**' CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY .<■ ~ GIFT OF V. H. Patten Date Due DE£d^-i961KN. MAY^^ft2-&g jj P-HHtfm^l ' tJfe*^ fenSTl'M p. PRINTED IN cSr NO. Z923S Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027293699 Cornell University Library PQ 2603.A665E5 1918 Inferno. 3 1924 027 293 699 THE INFERNO THE INFERNO BY HENRI BARBUSSE AUTHOR OP "UNDER FIRE" TRANSLATED FROM THE 100th FRENCH EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION Bt EDWARD J. O'BRIEN BONI AND LIVERIGHT NEWYORK 1918 Cop^night, ins Bt BONI fc UTEBIGHT, Ihc. Pint Printing August, 1918 Second Printing. . . .August, 1918 Third Printing Augaal, 1918 THE INFERNO INTRODUCTION In introducing M. Barbusse's most impor- tant book to a public abeady familiar with "Under Fire," it seems well to point out the relation of the author's philosophy to his own time, and the kinship of his art to that of cer- tain other contemporary French and English novelists. "L'Enfer" has been more widely read and discussed in France than any other reaUstic study since the days of Zola. , The French sales of the volume, in 1917 alone, exceeded a hun- dred thousand copies, a popularity all the more remarkable from the fact that its appeal is based as much on its philosophical substance as on the story which it tells. Although M. Barbusse is one of the most distinguished contemporary French writers of short stories, he has found in the novel form the most fitting literary medium for the expres- sion of his philosophy, and it is to realism 10 INTRODUCTION rather than romanticism that he turns for the exposition of his special imaginative point of view. And yet this statement seems to need some qualification. In his introduction to "Pointed Roofs," by Dorothy Richardson, Mr. J. D. Beresford points out that a new objec- tive literary method is becoming general in which the writer's strict detachment from his objective subject matter is united to a ten- dency, impersonal, to be sure, to immerse him- self in the life surrounding his characters. Miss May Sinclair points out that writers are be- ginning to take the complete plunge for the first time, and instances as examples, not only the novels of Dorothy Richardson, but those of James Joyce. Now it is perfectly true that Miss Richard- son and Mr. Joyce have introduced this method into English fiction, and that Mr. Frank Swinnerton has carried the method a step further in another direction, but before these writers there was a precedent in France for this method, of which perhaps the two chief exemplars were Jules Romains and Henri Barbusse. Although the two writers have lit- INTRODUCTION 11 tie else in common, both are intensely con- scious of the tremendous, if imponderable, im- pact of elemental and universal forces upon personality, of the profound modifications which natural and social environment uncon- sciously impress upon the individual life, and of the continual interaction of forces by which the course of life is changed more f imdamen- taUy than by less imperceptible influences. Both M. Romains and M. Barbusse perceive, as the fundamental factor influencing human life, the contraction and expansion of physi- cal and spiritual relationship, the inevitable ebb and flow perceived by the poet who pointed out that we cannot touch a flower without troubling of a star. M. Romains has fovmd his literary medium in what he call unanimism. While M. Bar- busse would not claim to belong to the same school, and in fact would appear on the siffface to be at the opposite pole of life in his philoso- phy, we shall find that his detachment, found- ed, though it is, upon solitude, takes essentially the same account of outside forces as the phi- losophy of M. Romains. 12 INTRODUCTION He perceives that each man is an island of illimitahle forces apart from his fellows, pas- sionately eager to live his own life to the last degree of self-fulfilment, but continually thwarted by nature and by other men and women, imtil death interposes and sets the seal of oblivion upon all that he has dreamed and sought. And he has set himself the task of disen- gaging, as far as possible, the purpose and hope of human life, of endeavouring to discover what promise exists for the future and how this promise can be related to the present, of mark- ing the relationship between eternity and time, and discovering, through the tragedies of birth, love, marriage, illness and death, the ul- timate possibility of human development and fulfilment. "The Inferno" is therefore a tragic book. But I think that the attentive reader wiU find that the destructive criticism of M. Barbusse, in so far as it is possible for him to agree with it, only clears away the dead undergrowth which obscures the author's passionate hope and belief in the future. INTRODUCTION 13 Although the action of this story is spiritual as well as physical, and occupies less than a month of time, it is focussed intensely upon reality. Everything that the author permits us to see and understand is seen through a single point of hfe — a hole pierced in the wall between two rooms of a grey Paris boarding house. The time is most often twilight, with its romantic penumbra, darkening into the obscur- ity of night by imperceptible degrees. M. Barbusse has conceived the idea of mak- ing a man perceive the whole spiritual tragedy of life through a cranny in the