Les hobereaux
Note: The original OCR of this cahier contains severe artifacts, and the bulk of the readable text in the source file is actually the continuation of François Porché’s poetry from cahier 17 (“À chaque jour”), which was bound together with this nineteenth cahier in the physical volume. The Tharaud brothers’ novella “Les hobereaux” proper is largely unrecoverable from the OCR. What follows is a translation of the recoverable poetic sections that appear in this cahier, which belong to Porché’s collection and include poems dedicated to the Tharaud brothers.
Smoke-Rings
O those dreams in my cigarettes, so often! Images, on the ceiling, of poplars, of vines And meadows flooded by April, to the lines Of the hillsides, where always an old windmill, Armless, its roof leaning over the horizon, listens To see if the miller’s donkey still climbs the road.
Province, in this cold night, whose ray Of dawn will tomorrow awaken the landscape, So simple one can sketch it in three strokes of a pencil, And smiling with tenderness like a face.
Is it the irritation of tobacco, is it the hour, And being alone, this evening, in my room? or, down there, In sleeplessness, might not a prudent heart have Trembled for me? Who knows, sometimes, why one weeps?
Imagery
Province, August sun, white houses dead, Flowerpots on the windowsills, drowsy cats, Old men hugging the walls toward one another, very slow, Or endlessly chewing over their lives on their doorsteps.
And sometimes there they are, side by side, the old ones, On a bench, in the green shade raining from the trees, Their skin kneaded with warm gold like ancient marbles, Impassive, silent, flies filling their eyes…
Province, languor of the Sunday bells. Behind the curtains of a window, one sees Young girls smiling, their torsos straight In their chairs. O monastic recreations!
So you used to smile, in our afternoons, When I was twelve, my cousin, and you sixteen, And when, my cheek ablaze, full of strange disquiet, I breathed your fingers clasped between my warmed ones…
Province, old hands that snuffed the candles, Old hands arranging fruits upon the sideboards, Province, what regrets pierce you in the evenings, And the windows of your houses, what are they waiting for?
Once, gallops, horns, and cries, Cracking flights of whips, love, chance, and war, And the windows trembled with all their body of glass At the rolling tumult of coaches bound for Paris.
Now, dust fallen and life extinguished. Dead the inn where the tall-booted postilions, Ready to leave, gambled a round of wine at dice, No more grooms at the troughs, no bucket that clinks.
Finished the drama of the high roads, exhausted The marvelous treasure of fine imagery, And the Province weeps at its windows, full of sorrow… May these verses reach her broken heart.
The Other
The Other had hair of wild gold, a blaze, Or else, streaming in the wind, the flame of a torch! And supple, cruel arms, like a rosebush That, for love of an oak, entwines and strips it, Sucks its blood, to flower from it. Her eyes Were changeable, like the sky: sometimes blue As, in the sun, the sea, when one swims underwater And the depths have gleams of fair scales. In those eyes, of pure water then, what have I not, Even to doubting if their treachery were a dream,
Glimpsed of childlike innocence, down there, In that marine depth where the soul plunges!
But no. The storm broods, crouching on the waves, And swells, laden with the dead weight of autumn, And, black with rain and blue with lightning, bursts and thunders, Like a ripe throat where sobs are rolling. And beneath the burning block of sky that overhangs, In the shadow of volcanoes of clouds, the sea Immensely streaked and livid turns leaden…
Eyes of the Other, suffering, blue, now so clear, Soft light between her lashes bathing her cheek, Then storm, swirling of leprous water and of mud!
My eighteen years, ah! mad year! trembling love, April in the orchard drenched with rain and white With that snow of the apple trees, timid love Like the morning mist in the damp grass, Gray lucerne, powdered with dew, where the hunter In passing hollows green paths! And her sweetness Was of a folded rose where the dawn, At the hour of twilight, still quivers…
Fear of daring, blushes and a shivering voice, Dear prelude! and to feel for the first time, To feel there, beneath her hand, the virile pride in the soul, To breathe that rich flower, a woman’s breast! And so virgin and so young is the flesh, so deep The shock of sudden pleasure that crushes it, That with her, and like the wax that melts, The heart softens and flows and sizzles with joy! O that perfume of mingled bodies, dense and vermilion, That smell of ripe harvests and of sun! And the mouth, which wholly and fervently gives itself As a chalice opens to the storm, is astonished… And the eyes, their ecstasy and their enchantment! The eyes like a net over the naked mistress! The eyes, changed, already graver, of the lover Who now is yours, O sorrow so soon arrived!
