Calvary: A Novel

by Octave Mirbeau

In the church of Saint-Michel, inside a small chapel, illumined by the red glimmer of a window, upon an altar ornamented with embroidery and vases full of flowers, stood a statue of the Virgin. She had a pink body, a blue cloak bespangled with silver stars, a lilac-colored robe whose folds fell modestly upon gilt sandals.... In her arms she held a child, rosy and nude with a golden halo around its head, and the eyes of the mother rested rapturously upon the child. For several months this plaster Virgin was my sole friend, and the entire time which I could steal from my lessons I used to spend before this image, contemplating its tender colors. She appeared to me so beautiful, so kind and sweet that no human creature could rival in beauty, kindness and sweetness this painted piece of statuary which spoke to me in an unknown and delightful language and from which there came to me something like the intoxicating odor of incense and myrrh. When near her I was in truth a different child; I felt how rosier my cheeks were getting, how my blood was flowing more vigorously in my veins, how my thoughts disentangled themselves more easily and quickly; it seemed to me that the black veil which hung over my mentality was gradually being lifted, revealing new lights to me.

Marie was made an accomplice in my stealthy flights to the church; she often led me to the chapel where I remained for hours conversing with the Virgin, while the old nurse fervently recited her Rosary, kneeling before the altar. She had to get me out of my state of ecstasy by force, because otherwise, absorbed as I had been in the dreams which transported me to heaven, I would never have thought of returning home. My passion for this Virgin became so strong that away from her I was miserable and wished I had never left her at all. "Monsieur Jean will surely become a priest," old Marie used to say. It was like a yearning for possession, like a violent desire to take her, to entwine her, to cover her with kisses.

I took a notion to make a sketch of her: with what love, it would be impossible for you to imagine. When the statue had taken on a semblance of crude form on the paper, it gave me joy without end. All the energy in me that I could put forward I employed in this work, which I thought admirable and superhuman. More than twenty times I started the drawing over again, incensed with the crayon for not conforming to the delicacy of the lines, incensed with the paper upon which the image would not appear as live and real as I should have liked to see it. I was rabid on this point. My will was bent upon this unique goal. At length I succeeded in giving more or less exact substance to my idea of the plaster Virgin—but how naïve an idea it was. And immediately thereafter I stopped thinking of it. An inner voice had told me that nature was more beautiful, more moving, more splendid, and I began to notice the sun which caressed the trees, which played upon the pentiles of the roof, covered the grass with gold, illumined the rivers; and I began to listen to all the palpitations of life, whose puffed up creatures scourge the earth like a body of flesh.

The years rolled by, wearisome and void. I remained gloomy, wild, always shut up within myself, fond of running about in the fields, penetrating into the very heart of the forest. It seemed to me that at least there, lulled by the grand voices of things, I was less alone and I felt more alive. Without being endowed with that terrible gift which certain natures have of analyzing themselves, questioning themselves, searching without end for the reason of their actions, I often asked myself who I was and what I wanted. Alas! I was nobody and did not want anything.

My childhood had been spent in darkness, my adolescence was passed in a void; not having been a child I could no more be a young man. I lived in a sort of fog. A thousand thoughts were agitating me, but they were so confused that I could not seize upon their form; none of them detached itself clearly from this depth of opaque mist. I had some aspirations; some exalted notions, but it would have been impossible for me to formulate them, to explain their cause or reason. It would have been impossible for me to say into which world of reality or dream they transplanted me; I had fits of infinite tenderness, in which my whole being would lose itself, but for whom or for what this feeling was intended, I did not know. Sometimes, all of a sudden, I would abandon myself to tears, but the reason for these tears? In truth, I knew not. What was certain was that nothing was to my liking, that I did not see any purpose in living, that I felt myself incapable of any effort.

Children usually say: "I'll be a general, priest, physician, innkeeper." I never said anything of the kind, never; never did I tear myself loose from the present; never did I venture a glimpse into the future. Man appeared to me like a tree which spread out its foliage and stretched out its limbs into the stormy skies, without knowing which flower would bloom at its foot, which birds would sing at its top, or which thunderbolt would fell it to the ground. And notwithstanding that, the feeling of moral solitude in which I found myself oppressed and frightened me. I could not open my heart to my father, to my teacher or to anybody else. I had no friend, not a living soul who could understand, guide or love me. My father and preceptor were disheartened by my waywardness, and in the country I passed for a feebleminded maniac. In spite of everything, however, I was permitted to take my college entrance examinations, and though neither my father nor myself had any idea as to what I should take up, I went to Paris to study law. "Law will get you anywhere," my father used to say.

Paris amazed me. It struck me like a place of tempestuous uproar and raving madness. Individuals and throngs were passing by, strange, incoherent, hurrying to work which I imagined terrible and monstrous. Knocked down by horses, jostled by men, deafened by the roar of the city always in motion like some colossal and hellish factory, blinded by the glare of lights to which I was not accustomed, I roamed about the city in the strange dream of a demented one. I was very much surprised to find trees there. How could they grow there, in that soil of pavements, how could they shoot upwards in the forest of stone, amidst the rumbling noise of men, their branches lashed by evil winds?

It took me a long time to get used to this life which seemed to me the reverse of nature; and from the depths of this boiling hell my thoughts would often wander back to the peaceful fields way yonder which brought to my nostrils the delicious odor of dug up and fertile soil; back to the green retreats of the woods, where I heard only the light rustling of the leaves, and from time to time in the resonant depths, the dull blows of the ax and the almost human groans of the old oak trees. Nevertheless, curiosity often drove me out of my small room which I occupied on Rue Oudinot, and I sauntered along the streets, the boulevards, the river banks impelled by a feverish desire for walking, my fingers twitching from nervousness, my brains squashed, as it were, by the gigantic and intense activity of Paris, my senses in some way thrown out of balance by all these colors, odors, sounds, by the perversion and strangeness of the contact so new to me. The more I mingled with the crowds, the more intoxicated I became with this uproar, the more I saw multitudes of human lives pass by, brushing one another, indifferent to one another, without apparent attachment, and saw others surge forward, disappear and emerge again and so on forever—the more I felt the overwhelming sense of inexorable loneliness.

At Saint-Michel, although I was lonely, I at least knew some human beings and objects. Everywhere I had points of reference by which my spirit was guided; the back of a peasant bent over his glebe, the ruins of a building at the turn of the road, a ditch, a dog, a clay pit, a charming face—everything there was familiar to me, if not dear. At Paris everything was strange and unknown to me. In this frightful haste with which all seemed to be moving about, in the profound selfishness, in this giddy obliviousness to one another into which they were all precipitated, how could one retain even for a single moment the attention of these people, these phantoms; I don't speak of the attention of tenderness or pity, but of that of simple notice!... One day I saw a man who killed another: he was admired and his name was soon on everybody's lips; the next morning I saw a woman who lifted her skirt going through obscene motions: the crowd followed her.

Being awkward, ignorant of the ways of the world, very timid, I found it hard to make friends. I never even set foot in the homes where I was recommended, for fear of appearing ridiculous. I had been invited for dinner to the home of a cousin of my mother's who was rich and kept a large retinue. The sight of the mansion, the footmen in the vestibule, the lights, the carpets, the heavy perfume of smothered flowers—all this frightened me and I fled, knocking down on the stairway a woman in a red cloak who got up and started to laugh at my bewildered look.