Page:Calvary mirbeau.djvu/205

Rh me how to read nature, to understand her passionate tongue, to feel the emotions latent in things. You proved to me the existence of immortal beauty. You said to me: 'Love, why it is in the earthenware pitcher, it is in the verminous rags which I paint. To take a feeling, a joy, a moment of suffering, of palpitation, a vision, a shudder anything, no matter how fugitive an experience of life it may be and recreate it, fix it in colors, in words or sounds, means to love! Love is a man's yearning to create!'

"And I dreamed of becoming a great artist! Ah! my dreams, my delights in being able to perceive things, my doubts, my sacred agonies, do you remember them? Look what I have done with all that! I wanted to love and I went to a woman who kills love. I started with wings, drunk with the air, with the azure, with light! And now I am nothing but a dirty hog, sunk in its filth, with greedy snout and sides shaking with impure rutting. You can see for yourself, Lirat, that I am lost, lost, lost! . . and that I must kill myself."

Then Lirat approached and put both hands on my shoulders:

"You say you are lost! Let us see now; when one is of your stock, can one say that a man's life is lost? You say you must kill yourself? Does a man who has typhoid fever say: 'I must kill myself?' He says: 'I must cure myself!' You have typhoid fever, my poor child. . . cure yourself. Lost! Why, there is not a crime, do you hear me, there is not a crime, no matter how monstrous and vile, that can not be redeemed by forgiveness. I don't mean God's forgiveness or man's forgiveness, but one's own forgiveness, which is much more difficult and more worth while to obtain. Lost! I was listening to you, my dear Mintie, and do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking that you