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Deliria

I

Foolish Virgin

The Infernal Husband

 

Let us hear a hellmate's confession:

"O divine Husband, my Lord, refuse not the confession of the saddest of thy servants. I am lost. I am drunken. I am impure. What a life!

"Forgive, divine Lord, forgive! Ah! forgive! How much of tears! And how much more of tears still later, I hope.

"Still later, I shall know the divine Husband! I was born submitted to Him—the other can beat me now!

"At present, I am at the bottom of the world, o my friends!... no, not my friends... never deliria nor torments the like... is it foolish!

"Ah, I suffer, I shout. I suffer truly. All nonetheless is permitted me, laden with the contempt of the most contemptible hearts.

"In short, let us confide this, though it be repeated twenty times more—as dreary, as insignificant!

"I am slave to the infernal Husband, the one who was the undoing of the foolish virgins. He is really that demon. He is not a specter, not a phantom. But I who have lost wisdom, who am damned and dead to the world—they will not kill me! How describe him to you! I cannot even speak anymore. I am in mourning, I weep, I'm afraid. A little coolness, Lord, if you will, if you but will!

"I am a widow... I was a widow... oh yes, I was quite serious once, and I was not born to become a skeleton!... he was nearly a child... his mysterious delicacies had seduced me. I forgot all my human duty to follow him. What a life! The true life is absent. We are not in the world. I go where he goes, needs must. And often he flares up at me, me, poor soul. The Demon!—he is a demon, you know, he is not a man.

"He says, 'I do not love women: love is to be reinvented, one knows. They cannot want more than a secure position. The position gained, heart and beauty are put aside; all that's left is cold disdain, the aliment of marriage today. Or else I see women, with the signs of happiness, whom I myself could have made good comrades, devoured out of hand by brutes sensitive as logs... '

"I hear him making infamy a glory, cruelty a charm. 'I am of a far-off race: my forefathers were Scandinavian; they pierced their sides, drank their blood—I shall get me gashes all over my body, I shall tattoo myself, I would become hideous as a Mongol: you shall see, I shall howl in the streets. I would become quite mad with rage. Do not ever show me jewels, I should crawl and writhe on the carpet. My wealth, I would have it stained with blood all over. Never shall I labor... ' Several nights, his demon taking hold of me, we rolling, I fought with him!—nights, often, drunk, he stood himself in the streets or in houses, to mortally frighten me—'They will really cut my neck; it will be disgusting.' Oh! those days when he wanted to walk with an air of crime!

"Sometimes he speaks, in a kind of softer patois, of death that makes repentance, of the unfortunate who exist certainly, of painful labors, of departures that rend hearts. In the joints where we would get drunk, he wept while considering those who surrounded us, cattle of misery. He lifted up drunkards in the dark streets. He had a bad mother' s pity for little children—he went away with the kindness of a little girl at catechism—he feigned to be enlightened about everything, commerce, art, medicine—I followed him, needs must!

"I saw all the scenery with which, in his mind, he surrounded himself: vestments, cloths, furnishings; I loaned him arms, another face. I saw everything that touched him, as he would have created it for himself. When it seemed to me he had an apathetic spirit, I followed him myself in actions strange and complicated, far, good or bad: I was sure of never entering into his world. Beside his dear body asleep, how many hours of night I watched, seeking why he wanted so much to escape from reality. Never man had the like wish. I recognized—without fearing for him—that he could be a serious danger for society—he has it may be secrets to change life? No, he is only seeking them, I answered. In short his charity is bewitched, and I am its prisoner. No other soul would have enough strength—strength of despair!—to put up with it, to be protected and loved by him. Moreover, I never conceived him with another soul: one sees one's Angel, never the Angel of another—I think. I was in his soul as in a palace emptied so as not to see a person as little noble as you: that's all. Alas! I really depended on him. But what did he want with my existence dull and craven? He made me no better, if he didn't kill me! Sadly spited, I said to him sometimes, 'I understand you.' He shrugged his shoulders.

"So, my chagrin renewed without let, and finding myself more astray in my eyes—as in all the eyes that would have fixed me, if I had not been condemned forever to the oblivion of all!—I had more and more hunger for his goodness. With his kisses and his friendly hugs, it was a very heaven, a dark heaven, where I entered, and where I wanted to be left, poor, deaf, mute, blind. Already I had the habit of it. I saw us as two good children, free to walk in the Paradise of sadness. We got on. Quite moved, we labored together. But, after a penetrating caress, he said, 'How droll it will seem to you, when I am no longer there, what you have been through. When you no longer have my arms under your neck, nor my heart to rest yourself on, nor this mouth on your eyes. Because it needs must be that I go away, very far, one day. Then needs must I be a help to others: it is my duty. Although it were scarce tempting... dear soul... ' All at once I foresaw myself, him gone, a prey to vertigo, precipitated into the most frightful darkness: death. I made him promise that he would never leave me. He made it twenty times, that lover's promise. It was as frivolous as me telling him, 'I understand you.'

"Ah! I have never been jealous of him. He will never leave me, I think. To become what? He hasn't one acquaintance; he will never labor. He wants to live sleepwalking. On their own, would his goodness and charity give him rights in the real world? At moments, I forget the pity into which I have fallen: he will make me strong, we shall travel, go hunting in deserts, sleep on the pavement in unknown cities, without cares, without troubles. Or I shall awaken, and laws and customs will have changed—thanks to his magic power; or the world, while staying the same, will leave me to my desires, joys, nonchalances. Oh! the life of adventures that exists in children's books, to recompense me, I've suffered so much, will you give me that? He cannot. I do not know his ideal. He has told me of having regrets, hopes: that must not concern me. Does he talk to God? It may be I must address myself to God. I am in the lowest depths of the abyss, and I can no longer pray.

"If he explained to me his sadnesses, would I understand them more than his railleries? He attacks me, he spends hours making me ashamed of all that might have touched me in the world, and gets indignant if I weep.

—"'You see that elegant young man, entering into the beautiful and calm house: his name is Duval, Dufour, Armand, Maurice, what do I know? A woman devoted herself to loving that nasty idiot: she is dead, certainly a saint in heaven, at present. You will make me die as he made die that woman. It's our lot, we charitable hearts... ' Alas! There were days when all active men seemed to him playthings of grotesque deliria; he laughed frightfully, a long time.—Then, he resumed his manners of a young mother, an elder sister. If he was less wild, we would be saved! But his sweetness too is mortal. I am submitted to him.—Ah! I am mad!

"One day it may be he will vanish miraculously; but needs must I know, if he must remount to a heaven, see a little the assumption of my little friend!"

Droll ménage!