was comprised in this 'account rendered,' my future lay in a linen bag
with eleven hundred and twelve francs in it, human society stood
before me in the person of an auctioneer's clerk, who kept his hat on
while he spoke. Jonathan, an old servant who was much attached to me,
and whom my mother had
formerly pensioned with an annuity of four
hundred francs, spoke to me as I was leaving the house that I had so
often gaily left for a drive in my
childhood.
" 'Be very
economical, Monsieur Raphael!'
"The good fellow was crying.
"Such were the events, dear Emile, that ruled my destinies, moulded my
character, and set me, while still young, in an utterly false social
position," said Raphael after a pause. "Family ties, weak ones, it is
true, bound me to a few
wealthy" target="_blank" title="a.富有的;丰富的">
wealthy houses, but my own pride would have
kept me aloof from them if
contempt and
indifference had not shut
their doors on me in the first place. I was
related to people who were
very
influential, and who lavished their
patronage on strangers; but I
found neither relations nor patrons in them. Continually circumscribed
in my affections, they recoiled upon me. Unreserved and simple by
nature, I must have appeared frigid and sophisticated. My father's
discipline had destroyed all confidence in myself. I was shy and
awkward; I could not believe that my opinion carried any weight
whatever; I took no pleasure in myself; I thought myself ugly, and was
ashamed to meet my own eyes. In spite of the
inward voice that must be
the stay of a man with anything in him, in all his struggles, the
voice that cries, 'Courage! Go forward!' in spite of sudden
revelations of my own strength in my
solitude; in spite of the hopes
that thrilled me as I compared new works, that the public admired so
much, with the schemes that hovered in my brain,--in spite of all
this, I had a
childishmistrust of myself.
"An overweening
ambition preyed upon me; I believed that I was meant
for great things, and yet I felt myself to be nothing. I had need of
other men, and I was friendless. I found I must make my way in the
world, where I was quite alone, and
bashful, rather than afraid.
"All through the year in which, by my father's wish, I threw myself
into the whirlpool of
fashionable society, I came away with an
inexperienced heart, and fresh in mind. Like every grown child, I
sighed in secret for a love affair. I met, among young men of my own
age, a set of swaggerers who held their heads high, and talked about
trifles as they seated themselves without a tremor beside women who
inspired awe in me. They chattered
nonsense, sucked the heads of their
canes, gave themselves
affected airs, appropriated the fairest women,
and laid, or pretended that they had laid their heads on every pillow.
Pleasure,
seemingly, was at their beck and call; they looked on the
most
virtuous and prudish as an easy prey, ready to
surrender at a
word, at the slightest impudent
gesture or
insolent look. I declare,
on my soul and
conscience, that the
attainment of power, or of a great
name in
literature, seemed to me an easier
victory than a success with
some young, witty, and
gracious lady of high degree.
"So I found the
tumult of my heart, my feelings, and my creeds all at
variance with the axioms of society. I had plenty of
audacity in my
character, but none in my manner. Later, I found out that women did
not like to be implored. I have from afar adored many a one to whom I
devoted a soul proof against all tests, a heart to break,
energy that
shrank from no sacrifice and from no
torture; THEY accepted fools whom
I would not have engaged as hall porters. How often, mute and
motionless, have I not admired the lady of my dreams, swaying in the
dance; given up my life in thought to one
eternalcaress, expressed
all my hopes in a look, and laid before her, in my
rapture, a young
man's love, which should outstrip all fables. At some moments I was
ready to
barter my whole life for one single night. Well, as I could
never find a
listener for my impassioned proposals, eyes to rest my
own upon, a heart made for my heart, I lived on in all the sufferings
of impotent force that consumes itself;
lacking either opportunity or
courage or experience. I despaired, maybe, of making myself
understood, or I feared to be understood but too well; and yet the
storm within me was ready to burst at every chance
courteous look. In
spite of my
readiness to take the
semblance of interest in look or
word for a tenderer solicitude, I dared neither to speak nor to be
silent seasonably. My words grew
insignificant, and my silence stupid,
by sheer
stress of
emotion. I was too ingenuous, no doubt, for that
artificial life, led by candle-light, where every thought is expressed
in
conventional phrases, or by words that fashion dictates; and not
only so, I had not
learned how to employ speech that says nothing, and
silence that says a great deal. In short, I concealed the fires that
consumed me, and with such a soul as women wish to find, with all the
elevation of soul that they long for, and a mettle that fools plume
themselves upon, all women have been
cruellytreacherous to me.
