"You understand, of course, that I cannot disappoint Edgar. And perhaps, too, he might know of a place for you.
A place gotten through Edgar,—ah! that would be astonishing."
On leaving me, he said:
"I will come to see you to-morrow.
Be wise; no more stupidities. They do you no good. And get this truth well into your head, Celestine,—that life is life!"
The next day I waited for him in vain. He did not come.
"It is life," I said to myself.
But the following day, being impatient to see him, I went to the house.
I found in the kitchen only a tall blonde girl, bold and pretty,—prettier than I.
"Eugenie is not here?" I asked.
"No, she is not here," answered the tall girl, dryly.
"And William?"
"Nor William either."
"Where is he?"
"How do I know?"
"I want to see him.
Go tell him I want to see him."
The tall girl looked at me scornfully.
"Say, am I your servant?"
I understood it all. And, being tired of struggling, I went away.
"It is life."
This phrase pursued me, obsessed me, like a music-hall refrain.
And, as I went away, I could not help thinking, not without a feeling of sorrowful melancholy, of the joy with which I had been welcomed in that house.
The same scene must have taken place. They had opened the usual bottle of champagne.
William had taken the blonde girl on his knees, and had whispered in her ear:
"You will have to be nice with Baby."
The same words, the same movements, the same caresses, while Eugenie, devouring the janitor's son with her eyes, led him into the adjoining room.
"Your little phiz, your little hands, your big eyes!"
I walked on, utterly irresolute and stupefied, repeating to myself with stupid obstinacy:
"Yes, indeed, it is life; it is life."
For more than an hour, in front of the door, I paced up and down the sidewalk, hoping that William might come in or go out.
I saw the grocer enter, a little milliner with two big band-boxes, and the delivery-man from the Louvre; I saw the plumbers come out, and I know not who or what else,—shades, shades, shades. I did not dare to go into the janitor's lodge in the next house.
The janitress undoubtedly would not have received me well. And what would she have said to me?
Then I went away for good, still pursued by the irritating refrain:
"It is life."
The streets seemed to me intolerably sad. The passers-by made upon me the impression of spectres. When I saw in the distance a hat shining on a gentleman's head, like a light-house in the night, like a gilded cupola in the sunshine, my heart leaped. But it was never William. In the lowering, pewter-colored sky, no hope was shining. I returned to my room, disgusted with everything.
Ah! yes, the men! Be they coachmen, valets, dudes, priests, or poets, they are all the same. Low-lived wretches! _____
I think that these are the last recollections that I shall call up.
I have others, however,—many others. But they all resemble each other, and it tires me to continually write the same stories, and to unroll, in a continuous and monotonous panorama, the same faces, the same souls, the same phantoms. And then I feel that I have no mind left for it, for I am becoming more and more distracted from the ashes of this past by the new preoccupations of my future.
I could have told also of my stay in the Countess Fardin's mansion.
But what is the use?
I am too weary, and also too distressed. There, amid the same social phenomena, there was one vanity that disgusts me more than any other,—literary vanity; one species of stupidity that is lower than any other,—political stupidity.
There I knew M. Paul Bourget in all his glory; it is needless to say more. Ah! there you have the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, befitting the pretentious nullity, the intellectual hollowness, the falsehood, of that sphere of society in which everything is artificial,—elegance, love, cooking, religious feeling, patriotism, art, charity, and vice itself, which, making a pretext of politeness and literature, wraps itself in mystical tinsel and covers itself with sacred masks; that sphere of society in which there is to be found but one sincere desire,—the fierce desire for money, which gives to these ridiculous mountebanks something even more odious and grim than their ridiculousness.
That is the only thing that makes of these poor phantoms living human creatures.
There I knew Monsieur Jean, he too a psychologist and a moralist, a moralist of the servants' hall, a psychologist of the ante-room, scarcely more of a parvenu in his way, or more of a ninny, than he who reigned in the salon. Monsieur Jean emptied chamber-vessels; M. Paul Bourget emptied souls.
Between the servants' hall and the salon there is not such a distance of servitude as we think.
But, since I have put Monsieur Jean's photograph in the bottom of my trunk, let his memory remain, similarly buried, in the bottom of my heart, under a thick layer of oblivion. _____
It is two o'clock in the morning. My fire is going out, my lamp is smoking, and I have no more wood or oil.
I am going to bed.
But there is too much fever in my brain; I shall not sleep. I shall dream of him who is on the way to me. I shall dream of what is to happen to-morrow. Outside, the night is calm and silent.