Octave Mirbeau Archive
Written: 1886.
Source: Text from RevoltLib.com.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
When I regained my senses, the killing of Spy appeared to me a monstrous crime. I was as horrified as if I had killed a child. Of all the cowardly acts committed I thought that was the most cowardly and loathsome! 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! I had killed him while hidden behind a tree, concealed by the shadow, like a coward! He was a Prussian? What difference does it make! He, too, was a human being, a man like myself, better than myself. Upon his life were depending the feeble lives of women and children; a portion of suffering humanity was praying for him, waiting for him; perhaps in that virile youth, in that robust body that was his, he had the germs of those superior beings for whom humanity had been living in hope? And with one shot from an idiotic, trembling gun I had destroyed all that. And now I killed a dog! ... and killed it when it was coming toward me, when it was trying with its little paws to climb on my lap! Verily, I was an assassin! That small cadaver haunted me, I always saw that head hideously crushed, the blood squirting all over the white clothes of the bedroom, and the bed indelibly stained with blood.
What was also tormenting was the thought that Juliette would never forgive me the loss of Spy. She would be horrified at the mere sight of me. I wrote her letters of repentance, assured her that from now on I was going to be satisfied with what little attention she might give me, that I would never again complain, that I was not going to reproach her for her behavior; my letters were so humble, so self-degrading, so vilely submissive that a person other than Juliette would feel disgusted on reading them. I sent them with a messenger whose return I would anxiously await on the corner of the Rue de Balzac.
“No answer!”
“Are you sure you did not give it to the wrong person? Did you deliver it to the party on the first floor?”
“Yes, Monsieur. The maid even said to me: ‘No answer!’”
I went to her house. The door was opened only to the extent allowed by the chain lock which Juliette, fearing me, had ordered put on, since the evening of that terrible scene; and through the half-opened space I could see the mocking and cynical face of Celestine.
“Madame is not in!”
“Celestine, my good Celestine, let me in, please!”
“Madame is not in!”
“Celestine! My dear little Celestine. Let me go in and wait for her. I’ll give you a lot of money.”
“Madame is not in!”
“Celestine, I beg of you! Go and tell Madame that I am here, that I am all right now ... that I am very sick ... that I am going to die! And you shall have a hundred francs, Celestine ... two hundred francs!”
Celestine looked at me slyly, with a mocking air, happy to see me suffer, happy above all to see a man reduced to her own level, begging servilely to her.
“For just one minute, Celestine. I’ll just look at her and go away!”
“No, no, Monsieur! She’ll scold me!”
The ringing of a bell was heard. I heard the noise of it quicken.
“You see, Monsieur, she is calling me!”
“Well, now! Celestine, tell her that if she does not come to my house by six o’clock, if she does not write to me by six o’clock ... tell her that I am going to kill myself! Six o’clock, Celestine! Don’t forget now ... tell her that I am going to kill myself!”
“All right, Monsieur!”
The door was shut behind me with the clang of a chained lock.
It occurred to me to see Gabrielle Bernier, to tell her my troubles, to ask her advice, and use her offices for a reconciliation with Juliette. Gabrielle was finishing breakfast with a friend of hers, a short, skinny woman of dark complexion, with a pointed chin like a mouse which when speaking seemed always to be nibbling at something. In a morning robe of white silk, soiled and rumpled, her hair kept from falling by a comb stuck across it on top of her head, her elbows resting on the table, Gabrielle was smoking a cigarette and sipping chartreuse from a glass.
“Why, Jean! And so you have come back?”
She showed me into her dressing room which was very untidy. At the very first words which I spoke of Juliette, she exclaimed:
“Why ... don’t you know? We have not been on speaking terms for two months since the time she beat me out of a consul, my dear, an American Consul, who paid me five thousand a month! Yes, she beat me out of it, that skinflint did! And how about you? You have made her come down a peg lower, I hope.”
“Ah! I!” I answered, “I am very unhappy! And so a consul is her lover now!”
Gabrielle relit her extinguished cigarette and shrugged her shoulders.
“Her lover! Do you think women like that can keep a lover! She could not keep the Lord himself, my dear! Ah, men don’t stick to her very long, I tell you. They come one day and then the next they pitch camp somewhere else. Well, thanks very much! It’s all right to fleece them but you must do it with your gloves on, don’t you think? And you are still in love with her, poor boy.”
“Still—why I am more so than ever! I have done everything to cure myself of this shameful infatuation which makes me the lowest of men, which kills me, but I can’t. Well now, she is leading a loathsome life, isn’t she?”
