Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry

MISTRESSES' PORTRAITS

In a men's boudoir, that is, in a smoking room adjoining a fashionable brothel, four men were smoking and drinking. They were not exactly either young or old, either handsome or ugly; but, old or young, they bore that unmistakable distinction of veterans of joy, that indescribable something-or-other, that cold and scoffing sadness that so clearly says: "We have lived forcefully, and we seek what we can love and prize."

One of them drew the talk to the subject of women. It would have been more philosophical not to have spoken of them at all; but there are men of parts who, after drinking, do not disdain commonplace conversations. One listens, then, to the one that speaks as to the music of a dance.

"All men," said this one, "have passed through the age of the Cherub: that is the period when, in default of dryads, one embraces, without disgust, the trunks of oaks. It is the first degree of love. At the second degree, one begins to choose. To be able to deliberate is already decadence. Then it is that one makes a decided search for beauty. As for me, gentlemen, I take pride in having long ago reached the climactic period of the third degree, when beauty itself no longer suffices, unless it be seasoned with perfume, with finery, et cetera. I will even confess that I sometimes aspire, as to an unknown happiness, to a certain fourth degree which is marked by absolute calm. But, all through my life, except at the Cherub age, I have been more sensible than all others of the enervating folly, of the irritating mediocrity, of women. What I like above all in animals is their candor. Judge then how much I suffered at the hands of my last mistress.

"She was a prince's bastard. Beautiful, that goes without saying; otherwise, why should I have taken her? But she spoiled that great quality by an unseemly, deformed ambition. She was a woman who wanted always to play the man. 'You're not a man!' 'Of the two, it is I who am the man! 'Such were the unbearable refrains that came from her mouth when I wished to see nothing but songs take wing.

"In regard to a book, a poem, an opera, for which I let my admiration escape: 'So you think this is rather powerful?' she would say at once; 'since when are you a judge of power?' and she would argue on.

"One fine day she took to chemistry; so that between her mouth and mine I found thenceforth-a mask of glass. With all that, quite squeamish. If now and then I jostled her with too amorous a gesture, she raved like a ravished virgin."

"How did it end?" asked one of the three others. "I never knew you so patient."

"God," he replied, "found the remedy in the ill. One day I found this Minerva, craving for ideal force, alone with my servant, and in a situation which forced me to retire discreetly, so as not to make them blush. That evening, I dismissed them both, giving them the arrears of their wages."

"As for me," continued the interrupter, "I have only myself to complain of. Happiness came to dwell with me, and I did not know her. Fate once granted me the enjoyment of a woman who was indeed the sweetest, the most submissive, the most devoted of creatures, and always ready, and without enthusiasm. 'I am quite willing, since it's agreeable to you.' That was her usual response. You might give a bastinado to this wall or this couch and draw from it as many sighs as the most infuriate transports of love would draw from the breast of my mistress. After a year of life together, she confessed to me that she had never known pleasure. I lost taste in the unequal duel, and that incomparable girl got married. Later I had a fancy to see her, and she said, showing me six fine children: 'Well, my dear friend, the wife is still as much a virgin as was your mistress.' Nothing had changed. Sometimes I regret her; I should have married her."

The others burst into laughter, and a third spoke in turn:

"Gentlemen, I have known joys which you have perhaps neglected. I mean the comical in love, and a comical which does not bar admiration. I admired my last mistress, I think, more than you could have loved or hated yours. And every one admired her as much as I. When we entered a restaurant, after a few minutes every one forgot to eat in watching her. The barmaid and the waiters themselves felt the contagious ecstasy so far as to neglect their duties. In short, I lived for some time face to face with a living phenomenon. She ate, chewed, ground, devoured, swallowed up, but with the lightest and most careless air imaginable. In this way she kept me for a long time in ecstasy. She had a soft, dreamy, English and romantic way of saying: 'I am hungry.' And she repeated these words day and night, revealing the prettiest teeth in the world, which would soften and enliven you together. – I could have made my fortune exhibiting her at fairs, as a polyphagous monster. I nourished her well, but none the less she left me…"

"For a purveyor of provisions, undoubtedly?"

