I am poor; I should live alone. My pride would suffer from commonplace consolations, my hand wishes to press only those of my equals. I am ignorant of the world, but I feel that Want is so cold she must freeze the hearts around her, and that, being the sister of Vice, she is timid and ashamed when she is noble. I carry my head aloft and do not mean to lower it.
Poverty and Solitude, be you then my guests. Be my guardian angels, my muses, my companions with harsh but encouraging voices. Make me strong, give me the science of living, tell me the cost of my daily bread. May your vigorous caresses, so sharp that they seem like wounds, force me towards the good and the just. I will relight my lamp during these winter nights, and I will feel you both beside me, icy and silent, bending over my table, dictating to me the hard truth. When, weary of gloom and silence, I put by my pen and curse you, your melancholy smiles will, perhaps, make me doubt my dreams. Then your serene and sad peace will render you so beautiful that I will take you for my sweethearts. Our loves shall be as serene and deep as you; the lovers of sixteen will envy the bitter pleasure of our fruitful kisses.
But, nevertheless, brothers, it would be delightful to me to feel the purple upon my shoulders, not to drape myself with it before the crowd, but to live more generously beneath the rich and superb tissue. It would be delightful to me to be king of Asia, to dream night and day upon a bed of roses in one of those fairy-like dwelling-places, harems of flowers and sultanas. The marble baths with perfumed fountains, the galleries of honeysuckles supported by silver trellises, the immense halls with ceilings sown with stars, do not these constitute the palace which the angels should build for each young man of twenty? Youth wishes at its festival all that sings, all that shines. When the first kiss is given, the fiancée should be covered with lace and jewels, and the nuptial couch, borne by four golden and marble fairies, should have a canopy of precious stones and sheets of satin.
Brothers, brothers, do not scold me, for I wish to be wise. I shall love my garret and think no more of my palaces. Oh! how fresh and passionate life would be in them!
CHAPTER III
[THE YOUNG HARVEST-GIRL]
I toil and hope. I pass the days seated at my little table, putting aside my pen for long hours to caress some ideal blonde whom the ink would soil. Then, I resume my work, decking my heroines with the rays of my dreams. I forget the snow and the empty closet. I live I know not where, perhaps in a cloud, perhaps amid the down of an abandoned nest. When I write a phrase sprucely and coquettishly draped, I imagine I see angels and hawthorns in bloom.
I have the holy gayety of toil. Ah! how foolish I was to be sad, and how deceived I was in thinking myself poor and alone! Yesterday my chamber was hideous; now it smiles upon me. I feel around me friends whom I cannot see, but who are legion and who all put out their hands to me. So great is their number that they hide from me the walls of my den.
Poor little table, when Despair shall touch me with her wing, I will always seat myself before you and bend over the white paper on which my dream fixes itself only after having given me a smile.
Alas! I must have, nevertheless, a shade of reality. I surprise myself sometimes uneasy, wishing for a joy that I cannot shape. Then, I hear something like a complaint from my heart: it tells me that it is always cold, always famished, and that a mad dream can neither warm nor satisfy it. I wish to content it. I will go out to-morrow, no longer isolating myself in myself, but gazing at the windows, telling it to make its choice from among the beautiful ladies. Then, from time to time, I will take it back beneath the chosen balcony. It will carry away from it a glance to feed on, and, for a week, will no longer feel the winter. When again it shall cry famine, a new smile shall appease it.