Yet what tenderness at our awakenings, A plant’s slowness to live, and how vague Our bodies in those lagoons of half-sleep, And so light, like boats upon the waves. Her soul was the wild thrush that, in the evening, Having pillaged black grapes from the vineyards, Lies between two furrows, at the hour when the shadow stirs And swells at the east and breaks into daybreak, Its feathers ruffled and still red with lees, Dead drunk. O the sweet mornings gorged with love,
And sole good memory perhaps, when her head Rolling like wreckage at sea adrift, Her mown-down arms seemed lilies in the storm. O fatigue, opium surer than forgiveness! She was like a child and wounded, being weary And so weak, and said I-love-yous in a low voice. She was that child without a friend and so well-behaved Whose mother hides her tears while kissing her… And pale and bruised, from what bleeding rose Had these petals fallen upon her face?
But, soon after, the fear of suffering, my shivers Merely at finding her a woman again by her ways Of sharpening her nails at length, and her grace In quickly pinning her hat before the mirror…
Behind the Door
The house weeps in its gutter, In the hearth a charcoal fire burns, The tea, from the teapot’s spout, Steams and smells good, And I dream of ancient loves, The cigar at my lips, time flies. Suddenly, through the slats of the shutters, A flash of light!
A gas lamp at the end of the street Sends out a shrill, fluting, plaintive song… In the silence of the untimely hour I tremble like a fearful child.
Someone is there, behind the door. Do I not hear them scratching the wood? Someone is there. It is she, the Dead Woman, The beloved mistress of old.
What thirst then outlives her mouth That each day I forget a little more? What desire for love, other and fierce, Can torment a body that is no more?
Go away, return to the land of souls, I fear the kiss you demand!
Lay Down Your Dear Head…
Lay down your dear head on my breast where My heart can be heard beating wildly, the fool!
Do not dream too high, if you fall asleep, of the Other. Think as you close your eyes of this present that is ours. Think that it is much to have always there, near, A hand for your brow that is a cool balm.
No, nothing is worth this simple gesture and this smile Of two lovers undressing without a word.
So sweet the impatience that makes them pale When their goose-fleshed skin slips into the bed, So sweet the ardent sadness of fatigues Where the dammed flood of tears breaks through its dikes. Ray of early morning at the windowpanes, thin and cold, Making the embrace more tender and more tight, And cracking of the milkmen’s whips, the bell For the dawn mass, in some nunnery, And always, punctual, harsh alarm clocks, Those hammers forging chains upon our destinies.
Fugitives
Ray of early morning, thin, like the blade Of a justice knife above their heads, And, weakness or remorse, their napes already ready For the blows of heaven, in punishment for this exile.
Cowards, already beaten, from the station courtyard, And so puny, so shivering, like the gas Of the broad, deserted boulevard where the eye wanders Far off, in the mists of a March dawn.
Where then their dream? where then that proud love that throbs With the will to shatter all and flee to be free? Where those rages of sacrifice and defiance With which the soul in the ardor of white nights exalts itself?
Poor pride that the cold morning air has sufficed To dash down and fling crestfallen on the asphalt Of these sidewalks glistening with showers. Hearts embittered With rancor nursed in silence, with shame Soon about to burst into quarrel, and rising Slow and red like the sun in the gray sky.
But quickly vanished into the smoking city, Into the shrill din of the merchants, the halo Of lights, the sound, as from the bottom of the sea, Of raucous tramway horns piercing the mist, Carried off into the crowd, and nothing more than a tear Anonymous, lost in the flood of sorrow.
Departure
When you left, at the break of day, pearl gray Was the sea, with the laughter that crashes in And the frolics of its foam, games and fights, They say, of nymphs upon the sand, and songs of flutes, And just as, after the bath, bristled in the air, The evening before, the pink pulp of your flesh, So, naked and wet, stretching over the sea Her pale arms, the dawn shivered in the bitter wind…
And meanwhile, already, the carriage that bore you away Was receding along the dunes the water licks, Pulling this way and that, from jolt to jolt, Now raising its body and its nags on top Of a hillock, now in a fold hidden, Here almost falling to the right and there leaning To the left, lurching and squealing at the axle Beneath the baggage of sorrow of such a farewell, I watched it in the distance flee diminished And plunge into the gaping blue of a cloud…
It was then, only then, that I understood, too late, My fault, and that this sudden drama of departure, The jolt of waking, rising in the room Still dark and that cold November dawn, Those torches, those muffled sounds of doors and steps, Our rigid silence at that last meal, Those leaden faces glimpsed in the mirror, And that last kiss of the lips, ember and ice, Clenching of the frenzied soul, in the instant Of supreme heartbreak when the carriage waits, All these pictures of a cruel crisis Were something lived, atrociously real! I would have liked to cry: “Don’t go, I am wrong, I love you! See my tears, see my arms that I wring, And see my pride on the ground, humbled! Forgive, or better still, work this miracle, forget! And of our old grievances let nothing remain between us, But silence with my brow upon your knees!”