"Something of the sort, a kind of employee in the commissariat who, by some by-profit unknown to her, perhaps furnished the poor child with the rations of several soldiers. At least, so I imagine."

"As for me," said the fourth, "I have endured grievous, sufferings through the opposite of that with which we usually reproach the female egoist. You are quite unjustified, too happy mortals, in complaining of the imperfections of your mistresses!"

This was said in a very serious tone, by a man of pleasant and sedate appearance, of an almost clerical countenance, unhappily lighted by clear grey eyes, those eyes whose glances spoke: "I wish it!" or "It is necessary!" or indeed "I never forgive!"

"If, nervous as I know you to be, you, G – , slothful and trifling as you are, you two, K – and J – , if you had been matched with a certain woman I know, either you would have fled, or you would have died. I survived, as you see. Imagine a person incapable of making an error, from feeling or from design; imagine a provoking serenity of mind, a devotion without sham and without parade, a softness without weakness, an energy without violence. The story of my love is like an endless voyage on a surface as pure and polished as a mirror, dizzily monotonous, reflecting all my feelings and my movements with the ironic exactness of my own conscience, so that I could not allow myself an unreasonable move or emotion without immediately beholding the dumb reproach of my inseparable spectre. Love seemed to me like a protectorate. How much nonsense she stopped me from committing, which I regret not having done! How many debts I paid despite myself! She deprived me of all the benefits I could have reaped from my personal folly. With a cold and impassable rule, she barred all my caprices. To crown the horror, she demanded no gratitude when the danger was passed. How many times have I not held myself from leaping at her throat, crying: 'Be imperfect, wretch! so that I can love you without uneasiness and wrath!' For several years I wondered at her, my heart full of hate. Finally, it was not I that died of it!"

"Ah!" said the others, "then she is dead?"

"Yes. Things could not go on like that. Love had become an overwhelming nightmare to me. Victory or death, as the Politics says, such was the alternative which destiny imposed. One evening, in a wood… at the edge of a pond… after a melancholy walk in which her eyes reflected the gentleness of heaven, and my heart was thrilling with hell…"

"What!"

"What's that?"

"What do you mean?"

"It was inevitable. I had too great a sense of justice to beat, to insult, or to dismiss an irreproachable servant. But I had to reconcile that feeling to the horror which that being inspired in me; rid myself of that being without losing her respect. What would you want me to do with her, since she was perfect?"

The three others looked at him with an uncertain and somewhat stupefied gaze, as though feigning not to understand and as though tacitly avowing that they did not feel themselves capable of so rigorous an act, however sufficiently accounted for in another.

Then they ordered fresh bottles, to kill time whose life is so sturdy, and to speed life, whose movement is so slow.

SOUP AND THE CLOUDS

My well-beloved little madcap was dining with me, and through the open window of the dining-room I was contemplating the moving architecture which God formed from the vapors, the marvellous constructions of the impalpable. And I was saying to myself, in my reflection: "All these phantasmagoria are almost as beautiful as the eyes of my beautiful well-beloved, the little prodigious madcap with green eyes."

And all at once I received a violent punch in the back, and I heard a hoarse and charming voice, a voice hysterical and husky as with brandy, which said to me: "Are you going to eat your soup, s… b… of a dealer in clouds?"

THE LOSS OF A HALO

"Eh! What! You here, my dear? You, in a place of ill! You, the drinker of quintessences! you, the eater of ambrosia! Indeed, this is something surprising!" "My dear, you know my dread of horses and carriages. Just now, as I was crossing the boulevard, in great haste, and as I was hopping about in the mud, in the midst of that moving chaos where death arrives at a gallop from all sides at once, my halo, in a sudden start, slipped from my head into the mire of the macadam. I did not have the courage to pick it up. I thought it less disagreeable to lose my insignia than to have my bones broken. And then, I reflected, it's an ill wind that blows, no good. I can now go about incognito, perform base actions, and give myself over to debauchery, like ordinary mortals. And here I am, quite like you, as you see!"

"You ought at least have the halo advertised, or asked for at the police."

