Claude's Confession

by Émile Zola

I wish to ascertain to what point of despair I have descended; I wish to open my heart and there read the truth; I wish to penetrate to the utmost depths of my being, to interrogate it and to demand from it an account of itself. At least, I ought to discover how it happens that I have fallen so low; I have the right to probe my wound, at the risk of torturing myself and ascertaining that I must die of it.

If, in this disagreeable task, I should make my wound greater than it is, if my love should increase by affirming itself, I will accept this augmented pain with joy, for the brutal truth is necessary to those who walk unshackled in life, obeying only their instincts.

I love Laurence, and I exact from my heart the explanation of this love. I did not fall in love with her at first sight, as men fall in love with women in romances. I have felt myself attracted little by little, melted, so to speak, gnawed and covered gradually by the horrible affliction. Now, I am altogether under its influence; there is not a single fibre of my flesh which does not belong to Laurence.

A month ago I was free; I kept Laurence beside me as one keeps an object which one cannot cast into the street. At present, she has bound me to her; I watch over her, I gaze at her when she is wrapped in slumber; I do not wish her to leave me.

All this was decreed by fate, and I think I can comprehend how love for this woman entered into me, took slow possession of my entire being. Amid suffering and abandonment, one cannot live with impunity beside a woman who suffers as one does, who is abandoned as one is. Tears have their sympathy, hunger is fraternal; those who are dying together, with empty stomachs, warmly grasp each other's hands.

I have remained five weeks in this sad and cold chamber, always in Laurence's company. I saw only her in the whole world; she was for me the universe, life, affection. From morning till night, I had before my eyes the face of this woman upon which I imagined I sometimes surprised a rapid flash of friendship. As for me, I was wretched and weak; I lived wrapped in my coverlet, an exile from society, not even possessing the power to go to seek my portion of the sunlight. I no longer had the smallest hope of anything; I had limited my existence to these four dark walls, to that corner of the sky which I saw between the chimney tops; I had fastened myself up in my dungeon, I had there imprisoned my thoughts, my wishes. I know not if you can thoroughly understand this: if you are some day without a shirt, you will realize that man can create a world, vast and full of living beings, from the bed upon which he is stretched.

I was in that condition when I met a woman as I went from the window to the door, enveloped in my coverlet. Laurence, seated in her chair, saw me walking about for hours together. Each time I trudged back and forth, I passed before her and found her eyes tranquilly following me. I felt her glance fasten itself upon me, and I was solaced in my weariness. I cannot tell what intense and strange consolation I derived from knowing myself regarded by a living creature, by a woman. It is from the period of these glances that my love must date. I perceived for the first time that I was not alone; I felt a profound satisfaction in discovering a human creature near me.

This creature was, without doubt, at first only a friend. I finally sat down beside her, talked, and wept without concealing my tears. Laurence, whom my sad situation and extreme poverty must have filled with pity, answered me, wiped away my tears. She also was weary of thus dying by inches; the silence and cold had at last begun to be tiresome to her. Her words seemed to me more refined, her gestures more caressing than usual; she had almost become a woman again.

At this point, brothers, I was suddenly invaded by love. My sphere of life was growing narrower each day. The earth was fleeing from me; Paris, France, yourselves, my thoughts and my acquaintances, all were no more. Laurence represented in my eyes God and mankind, humanity and the Divinity; the chamber in which she was had acquired a horizon out of all proportion. I felt myself beyond the world, almost in the embrace of death; I no longer thought that I might one day descend into the street, the noise of which mounted to my ears, and I had so little comprehension that I was alive that the thought had come to me to live without eating. It seemed to me that Laurence and I were in another part of the celestial system, lost, separated from the living, transported to some unknown corner beyond time and space. We could not have been more alone in the midst of the infinite.

One evening, as twilight came on, filling the chamber with a transparent gloom, I was walking slowly about, still going from the door to the window. In the growing obscurity, I saw Laurence's pale face, standing out from amid her dishevelled black hair; her sombre eyes had a vague brightness, and she looked at me thus, steadily, beautiful in her sufferings. I stopped in my weary walk and contemplated her. I knew not what had taken place within me; my flesh was shaken, my heart was open and I trembled like a leaf in every limb. All of a quiver, I ran to Laurence and clasped her in my arms. I loved her.