“Ah! Well ... that’s true,” Gabrielle exclaimed, blowing a cloud of smoke in the air. “You know that I myself don’t play the prude. I am enjoying myself just like everybody else ... but honestly ... I can swear.... I’d feel ashamed to do what she does!”
With head turned, she was emitting coils of smoke which rose tremblingly toward the ceiling. And to emphasize what she had just said:
“That’s the truth I am telling you,” she repeated.
Although I suffered cruelly, although every word of Gabrielle cut my heart as with a knife, I came up to her and coaxingly:
“Come, my little Gabrielle,” I begged her, “tell me all about her!”
“Tell you! ... tell you! Wait now! You know the two Borgsheim brothers ... those two dirty Germans! Well, Juliette, was with both of them at the same time. I saw that myself, you know! At the same time, mind you, my dear! One night she said to one of them: ‘Ah well! It is you that I love!’ And she led him away. The next day she said to the other: ‘No, it is positively you!’ And she led him away. And you should have seen them! Two wretched Prussians who haggled over the bill! And a lot of other things. But I don’t want to tell you anything because I see I hurt you.”
“No!” I exclaimed, “no, Gabrielle, go on, because ... you understand. After all the disgust ... the disgust....”
I was choking. I burst into sobs.
Gabrielle was trying to console me.
“Come! Come now.... Poor Jean! Don’t cry! She does not deserve all this grief! Such a nice boy as you are! I can’t see how that is possible! I always used to tell her: ‘You don’t understand him, my dear, you never did understand him, a man like that is a jewel!’ Ah! I know some women who would be mighty glad to have a man like you ... and who would love you very much!”
She sat down on my lap and wanted to dry the tears from my eyes. Her voice became soft and her eyes luminous:
“Have a little courage. Cut loose from her! Get another one, one who is kind and gentle, one who would understand you. Can’t you see?”
And suddenly, she threw her arms around me and fastened her mouth upon my own. Her bare breast which rolled out from under the lace of her peignoir was pressing against my chest. This kiss, this exposed portion of her body horrified me. I freed myself from her embrace, I rudely pushed Gabrielle away, she straightened up again somewhat abashed, fixed her dress and said to me:
“Yes, I understand! I have had the same feeling. But, you know, dear. Whenever you want to ... come to see me.”
I left. My legs were shaking, around my head I felt rings of lead; a cold sweat covered my face and rolled in titillating drops down my back. In order to walk I had to hold on to the house walls, as I was on the verge of fainting. I walked into a café and avidly gulped down a few drafts of rum. I could not say that I suffered much. It was a sort of stupor that rendered my members inactive, a kind of physical and mental prostration in which from time to time the thought of Juliette brought with it the sensation of a sharp, lancinating odor. And in my disordered mind Juliette was losing her identity; it was no longer a woman who had an individual existence that I saw, it was prostitution itself with its immense, outstretched body covering the entire world; it was lust personified, eternally defiled, toward which panting multitudes were rushing across the shadow of woeful nights, pierced by torches carried by monstrous idols.... I remained there a long time, my elbows on the table, my head buried in my hands, with gaze fixed between two mirrors upon a panel on which flowers were painted.
At last I left the café and walked and walked ahead, without knowing where I was going. After a long course and without the least intention of getting there, I found myself in the Avenue Bois-de-Boulogne, near the Arc de Triomphe. The sun was beginning to set. Above the hills of Saint Cloud which took on a violet tinge, the sky was a glorious purple, and little pink clouds were wandering upon the pallid blue expanse. The woods stood out as a solid mass, grown darker, a fine dust reddened by the reflection of a setting sun rose from the avenue black with carriages. And the dense mass of carriages, congested into interminable lines, were passing without end, carrying human birds of prey to nocturnal carnages. Reclining on their cushions, indolent and disdainful, with stupid countenances and flabby flesh, exhaling a putrid odor, they were all there, so nearly alike that I recognized Juliette in each one of them. The line of vehicles appeared to me more lugubrious than ever. As I looked at these horses, this diversity of colors, this crimson sun which made the glass panes of the carriages shine like breastplates, all this intense intermingling of colors—red, yellow, blue—all these plumes that swayed in the wind, I had the impression of looking at some enemy regiments, regiments of an army of conquest ready to fall upon vanquished foes, drunk foes, drunk with a desire for pillage. And quite seriously I was indignant over the fact that I did not hear the roar of cannons, did not hear the mitrailleuses spitting death and sweeping the avenue with fire. A laborer who was returning from work stopped at the end of the sidewalk. With tools on his shoulder and crooked back, he was watching the street. Not only did he have no hatred in his eyes but there was a sort of ecstasy in them. Anger seized me. I wanted to come up to him, grab him by the collar and cry out:
“What are you doing here, you fool? Why do you look at these women so? These women who are an insult to your torn coat, to your arms trembling with fatigue, to your whole wretched body emaciated by daily hardships! In the days of revolution you thought you could avenge yourself upon society which kept you down by killing soldiers and priests, humble and suffering human beings like yourself? And you never thought of erecting scaffolds for these infamous creatures, for these ferocious beasts who steal from you your bread, your sun. Look! Society which is so cruel to you, which tries to make ever heavier the chains that hold you riveted to eternal misery, that society offers them protection and riches; the drops of your blood it transforms into gold with which to cover the flabby bosoms of these despicable creatures. It is in order that they may live in palaces that you are spending your strength, that you are dying from hunger or that they break your head on the barricades. Look! When you beg for bread on the streets the police beat you with clubs, you poor wretch! But see how they make way for their coachmen and horses! Look! What a juicy grape-gathering they have! Ah! these vintage tubs of blood! And how on earth can the pure wheat grow tall and nourishing in the soil where these creatures rot!”