Promenades
to Madame Simone Le Bargy
I
It was I know not what kind of morning, fresh and pearly Like the lively fish with its slimy scales In the drawn net whose meshes drip, A morning of health, young, forgetful, sacred, One of those when you go out on your own legs, at ease, Happy to be robust and that the sky is clear! I wandered over the reefs the sea uncovers, And which in turn, laid bare, the dawn embraces and kisses, The pustulous seaweeds cracked, the green crabs Scratching the mud hid themselves at my approach, Or, more often, surprised in love, sideways Scuttled off, carrying into crevices in the rocks
Their female hanging from their belly. Suddenly, My foot slipping, I had water up to my ankles, That rough water that pinches the flesh of girls And makes them laugh, hands on their throats, at the bath. And meanwhile there shone, oblique, at the level of the swells, Amid shrieking whirlwinds of vermilion birds That seemed to peck at its flames, the sun! And, standing in the wind, women gathering mussels, At the point of a cape plumed with spray, Their bodies straight in the floating folds of brown rags, Rose up proudly against the pink sky, like Victories of bronze and gold beating their wings!
So I wandered, my brow toward the east, my eyes Dazzled, my soul vague and divinely drunk, Full of an astonishment at going, at seeing, at living, And moved to tears by the mysterious gift That was made to me of the world on that morning, Content with everything, with nothing, with the mere sound of my steps, Listening to myself breathe and not understanding, And with my lips seeking your mouth, O Destiny!
II
After those sandy beaches, where the mica Sparkles like flint rubbed together, And that sun hailing upon the sea, the grotto Where my foot ventured the other afternoon, Imprisoned in nets of brown seaweed A half-light of aquarium and of moon. Coolness from between the rocks that flowed In a shower of shadow on my nape! It is there, In the rustlings of crab and woodlouse, That I found your body still warm, O Dead Woman!
It is only a dream… no, for do I not hear The seashells crackling beneath my steps? And the cold water where my hand dips is as real As the rock my fingernail scratches is real, And, behind me, on the side of the sea, Whose muffled echoes, when the sea wind enters, Roll in thunderclaps at the bottom of the cavern, As far as the eye can see the sky is clear!
Beauty, flames of joy in my unworthy eye, Dazzlements that make my eyelid blink. From her wounded flank her blood flows. She must Have come ashore, to die here, in this lost corner. She was sleeping, at dawn, on the smooth sea… Like a jellyfish, at the surface, toward the blue Her luminous, pure belly emerged. Some steamer, perhaps, with a stroke of its propeller…
III
Ah! autumn and its ends of day, in the old village, And its black skeletons, against the still-bright sky, Of burned trees shivering in the sea wind, And the muffled collapse of gray waves on the beach.
Here is the little harbor and its acrid perfume Of brine, and the ghost-like bark returning, Heavy and massive, with its catch in its belly, And here are all the lighthouse fires one by one. And it is the hour when one knocks at the doors of inns.
Dawn of July
to Jérôme and Jean Tharaud
Above the rooftops, a milky glow Appears and, refracted in the bronze basin, Glazes the nymphs with blue, slides a flash Along a thread of water that murmurs. Nothing in the air, The night’s miasmas dispersed, weighs. The city on the breast of dawn grows calm, Barely breathes and takes on a childlike brow. One would say, though in summer, that a sudden April Silvers the quays where the river laps. A dome gleams, burnished with new light. In the squares it is, as in the fields, an awakening Of birds, an expectation, in the treetops, of the sun.
Mists velvet the lawns, the bark, Brown and wet, has a varnish-like strength, And cheerful, on a wineskin, a black faun dances! Morning! dew and breeze, shivers of hope! O lustral clarity that metamorphoses Cities, jaws of hell, into rosy virgins, And, streaming through the windows, enlarges With all the blue sky that opens the hovels, Morning, wash my brow, absolve it, leave upon it Only what is needed to live well, of weakness, True pity, humble, and indulgent love! Already, on the carts, heading In masses toward the market halls, the fresh vegetables Perfume the mists with rustic odors, And in the dawn, at the corner of a street, an oven Of a baker smokes for the bread of the day.
