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IRAT! Ah, at last it is you! For a week I have been looking for you, have been writing to you, have been calling you, have been waiting for you. . . . Lirat, my dear Lirat, save me!"

"What? My God! What's wrong?"

"I want to kill myself."

"Kill yourself! Well, that's an old story. Come, there is no danger."

"I want to kill myself! I want to kill myself! . . ."

Lirat looked at me, blinked his eyes and paced up and down the study with long strides.

"My poor Mintie! "he said," if you were a statesman, a stockbroker or. . . . Well, I don't know. . . say a grocer, an art critic, or a journalist, I would say to you: 'You are unhappy and you have had enough of life, my boy! Go ahead, kill yourself!' And with these words I would leave you. But here you have that rare opportunity of being an artist, you possess that divine gift of seeing, understanding, feeling things which others can't see, can't understand and can't feel! There are harmonies in nature which exist only for you and which others will never hear. . . you have all the real joys of life, the only joys, the noble, grand and pure ones, the joys which make you forget men and which render you almost Godlike. And because some woman has deceived you, you want to renounce all that? She has deceived you; it is evident that she has deceived you. . . . Well, what else did you expect her to do? And what concern is it of yours, even if she has? . . ."

"Please don't jeer at me. You don't know anything,