Suddenly I saw Juliette. I saw her for a second, in profile. She wore a pink hat, looked fresh, was smiling; she seemed happy. Answering greetings with a slow motion of her head, Juliette did not see me.... She passed on.
She is going to my house! She has come back to her senses. She is going to my house!
I was sure of it. An empty carriage passed by. I went in. Juliette had disappeared.
“If I could only get there at the same time she does. For I know she is going to my house! Hurry up, driver, hurry up!”
There is no carriage in front of the door of the furnished house. Juliette is already gone. I rushed down to the caretaker.
“Was there someone here a minute ago asking about me? Was it a lady? Mme. Juliette Roux?”
“Why no, Monsieur Mintié.”
“Well, is there a letter for me?”
“Nothing, Monsieur Mintié.”
I was thinking:
“She’ll be here in a minute!”
I waited. No one came! I continued waiting. Nobody came! Time passed. And still no one came!
“The contemptible creature! And she was still smiling! And she looked gay! And she knew that I was going to kill myself at six o’clock!”
I ran to the Rue de Balzac. Celestine assured me that Madame had just gone out.
“Listen, Celestine, you are a nice girl. I like you very much. Do you know where she is? Go and find her and tell her that I want to see her.”
“But I don’t know where Madame is.”
“Yes, you do, Celestine. I implore you. Please go! I suffer so!”
“Upon my word of honor! Monsieur, I don’t know where she is.”
I insisted:
“Perhaps she is at her lover’s? At the restaurant. Oh, tell me where she is!...”
“But I don’t know!”
I was getting impatient.
“Celestine, I have been trying to be nice to you. Don’t make me lose my temper ... because....”
Celestine crossed her arms, shook her head and in the drawling voice of a blackguard:
“Because what? Oh, I am getting tired of you, you miserable wretch, you! And if you don’t betake yourself from here in a hurry, I am going to call the police, do you hear?”
And pushing me rudely toward the door she added:
“Yes, I mean it! These sluts here are worse than dogs!”
I had sense enough not to start a quarrel with Celestine and, burning with shame, I went down the stairway.
It was midnight when I returned to the Rue de Balzac. I had gone through several restaurants, my eyes seeking Juliette in the mirrors, through curtain openings. I had gone into a few theaters. At the Hippodrome where she used to go on subscription days I had made a search of the stalls. This large place, with its dazzling lights, above all, this orchestra which played a slow and languid air—all this had unstrung my nerves and made me cry! I had approached groups of men, thinking that they might be talking about Juliette and that I might perhaps learn something. And every time I saw a man dressed in evening clothes, I had said to myself:
“Perhaps that’s her lover!”
What was I doing here? It seemed it was my fate to run after her everywhere, always, to live on the sidewalk, at the door of evil places and wait for Juliette! Exhausted with fatigue, a buzzing sensation in my head, unable to find a trace of Juliette, I had found myself on the street again. And I was waiting! For what? Really, I did not know. I was waiting for everything and nothing at the same time. I was there either to bring myself as a voluntary offering once more or to commit some crime. I was hoping that Juliette would come home alone. Then I thought I would go up to her and move her to pity with my words. I was also afraid I might see her in the company of a man. Then I would perhaps kill her. But I was not premeditating anything. I had simply come here, that’s all! To surprise her all the better, I hid myself in the shadow of the door of the house next to her own.
