Full Text

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN

_VOLUME ONE_

BY

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

THE REALISTS

PRINTED BY

GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA

1897

[Illustration: Mlle. de Maupin]

THIS EDITION OF

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN

HAS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED

BY

I. G. BURNHAM

THE ETCHINGS ARE BY

FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LE SUEUR

AND DRAWINGS BY

ÉDOUARD TOUDOUZE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN--VOLUME I

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN Front.

THE IMAGINARY MISTRESS

FIRST MEETING WITH ROSETTE

EPISODE OF THE "TOILETTE DE BAL"

D'ALBERT AND ROSETTE

THE ARRIVAL OF THÉODORE

THÉODORE AND THE PAGE

ROSETTE'S MORNING AUDIENCE

THE ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

This celebrated novel, the celebrity of which has not been lessened by

the very numerous editions that have been published, had a very modest

beginning which in no way foreshadowed the great success which it was

to obtain later.

The title: _Mademoiselle de Maupin--Double Love_ appeared, we believe,

for the first time in Renduel's catalogue in connection with _The Life

of Hoffman_, by Lœve-Weimars, which appeared in October, 1833,

announcing the new work of Théophile Gautier as being in press. Renduel

had made the acquaintance of the author at Victor Hugo's; he had

published in August, 1833, his first volume of prose, _Young France_,

and now it was a question of launching a work in two volumes, a truly

daring undertaking for a publisher of that day; especially in the case

of the work of an author but little known and only twenty-two years

old.

_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ was not, however, destined to see the light so

soon. For two years Théophile Gautier, more enamored of freedom than of

work, or preferring the task of making two harmonious rhymes to all the

beauties of his learned and rhythmic prose, incessantly abandoned and

resumed the promised work. A tradition preserved in the family of the

poet tells how his father often shut him up in his room at that time,

forbidding him to leave it until he had completed a certain number of

pages of the _Grotesques_ or of _Mademoiselle de Maupin._ When the

maternal kindness did not come to his aid, the frolicsome author, who

then lived with his parents on Place Royale, often found the means

of getting away by the window and so escaping a paternal task. Such

escapades being frequently renewed, it may well be believed that the

novel made but little progress; 1834 was drawing to a close; only the

first of the two volumes was finished; the publisher complained, and

the author tried to pacify him by notes similar to the following:

"I have just discovered at a bric-à-brac dealer's a charming picture of

Boucher in a splendid state of preservation; it is an opportunity that

I do not wish to miss, and not having money enough, I take the liberty

of asking you for my balance.[1] You will confer on me a real pleasure

in sending it to me.

"I am harnessed to _La Maupin_, and that prevents me from prowling

about and calling on you.

"With cordial wishes, I am, yours,

"THÉOPHILE GAUTIER."

Finally, in 1835, the second volume was written in six weeks on Rue du

Doyenné, where the poet, having left the paternal nest, had installed

himself; the manuscript was delivered to Renduel and we read the

following note in _Le Monde Dramatique_, of September 20th, concerning

the biography of the strange person who really bore the name of Maupin,

a biography signed by Rochefort and published in that number under the

title: _Mademoiselle d'Aubigny-Maupin_: "One of our collaborators,

Monsieur Théophile Gautier, has been busy for a long time on a romance

entitled: _Mademoiselle (de) Maupin._"

The work was now soon to appear; it was issued in November, 1835,

in two octavo volumes, printed by Madame Poussin under the title:

_Mademoiselle de Maupin--Double Love._ The first volume bears the date

1835, the second 1836, while the preface is dated May, 1834.

The work produced no very great sensation. A few journals spoke of

it, but publicity was not then systematized as it is to-day, and

except by some few literary men and the small romantic group of the

author's friends, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ was soon forgotten. Let

us remark, nevertheless, that immediately the book appeared, Honoré

de Balzac wrote Renduel a note, asking for a copy, this note we

have seen ourselves; from this moment dates the admiration that he

always professed thereafter for Théophile Gautier. We learn from

Monsieur Arsène Houssaye, the old and faithful friend of the poet,

that owing to the failure to sell the work, Renduel determined not

to publish anything more for his author; _La Comédie de la Mort_,

already announced upon the covers of the work (as well as _Capitaine

Fracasse)_, was, in fact, returned to the author, and only appeared in

1838, when it was published by Desessart, at that time one of Arsène

Houssaye's publishers; it was the author of _La Couronne de Bleuets_,

who introduced his friend to him and secured a favorable consideration

for his collection of verses.

