The Confessions Read online

  But if I had so much as supposed that Mlle Goton could lavish on anyone else the attentions I received at her hands I should have been jealous as a Turk, and as savage as a tiger. For the favours she granted me were favours to be begged for on bended knee. On greeting Mlle de Vulson I had a feeling of lively pleasure, but was undisturbed. But I had only to see Mlle Goton, and my eyes were blind to all else, my senses aswim. With Mlle de Vulson I was familiar without familiarity; but before Mlle Goton I trembled with agitation even at the height of our greatest intimacies. I think that if I had remained longer with her it would have killed me; I should have been choked by the beatings of my own heart. I was equally afraid of displeasing either; but to one I was obedient, to the other submissive. I would not have offended Mlle de Vulson for anything in the world; but if Mlle Goton had commanded me to jump into the flames I think I should have obeyed her unhesitatingly.

  Fortunately for us both, my affair, or rather my meetings, with Mlle Goton, did not last long. My connexion with Mlle de Vulson also, though far less dangerous and rather longer in duration, concluded in catastrophe. Such things should always end on a somewhat romantic note, offering opportunities for a scene. My relations with Mlle de Vulson, though less passionate than those with Mlle Goton, had been perhaps the more binding. We never parted without tears, and each time I left her I suffered a strange and overpowering sense of emptiness. I could talk and think of nothing but her. My grief, therefore, was deep and genuine; but I think that, at bottom, my violent feelings were not all for her; the amusements of which she was the centre had their share in them too. To assuage the pains of separation we carried on a correspondence pathetic enough to melt a stone, till finally I triumphed; she could stand it no longer. She came to Geneva to see me, and for a moment my head was completely turned. For the two days of her stay I was intoxicated, beside myself, and when she left I longed to throw myself in the water after her. For a while I rent the air with my cries. A week later she sent me some sweets and some gloves, which would have seemed a most charming attention if I had not heard at the same time that she had married, and that the visit she had so graciously paid me was for the purpose of buying her wedding-dress. It would be purposeless to describe my fury; I swore in my exalted rage that I would never look on the treacherous creature again. I could not think of any worse way of punishing her. But she survived. Twenty years later, when I was staying with my father and had gone rowing with him on the lake, I saw some ladies in a boat close by and asked him who they were. ‘Why,’ he exclaimed with a smile, ‘doesn’t your heart tell you? It’s your old love, Mme Cristin – Mlle de Vulson she was.’ I started at that almost forgotten name; but I told the boatman to change course. It was not worth while breaking my vow, and renewing a twenty-year-old quarrel with a woman of forty, though then I was in a very good position to take my revenge.

  1723–1728 Thus, before my future career was decided, I wasted the most precious period of my childhood in foolishness. After lengthy discussions, however, as to my natural bent, they fixed on the profession for which I was least fitted, and sent me to M. Masseron, the City Registrar, to learn – as my Uncle Bernard put it – the profitable art of pettifogging. This term vastly displeased me; my proud nature was very little flattered by the prospect of earning a pile of money in ignoble ways. The job itself seemed unbearably boring; the hard work and obedience required repelled me even more, and I never entered the office without a feeling of disgust, which grew stronger with each day. M. Masseron, for his part, was displeased with me, treated me with contempt, and constantly scolded me for my idleness and stupidity. Every day he told me afresh how my uncle had assured him that I was clever and knew a great deal, whereas really I did not know a thing. He had been promised a bright lad, he protested, and all he had got was a donkey. Finally I was ignominiously discharged from the office for my ineptitude, and M. Masseron’s clerks proclaimed that all I was good for was to handle a watchmaker’s file.

  With my vocation thus decided I was apprenticed, though not to a watchmaker but to an engraver. The Registrar’s contempt had completely humiliated me, and I obeyed without a murmur. M. Ducommun, my master, was an oafish, violent young man who managed in a very short time to quench all the fire of my childhood, and to coarsen my affection and lively nature; he reduced me in spirit as well as in fact to my true condition of apprentice. My Latin, my interest in history and antiquities, were for a long time forgotten; and I did not so much as remember that the Romans had ever existed. When I went to see my father he no longer treated me as his idol; and for the ladies I had ceased to be the gallant Jean-Jacques. I was so conscious, indeed, that M. and Mlle Lambercier would not have recognized me as their pupil, that I was ashamed to call on them and have not seen them since that day. The vilest tastes and the lowest habits took the place of my simple amusements, and soon not a memory of them was left. Despite my excellent upbringing, I must have had a strong inclination towards degeneracy; for I degenerated very rapidly, and without the least difficulty; never did a precocious Caesar so promptly become a Laridon.*

  My trade did not displease me in itself. I had a strong taste for drawing, and quite enjoyed using etching tools. Furthermore engraving for the watch trade demands very limited talents, and I had hopes of attaining perfection. I should have succeeded indeed, if brutality and unreasonable restraint on the part of my master had not disgusted me with my work. I stole the time that should have been his, to spend it in occupations of a similar nature that had for me the attractions of liberty. I was engraving medals of a sort to serve me and my fellows as the insignia of an order of chivalry, when I was caught by my master at this illegal pursuit and severely beaten. He accused me of teaching myself to forge money, for these medals of ours bore the arms of the Republic. I can freely swear that I had no idea of false money, and very little of true coin, and knew more about the making of Roman denarii than of our three sou bits.