From there I could observe everything without being seen, if it were necessary not to show myself. I did not have to wait very long. A hackney coach coming from Faubourg Saint Honoré, passed into the Rue de Balzac, crossed the street diagonally to the side where I was standing and, grazing the sidewalk, stopped in front of Juliette’s house! I held my breath. My whole body trembled, shaken by convulsions. Juliette came out first. I recognized her at once. She ran across the sidewalk and I heard her pull the handle of the door bell. Then a man came out; it seemed to me that I knew the man also. He came to the lamp post, searched in his pocketbook and awkwardly took out a few silver pieces which he examined by the light with upraised arm. And his shadow upon the ground assumed an angular and monstrous form! I wanted to rush out of my place of hiding. Something heavy held me nailed to the ground. I wanted to shout. The cry was throttled in my throat. At the same time a chill rose from my heart to my brains. I had a feeling as though life were slowly leaving my body. I made a superhuman effort and with tottering steps I went toward the man. The door was opened and Juliette disappeared through it, saying:
“Well, are you coming?”
The man was still searching in his pocketbook.
It was Lirat! Had the houses, the very sky crashed upon my head my astonishment would have been no greater! Lirat going home with Juliette. That could not be! I had lost my senses! I came still closer.
“Lirat!” I cried out, “Lirat!...”
He had paid the coachman and looked at me, terrified! Motionless, with gaping mouth, with outspread legs he was looking at me, without saying a word!
“Lirat! Is that you? It is not possible! It is not you, is it? You look like Lirat but you are not Lirat!”
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! If I did not come to see you it was because I feared to incur your anger! Come, speak to me, Lirat. Answer me!”
Lirat was silent. Juliette was calling him in the hallway:
“Well, are you coming?”
I seized Lirat’s hands:
“Look here Lirat ... she is mocking you. Don’t you understand it? One day she said to me: ‘I shall revenge myself on Lirat for his contempt, for his arrogant harshness! And that will be a farce!’ She is having that revenge now. You are going into her house, aren’t you ... and tomorrow, tonight, this very minute, perhaps, she will chase you out in disgrace! Yes, that is what she is after, I can swear! Ah! Now I understand it all! She has pursued you! Foolish as she is, infinitely inferior to you as she is, she has known how to turn your head. She has a genius for evil, and you are chaste in body and mind! She has poured poison into your veins. But you are strong! You can’t do this after all that has taken place between us ... or else you are a depraved man, a dirty pig, you whom I admire! You are a dirty pig! Come now!”
Lirat suddenly wriggled out of my hold, and, pushing me away with his two clenched fists:
“Well, yes!” he shouted, “I am a dirty pig! Leave me alone!”
A dull noise was heard which resounded in the air like a thunderbolt. It was the door shut after Lirat. The houses, the sky, the lights of the street were in a whirl. And I no longer saw anything. I stretched out my arms in front of me and fell on the sidewalk. Then in the midst of peaceful cornfields I saw a road, a white road upon which a man, seemingly tired, was walking. The man never stopped looking at the beautiful corn which ripened in the sun, and at the broad meadows where flocks of gamboling sheep grazed, their snouts buried in the grass. Apple-trees stretched out to him their branches weighted down with the purple fruit, and the springs purled at the bottom of their moss-covered recesses in the ground. He seated himself upon the bank of a river covered at this spot with little fragrant flowers, and listened rapturously to the music of nature.... From everywhere voices which rose up from the earth, voices which came down from heaven, soft voices were murmuring: “Come to me all ye who suffer, all ye who have sinned. We are the comforters who will restore to wretched people their repose of life and their peace of conscience. Come to us all ye who wish to live!” And the man with arms uplifted to heaven prayed: “Yes, I wish to live! What must I do in order not to suffer? What must I do in order not to sin?” The trees shook their crowns, the corn field moved its sea of stubble, a buzzing arose from every grass blade, the flowers swayed their little corollas on top of their stems, and from all this a unique voice was heard: “Love us!” said the voice. The man resumed his walk, birds were fluttering all around him.
The next day I bought a suit of working clothes.
“And so Monsieur is going away!” asked the errand boy of the premises to whom I had just given my old clothes.
“Yes, my friend!”
“And where is Monsieur going?”
“I don’t know.”
On the street, men appeared to me like mad ghosts, old skeletons out of joint, whose bones, badly strung together, were falling to the pavement with a strange noise. I saw the necks turning on top of broken spinal columns, hanging upon disjointed clavicles, arms sundered from the trunks, the trunks themselves losing their shape. And all these scraps of human bodies, stripped of their flesh by death, were rushing upon one another, forever spurred on by a homicidal fever, forever driven by pleasure, and they were fighting over foul carrion.