How strange to us and unlikely, even, all this seems, when one recalls

the exorbitant prices obtained for some years past for rare, stitched

copies in good condition of the first edition of the work that we are

now considering. Many have realized one thousand five hundred francs,

that is to say, the total sums received by the author as royalty on

the first issue of his work. This sum is verified by his receipts to

Renduel, which are in our hands.

A curious incident occurred as to _Mademoiselle de Maupin._ After

its appearance, all the opening of the eleventh chapter was inserted

in _Le Monde Dramatique_ of January 4, 1836, without mentioning its

source, under the title of: _La Comédie Romanesque._ Since that time,

those pages have been frequently reprinted, but not a single one of

these reproductions gives any indication of their origin. It must be

admitted that Théophile Gautier himself gave rise to this error in _La

Presse_ of December 17, 1838, in again quoting these lines, inserted

in an unpublished commentary, as an isolated article which had come

under his notice by chance. He had forgotten this extract, and believed

in good faith to have found in _La Monde Dramatique_ only a newspaper

improvisation. This first mistake was the starting-point of all that

succeeded, the most striking of which is the insertion in 1858 of this

fragment from _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ in the first volume of Théophile

Gautier's work: _Histoire de l'Art Dramatique in France._ It is useless

to add that no one noticed this fact.

Time, however, rolled on, and the renown of the poet continued to

increase; his appearance in _La Presse_ in 1836, and his critical

work, had made a circle of new readers. Then, _Fortunio, La Comédie de

la Mort, Une Larme du Diable, Tra Los Montès, Les Grotesques_, etc.,

etc., had considerably increased his literary _impedimenta._ So, when

Monsieur Charpentier, the father of the present publisher of Théophile

Gautier's complete works, had founded the collection to which he gave

his name, he soon thought of reprinting our author's principal works.

Monsieur Charpentier, who succeeded in grouping in his catalogue the

most select of the remarkable works of his age, was of refined literary

taste and held among the publishers of his day a place similar to that

then held by Monsieur Buloz in his capacity of director of _La Revue

des Deux Mondes_: it was difficult to obtain an interview with either,

and to appear in print in their collections was regarded as a kind of

consecration.

It was in 1845 when four of Théophile Gautier's volumes appeared in the

Charpentier catalogue; they were _Poésies Complètes, Nouvelles, Voyage

en Espagne_, and _Mademoiselle de Maupin._ For this reprint, the first

since the original edition[2], the author modified, but very slightly,

some phrases of his work, the text of which, from that time, has never

been changed.

Here ends, in reality, the history of this work. Since 1845, the

number of editions has continued to increase; we will only quote two

that appeared in 1878: one in two volumes, 24mo, illustrated with four

designs by Eugèn Giraud, and another in a large 12mo volume, upon

Holland paper, embellished with a portrait of the heroine by Théophile

Gautier himself, the portrait dated 1834. Finally, in 1880, there was

added to a reprint of this edition, a reproduction of the medallion of

the author by David d'Anger; this reproduction is erroneously dated

1834, instead of 1835, which is the actual year of its execution.

Is it possible, as has often been asserted, that this work, whose

incomparable style should have warranted the opening of the doors of

the Académie Française to the author, was in part the cause of their

remaining stubbornly closed against him?--We do not know; but from

another tradition preserved in the poet's family, it would appear that

the father himself, when he knew of the completion of the work (only

the first volume, as we have seen, was written under his eyes), could

not have been without apprehension as to the part which the book would

play in the life of his son, and, notwithstanding his admiration for

the style of the work, he would often have expressed the fear that the

second volume would at times influence the future of the author.

