Octave Mirbeau

“ The grandmother had not lied. M. Georges was a charming, an adorable child. His beardless face had the loveliness of that of a beautiful woman; womanly also were his indolent movements, and his long, white, supple hands, through which could be seen the network of his veins. But what ardent eyes! Pupils consumed by a dull fire, beneath eyelids ringed with blue, and seemingly burned by the flaming gaze! What an intense focus of thought, of passion, of sensibility, of intelligence, of inner life! And to what an extent already had the red flowers of death invaded his cheeks! ”

“ Clara!” I implored. “Let's go away, I beg you!” “Oh, how pale you are! And why! Isn't it a lot of fun?” “Clara, dear Clara!” I insisted, “I can't possibly stand this odor any longer.” “But it doesn't smell bad, my love. It smells of death, that's all.” She did not seem to be affected. No grimace of disgust wrinkled her white skin, fresh as a cherry blossom. From the veiled ardor of her eyes, from the fluttering of her nostrils, she seemed to be experiencing thrills of passion. She inhaled the
stench with delight, like a perfume. ”

“ Near her, near this dress, these plumes, these flowers, these jewels, fury would again seize me:
"Come right up with me or I'll crack your head against these steps!"
And when in the room I would throw myself at her feet.
"Ah, my little Juliette, I am wrong, I know I am wrong. But I suffer so much! Have pity on me! If you only knew in what a hell I am living! If you could only tear my breast open and see what is going on in my heart! Juliette! Oh, I can't, I can't go on living like this any more! Even a beast would have pity on me. Yes, a wretched beast would have pity on me!" ”

“ I said to myself that if I left her, Juliette would sink to even lower depths; that my love for her had in some manner been her last vestige of decency which I should finally succeed in restoring by saving her from the mire in which she wallowed. Truly I had been repaid by the luxury of pity and self sacrifice. But I was lying! I simply can't leave her! I can't because I love her, because the more depraved she is the more I love her. Because I want her, do you hear, Lirat? And if you only knew what it means to me, this love, what frenzies, what shame, what tortures? ”

“ This idea that I was no longer to be in the service of others caused me some regret. Formerly I thought that I should welcome the news of my liberty with great joy. Well, no! Through being a domestic, one gets it into his blood. Suppose I should suddenly miss the spectacle of bourgeois luxury? I foresaw my own little interior, severe and cold, like a workman's interior, my mediocre life, deprived of all these pretty things, of all these pretty stuffs so soft to the touch, of all these pretty vices which it was my pleasure to serve, to dress, to adorn, to plunge into, as into a perfumed bath. ”

“ Does she exist! Why Clara! Clara is life, the actual presence of life and all of life! “Clara! Clara! Clara!” She does not reply, she does not budge, she does not turn around. A thicker blue and silver mist rises from the lawns and the pond and envelops the bushes, shrouding the gallows. And it seems to me that an odor of blood, an odor of the corpse rises with it—an incense that invisible censers, swung by invisible hands, offer to the deathless glory of death and to the everlasting glory of Clara! On the other bank of the pool, behind me, the gecko begins to sound the hours. ”

“ But, far from being a palliation of her ugliness, this hair only aggravated it, making it more striking, fulgurating, irreparable.
This is not all. Every movement that she made was clumsy. She could not take a step without running against something; everything she took into her hands she was sure to let fall; her arms hit against the furniture, and swept off everything that was lying on it. When walking, she stepped on your toes and dug her elbows into your breast; then she excused herself with a harsh and sullen voice, a voice that breathed into your face a tainted, corpse-like odor. ”

“ To kill Juliette! That would have been a crime, of course, but perhaps there could be found, if not an excuse, at least a reason for that crime in the revolt of my anguish. But to kill Spy! A dog ... a poor, inoffensive creature! Why? For no other reason than that I was a brute, that I had in me the savage and irresistible instinct of a murderer! During the war I had killed a man who was kindly, young and strong, and I had killed him just at the moment when, fascinated, with beating heart, he was rapturously watching the rising sun! ”

“ Yet, in spite of myself, I am beginning to glide, to "walk in the air," as Joseph says. Often in these dark passage-ways, alongside these cold walls, I seem to myself like a spectre, like a ghost. And I am stifling in it all. And I stay.
My sole diversion is to go on Sunday, after mass, to call on Mme. Gouin, the grocer. Disgust holds me back, but ennui, stronger than disgust, takes me there. There at least we are ourselves again,—all of us together. We gossip, we laugh, we tell stories as we sip our little black-currant cocktails. There we find a little of the illusion of life. ”

