"More than you think. I know that you have been rich and that you are poor, that you had a youth filled with all the pleasures of wealth and that you were ruined and cast out of your world, that you have struggled and not weakened. I know what your struggle has been, for I underwent it myself, every day, for thirty years of my life, a hand-to-hand struggle, and twenty times I was on the point of giving in. You have held out. As for me, I was used to it. I have known abject poverty from the cradle. You had a thin skin, and you were pampered and made much of. You did not yield. You have never accepted any shameful compromise. You never tried to escape the struggle by any feminine means, seduction or the honest expedient of a marriage for money."
"Do you imagine it has been offered to me so many times?"
"That is because they knew very well, even the meanest of them, that you are not a person to be bought by contract."
"Inalienable, yes."
"I know that after having loved and had a child you refused to be the wife of your child's father. I do not need to know the reasons of your heart. But I do know that in the face of a cowardly society, you dared to demand, not the right to enjoy, but the right to suffer, the right to have a son and bring him up, in your poverty, alone. It was nothing to have demanded this right, but you have exercised it, all by yourself, for thirteen years. And knowing, through my own experience, what these thirteen years mean in suffering and daily effort, I see you before me, intact, straight, proud, without a trace of wear and tear. You have escaped two defeats, that of failure and that of bitterness . . . I myself have not escaped the mark of the latter. . . . I am a connoisseur of the battle of life. I know what the quality of a character like yours is worth. That serious smile, those clear eyes, the calm line of the lids, the loyalty of those hands, that tranquil harmony—and, under it all, the burning fire, the joyous thrill of the struggle, even if one is beaten. (It doesn't seem to matter! One goes on fighting . . .) Do you suppose that a man like myself does not know the value of a woman like you? Or that, knowing it, he should not be ready for anything to win it? . . . Rivière, I want you. I need you. Listen! I am not trying to deceive you. Although I desire your good, I do not want you for your own good, but for my own. I am not offering you any advantages, only more ordeals. . . . You don't know about my life. . . . Sit down here beside me, my beauty of the eyebrows!"
Seated on the floor, she raised her eyes to his. He held her two hands in a firm clasp while he talked to her. "I have a name, I have success, I have money and everything it gives. But you don't know how I got them or how I keep them. I took them by force and I hold them by force. I compelled my fate, if there is a fate. I succeeded in spite of things and in spite of men. And I have never tried, or desired, to win forgiveness for my success by bandaging the wounded self-esteem and the interests that have been trampled upon as I passed. My dear colleagues expect that success at least will have its narcotic effect upon me. There hasn't been any such effect. They have tried in vain to flatter me; they feel that I am not and never will be one of them. I can't forget what I have seen on the other side of the fence, the innumerable rascalities and iniquities. I have had time to meditate on the social lies for which the best watchdog has always been the intellectual class, in spite of what it pretends and what people expect from it. Apart from a few knowing fellows who, where their art and thought are in question, have the reputation of respecting nothing, but who, outside their own bailiwick, tip their hats very politely to the reigning imbecility. I have had the conspicuous folly never to pay court to it. At this very moment I am planning an attack upon some of their sacred impostures, impostures that condemn thousands of beings to poverty and endless misery. I am going to make the three heads of Cerberus howl, the three hypocrisies of morality, patriotism and religion. I shall tell you all about it later. I shall be beaten, too, I know. But I shall fight on just the same, for the joy of it, for the difficulty, and because it has to be done. . . . You see why your words, the other evening, brought me a message you never foresaw. Your words are mine. The mouth ought to be mine."
Annette gave it to him. He took her forehead and her Cheeks tenderly in his strong hands. "Rivière, I need you. I never expected to find you. Now that I have you I shall hold you."
"Hold me firmly! I am afraid I may escape."
"I know how to keep you. I offer you my hard life, my enemies, my dangers."
"Yes, you know me. But none of this can be mine. It is not yours to dispose of. It belongs to your Noémi."