In the Evening
You please me, so shy and so awkward and so white, With your ringless hands, your fine neck that bends, Your hair swept up revealing your brow, And your childlike cheek with its firm, round contour. But I tremble, truly I tremble that my mouth, When we talk beneath the lampshade, in a low voice, Might take a fold, might say a word that startles you, A brand, sad echo of the shames of the past.
And still more I fear those times of silence When my blood hums in my ears and wells up, When the city, far off, rumbles and heaves a dull groan, When, always, like an afflicted heart that leaps, Through the fog and the soot of the evening, A whistle rises and goes to die in the black sky…
Yes, I am afraid, for I know, and my soul recoils, I know of what troubled thing, at twilight, Silences like these, elsewhere, were followed. I fear that an impure shadow, O virgin, might brush you, I fear that my very fear, grazing your shoulder, Might be, for the bright swarm of your ravished dreams, For all that dear happiness that makes you so rosy, The choking smoke in which the bees die.
Listen, I would like, as I have changed my soul, To change my mask as well, change my eyes…
Wanderers
Pity for the poor desires dragging their leg From street to street, in this long June evening that blazes, Pity for these shamefaced ones, these solitaries, for All the prowlers who go brushing, sniffing at love.
Dust floats very low, vapors tremble In spirals, the walls, the rows of trees seem To move in a russet haze, in the blood And the cries, one would say, of a battle ending…
Sad brothers! no doubt, in some narrow, Stifling room, they paced, their eyes wild, their skin moist With fever. They were alone. But no, in every corner, They found old sorrows and, in the mirror, Their whole life with its wrinkles, face to face. Groping, down the dark stairway, they fled far From themselves. In the street one walks, one has the crowd, The lights, the shoulder bumps where one rolls Unknown, the cafes, the smell, on the sidewalks, Of spirits, the noises, the augers, the punches On the skull, of noises, boring, breaking the fixed Idea, and one walks, one walks, the head emptied. Then, in the street one believes in chances, one believes One can hook hope by dint of going straight Ahead, far. The street is gruff and rough… All the same, love passes there, one brushes it.
Suburbs
I
Tall new houses, vague open spaces, Hovels, further off, lying low in ambush.
There, networks of rails gleam. How many wires Tangle their lines against the sky! Where do they go? Where does the sly twilight go upon the road? Like a thug it prowls, then stops, listens. Nothing on the road. In the distance the city muffles its cries In the fog where a gray dome dissolves.
The evening leans over the edge of a crime… Oh! come home quickly From school. If you knew, poor little one!
II
A day of biting wind in a sky bristling with suffering Harsh and dry, a day grayish in appearance, Ordinary, we were following the road that runs alongside The open spaces of a racecourse at the edge of the woods. How that day, since, has blossomed, how deeply it drives Its roots into my heart! I see again Your fine face pink with cold and your air Fragile in that bare winter landscape, Between the cracked meadows and the rusted fences Of villas where the stripped branches were cracking. Our very young love already had tears Of tenderness, a dull and doleful ardor of blood, A mysterious depth of fear, sudden Pallors, and its excessive joy was heavy.
You walked on my arm, a refugee and weary, Then we entered a tavern to sit down. Men, in a corner of the room, in low voices Were arguing. How they stared at you! And the evening Was falling. The sharp frost scratched the blue panes, And the murderous vise of the frost, for miles Around, was tightening, crushing the long roads. Our love, like the tree, to the sorrows of the earth Was clinging, clutching its solitary trunk. We stayed without speaking, my hands searching for your hands.
III
A Sunday of bright leaves, of white flowers, In the crowd of a suburban park, torn open By trains whistling on embankments among the branches.
A face glimpsed of a boy has entered My soul, and, since then, flaxen blond, his cheek All pale, strangely spotted with fire, When I find again in me that poor child at play, How he disturbs me with his ardor at the game!
Bareheaded, his supple body in its gray rags, In the path, at the edge of the pond, where the families Move their motley groups, he frolics, Throws bread on the water, and when he sees his prey, The swan, beautifully approaching, his heart beats For himself alone, his heart does not share his joy.
The little faun of the suburbs, I cherish him, But everything in him, his fixed blue gaze, his real Ease in the crowd already, everything frightens me, And I hear such loud clamors in his cries.
