The reference here is to a loved adolescent girl imagined by Chateaubriand (the ‘great René’).

VI
To Each His Chimæra

Under a wide gray sky, in a great dusty plain, pathless, grassless, without so much as a thistle or a nettle, I came across some men walking, their shoulders bent.

Each carried on his back an enormous Chimæra, heavy as a sack of flour or charcoal, or a Roman foot-soldier’s pack.

But the monstrous beast was no dead weight; on the contrary, it enveloped and mauled its man with supple and powerful muscles; scratching with two enormous claws the chest of its mount. And its fabulous head surmounted the man’s, like one of those horrible helmets ancient warriors wore, hoping to increase the terror of their foes.

I questioned one of these men and asked him where they were going. He told me he didn’t know, nor did the others; but obviously they were going somewhere, since they were driven by an invincible need to go.

Curious to note: none of these travelers seemed annoyed by the fierce beast hanging at his neck and attached to his back; one must suppose he considered it a part of himself. All these faces, tired and serious, betrayed no despair; under the splenetic cupola of sky, feet sunk in the dust of a soil every bit as desolate as the sky, they trudged on, with the resigned faces of those condemned forever to hope.

And the cortege passed by me and sank into the atmosphere at the horizon, where the planet’s rounded surface renders it unavailable to human curiosity.

And for a few moments I persisted in trying to solve the mystery; but soon irresistible Indifference came over me, and I was more heavily burdened with it than they by their crushing Chimæras.

VII
The Fool and Venus

What a fine day! The vast park swoons under the burning eye of the sun, like youth under Love’s dominion.

The universal ecstasy of things no sound expresses; the waters themselves as if put to sleep. Quite other than with human celebrations: here the orgy is silent.

It would seem that light increasing steadily makes objects sparkle more and more; that flowers in their excitement burn with desire to pit their colors against the blue of the sky; and that heat, rendering their scent visible, lifts them starward like smoke.

But in this universal enjoyment, I noticed one unblessed being.

At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those made-up fools (voluntary buffoons employed in getting kings to laugh when overtaken by Remorse or Ennui, all tricked out in a loud and ridiculous costume, capped with horns and bells) crouching down against the pedestal, lifted his tear-filled eyes towards the immortal Goddess.

And his eyes said: — “I am the last and the most solitary of human beings, deprived of love and friendship, lower in that respect than the most imperfect animal. Nevertheless, I too am made so as to comprehend and appreciate immortal Beauty! Ah! Goddess! have pity on my sorrow, on my folly!”

But implacable Venus gazes yonder towards who knows what with her eyes of marble.

VIII
Dog and Flask

“ — My beautiful dog, good dog, dear bow-wow, come closer and sniff an excellent perfume, purchased at the best scent shop in town.”

And the dog, wagging his tail, which I suppose, in these poor creatures, the sign corresponding to laugh and to smile, approaches and, curious, puts his moist nose to the unstoppered flask; after which, drawing back in fright, barks at me, clearly a reproach.

“ — Ah! wretched dog, if I had offered you a bundle of excrement, you would have sniffed its scent with delight and perhaps devoured it. So you too, unworthy companion of my sad life, you are like the public, to whom one must not present the delicate perfumes which exasperate them, but carefully selected crap.”

IX
The Bad Glazier

There are natures purely contemplative, completely unsuited for action, who nevertheless, under mysterious unknown impulses, act sometimes with a rapidity of which they would suppose themselves incapable.

Those for instance who, afraid their concierge may have bad news for them, pace an hour timorously before daring to go in; those who hold letters for two weeks before opening them, or wait six months to take some step that has been immediately necessary for a year already — but sometimes abruptly feel precipitated into action by an irresistible force, like an arrow leaving the bow. Moralists and doctors, who claim to know everything, fail to explain from whence so sudden a mad energy comes to these lazy, voluptuous souls and why, incapable of the simplest and most necessary things, they find at certain moments a spurt of first class courage to execute the most absurd and even most dangerous actions.

A friend of mine, as harmless a dreamer as ever was, one day set a forest on fire, in order to see, he said, if a fire would catch as easily as generally claimed. Ten times the experiment failed; but the eleventh it was all too successful.

Another lit a cigar next to a powder keg, to see, to see if, to tempt fate, to force himself to prove his own energy, to gamble, to feel the pleasures of anxiety, for nothing, caprice, to kill time.

This sort of energy springs from ennui and reverie; and those in whom it so unexpectedly appears are in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamy of mortals.

Another, timid to the extent of lowering his eyes before anybody’s gaze, to the point of having to pull together his poor will to enter a café or go past the ticket office of a theater (where the managers seem to him invested with the majesty of Minos, of Aeacus and of Rhadamanthus) will all of a sudden fall on the neck of some geezer and embrace him enthusiastically, to the astonishment of passers-by.

Why? Because . . . because of an irresistibly sympathetic physiognomy? Maybe, but we may well suppose that he himself has no idea.

More than once I have been victim to these crises, these outbursts, that give some authority to the notion that malicious Demons slip into us and make us unwittingly accomplish their most absurd wishes.

One morning I got up on the wrong side, dejected, worn out from idleness, driven it seemed to me to perform some grand, some brilliant action. And, alas! I opened the window.