“ It is the uncertainty of your life, it is the cruel anguish of everything I feel, of everything I suspect about you that gnaws at my heart, devours me, sucks my brains! When you are not here, I don't know where you are! And still I am always with you wherever you are! Ah! if you only wished! To know that you are near me, loving and tranquil, far from everything that besmirches, from everything that torments. Why, I could then have the strength of a God in me! Money! Money! Why, I'll make it for you by the shovelful, by the cartful! Ah! Juliette if you only wished. ”

“ It was somewhat like an abyss in
the air, a hanging void which seemed to rise from earth to sky, and whose bottom, filled with silent shadows, could not be seen. At that moment we understood what the two men were bending over—those men whose emaciated torsos and loins girdled with brown wool had appeared to us under the dome of the bell the moment we entered that part of the garden. They were bending over a corpse and unwrapping the ropes and leather thongs with which it had been firmly trussed. The corpse, the color of ochre clay, was entirely naked, and lay with its face to the ground. ”

“ And this charm, yes, this charm acts more and more on my nerves, conquers my passive and submissive flesh. It is something which I cannot define exactly, something that takes me wholly, by my mind and by my sex, revealing in me instincts of which I was unaware, instincts that slept within me without my knowledge, and that no love, no thrill of voluptuousness had before awakened. And I tremble from head to foot when I remember the words of Joseph, saying to me:
"You are like me, Célestine. Oh! not in features, of course. But our two souls are alike our two souls resemble each other." ”

“ Where look for the voice that soothes! Where can he find compassion which dries the eyes that weep? Oh! I know these chaste dawns, these gay noon hours, these pensive evenings and starry nights! . . . These endless distances where the soul expands, where sorrows dissolve. . . Ah! I know them! . . . Beyond this horizon line, beyond this sea, are there no countries like the rest? Are there no people, no trees, no noises?
'There is no rest, no silence for me! . . . To die! . . But who can assure me that the thought of Juliette will not come to mingle with the worms to eat me up? ”

“ Juliette would come to see me from time to time, nobody would know that I existed, and in my obscurity I could enjoy my heavenly as well as abominable bliss.... Lirat had spoken to me of honor, of duty, and I believed him!... He had said to me: "Nature will console you." And I believed him! Lirat had lied to me. Nature has no soul. Entirely given over to her eternal labor of destruction, she whispers to me nothing but thoughts of death and crime. Never has she bent over my burning forehead to cool it or stooped over my panting breast to calm it. ”

“ An extraordinary thing,—love has given her no radiance, no grace. She has not that halo of light with which voluptuousness surrounds the ugliest faces. She has remained the same,—heavy, flabby, lumpy.
I left her with a somewhat heavy heart. Now I laugh no more; I will never laugh at Marianne again, and the pity that I feel for her turns into a real and almost painful emotion.
But I feel that my emotion especially concerns myself. On returning to my room, I am seized with a sort of shame and great discouragement. One should never reflect upon love. How sad love is at bottom! ”

“ Nothing remains of the horror of the garden; only its beauty remains, trembles and heightens as the night falls more and more deliciously about us. I feel recovered. It seems my fever is gone. My limbs become lighter, stronger, and more elastic. As I walk along, my fatigue vanishes, and I feel something like a violent need of love rising in me. I have caught up to Clara and I walk beside her... quite near her... excited by her. But Clara's face is no longer sinful, as when she was chewing the thalictrum blossom and passionately peppering her
lips with its bitter pollen. ”

“ Only the windows of the brothel houses were aglare, like the eyes of some huge beasts crouching in the depth of night.
Without knowing exactly the state of my financial affairs, I felt that ruin was ahead of me. I had paid out considerable sums of money, debts were accumulating and, far from decreasing, Juliette's whims became even more numerous and more expensive: money flowed like water from her hands, like a fountain, in one continuous stream. "She evidently thinks me richer than I am," I thought to myself, in an effort to deceive myself. ”

“ Lirat was silent. . . .
"Come, Lirat! You are not going to do that. . . or I shall say that you have sent me away to Ploch in order to steal Juliette from me! You here, with her! Why that's preposterous! Lirat! Remember what you told me about her. . . think of the beautiful things which you had planted in my soul. This despicable woman! Why she is good only for one like me who am lost. But you! You are an honorable man, you are a great artist! Is it to revenge yourself on me that you are doing this? A man like you does not revenge himself in such a manner! He does not besmirch himself! ”

“ Worse still! It meant the extravagant nightmare that my head was in Ceylon, my feet in China, separated by abysses of ocean, and that I would continue to live in these two stumps which could never be reunited! That the very next day I would no longer possess those swooning eyes, those devouring lips, the nightly renewed miracle of that body with its divine contours and savage embraces; and, after long spasms as powerful as sin and as deep as death, that naive stammering, those little laughs, those little tears, those languid little songs of a child or a bird—was it possible! ”