new sorrows have made the pen fall from my fingers.
Brothers, my new sorrows are caused by the fact that our ridiculous fancies of childhood are being dissipated one by one. This adieu to early hopes has, in its salutary harshness, the most profound bitterness. I feel myself becoming a man; I weep over my departing weaknesses, taking, at the same time, a great pride in the strength I am acquiring.
Ah! how silly youth would be, if it had not its beautiful simplicity! The foolishness upon the lips of the child is an adorable ignorance by which men are quietly amused. Scarcely a month ago, I was a simpleton; I spoke to you innocently of the redemption of women. Verily, to have heard me, an old man would at once have smiled his sweetest smile and ironically shaken his head: he would have given the smile to the young soul who had faith in entire perfection, and addressed the shake of the head to the absurd youth who was boldly attempting the miracle which the Saviour alone has the power to work.
Enough of deceptions! The brutal truth has strange delights for those who are tormented by the problem of life; they are weary of those hopes which mothers bequeath to their children, and which, slow to vanish, abandon them one by one, lengthening their martyrdom. As for me, I prefer, even should I suffer from having all my illusions torn from me in a day, to see clearly into this world of dissipation to the depths of which I have descended.
No doubt, some once sinful women who have sincerely repented are met with. Women who have strayed from the right path have seen the error of their ways, have reformed, have found husbands and have been pardoned. But such things are miracles. The laws common to short-sighted humanity seem to ordain that wretched women, who have once forgotten themselves, shall be trodden under foot, torn to pieces, and their fragments so scattered that they cannot be reunited at the final hour.