"I dress myself every evening in white muslin. Alone in a sort of nook, leaning against the back of an arm-chair, I have nothing to do but smile from six o'clock until midnight. From time to time, I make a courtesy, I send a kiss into space. For this I am paid three francs a sitting.
"Opposite me, behind a little glass enclosed in the partition, I incessantly see an eye looking at me. Sometimes it is black, sometimes blue. Without this eye, I should be perfectly happy; it spoils the business for me. At times, from always finding it alone and steadily fixed there, I am filled with wild terror, I am tempted to cry out and flee!
"But one must work for one's living. I smile, I courtesy, I send my kiss. At midnight, I wash off my rouge and resume my calico dress. Bah! how many women, without being forced to do so, air their graces before a mirror!"
By this time, we had reached the wretched abode in which this girl dwelt. I left her at the door, and returned to my mansarde and my misery.
CHAPTER XXVI
[AT MARIE'S BEDSIDE]
I take a sad pleasure in being in Marie's chamber. In the morning, I go there and sit upon the edge of the dying girl's bed; I live there as much as possible, departing with regret. Everywhere else, I belong to Laurence, everywhere else, I am feverish, excited and tormented. I hasten to reach this spot of pacification, I enter it with the feeling of confidence and comfort experienced by an invalid who is going to breathe a milder atmosphere, by which he expects to be cured.
I love death. The chamber is lukewarm, damp; the light there is gray and softened, made up of shadow and white brightness; everything there floats in a final languor, in a soft and dreamy half transparency. One does not know how sweet to a bleeding heart is the silence which reigns in a chamber where a young girl is dying. This silence is a strange, peculiar silence, full of exquisite mildness, full of restrained tears. The sounds—the clink of a glass, the crackling of a piece of furniture—are subdued, drag along like half stifled complaints; the cries from without enter in murmurs of pity, of compassionate encouragement. Everything is held in check, noise as well as light; everything is filled with grief and hope. And, in the shadow, amid the silence, one hears a vague despair which comes from one knows not where, and which accompanies the broken breath of the dying girl.
I gaze at Marie. I feel myself penetrated, little by little, by that invisible breath of consoling pity which fills the chamber. My eyes rest from their tears in that pale brightness; my ears, amid the quivering silence, forget for an hour the sound of my sobs. All the gentleness, all the delicate attentions, all the faintly uttered and caressing words, intended for Marie, seem as if addressed to me; they subdue the sound of voices and footsteps; they question, they reply, affectionately; they avoid sharp and painful sensations; and, as for me, I believe, at times, that all these considerate precautions are taken that my poor being, full of suffering, may not burst asunder. I imagine that I am dying, that they are taking care of me; I seize my share of the care and consolation; I steal from Marie half of her agony and of the pity it causes; I go there, beside a dying girl, to profit by the regrets and tenderness which men accord to the last hours of a soul. I am curing my love through death.
I feel that it is the need of being pitied, of being caressed, which pushes me into this chamber. I find here the atmosphere, the pity, necessary for me. Life is too sharp for my painful flesh and my wounded heart; the bright sunlight irritates me; I am at ease only in the restorative seclusion of the tomb. If, some day, I emerge from my despair, I ought to thank God for having permitted me to live thus, seated at the foot of a bed of death, for having allowed me to share the pacification of a dying creature. I will live, because a child expired at my side.