Down and Out in Paris and London Read Free

into the eyes. It
    was a heavy, stifling red, as though the light were shining
    through bowls of blood. At the far end stood a huge, square
    bed, with quilts red like the rest, and on it a girl was lying,
    dressed in a frock of red velvet. At the sight of me she shrank
    away and tried to hide her knees under the short dress.
    ‘I had halted by the door. ‘Come here, my chicken,’ I
    called to her.
    ‘She gave a whimper of fright. With a bound I was be-
    side the bed; she tried to elude me, but I seized her by the
    throat—like this, do you see? —tight! She struggled, she be-
    gan to cry out for mercy, but I held her fast, forcing back her
    head and staring down into her face. She was twenty years
    old, perhaps; her face was the broad, dull face of a stupid
    child, but it was coated with paint and powder, and her blue,
    stupid eyes, shining in the red light, wore that shocked, dis-
    torted look that one sees nowhere save in the eyes of these
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    women. She was some peasant girl, doubtless, whom her
    parents had sold into slavery.
    ‘Without another word I pulled her off the bed and
    threw her on to the floor. And then I fell upon her like a
    tiger! Ah, the joy, the incomparable rapture of that time!
    There, MESSIEURS ET DAMES, is what I would expound
    to you; VOILA L’AMOUR! There is the true love, there is
    the only thing in the world worth striving for; there is the
    thing beside which all your arts and ideals, all your philoso-
    phies and creeds, all your fine words and high attitudes, are
    as pale and profitless as ashes. When one has experienced
    love—the true love—what is there in the world that seems
    more than a mere ghost of joy?
    ‘More and more savagely I renewed the attack. Again
    and again the girl tried to escape; she cried out for mercy
    anew, but I laughed at her.
    ‘’Mercy!’ I said, ‘do you suppose I have come here to
    show mercy? Do you suppose I have paid a thousand francs
    for that?’ I swear to you, MESSIEURS ET DAMES, that if it
    were not for that accursed law that robs us of our liberty, I
    would have murdered her at that moment.
    ‘Ah, how she screamed, with what bitter cries of agony.
    But there was no one to hear them; down there under the
    streets of Paris we were as secure as at the heart of a pyra-
    mid. Tears streamed down the girl’s face, washing away the
    powder in long, dirty smears. Ah, that irrecoverable time!
    You, MESSIEURS ET DAMES, you who have not cultivated
    the finer sensibilities of love, for you such pleasure is almost
    beyond conception. And I too, now that my youth is gone—
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    Down and Out in Paris and London
    ah, youth!—shall never again see life so beautiful as that. It
    is finished.
    ‘Ah yes, it is gone—gone for ever. Ah, the poverty, the
    shortness, the disappointment of human joy! For in reali-
    ty—CAR EN REALITE, what is the duration of the supreme
    moment of love. It is nothing, an instant, a second perhaps.
    A second of ecstasy, and after that—dust, ashes, nothing-
    ness.
    ‘And so, just for one instant, I captured the supreme
    happiness, the highest and most refined emotion to which
    human beings can attain. And in the same moment it was
    finished, and I was left—to what? All my savagery, my pas-
    sion, were scattered like the petals of a rose. I was left cold
    and languid, full of vain regrets; in my revulsion I even felt
    a kind of pity for the weeping girl on the floor. Is it not nau-
    seous, that we should be the prey of such mean emotions?
    I did not look at the girl again; my sole thought was to get
    away. I hastened up the steps of the vault and out into the
    street. It was dark and bitterly cold, the streets were empty,
    the stones echoed under my heels with a hollow, lonely ring.
    All my money was gone, I had not even the price of a taxi
    fare. I walked back alone to my cold, solitary room.
    ‘But there, MESSIEURS ET DAMES, that is what I prom-
    ised to expound to you. That is Love. That was