Claude's Confession

by Émile Zola

Yesterday, when night came on, Marie's chamber was filled with gloom and silence. A candle, half hidden behind a vase on the mantelpiece, lighted a corner of the ceiling; the walls and the floor were in darkness; the bed was white amid the transparent shadows. Marie, paler, more broken, had closed her eyes. I knew that she could not last through the night. Pâquerette was asleep in her arm-chair, her hands crossed in her lap, smiling in a dream at some imaginary gluttony; her chin resting on her corsage, she was snoring softly, and the sound of her breath mingled with the weakened rattle in Marie's throat. I felt myself suffocating between this dying young girl and this old woman gorged with food. I hastened to the window. I opened it. The weather was clear.

I leaned my elbows upon the sill, and gazed at the square patch of yellow light on the wall opposite. The stains came and went with rapidity, fading away to re-appear of greater dimensions than before. Never had the shadows been so nimble, so ironical; they seemed to be indulging with delight in a jeering dance, in an inexplicable confusion of shapes, wishing to entirely overthrow my reason. It was an indescribable pell-mell, a mass of heads, necks and shoulders, which rolled upon itself as if beaten and flattened by the strokes of a flail. Then, suddenly, at the very instant when I was smiling bitterly, no longer seeking to understand, supreme quietness settled down upon the sombre and agile shadows; the stains gave a final leap, two profiles were thrown upon the wall, enormous, full of energy, standing out with sharpness and vigor. It seemed as if, weary of tormenting me, the shadows had at last decided to reveal themselves; they were there, black, powerful, full of superb truth and insolence. I recognized Laurence and Jacques, out of all proportion, disdainful. The two profiles approached each other slowly and united with a kiss.

I had not ceased to smile. I felt in myself a sort of tearing sensation, followed by a sudden feeling of satisfaction. My heart, with an enormous pulsation, had driven out all the love which was stifling it, and that love had gone out through my veins, giving me a final burn. I felt that sensation of anguish which the patient experiences beneath the hands of the surgeon: I suffered in order that I might cease to suffer.

At last, the shadows had spoken, they had given me a certainty. I had the truth written there, before me, upon the wall; I knew that which I had sought to guess for so many long days; I stared fixedly at those two black heads, which were kissing in the square patch of yellow light.

I was astonished at suffering so little. I had thought I should die on learning the truth, and I felt only an extreme lassitude, a benumbing of all my being. For a long while, I remained leaning upon my elbows, staring at the two shadows which were agitating themselves in a curious fashion, and I thought of the terrible episode which was finished by the kisses of two dark stains upon an illuminated wall. The conversation which I had had with Jacques then returned forcibly to my memory; in the gulf which had opened within me I heard, repeated one by one, gravely and slowly, the words of the practical man, and those words, which I imagined I was listening to for the first time, astonished me strangely, uttered in the presence of the kisses which the shadow of Jacques was giving to the shadow of Laurence. Who was deceived in all this? Was Pâquerette right, or was I staring at one of those inexplicable caprices of the mind, which urge people to lie to themselves? Could it be possible that Jacques was devoting himself to save me, going as far as deceptive caresses? Singular devotedness, which could strike me in my flesh, in my heart, and cure me of an evil by an evil more terrible still!

Little by little, my thoughts grew troubled, I no longer possessed the calmness of the first moment.

I could not comprehend those kisses, and, at last, I began to fear that what I had seen was only a miserable trick.

The struggle between doubt and certainty was, for an instant, re-established within me, sharper, more biting, than ever. I could not imagine that Jacques loved Laurence; I believed more in him than I believed in Pâquerette. Then, I said to myself that kisses have their intoxication, and that he would learn to love this woman, if he did not love her already, by applying his lips to her lips in that fashion.

Hence I suffered anew. My jealousy was reawakened, my anguish again took me by the throat.

I should have retired from that window, I should not have abandoned myself to the sight of those two shadows. What I suffered in a few minutes cannot be told; it seemed to me that they had torn out my heart and that I could not weep.