  My master’s tyranny finally made a trade which I should have liked quite unbearable to me, and drove me to vices I should otherwise have despised, such as falsehood, idleness, and theft. Nothing has taught me better the difference between filial dependence and abject slavery than memory of the changes which this period worked in my character.

  Being shy and timid by nature, there was no fault so foreign to my character as presumption. I had enjoyed simple liberty, which hitherto had only been restricted by degrees but which now completely vanished. I had been bold at home, free at M. Lambercier’s and prudent at my uncle’s; at my master’s I was afraid, and from thenceforth I was a lost creature. I was used to living on terms of perfect equality with my elders; to knowing of no pleasures that were not within my grasp, to seeing no dish of which I did not have a share, to having no desires that I did not express; to letting every thought in my heart rise to my lips. Imagine my fate in a house where I dared not open my mouth, where I had to leave the table before the meal was half over, and the room as soon as I had no more duties to perform there. Continuously confined to my work, I saw enjoyments everywhere for other people and privations for me alone. The thought of the liberty in which the master and journeyman lived doubled the weight of my misery. When there were arguments on subjects about which I knew best I dared not open my mouth. Everything I saw about me I grew to covet in my heart, only because I was deprived of everything. There was an end to ease and gaiety and to those happy expressions that had often earned me exemption from punishment when I most richly deserved it. I cannot avoid a smile when I recall how one evening, at home, I was sent to bed without my supper for some piece of roguery, and as I passed through the kitchen with my miserable hunk of bread, saw and smelt the joint turning on the jack. My father and the others were standing in front of the fire and, as I went by, I had to say good-night to everyone. This ceremony over, I cast a sidelong glance at that joint, which looked and smelt so good that I could not help making it a bow too, and saying wretchedly, ‘Good night, joint!’ This display of naïveté so amused everyone that I
was allowed to stay up for supper after all. Perhaps a similar remark would have had the same success at my master’s, but I am sure that it would never have occurred to me or, if it had, that I would never have dared to make it.

  So it was that I learnt to covet in silence, to conceal, to dissimulate. to lie, and finally to steal – an idea that had never before come into my head and one that I have never been able entirely to rid myself of since. Unsatisfied desires always lead to that vice. That is why all lackeys are rogues and why all apprentices should be; though under quiet and equitable conditions, when everything they see is within their reach, these latter throw off the shameful propensity as they grow up. But my circumstances were not so happy, and I derived no such advantage from them.

  It is nearly always generous feelings misdirected that lead a child into taking his first steps in crime. Notwithstanding privations and continuous temptation, I had been for more than a year with my master without ever making up my mind to take anything, even anything to eat. My first theft was out of mere compliance; but it opened the door to others which had no such laudable purpose.

  There was a journeyman at my master’s by the name of Verrat, whose mother lived in the neighbourhood and had a garden a considerable distance from her house where she grew very fine asparagus. Now it occurred to M. Verrat, who had not much money, to steal some of her asparagus when it was ready and sell it, thus realizing enough money for a good luncheon or two. As he was not very nimble and did not want to take the risk himself, he picked on me for the exploit. After some preliminary flattery, which seemed real enough to me since I did not know its purpose, he proposed the matter as if it were an idea that had just come into his head. I put up considerable opposition, but he persisted. I have never been able to resist flattery, and gave in. Every morning I went and cut the finest asparagus and took it to the Place du Molard, to some old woman who guessed that I had stolen it and told me so in order to get it cheaper. In my alarm, I accepted whatever she offered and took the money to M. Verrat. It was immediately turned into a lunch, which I went to fetch and which he shared with a comrade; as for me, I was content with what was left over. I did not even touch their wine.

  This little business went on for several days without my so much as thinking of robbing the robber, and tithing the yield of M. Verrat’s asparagus. I did my rascally job most faithfully for no other purpose than to please the man who made me do it. Yet if I had been caught I should have been exposed to all manner of beatings, abuse, and cruelty, while that wretch would have disowned me. For his word would have been taken against mine, and I should have received twice the punishment for having dared to accuse him, since he was a journeyman and I only an apprentice. So it is that in every situation the powerful rogue protects himself at the expense of the feeble and innocent.

  Thus I learnt that stealing was not so terrible as I had thought; and I soon turned my new knowledge to such good account that nothing I coveted and that was in my reach was safe from me. I was not exactly undernourished at my master’s; the modesty of the fare was only painful to me when compared to the luxury he enjoyed. The custom of sending young people away from table when those dishes are brought on that tempt them most seems to me calculated to make them not only greedy but dishonest. I soon became both, and came off pretty well in general, though very badly when I was caught.