"Heavens, no! I am quite well off here. You alone have recognized me. Besides, dignity was boring. Then, too, I think with joy that some poor poet will pick it up, and will impudently deck himself out. To make some one happy, what joy! and especially a happy one that makes me laugh! Think of X – , or of Z – ! Oh! that would be comical!"

MLLE. BISTOURY

When I had reached the heart of the slums, under the gaslights, I felt an arm which slid softly under mine, and I heard a voice which whispered: "You are a doctor, sir?"

I looked: it was a big girl, robust, slightly rouged, her eyes wide open, her hair floating in the wind with her bonnet strings.

"No, I am not a doctor. Let me pass."

"Oh yes! you are a doctor. I can see it well. Come to my house. You will be quite satisfied, I assure you. I shall doubtless go to see you, but later, after the doctor, goodness me!… Ha! Ha!" she exclaimed, still clinging to my arm and bursting into laughter. "You are a physician jokester. I have known several of that sort. Come."

I am passionately in love with mystery, because I always hope to unravel it. So I let myself be led by my companion, or rather, by the unlooked-for enigma.

I omit description of the hovel; it can be found in several well known old French poets. Only, detail unnoticed by Regnier, two or three portraits of renowned physicians were hung upon the wall.

How I was pampered! A great fire, warm wine, cigars; and while offering me these fine things and lighting a cigar for herself the comical creature said to me: "Make yourself at home; be quite at ease. This will bring back the hospital and the happy days of your youth… Oh look! where did you win those white hairs? You were not like that, not so long ago, when you were interne at L – . I remember it was you that helped at the major operations. There was a man that loved to cut, hew, lop off! It was you that handed him the instruments, the threads and the sponges… And how proudly, the operation performed, he used to say, looking at his watch, 'Five minutes, gentlemen!' Oh! I, I go everywhere! I know these people well!"

A few moments later, in more familiar tone, harping on the same theme, she said: "You are a doctor, aren't you, darling?"

That unintelligible refrain brought me to my feet "No!" I cried, furious.

"Surgeon, then?"

"No! No! unless it be to cut off your head!"

"Wait," she continued, "you shall see."

And she drew from a closet a file of papers which was nothing else than the collection of illustrious doctors of the day, lithographed by Maurin, that was displayed for several years on the Quay Voltaire.

"Look, do you recognize this one?"

"Yes, it's X – . The name is at the bottom, besides; but I know him personally."

"I should say so! Look! Here is Z – , the one who said in his course, speaking of X – , 'this monster, bearing on his face the blackness of his soul!' all because the other did not agree with him in a certain case! How they laughed at that in the school, at the time! Do you remember?.. Look! here is K – , who denounced to the authorities the rebels he was caring for at his hospital. That was at the time of the riots. How is it possible so handsome a man can have so little heart? … This one is W – , a famous Englishman; I captured him on his visit to Paris. He looks like a girl, doesn't he?"

And as I touched a little tied-up parcel, also on the table: "Wait a while," she said, "In this one are the internes; and that package has the dressers."

And she spread out, fanlike, a mass of photographs, picturing much younger faces.

"When we see each other again, you will give me your portrait, won't you, deary?"

"But," I said to her, I also following my fixed idea, "what makes you think I am a doctor?"

"It's because you are so amiable and good to women!" "Peculiar logic," I said to myself.

"Oh! I am hardly ever mistaken; I have known quite a number. I love them so much that, even though I am not sick, I sometimes go to see them, only to see them. There are some who say coldly: 'You are not sick at all!' But there are others who understand me, because I ogle them."

"And when they do not understand?"

"Well, since I have disturbed them fruitlessly, I leave ten francs on the mantel… They are so good and so kind, these folk! I discovered a little interne at the Pieté, pretty as an angel, and so refined! and a worker, the poor boy! His comrades told me he didn't have a sou, because his parents were poor folks who couldn't send him anything. That gave me confidence. After all, I am a fairly good looking woman, although not too young. I said to him: 'Come to see me, come to see me often. With me you needn't bother: I have no need of money.' But you know that I made him understand that in a host of ways, I didn't tell it to him bluntly; I was so afraid of humiliating him, the dear child!.. Oh well! would you believe that I had a queer fancy I didn't dare to tell him?.. I should have liked him to come to see me with his instrument case and his apron, even with a little blood on it."