wall, and there is a fine symbolism in this, as if he were vouch- safing us the opportunity to perceive eternal things through the tiny crack which is all that is revealed to us of infinity, so that the gates of Horn, darkened by our human blindness, scarcely swing open before they close again. The hero of this story has been dazzled by the flaming ramparts of the world, so that eternity is only revealed to him in fiery glimpses that shrivel him, and he is left in the dark void of time, clinging to a dream which already begins to fail him. 14 INTRODUCTION And the significant thing about this book is that the final revelation comes to him through the human voices of those who have suffered much, because they have loved much, after his own daring intellectual flights have failed him. So this man who has confronted the great- est realities of life, enabled to view them with the same objective detachment with which God sees them, though without the divine knowl- edge which transmutes their darkness, comes to learn that we carry all heaven and hell within ourselves, and with a relentless insight, almost Lucretian in its desperate intensity, he cries: "We are divinely alone, the heavens have fallen on our heads." And he adds : "Here they will pass again, day after day, year after year, all the prisoners of rooms will pass in their kind of eternity. In the twilight when everything fades, they wiU sit down near the light, in the room full of haloes; they will drag themselves to the window's void. Their mouths will join and they will grow tender. They will exchange a first or a last useless glance. They will open their arms, they will caress each other. They will love life and be afraid to disappear. . . . INTRODUCTION 15 "I have heard the annunciation of whatever finer things are to come. Through me has passed, without staying me in my course, the Word which does not he, and which said over again, will satisfy." Truly a great and pitUess book, but there is a cleansing wind running through it, which sweeps away life's illusions, and leaves a new hope for the future in our hearts. Edwabd J, O'Brien. Bass Rivsr, Mass., July, 10, 1918. THE INFERNO CHAPTER I The landlady, Madame Lemercier.left me alone in my room, after a short speech im- pressmg upon me all the material and moral advantages of the Lemercier boarding-house. I stopped in front of the glass, in the middle of the room in which I was going to live for a while. 1 looked round the room and then at myself. The room was grey and had a dusty smell. I saw two chairs, one of which held my valise, two narrow-backed armchairs with smeary up- holstery, a table with a piece of green felt set into the top, and an oriental carpet with an arabesque pattern that fairly leaped to the eye. This particular room I had never seen be- fore, but, oh, how familiar it all was — that bed of imitation mahogany, that frigid toilet table, -17 18 THE INFERNO that inevitable arrangement of the furniture, that emptiness within those four walls. The room was worn with use, as if an in- finite nimiber of people had occupied it. The carpet was frayed from the door to the win- dow — a path trodden by a host of feet from day to day. The mouldiag, which I could reach with my hands, was out of line and cracked, and the marble mantelpiece had lost its sharp edges. Human contact wears things out with disheartening slowness. Things tarnish, too. Little by little, the ceiling had darkened like a stormy sky. The places on the whitish woodwork and the pink wallpaper that had been touched oftenest had become smudgy — ^the edge of the door, the paint around the lock of the closet and the wall alongside the window where one pulls the cur- tain cords. A whole world of human beings had passed here like smoke, leaving nothing white but the window. And I? I am a man like every other man, just as that evening was like every other eve- ning. THE INFERNO 19 I had been travelling since morning. Hur- ry, formalities, baggage, the train, the whiff of different towns. I fell into one of the armchairs. Everything became quieter and more peaceful. My coming from the country to stay in Paris for good marked an epoch in my life. I had found a situation here in a bank. My days were to change. It was because of this change that I got away from my usual thoughts and turned to thoughts of myself. I was thirty years old. I had lost my father and mother eighteen or twenty years before, so long ago that the event was now insignifi- cant. I was unmarried. I had no children and shall have none. There are moments when this troubles me, when I reflect that with me a line will end which has lasted since the be- ginning of humanity. Was I happy ^ Yes, I had nothing to mourn or regret, I had no complicated desires. Therefore, I was happy. I remembered that since my childhood I had had spiritual illumi- nations, mystical emotions, a morbid fondness for shutting myself up face to face with my 20 THE INFERNO past. I had attributed exceptional importance to myself and had come to think that I was more than other people. But this had grad- ually become submerged in the positive noth- ingness of every day. • • • • • There I was now in that room. I leaned forward in my armchair to be near- er the glass, and I examined myself carefully. Rather short, with an air of reserve (al- though there are times when I let myself go) ; quite correctly