Desires, all the desires, pure, impure, a chaos! . . . All the hostile demons! He would have been the plaything of chance—nothing could have helped him—had it not been for a basis of moral health and decency—rather, the grandeur that is unaware of its own capabilities, that divine something, the result of the sufferings, the valor, and the long patience of the best of the race, which will not endure the shame of defilement, the disgrace of falling, which has an anxious instinct for what is vile and cowardly, which follows its trail inward, into all the sinuosities of one's thought, which does not always escape stains, but never fails to condemn them, to condemn oneself, to brand oneself and punish oneself.
Pride! All praise to pride! Sanctus . . . In childish natures like this pride is health. It is the affirmation of the divine in the mire, the principle of salvation. In a solitude without love who would struggle without pride? Why struggle, if one does not believe one has supreme blessings to defend, and that for them one must conquer or die! . . .
Marc was determined to conquer. Conquer what he understood and what he did not understand. Conquer what he was ignorant of and what was repugnant to him. Conquer the enigma of the world and his own baseness. Ah, here as elsewhere, he was incessantly conquered. In his effort to work, to read, to concentrate, he slipped beyond his own control, he found himself out of hand. He always lacked the strength. . . . It was there, but it was hardly formed, unequal to the task and the demands of the will. He was devoured by desires and curiosities, healthy, unhealthy, that plagued him on all sides, weltering as he was in torpor, incapable of doing anything or determining anything. He wasted his time, and he was always in a hurry. Already his future filled his mind, the choice of a career; for he knew that it would be necessary for him to decide early, and he had no grounds for deciding; he floated through everything, equally interested and indifferent, attracted and disgusted. He wanted and he did not want; he was not even capable of wishing or of not wishing. The machine was not running aright. It would bound forward and suddenly stop, and he would find himself sprawling on the ground.
Then he looked around him. And this child who was suffering and devouring himself was quicker than anyone else to perceive the emptiness and the ennui of an age that had begun its journey to destruction. He had a keen sense of the abyss.
But his mother saw none of all this. She saw a sulky, overweening, rebellious, childish boy, morbidly susceptible, grandiloquent, always making trouble, who sometimes took delight in uttering obscenities, and at other moments was shocked at a mere free expression. Above all, she was irritated by his sneers. She had no suspicion of his feeling of bitterness, still less of his defiance of an evil fate. He felt cruelly the injustice of his lot; he was (or thought himself) without strength, without beauty, without talent, good for nothing; he ended by swamping himself, adding to his real defects others that he imagined; he conspired with all the outward signs that were able to humiliate him. . . . Those two little working-girls who laughed as they passed him were laughing, he thought, at him; he did not suspect that they were laughing just to arouse his interest, that they rather liked his blushing, shyly girlish air. He thought he saw in the eyes of his teachers a contemptuous pity for his mediocrity. He thought his more robust comrades despised his weakness and were showing up his cowardice; for since he was excessively nervous, he had his moments of pusillanimity; and, as he was sincere, he confessed this to himself and felt that he was dishonored. As a means of self-punishment, he secretly compelled himself to commit dangerously imprudent acts that brought the cold sweat to his brow and rehabilitated him a little—so little!—in his own eyes. It was at himself, often, that this little Nicodemus was sneering, at himself and his own weaknesses. But he was angry with the world that had made him what he was, and especially with his mother.
She did not understand his hostile air. . . . What an egoist he was! He thought only of himself.
He thought only of himself? What would have become of him if he had not thought of himself? If he had not helped himself, who would have helped him?
They remained alone, walled up, side by side. The day of confidences was past. Annette was beginning to repeat the lamentation of mothers, "How much more loving he was when he was younger!"
And he was saying to himself that mothers only love their children for their own amusement. No one loves anyone but himself.
No, everyone wants to love the other person. But when one is in danger one must think of oneself. One will think of the other afterward. How can one save the other if one hasn't saved oneself? And how can one save oneself if one lets the other hang about one's neck?