Clamors! that rises, one evening, from the depths of the streets, That advances in dark bands quickly swelling, That sings in the dust irresistible, And it is like another springtime far more terrible.
For Verlaine
I --- Cour Saint-François
The courtyard has not changed since you. The brats In the gutter of dirty water play and squabble. Empty casks, piled up, handcarts Clutter it, and the trains shunt level With the roofs, and one can hear, toward the nearby station, A signal turning with a clinking of chain.
You came here, alone, after ten years, alone, like a dead man Returning, forgotten by all, and your luggage, A thin parcel that one tosses aside, was heavy with remorse And genius and promises to be good.
O vagrant lodged for the night, the innkeeper’s eye Follows you! What criminal are you? from what fault Do you return so weary, the day done? Thus your life: a number in a rooming house.
Go, take your key hanging from the nail, take your candle, And go up. These shoes at the doors, they too Have dragged themselves by what road to here? Poor garret, with that city around it, Monstrous, unbridled, and those evenings when you burn With the desire to go toward the wild laughter of the girls! And what sobs, then, in the silence, fit to rend The soul, that the neighbor listens to without understanding.
II
Passer-by of the evening, come with me, let us cleave the flood Of carriages, follow me, mind that wheel, Stop, let us stand on this refuge, an island Lost in the torrent of light and mud.
And now, be all ears. Do you hear Those cries, that whirlwind of despair that prowls Around us, wherever the melee is hot, Rises, covers the sky and, abruptly beaten down Over the street, bumps against the windowpanes and floats in shawls Of fog and rain at the pale shop fronts…
What need to suffer again drives out Of their rest and mingles with our fevers the dead? Who knows? in some vague suburban enclosure They were sleeping. Every evening, above the embankments, The city unfurled its mad blue glow. What! to sleep there, near it, at the gates, never again To cross its toll-gates where the roads Come from afar with love to throw themselves all together. They dreamed: what great fire of passion over there Blazes? The dark crowd of the living circulates, The earth beneath our feet throbs under their steps Multiplied… Toward the cries of twilight They have escaped, perhaps. How many times, You, my dead, through the city have I heard your voices!
Gardens where, wandering alone, I breathe your mouth, O vanished one! And you, that shadow that touches me Like a hand upon the shoulder, and gently guides me, O master, is it not your soul in the night?
III
It is an evening, at the hours of fever, when the streets Are hells of cries and surly shoulders That jostle you running fast, God knows where… The city, it capsizes in a mad whirl Of light and dark crowd flowing away.
On the asphalt, the rain is blue, where the day dies, And, beyond the river breezes and the tower, At sunset, so much hope crumbles in the flames!
The air ripples, as in a dream of alcohol; I see double. Stairways, at ground level, Fan me with a muffled din, with smells of stations. The crossroads, I plunge in and swim, in the crush Of cabs. The sidewalks, I dream there, in the halos Of shops, my eyes dazzled and half-closed. An omnibus shakes a bridge. The red reflection Of a gas lamp in the gray water stretches and moves.
And here, I do not know how… yes, it is you, Passing by, dragging your leg near me. It is you, weary faun, among the scrawny trees Of the city, you who, not long ago, upon the marble Of cafes resting your divine languor, Listened, wise and mad, to your heart sing and weep! What do you want? in the night sky, look, your glory Is rising! What do you want? to suffer again and drink Again in your city? and does the abode of the blessed Make you miss the street of vagabonds?
But you flee… in the wind your red scarf floats. Nothing more, but that reflection in the gray water that moves…
Nuits
II
A silent couple, they go, in summer, to sit In the shadowy corners of gardens and, a whole evening, Feel, from one to the other, through their bare hands, Their life flow. O deep springs, come From so far, from a dormant and hidden depth!
A breath passes, takes their detached soul, Disperses it, and the scent of the lawns is she. Rested, softened, and that swallow’s cry, The shrill cry of your little games, little girls, She! and those dust-motes of stars, she again!
Around them, a murmur rolls, points of gold Glide between the dark trees, along the fences. But the calm vapor of moonlight that stretches Over the lawns isolates and protects their dream. Then, all falls silent, the lights die, they forget The city and the cares of living there that bind them. What do they know? Long they have in sadness, Side by side, long journeyed… When was that?
Cleared for printing after corrections for two thousand copies of this seventeenth cahier on Tuesday, June 7, 1904.
Manager: CHARLES PÉGUY
This cahier was typeset and printed at the rate of unionized workers.
IMPRIMERIE DE SURESNES (Ed. Grenier, director), 9 rue du Pont.