dressed; nothing to criticise and nothing striking about my appearance. I looked close at my eyes. They are green, though, oddly enough, people usually take them for black. I believed in many things in a confused sort of way, above all, in the existence of God, if not in the dogmas of religion. However, I thought, these last had advantages for poor people and for women, who have less intellect than men. As for philosophical discussions, I thought they are absolutely useless. You cannot dem- THE INFERNO 21 onstrate or verify anything. What was truth, anyway? I had a sense of good and evil. I would not have committed an indelicacy, even if cer- tain of impunity. I would not have permitted myself the shghtest overstatement. If every one were like me, aU would he well. It was already late. I was not going to do anything. I remained seated there, at the end of the day, opposite the looking-glass. In the setting of the room that the twilight began to invade, I saw the outline of my forehead, the oval of my face, and, under my blinking eye- lids, the gaze by which I enter into myself as into a tomb. My tiredness, the gloominess (I heard rain outside), the darkness that intensified my soli- tude and made me look larger, and then some- thing else, I knew not what, made me sad. It bored me to be sad. I shook myself. What was the matter? Nothing. Only myself, I have not always been alone in life as I was that evening. Love for me had taken on the form and the being of my little Josette. 22 THE INFERNO We had met long before, in the rear of the millinery shop in which she worked at Tours. She had smiled at me with singular persis- tence, and I caught her head in my hands, kissed her on the lips — and found out suddenly that I loved her. I no longer recall the strange bliss we felt when we first embraced. It is true, there are moments when I still desire her as madly as the first time. This is so especially when she is away. When she is with me, there are moments when she repels me. We discovered each other in the holidays. The days when we shall see each other again before we die — ^we could count them — if we dared. To die I The idea of death is decidedly the most important of aU ideas. I should die some day. Had I ever thought of it? I reflected. No, I had never thought of it. I could not. You can no more look destiny in the face than you can look at the sun, and yet destiny is grey. And night came, as every night wiU come, until the last one, which will be too vast. THE INFERNO 23 But all at once I jumped up and stood on my feet, reeling, my heart throbbing like the fluttering of wings. What was it? In the street a horn resound- ed, playing a hunting song. Apparently some groom of a rich family, standing near the bar of a tavern, with cheeks puffed out, mouth squeezed tight, and an air of ferocity, astonish- ing and silencing his audience. But the thing that so stirred me was not the mere blowing of a horn in the city streets. I had been brought up in the country, and as a child I used to hear that blast far in the dis- tance, along the road to the woods and the castle. The same air, the same thing exactly. How could the two be so precisely alike? And involimtarily my hand wavered to my heart. Formerly — ^to-day — ^my life — ^my heart — myself! I thought of all this suddenly, for no reason, as if I had gone mad. My past — ^what had I ever made of myself? Nothing, and I was already on the decline. Ah, because the refrain recalled the past, it 24 THE INFERNO seemed to me as if it were all over with me, and I had not lived. And I had a longing for a sort of lost paradise. But of what avail to pray or rebel? I felt I had nothing more to expect from life. Thenceforth, I should be neither happy nor unhappy. I could not rise from the dead. I would grow old quietly, as quiet as I was that day in the room where so many people had left their traces, and yet' no one had left his own traces. This room — anywhere you turn, you find this room. It is the imiversal room. You think it is closed. No, it is open to the four winds of heaven. It is lost amid a host of sim- ilar rooms, like the light in the sky, like one day amid the host of aU other days, like my "I" amid a host of other I's. I, I! I saw nothing more now than the pallor of my face, with deep orbits, buried in the twilight, and my mouth filled with a sUence which gently but surely stifles and destroys. I raised myself on my elbow as on a clipped wing. I wished that something partaking of the infinite would happen to me. THE INFERNO 25 I had no genius, no mission to fulfil, no great heart to bestow. I had nothing and I deserved nothing. But aJl the same I desired some sort of reward. Love. I dreamed of a unique, an unheard- of idyU with a woman far from the one with whom I had hitherto lost all my time, a woman whose featm-es I did not see, but whose shadow I imagined beside my own as we walked along the road together. Something infinite, something new! A jour- ney, an extraordinary journey into which to throw myself headlong and bring variety into my life. Luxurious, bustling departures sur- rounded by solicitous inferiors, a lazy leaning back in railway trains that thunder along through wild landscapes and past cities rising up and growing as if blown by the wind. Steamers, masts, orders given in barbarous tongues, landings on golden quays, then strange, exotic