She said this in the most candid manner, as a feeling man would say to an actress that he loved: "I want to see you dressed in the costume you wore in this famous rôle that you created…"

I, persisting, continued: "Can you remember the time and the occasion when this so special passion was born in you?"

I made her understand with difficulty; finally I succeeded. But then she answered in a very sad tone, and even, as well as I can recall, lowering her eyes: "I don't know… I can't remember."

What oddities can be found in a great city, if one knows how to walk about and watch. Life swarms with innocent monsters. —

Lord, my God! You, the Creator, You the Master, You who have created Law and Liberty; You, the Sovereign that doth not interfere; You, the Judge that pardoneth; You who are full of motives and causes, and who perhaps have planted a taste for horror in my mind in order to convert my soul, as the recovery after a sword; Lord, have pity, have pity on madmen and mad women! O Creator, can monsters exist in the eyes of Him who alone knows why they exist, how they are made, and how they need not have been made?

LET US FLAY THE POOR

For a fortnight I was confined to my room, and I surrounded myself with the books of the day (sixteen or seventeen years ago); I mean those volumes which treat of the art of making people happy, wise and rich, in twenty-four hours. I had thus digested – swallowed, I should say – all the lucubrations of all those master-builders of the public weal, of those who advise all the poor to enslave themselves, and of those who persuade them they are all dethroned kings. There is, then, naught surprising in the fact that I was in a state of mind bordering on intoxication or stupidity.

It seemed to me merely that I felt, imprisoned in the depths of my intelligence, the obscure germ of an idea superior to all the old wives' formulæ the cyclopedia of which I had just run through. But it was only the thought of a thought, a something infinitely vague.

And I went forth with a great thirst, for the impassioned taste of poor reading engenders a proportionate need of open air and of refreshment.

As I was about to enter a tavern, a beggar held out his hat to me, with one of those unforgettable glances that would tumble down thrones, if the mental moved the material, and if a mesmerist's glance could ripen grapes.

At the same time, I heard a voice which whispered at my ear, a voice that I knew well: it was that of a good angel, or a good Demon, who is with me everywhere. Since Socrates had his good Demon, why may not I have my good Angel, and why may not I have the honor, like Socrates, of securing my brevet in folly, signed by the subtle Lélut and the well-advised Baillar get?2

There is this difference between the Demon of Socrates and my own, that his manifested itself only to warn, to forbid, to prevent, and that mine deigns to counsel, suggest, persuade. Poor Socrates had only a Demon prohibitor; mine is a great affirmator, mine is a Demon of action, or a Demon of combat.

Now, his voice whispered to me thus: "He alone is the equal of another, that proves it; and he alone is worthy of liberty, that can secure it."

Immediately I leapt upon the beggar. With one punch, I stopped an eye, which became in a moment large as a ball. I broke one of my nails shattering two of his teeth, and as I did not feel strong enough, having been born delicate and having had but little practice in boxing, to beat the old fellow to death right away, I grasped him by one hand by the collar of his coat, and with the other I throttled him, and I set to work dashing his head against a wall. I must avow that I had first inspected the surroundings in a glance, and had made sure that in that deserted suburb I should be long enough out of the reach of a policeman.

Having then, with a kick in the back, hard enough to break his shoulderblade, felled the enfeebled sexagenarian, I seized a great branch of a tree which lay along the ground, and I beat him with the determined energy of cooks trying to make a beefsteak tender.

All at once, – O miracle! O joy of the philosopher who proves the excellence of his theory! – I saw that antique carcass turn about, straighten up with an energy I should never have suspected in so strangely disordered a machine – and, with a glance of hate that seemed to me good omen, the decrepit ruffian hurled himself upon me, blackened both my eyes, broke four teeth, and with the same branch beat me stiff as a jelly. By my energetic medication, I had restored to him pride and life.