  One memory of an apple-hunt that cost me dear still makes me shudder and laugh at the same time. These apples were at the bottom of a cupboard which was lit from the kitchen through a high lattice. One day when I was alone in the house I climbed on the kneading trough to peer into this garden of the Hesperides at those precious fruits I could not touch. Then I went to fetch the spit to see if it would reach; it was too short. So I lengthened it with one which was used for game – my master being very fond of hunting. I probed several times in vain, but at last I felt with delight that I was bringing up an apple. I raised it very gently, and was just on the point of grasping it. What was my grief to find that it was too big to pass the lattice! I resorted to the most ingenious devices to get it through. I had to find supports to keep the spit in position, a knife long enough to cut the apple in two, and a lath to hold it up. With time and perseverance I managed to divide it, and was in hopes of then bringing the pieces through one after the other. But the moment they were apart they both fell back into the cupboard. Kind reader, sympathize with me in my grief!

  I did not lose courage, but I had lost a great deal of time, and was afraid of being caught. So I put off the attempt till next day, when I hoped to be more successful, and resumed my work as calmly as if I had done nothing wrong, without a thought for the two awkward witnesses testifying against me in the larder.

  Next day, when the opportunity offered, I made a fresh attempt. I climbed on my perch, fastened the two spits together, straightened them, and was just going to probe…. But unfortunately the dragon was not asleep; the larder door suddenly opened; my master came out, folded his arms, looked at me, and said ‘Bravo!’ The pen falls from my hand.

  Soon I had received so many beatings that I grew less sensitive to them; in the end they seemed to me a sort of retribution for my thefts, which authorized me to go on stealing. Instead of looking back and thinking of my punishment, I looked forward and contemplated vengeance. I reckoned that to be beaten like a rogue justified my being one. I found that thieving and being beaten belonged together, and were in a. sense a single state, and that if I fulfilled my share in the bargain by doing my part I could leave the responsibility for the rest to my master. In this assurance I began to thieve with an easier conscience than before, saying to myself, ‘Well, what will happen? I shall be beaten? All right, that’s what I was made for.’

  Without being greedy, I like my food. I am a sensualist but not a glutton; I have too many other tastes to distract me. I have never been concerned with my belly except when my heart has been disengaged, and that has been the case so seldom in my life that I have not had much time to think of tasty morsels. So I did not limit my thieving for long to food. Soon I extended my range to cover anything that tempted me; and if I did not become a real thief, it is because I have never been much tempted by money. Inside the common workshop my master had a separate one of his own which he kept locked. But I found a way of opening and shutting the door without leaving any trace. I took my toll of his best tools, drawings, and prints, and of everything I coveted and he wished to keep out of my grasp. Really the theft of these trifles was quite innocent, since I only took them to use in his service. But I was overjoyed to have them in my possession. For I imagined that by stealing them I acquired the skill to employ them. Besides these things, there were some boxes in his little workshop containing gold and silver filings, small jewels, valuable medals, and some small change. If I had four or five sous in my pocket, that was ample. So far from touching any of this, I do not remember ever even having cast a longing glance at it; in fact I was more alarmed than glad to find it there. I think that my horror of stealing money or valuables was largely the product of my education. It was associated in my mind with secret broodings upon disgrace, punishment, prison, and the scaffold, that would have made me shudder even had I been tempted. For my exploits seemed to me no more than idle pranks, and indeed they were nothing more. All they could lead to was a good thrashing from my master, and I prepared myself for that in advance.

  But once again my covetousness was not sufficiently serious for me to hold back; there seemed no cause to struggle with myself. A single sheet of drawing-paper tempted me more than the money to buy a ream. This strange desire is connected with one of the principal facets in my character, which has had considerable influence on my conduct and which it is important to explain.

  My passions are extremely strong, and while I am under their sway nothing can equal my impetuosity. I am amenable to no restraint, respect, fear, or decorum. I am cynical, bold, violent, and daring. No shame can stop me, no fear of danger alarm me. Except for the one object in my mind the
universe for me is non-existent. But all this lasts only a moment; and the next moment plunges me into complete annihilation. Catch me in a calm mood, I am all indolence and timidity. Everything alarms me, everything discourages me. I am frightened by a buzzing fly. I am too lazy to speak a word or make a gesture. So much am I a slave to fears and shames that I long to vanish from mortal sight. If action is necessary I do not know what to do; if I must speak I do not know what to say; if anyone looks at me I drop my eyes. When roused by passion, I can sometimes find the right words to say, but in ordinary conversation I can find none, none at all. I find conversation unbearable owing to the very fact that I am obliged to speak.

  Furthermore, none of my dominant desires are for things that can be bought. All I need are simple pleasures, and money poisons them all. I am fond, for example, of a good meal, but cannot stand the boredom of polite company or the gross manners of an inn. I can only enjoy eating with a friend; when I am alone it is impossible, because my imagination is always busy with something else and I take no pleasure in my food. If the fire in my blood demands women, the emotion in my heart cries more loudly for love. Women who could be bought would lose all their charm for me. I doubt whether I could even take advantage of the situation. It is the same with all pleasures within my reach. If they are not to be had for nothing, they have no attraction for me. The only things I like are things that belong to no one but the first person who knows how to enjoy them.