faces in the sunlight, puzzlingly alike, and monuments, familiar from pictures, which, in my tourist's pride, seem to have come close to me. My brain was empty, my heart arid. I had A 26 THE INFERNO r ■ . ;« never found anything, not even a friend. I was a poor man strtoded for a day in a board- ing-house room where everybody comes and verybody goes. A^A. yet I longed for glory 1 For glory bound to me like a miraculous wound that I should feel and everybody would talk about./ 1 longed for a following of which I should be the leader, my name acclaimed un- der the heavens like a new clarion call. But I felt my grandeur slip away. My childish imagination played in vain with those boundless fancies. There was nothing more for me to expect from life. There was only I, who, stripped by the night, rose upward like a cry. I could hardly see any more in the dark. I guessed at, rather than saw, myself in the mir- ror. I had a reali^ng sense of my weakness and captivity. I held my hands out toward the window, my outstretched fingers making them look like something torn. I lifted my face up to the sky. I sank back and leaned on the bed, a huge object with a vague himian shape, like a corpse. God, I was lost 1 1 prayed to Him to have' pity on me. I thought that I THE INFERNO 27 was wise and content with my lot. I had said to myself that I was free from the instinct of theft. Alas, alas, it was not true, since I longed to take everything that was not mine. CHAPTER II The sound of the horn had ceased for some time. The street and the houses had quieted down. Silence. I passed my hand over my forehead. My fit of emotion was over. So much the better. I recovered my balance by an eflFort of will-power. I sat down at the table and took some pa- pers out of my bag that I had to look over and arrange. Something spurred me on. I wanted to earn a httle money. I could then send some to my old aunt who had brought me up. She always waited for me in the low-ceilinged room, where her sewing-machine, afternoons, whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock, and where, evenings, there was a lamp beside her which somehow seemed to look like herself. Notes — ^the notes from which I was to draw up the report that would show my abUity and definitely decide whether I would get a posi- 28 THE INFERNO 29 tion in Monsieur Berton's bank — Monsieur Berton, who could do everything for me, who had but to say a word, the god of my material life. I started to light the lamp. I scratched a match. It did not catch fire, the phosphorous end breaking oif . I threw it away and waited a moment, feeling a little tired. Then I heard a song hummed quite close to my ear. Some one seemed to be leaning on my shoul- der, singing for me, only for me, in confi- dence. Ah, an hallucination! Surely my brain was sick — ^my punishment for having thought too hard. I stood up, and my hand clutched the edge of the table. I was oppressed by a feeling of the supernatural. I sniffed the air, my eyelids blinking, alert and suspicious. The singing kept on. I could not get rid of it. My head was beginning to go round. The singing came from the room next to mine. Why was it so pure, so strangely near? Why 30 THE INFERNO did it touch me so? I looked at the wall be- tween the two rooms, and stifled a cry of sur- prise. High up, near the ceiling, above the door, always kept locked, there was a light. The song fell from that star. There was a crack in the partition at that spot, through which the light of the next room entered the night of mine. I climbed up on the bed, and my face was on a level with the crack. Rotten woodwork, two loose bricks. The plaster gave way and an opening appeared as large as my hand, but invisible from below, because of the mould- ing. I looked. I beheld. The next room pre- sented itself to my sight freely. It spread out before me, this room which was not mine. The voice that had been sing- ing had gone, and in going had left the door open, and it almost seemed as though the door were still swinging on its hinges. There was nothing in the room but a lighted candle, which trembled on the mantelpiece. At that distance the table looked like an jTHE INFERNO 31 island, the bluish and reddish pieces of furni- ture, in their va.gue outline, like the organs of a body almost alive. I looked at the wardrobe. Bright, con- fused lines going straight up, its feet in dark- ness. The ceiling, the reflection of the ceUing in the glass, and the pale window like a human face against the sky. I returned to my room — as if I had really left it — stunned at first, my thoughts in a whirl, almost forgetting who I was. I sat down on my bed, thinking things over quickly and trembling a little, oppressed by what was to come. I dominated, I possessed that room. My eyes entered it. I was in it. All who would be there would be there with me without know- ing it. I should see them, I should hear them, I should be as much in their company as though the door were open. A moment later I raised my face to the hole and looked again. The candle was out, but some one was there. It was the maid. No doubt she had come 82 THE INFERNO in to put the room in order. Then she paused. She was alone. She was quite near me. But I did not very well see the living being who was moving about, perhaps because I was daz- zled by seeing it so truly — a dark blue apron, falling down