Then I made any number of signs to him to make him understand that I considered the matter closed, and, rising with the satisfaction of a philosopher of the Porch, I said to him: "Sir, you are my equal! Kindly do me the honor of sharing my purse; and remember, if you are truly philanthropic, that you must apply to all your colleagues, when they ask for alms, the theory that I have had the sorrow of trying on your back."

He swore to me that he understood my theory, and that he would obey my counsels.

GOOD DOGS

I have never, even before the young writers of my century, been ashamed of my admiration for Buffon; but to-day it is not the spirit of that painter of lofty nature that I would call to my assistance. No.

Much more willingly I call to Sterne, and I say to him: "Descend from heaven, or climb to me from the Elysian Fields, to inspire me in behalf of good dogs, of poor dogs, with a song worthy of thee, sentimental farceur, farceur incomparable. Come back astraddle that famous ass which will always accompany you in the memory of the future; and especially do not let that ass forget to carry, delicately hung between his lips, his immortal macaroons."

Away with the academic muse! I have no business with that old prude. I invoke the familiar muse, the citizen, the boon companion, to aid me to sing the good dogs, the poor dogs, the dirty dogs, those whom every one drives away, pestiferous and lousy, except the poor, whose associates they are, and the poet, who sees them with fraternal eye.

Fie upon the foppish dog, upon the coxcomb quadruped, Dane, King Charles, pugdog or lapdog, so enamoured of himself that he darts inconsiderately between the legs or on the knees of the visitor, as if he were certain of pleasing, wild as a youngster, foolish as a flirt, often surly and insolent as a servant! Fie especially upon those four-pawed serpents, idle and shivering, that are called greyhounds, and that do not harbor in their pointed muzzle enough scent to follow the track of a friend, nor in their flattened head enough intelligence to play at dominoes!

To the kennel with all these plaguy parasites!

Let them slink to the kennel stuffed and sulky! I sing the dirty dog, the poor dog, the homeless dog, the stroller dog; the dog buffoon, the dog whose instinct, like that of the poor, the gypsy and the mountebank, is marvellously sharpened by necessity, that excellent mother, that true patron of intelligence!

I sing the distressful dogs, be they those that wander, alone, in the winding gullies of the great cities or those who have said to the forsaken man, with blinking spiritual eyes: "Take me with you, and of two miseries we shall make a sort of joy!"

"Whither go the dogs?" Nestor Roquepelan once said in an immortal leaflet which he has doubtless forgotten, and which I alone, and perhaps Saint-Beuve, recall today.

Where do the dogs go, you ask, heedless men? They go about their business.

Business engagements, affairs of love. Through the fog, through the snow, through the mire, under the biting dogstar, under the streaming rain, they come, they go, they hurry, they move along under carriages, excited by fleas, by passion, by duty or by need. Like us, they have risen bright and early, and they seek their livelihood or run to their pleasure.

There are some who sleep in a ruin in the suburbs and who come every day at a stated hour, to beg alms at the door of a Palais-Royal cook; others who run in troops, for more than five leagues, to partake of the repast which has been prepared for them through the charity of certain sexagenarian maids, whose unoccupied hearts are given over to beasts, since imbecile man wants them no more; others who, like runaway negroes, frantic with love, leave their province on certain days, to come to the city and romp for an hour with a handsome bitch, a little careless in her toilet, but proud and thankful.

And they are all very precise, without notebooks, without memoranda, without portfolios.

Do you know slothful Belgium, and have you, like me, admired all those vigorous dogs hitched to the cart of the butcher, of the milkmaid, of the baker, who give evidence in their triumphant barks, of the proud pleasure they feel in rivalling the horse?

And here are two that belong to a still more civilized order! Permit me to introduce you into the room of an absent mountebank. A bed, of painted wood, without curtains, with dragging covers stained with bugs; two cane chairs, a cast-iron stove, one or two disordered musical instruments. Oh, what sad furniture! But look, I pray you, at these two intelligent personages, clad in garments at once sumptuous and frayed, hooded like troubadours' or soldiers, who are guarding, with the close watch of a sorcerer, the nameless something which simmers on the lighted stove, and from the center of which a long spoon stands forth, planted as one of those aerial masts which announce that the masonry is complete.