"So in my
simplicity I admired the heroes of this set when they
bragged about their conquests, and never suspected them of lying. No
doubt it was a mistake to wish for a love that springs for a word's
sake; to expect to find in the heart of a vain,
frivolous woman,
greedy for
luxury and intoxicated with
vanity, the great sea of
passion that surged tempestuously in my own breast. Oh! to feel that
you were born to love, to make some woman's happiness, and yet to find
not one, not even a noble and
courageous Marceline, not so much as an
old Marquise! Oh! to carry a treasure in your
wallet, and not find
even some child, or
inquisitive young girl, to admire it! In my
despair I often wished to kill myself."
"Finely tragical to-night!" cried Emile.
"Let me pass
sentence on my life," Raphael answered. "If your
friendship is not strong enough to bear with my elegy, if you cannot
put up with half an hour's tedium for my sake, go to sleep! But, then,
never ask again for the reason of
suicide that hangs over me, that
comes nearer and calls to me, that I bow myself before. If you are to
judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings;
to know merely the
outward events of a man's life would only serve to
make a chronological table--a fool's notion of history."
Emile was so much struck with the bitter tones in which these words
were
spoken, that he began to pay close attention to Raphael, whom he
watched with a bewildered expression.
"Now," continued the
speaker, "all these things that
befell me appear
in a new light. The
sequence of events that I once thought so
unfortunate created the splendid powers of which, later, I became so
proud. If I may believe you, I possess the power of
readily expressing
my thoughts, and I could take a forward place in the great field of
knowledge; and is not this the result of
scientificcuriosity, of
excessive
application, and a love of
reading which possessed me from
the age of seven till my entry on life? The very
neglect in which I
was left, and the
consequent habits of self-repression and self-
concentration; did not these things teach me how to consider and
reflect? Nothing in me was squandered in
obedience to the exactions of
the world, which
humble the proudest soul and reduce it to a mere
husk; and was it not this very fact that
refined the
emotional part of
my nature till it became the perfected
instrument of a loftier purpose
than
passionate desires? I remember watching the women who mistook me
with all the
insight of contemned love.
"I can see now that my natural
sincerity must have been displeasing to
them; women, perhaps, even require a little
hypocrisy. And I, who in
the same hour's space am
alternately a man and a child,
frivolous and
thoughtful, free from bias and brimful of
superstition, and oftentimes
myself as much a woman as any of them; how should they do otherwise
than take my
simplicity for cynicism, my
innocent candor for
impudence? They found my knowledge
tiresome; my
feminine languor,
weakness. I was held to be listless and
incapable of love or of steady
purpose; a too active
imagination, that curse of poets, was no doubt
the cause. My silence was idiotic; and as I daresay I alarmed them by
my efforts to please, women one and all have condemned me. With tears
and mortification, I bowed before the decision of the world; but my
di
stress was not
barren. I determined to
revenge myself on society; I
would
dominate the
feminineintellect, and so have the
feminine soul
at my mercy; all eyes should be fixed upon me, when the servant at the
door announced my name. I had determined from my
childhood that I
would be a great man; I said with Andre Chenier, as I struck my
forehead, 'There is something
underneath that!' I felt, I believed,
the thought within me that I must express, the
system I must
establish, the knowledge I must interpret.
"Let me pour out my follies, dear Emile; to-day I am
barely twenty-six
years old, certain of dying unrecognized, and I have never been the
lover of the woman I dreamed of possessing. Have we not all of us,
more or less, believed in the
reality of a thing because we wished it?
I would never have a young man for my friend who did not place himself
in dreams upon a
pedestal, weave crowns for his head, and have
complaisant mi
stresses. I myself would often be a general, nay,
emperor; I have been a Byron, and then a nobody. After this sport on
these pinnacles of human
achievement, I became aware that all the
difficulties and steeps of life were yet to face. My exuberant self-