from her waist like rays of eve- ning, white wrists, hands darker than her wrists from toil, a face undecided yet striking, eyes hidden yet shining, cheeks prominent and clear, a knot on top of her head gleaming like a crown. A short time before I had seen the girl on the staircase bending over cleaning the ban- isters, her reddened face close to her large hands. I had found her repulsive because of those blackened hands of hers and the dusty chores that she stooped over. I had also seen her in a hallway walking ahead of me heavily, her hair hanging loose and her body giving out an unpleasant odor, so that you felt it was obnoxious and wrapped in dirty imiderwear. And now I looked at her again. The eve- ning gently dispelled the ugliness, wiped out the misery and the horror, changed the dust THE INFERNO 38 into shadow, like a curse turned into a blessing. All that remained of her was colour, a mist, an outline; not even that; a thrill and the beat- ing of her heart. Every trace of her had dis- appeared save her true self. That was because she was alone. An ex- traordinary thing, a dash of the divine in it, to be actually alone. She was in that perfect in- nocence, that purity which is solitude. I desecrated her solitude with my eyes, but she did not know it, and so she was not dese- crated. She went over to the window with brighten- ing eyes and swinging hands in her apron of the colour of the nocturnal sky. Her face and the upper part of her body were illuminated. She seemed to be in heaven. She sat down on the sofa, a great low red shadow in the depths of the room near the win- dow. She leaned her broom beside her. Her dust cloth fell to the floor and was lost from sight. She took a letter from her pocket and read it. In the twilight the letter was the whitest thing in the world. The double sheet trem- 34 THE INFERNO bled between her fingers, which held it care- fully, like a dove in the air. She put the trem- bling letter to her lips, and kissed it. From whom was the letter? Not from her family. A servant girl is not likely to have so much filial devotion as to kiss a letter from her parents. A lover, her betrothed, yes. Many, perhaps, knew her lover's name. I did not, but I witnessed her love as no other person had. And that simple gesture of kissing the paper, that gesture buried in a room, stripped bare by the dark, had something sublime and awesome in it. She rose and went closer to the window, the white letter folded in her grey hand. The night thickened — and it seemed to me as if I no longer knew her age, nor her name, nor the work she happened to be doing down here, nor anything about her — ^nothing at aU. She gazed at the pale immensity, .which touched her. Her eyes gleamed. You would say she was crjring, but no, her eyes only shed light. She would be an angel if reality flourished upon the earth. She sighed and walked to the door slowly. THE INFERNO 35 The door closed behind her like something falling. She had gone without doing anything but reading her letter and kissing it. I returned to my corner lonely, more ter- ribly alone than before. The simplicity of this meeting stirred me profoundly. Yet there had been no one there but a human being, a hu- man being like myself. Then there is nothing sweeter and stronger than to approach a hu- man being, whoever that hmnan being may be. This woman entered into my intimate life and took a place in my heart. How? Why? I did not know. But what importance she as- sumed! Not of herself. I did not know her, and I did not care to know her. She assmned importance by the sole value of the momentary revelation of her existence, by the example she gave, by the wake of her actual presence, by the true sound of her steps. It seemed to me as if the supernatural dream I had had a short while before had been grant- ed, and that what I called the infinite had come. What that woman, without knowing it, 36 THE INFERNO had given me by showing me her naked kiss — ^was it not the crowning beauty the reflec- tion of which covers you with glory? The dinner bell rang. This summons to everyday reality and one's usual occupations changed the course of my thoughts for the moment. I got ready to go down to dinner. I put on a gay waistcoat and a dark coat, and I stuck a pearl ia my cravat. Then I stood still and listened, hop- ing to hear a footstep or a voice. WhUe doing these conventional things, I continued to be obsessed by the great event that had happened — ^this app^ition. I went downstairs and joined the rest of my fellow-boardiers in the brown and gold din- ing-room. There was a general stir and bustle and the usual empty interest before a meal. A nimiber of people seated themselves with the good manners of polite society. Smiles, the sound of chairs being drawn up to the table, words thrown out, conversations started. Then the concert of plates and dishes began and grew steadily louder. THE INFERNO 37 My neighbours talked to those beside them. I heard their murmur, which accentuated my aloneness. I lifted my eyes. In front of me a shining row of foreheads, eyes, collars, shirt- fronts, waists, and busy hands above a table of glistening whiteness. All these things at- tracted my attention and distracted it at the same time. I did not know what these people were thinking about. I did not know who they were. They hid themselves from one another. Their shining fronts