(Please note that the urge to practical jokes, in certain persons, the result neither of work nor planning, but of mere chance inspiration, belongs largely, even if only through the eagerness of desire, to that temper — hysterical according to doctors; by rather better minds than a doctor’s, satanic — which drives us irresistibly towards a host of dangerous or indecent acts.)

The first person I noticed in the street was a glazier whose cry, piercing, discordant, came up to me through the oppressive and dirty Parisian atmosphere. Impossible for me to say why this poor fellow roused in me a hatred as sudden as despotic.

“ — Hey there!” and I yelled for him to come up, meanwhile reflecting, not without amusement, that, my room being on the sixth floor and the stairs very narrow, the man would find it difficult to effect his ascent, to maneuver at certain spots the corners of his fragile merchandise.

Finally he appeared: I examined curiously all his glass and said to him: “What? you have no colored glass? pink, red, blue glass, magical glass, the glass of paradise? Shameful! you dare promenade this poor district and you don’t even have glass to suggest a better life!” And I pushed him smartly towards the staircase where he stumbled growling.

I went to the balcony, picked up a little pot of flowers, and when the man came out of the door below, I let my war machine fall straight down, onto the edge of his hooks. The shock sending him over backwards, he smashed under his back the whole petty fortune he carried, from which burst the sound of a crystal palace shattered by a bolt of lightning.

And, drunk with my folly, I shouted at him, madly, “The beauty of life! the beauty of life!”

These nervous pleasantries are not without danger, and sometimes quite costly. But what’s an eternity of damnation to one who has found in such an instant infinite satisfaction?

X
One A.M.

Finally! Alone! No longer hearing anything but the rumble of a few hackneys delayed and exhausted. For several hours we’ll have silence, if not repose. Finally! the tyranny of the human face has disappeared and from now on my sufferings will be my own.

Finally I’m allowed to relax, bathed in shadows. First, a double turn of the lock. Turning the key seems to me to increase my solitude and raise the barricade that effectively separates me from the world.

Horrible life! Horrible city! Let’s go over my day: having seen some men of letters, one of whom asked me can you go to Russia by land (apparently assuming that Russia is an island); argued at length with the director of a review, who to each of my objections replied, “We’re all gentlemen here,” as if to say that every other paper is put out by rogues; greeted a couple dozen people, three quarters of whom I didn’t know; shook hands with a like number, without the precaution of gloves; during a rain, to kill time, went to see a lady tumbler who wanted me to design a costume for Vénustre; paid court to a theatre director who, dismissing me, said, “You might do better consulting with Z — —, dullest, stupidest and most famous of my authors, the two of you might come up with something — go see him and then we’ll talk about it”; bragged (why?) about several nasty things I hadn’t done and denied in cowardly fashion some misdeeds in which I had luxuriated, flagrant braggadocio, offenses to human dignity; refused a friend an easy favor and wrote a recommendation for a perfect skunk; oof! can that be all?

Annoyed by everyone and annoyed with my self, I’d like to be redeemed and gain a little self-respect in the silence and solitude of the night. Souls of those I’ve loved, souls of those I’ve sung, strengthen me, sustain me, take from me the world’s lies and breath of corruption. And you, Lord God, accord me the grace to produce a few beautiful lines, enough to prove to myself that I am not the worst of men, that I am not beneath even those for whom I have such contempt!

XI
Wild Woman and Little Darling

“Really, my dear, you endlessly and without pity wear me out; one would suppose, to hear you sigh, that your sufferings are worse than those of the gleaners or the old beggar women who dig out crusts of bread from dance hall garbage cans.

“If at least your sighs expressed remorse, they might do you honor; but they convey merely a surfeit of well-being and despondency from sleeping too much. And then, you never cease breaking out uselessly, ‘Love me more! I have such need of love! Console me, caress me, this way, that way!’ Now hold on. I’m going to try and cure you; maybe for a few pennies at a fair, without going to any great trouble.

“Do note, please, in this iron cage — bounding, howling like the damned, shaking the bars like an orangutan exasperated by exile, imitating to perfection, sometimes the circular sulk of the tiger, at other times the stupid waddle of a polar bear — a hairy monster whose form suggests, vaguely, yours.

“This monster is one of those animals generally addressed as ‘my angel!’ that is to say, a woman. That other monster, the one yelling at the top of his voice, stick in hand, is a husband. He has imprisoned his legitimate wife like a beast, and displays her in the suburbs on days of the fair — with, it goes without saying, permission of the authorities.

“Now pay attention! see with what voracity (not necessarily simulated) she rips apart live rabbits and still clucking fowl that her keeper throws her. ‘Take it easy,’ he yells, ‘mustn’t eat up everything in one day,’ and, with that good advice, cruelly rakes back the spoil, uncurled guts caught for an instant on a tooth of this ferocious beast — I mean to say, the woman’s.

“Here we go! a good whack of the stick to calm her down! since her terrible eyes dart covetously towards the food taken away. Good God! the stick is no music hall slapstick, have you heard her flesh pop, despite the false hair? And, eyes starting from their sockets, now she howls more naturally. In her rage, she throws out sparks like beaten iron.

“Such are the conjugal relations of these two descendants of Eve and Adam, these works of your hand, O my God! This woman is, to a certainty, unhappy, though perhaps to her the titillations of glory are, when you come right down to it, not unknown. There are sorrows more irremediable, and without compensation.