The Confession of a Child of the Century | Page 6

Alfred de Musset
society was already sowing in the
hearts of women the seeds of human independence. But it is certain that
a strange thing suddenly happened: in all the salons of Paris the men
passed on one side and the women on the other; and thus, the one clad
in white like brides, and the other in black like orphans, began to take
measure of one another with the eye.
Let us not be deceived: that vestment of black which the men of our
time wear is a terrible symbol; before coming to this, the armor must
have fallen piece by piece and the embroidery flower by flower.
Human reason has overthrown all illusions; but it bears in itself sorrow,
in order that it may be consoled.

The customs of students and artists, those customs so free, so beautiful,
so full of youth, began to experience the universal change. Men in
taking leave of women whispered the word which wounds to the death:
contempt. They plunged into the dissipation of wine and courtesans.
Students and artists did the same; love was treated as were glory and
religion: it was an old illusion. The grisette, that woman so dreamy, so
romantic, so tender, and so sweet in love, abandoned herself to the
counting-house and to the shop. She was poor and no one loved her;
she needed gowns and hats and she sold herself. Oh! misery! the young
man who ought to love her, whom she loved, who used to take her to
the woods of Verrieres and Romainville, to the dances on the lawn, to
the suppers under the trees; he who used to talk with her as she sat near
the lamp in the rear of the shop on the long winter evenings; he who
shared her crust of bread moistened with the sweat of her brow, and her
love at once sublime and poor; he, that same man, after abandoning her,
finds her after a night of orgy, pale and leaden, forever lost, with
hunger on her lips and prostitution in her heart.
About this time two poets, whose genius was second only to that of
Napoleon, consecrated their lives to the work of collecting the elements
of anguish and of grief scattered over the universe. Goethe, the
patriarch of a new literature, after painting in his Weyther the passion
which leads to suicide, traced in his Faust the most sombre human
character which has ever represented evil and unhappiness. His
writings began to pass from Germany into France. From his studio,
surrounded by pictures and statues, rich, happy, and at ease, he watched
with a paternal smile his gloomy creations marching in dismal
procession across the frontiers of France. Byron replied to him in a cry
of grief which made Greece tremble, and hung Manfred over the abyss,
as if oblivion were the solution of the hideous enigma with which he
enveloped him.
Pardon, great poets! who are now but ashes and who sleep in peace!
Pardon, ye demigods, for I am only a child who suffers. But while I
write all this I can not but curse you. Why did you not sing of the
perfume of flowers, of the voices of nature, of hope and of love, of the
vine and the sun, of the azure heavens and of beauty? You must have

understood life, you must have suffered; the world was crumbling to
pieces about you; you wept on its ruins and you despaired; your
mistresses were false; your friends calumniated, your compatriots
misunderstood; your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and you
were the Colossi of grief. But tell me, noble Goethe, was there no more
consoling voice in the religious murmur of your old German forests?
You, for whom beautiful poesy was the sister of science, could not they
find in immortal nature a healing plant for the heart of their favorite?
You, who were a pantheist, and antique poet of Greece, a lover of
sacred forms, could you not put a little honey in the beautiful vases you
made; you who had only to smile and allow the bees to come to your
lips? And thou, Byron, hadst thou not near Ravenna, under the
orange-trees of Italy, under thy beautiful Venetian sky, near thy
Adriatic, hadst thou not thy well-beloved? Oh, God! I who speak to you,
who am only a feeble child, have perhaps known sorrows that you have
never suffered, and yet I believe and hope, and still bless God.
When English and German ideas had passed thus over our heads there
ensued disgust and mournful silence, followed by a terrible convulsion.
For to formulate general ideas is to change saltpetre into powder, and
the Homeric brain of the great Goethe had sucked up, as an alembic, all
the juice of
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