made a wall against which I dashed in vain. Bracelets, necklaces, rings. The sparkling of the jewels made me feel far away from them as do the stars. A young girl looked at me with vague blue eyes. What could I do against that kind of sapphire? They talked, but the noise left each one to himself, and deafened me, as the light blinded me. Nevertheless, at certain moments these peo- ple, because in the course of conversation they thought of things they had at heart, revealed themselves as if they were alone. I recognised 38 THE INFERNO the revelation of this truth, and felt myself turning pale on remembering that other reve- lation. Some one spoke of money, and the subject became general. The assembly was stirred by an ideal. A dream of grasping and touching shone through their eyes, just as a little adora- tion had come into the eyes of the servant when she found herself alone. They recalled military heroes triimaphantly, and some men thought, "Me, too!" and worked themselves up into a fever, showing what they j' were thinking of, in spite of their ridicijlqusly ' ' low station and the slavery of their so^aj posi- tion. One young girl seemed ditzzled, looked overwhelmed. She could not restrain a sigh of ecstasy. She blushed under the effect of an inscrutable thought. I saw the surge of blood mount to her face. I saw her heart beaming. They discussed the phenomena of occultism and the Beyond. "Who knows?" some one said. Then they discussed death. Two diners, at opposite ends of the table, a man and a woman who had not spoken to each other and seemed not to be acquainted, exchanged a THE INFERNO 39 glance that I caught. And seeing liiat glance leap from their eyes at the same time, under the shock of the idea of death, I understood that these two loved each other. • • • ' • • The meal was over. The young people went into the parlour. A lawyer was telling some people around him about, a murder case that had been decided that dfty. The nature of the subject was such that he expressed himself very cautioiisly, as though confiding a secret. A man had injured and then murdered a little girl and had kept singing at the top of his voice to prevent the cries of his little victim from being heard. One by one the people stopped talking and listened with the air of really not listening, while those not so close to the speaker felt like drawing up right next to him. About this image risen in their midst, this paroxysm so frightful to our timid in- stincts, the silence spread in a circle in their souls like a terrific noise. Then I heard the laugh of a woman, of an honest woman, a dry crackling laugh, which she thought innocent perhaps, but which 40 THE INFERNO caressed her whole being, a burst of laughter, which, made up of formless instinctive cries, was almost fleshy. She stopped and turned silent again. And the speaker, sure of his ef- fect, continued in a cahn voice to hurl upon these people the story of the monster's con- fession. A young mother, whose daughter was sit- ting beside her, half got up, but could not leave. She sat down again and bent forward to conceal her daughter. She was eager and yet ashamed to listen. Another woman was sitting motionless, with her head leaning forward, but her mouth com- pressed as if she were defending herself tragic- ally. And beneath the worldly mask of her face, I saw a fanatical martyr's smUe impress itself like handwriting. And the men I I distinctly heard one man, the man who was so cahn and simple, catch his breath. Another man, with a characterless business man's face, was making a great efi^ort to talk of this and that to a young girl sitting next to him, whUe he watched her with a look THE INFERNO 41 of which he was ashamed and which made him blink. And everybody condemned the satyr in terms of the greatest abuse. And so, for a moment, they had not lied. They had almost confessed, perhaps uncon- sciously, and even without knowing what they had confessed. They had almost been their real selves. Desire had leaped into their eyes, and the reflection passed — and I had seen what happened in the silence, sealed by their lips. It is this, it is this thought, this kind of liv- ing spectre, that I wished to study. I rose, shrugging my shoulders, and hurried out, im- pelled by eagerness to see the sincerity of men and women unveiled before my eyes, beautiful as a masterpiece in spite of its ugliness. So, back in my room again, I placed myself against the wall as if to embrace it and look down into the Room. There it was at my feet. Even when empty, it was more alive than the people one meets and associates with, the people who have the vastness of numbers to lose themselves in and be forgotten in, who have voices for lying and faces to hide themselves behind. CHAPTER III NiGBQT, absolute night. Shadows thick as velvet hung all around. Everything sank into darkness. I sat down and leaned my elbow on the round table, lighted by the lamp. I meant to work, but as a matter of fact I only listened. I had looked into the Room a short time be- fore. No one had been there, but no doubt some one was going to come. Some one was going to come, that evening perhaps, or the next day, or the day after. Some one was bound to come. Then other human beings would follow in succession. I waited, and it seemed to me as if that was all I was made for. I waited a long time, not daring to go to sleep. Then, very late, when silence had been reigning so long that it paralysed me, I made an effort. I leaned up against the wall once more and looked prayerfully. The Room was 42 THE INFERNO 43 black, all things blending' into one, full of the night, fuU of the unknown, of every possible thing. I dropped back into my own room. The next day I saw the Room in the sim- plicity of daylight. I saw the dawn spread over it. Little by little, it began to come out of its ruins and to rise. It was arranged and furnished on the same plan as my own room. Opposite me was the mantelpiece with the looking-glass above. On the right was the bed, and on the left, on the same side as the window, a sofa, chairs, arm- chairs, table, wardrobe. The rooms were iden- tical, but the history of mine was finished while the history of the other one had not yet begun. After an insipid breakfast, I returned to the spot that attracted me, the hole in the par- tition. Nothing. I climbed down again. It was close. A faint smeU from the kitchen lingered even here. I paused in the infinite vastness of my empty room. I opened my door a little bit, then all the way. In the hall the door of each room was painted brown, with numbers carved on brass 44 THE INFERNO plates. All were closed. I took a few steps, which I alone heard — ^heard echoing too loudly in that house, huge and immobile. The passage was very long and narrow. The wall was hung with imitation tapestry of dark green foliage, against which shone the copper of a gas fixture. I leaned over the banister. A servant (the one who waited at the table and was wearing a blue apron now, hardly recognisable with her hair in disorder) came skipping down from the floor above with newspapers under her arm. Madame Lemer- cier's little girl, with a careful hand on the banister, was coming upstairs, her neck thrust forward like a bird, and I compared her little footsteps to fragments of passing seconds. A lady and a gentleman passed in front of me, breaking off their conversation to keep me from catching what they were saying, as if they refused me the alms of their thoughts. These trifling events disappeared like scenes of a comedy on which the curtain falls. I passed the whole afternoon disheartened. I felt as if I were alone against them all, while THE INFERNO 45 roaming about inside this house and yet out- side of it. As I passed through the hallway, a door went shut hastily, cutting off the laugh of a woman taken by surprise. A senseless noise oozed from the walls, worse than silence. From under each door a broken ray of light crept out, worse than darkness. I went downstairs to the parlour, attracted by the sound of conversation. A group of men were talking, I no longer remember about what. They went out, and I was alone. I heard them talking in the hall. Then their voices died away. A fashionable lady came in, with a rustle of sUk and the smell of flowers and perfimae. She took up a lot of room because of her fra- grance and elegance. She carried her head held slightly forward and had a beautiful long face set off by an expression of great sweet- ness. But I could not see her well, because she did not look at me. She seated herself, picked up a book, and turned the pages, and the leaves cast upon her face a reflection of whiteness and thoughtfulness. 46 THE INFERNO I watched her bosom rising and falling, and her motionless face, and the living book that was merged with her. Her complexion was so brilliant that her mouth seemed almost dark. Her beauty saddened me. I looked at this unknown woman with sublime regret. She caressed me by her presence. A woman always caresses a man when she comes near him and they are alone. In spite of all sorts of separation, there is always an awful beginning of happiness between them. But she went out. That was the end of her. Nothing had happened,^ and now it was over. All this was too simple, too hard, too true. A gentle despair that I had never experi- enced before troubled me. Since the previous day I had changed. Human life, its living truth, I knew it as we all know it. I had been familiar with it all my life. I believed in it with a kind of fear now that it had appeared to me in a divine form. CHAPTER IV I WENT for several days without seeing any- thing. Those days were frightfully warm. At first the sky was grey and rainy. Now September was flaming to a close. Friday! Why, I had been ia that house a week already. One sultry morning I sat in my room and sank into dreamy musings and thought of a fairy tale. The edge of a forest. In the undergrowth on the dark emerald carpet, circles of sunlight. Below, a hill rising from the plain, and above the thick yellow and dark-green foliage, a bit of wall and a turret as in a tapestry. A page advanced dressed like a bird. A buzzing. It was the sound of the royal chase in the dis- tance. Unusually pleasant things were going to happen. The next afternoon was also hot and sunny. I remembered similar afternoons, years before, 47 48 THE INFERNO and the present seemed to be that past, as if the glowing heat had effaced time and had stifled all other days beneath its brooding wings. The room next to mine was almost dark. They had closed the shutters. Through the double curtains made out of some thin mate- rial I saw the window streaked with shining bars, like the grating in front of a fire. In the torrid silence of the house, in the large slumber it enclosed, bursts of laughter mounted and broke, voices died away, as they had the day before and as they always would. From out of these remoter sounds emerged the distinct sound of footsteps, coming nearer and nearer. I propped myself up against the waU and looked. The door of the Room opened, as if pushed in by the flood of light that streamed through it, and two tiny shadows appeared, engulfed in the brightness. They acted as though they were being pur- sued. They hesitated on the threshold, the doorway making a frame around those little creatures. And then they entered. The dooi closed. The Room was now alive. THE INFERNO 49 I scrutinised the newcomers. I saw them in- distinctly through the dark red and green spots dancing in front of my eyes, which had been dazzled by the flood of light. A little boy and a Uttle girl, twelve or thirteen years old. They sat down on the sofa, and looked at each other in silence. Their faces were almost alike. The boy murmured: "You see, Helene, there is no one here." And a hand pointed to the uncovered bed, and to the empty table and empty clothes-racks — ^the careful denudation of unoccupied rooms. Then the same hand began to tremble like a leaf. I heard the beating of my heart. The voices whispered: "We are alone. They did not see us." "This is about the first time we've ever been alone together." "Yet we have always known each other." A little laugh. They seemed to need solitude, the first step to a mystery toward which they were travelling together. They had fled from the others. 50 THE INFERNO They had created for themselves the forbidden solitude. But you could clearly tell that now that they had found solitude, they did not know what else to look for. • • • • • Then I heard one of them stammer and say sadly, with almost a sob: "We love each ottier dearly." Then a tender phrase rose breathlessly, groping for words, timidly, like a bird just learning to fly: "I'd like to love you more." To see them thus bent toward each other, in the warm shadow, which bathed them and veiled the childishness of their features, you would have thought them two lovers meeting. Two lovers! That was their dream, though they did not yet know what love meant. One of them had said "the first time." It was the time that they felt they were alone, although these two cousins had been living close together. No doubt it was the first time that the two had sought to leave friendship and childhood behind them. It was the first time that de- THE INFERNO 51 sire had come to surprise and trouble two hearts, which until now had slept. Suddenly they stood up, and the slender ray of sunlight, which passed over them and fell at their feet, revealed their figures, lighted up their faces and hair, so that their presence brightened the room- Were they going away? No, they sat down again. Everything fell back into shadow, into mystery, into truth. In beholding them, I felt a confused min- gling of my past and the past of the world. Where were they? Everywhere, since they existed. They were on the banks of the Nile, the Ganges, or the Cydnus, on the banks of the eternal river of the ages. They were Daphnis and Chloe, imder a myrtle bush, in the Greek sunshine, the shimmer of leaves on their faces, and their faces mirroring each other. Their vague little conversation hummed like the wings of a bee, near the freshness of fountains and the heat that consimied the meadows, while in the distance a chariot went by, laden with sheaves. 52 THE INFERNO The new world opened. The panting truth was there. It confused them. They feared the brusque intrusion of some divinity. They were happy and unhappy. They nestled as close together as they could. They brought to each other as much as they could. But they did not suspect what it was that they were bringing. They were too small, too young. They had not lived long enough. Each was ,to self a stifling secret. Like all hiunan beings, like me, like us, they wished for what they did not have. They were beggars. But they asked themselves for charity. They asked for help from their own persons. The boy, a man already, impoverished al- ready by his feminine companion, turned, draAvn towards her, and held out his awkward arms, without daring to look at her. The girl, a woman already, leaned her face on the back of the sofa, her eyes shining. Her cheeks were plump and rosy, tinted and warmed by her heart. The skin of her neck, taut and satiny, quivered. Half -blown and waiting, a little voluptuous because voluptu- THE INFERNO 53 ousness, already emanated from her, she was like a rose inhaling sunlight. And I — I could not tear my eyes from them, • ■ • • After a long silence, he murmured: "Shall we stop calling each other by our first names?" "Why?" He seemed absorbed in thought. "So as to begin over again," he said at last. "Shall we. Miss Janvier?" he asked again. She gave a visible start at the touch of this new manner of address, at the word "Miss," as if it were a kind of embrace. "Why, Mr. Lecoq," she ventured hesitat- ingly, "it is as though something had covered us, and we were removing " Now, he became bolder. "Shall we kiss each other on our mouths?" She was oppressed, and could not quite smile. "Yes," she said. They caught hold of each other's arms and shoulders and held out their lips, as if their mouths were birds. 54 THE INFERNO