In any case, the renown of Théophile Gautier, like that of his

illustrious friend, Honoré de Balzac, who, likewise, was never a member

of the Académie, has only increased since his death, and the names of

these two rare talents are in truth missed among those of the members

of that illustrious body. For Théophile Gautier at least, the Académie

itself expressed one day, by the mouth of one of its members, its

regret at not having received him. On October 25, 1872, at its public

session and at the very hour of the obsequies of the great writer,

Monsieur Camille Doucet pronounced the following words which do honor

to their author, and we are happy to reproduce them here: "Permit me to

digress a moment. When I speak of the fraternity of Letters, I should

fail, messieurs, if I appeared longer to forget that at this very

hour, upon the threshold of a tomb, which I have left only with regret

to come here to fulfil another duty, Letters mourning, weep for a true

poet dear to all, a brilliant writer whose wit was thoroughly French

and whose heart was still more French. Very many votes have proved to

him that his place was indicated among us, and so we deplore the more

the sudden stroke to which Théophile Gautier succumbs."

We will add nothing to these touching lines and will close this notice

by saying a few words as to the present edition of _Mademoiselle de

Maupin._ It is the first reprint, absolutely conforming to the original

text. The work appears in two volumes, divided like those of 1835,

and the publishers have exerted every effort to satisfy bibliophiles

desirous of possessing as perfect an edition as possible, both as

regards the exactness of the text and the technical execution of the

work.

Finally, let us say that the designs of E. Toudouze, made especially

for this work, will render this edition still more complete. It will

rank, we hope, among the most treasured editions of the book.

CHARLES DE LOVENJOUL.

NOTES

[Footnote 1: Of his royalties as author of _Young France._]

[Footnote 2: _Figaro_, of May 26, 1837, and some other journals,

announced the sale, at Renduel's, of a second edition of this book. It

was only the first edition that the publisher was trying to get rid of

by this means.]

PREFACE

One of the most burlesque incidents of the glorious epoch in which

we have the good fortune to live side by side with Deutz and General

Bugeaud, is, beyond question, the rehabilitation of virtue undertaken

by all the newspapers, of whatever color they may be, red, green, or

tri-colored.

Virtue is most assuredly a very respectable thing, and we have no

wish to fail in our devotion to the excellent, worthy creature--God

forbid!--We consider that her eyes shine with sufficient brilliancy

through her spectacles, that her stockings are reasonably well put on,

that she takes snuff from her gold snuff-box with all imaginable grace,

that her little dog courtesies like a dancing-master.--We agree to all

that.--We are even willing to admit that her figure is not bad for her

age, and that she carries her years as well as any one could. She is

a very agreeable grandmother, but she is a grandmother. It seems to

me to be natural to prefer to her, especially when one is twenty years

old, some little immorality, very pert, very coquettish, very wanton,

with the hair a little out of curl, the skirt rather short than long,

the foot and eye alluring, the cheek slightly flushed, a smile on the

lips and the heart in the hand.--The most horribly virtuous journalists

can hardly be of a different opinion; and, if they say the contrary,

it is very probable that they do not think it. To think one thing and

write another is something that happens every day, especially among

virtuous folk.

I remember the epigrams uttered before the Revolution--I refer to the

Revolution of July--against the ill-fated and virginal Vicomte Sosthène

de la Rochefoucauld, who lengthened the skirts of the dancers at the

Opéra and applied with his own patrician hands a chaste plaster around

the middle of all the statues.--Monsieur le Vicomte Sosthène de la

Rochefoucauld is far surpassed.--Modesty has been greatly perfected

since his day, and we go into refinements that he would never have

imagined.

I, who am not accustomed to look at statues in certain places,

considered, as others did, the vine-leaf cut by the scissors of

Monsieur le Chargé des Beaux-Arts, the most absurd thing in the world.

It seems that I was wrong, and that the vine-leaf is one of the most

meritorious of institutions.

I have been told, but I refused to believe it, it seemed to me so

extraordinary, that there were people who, when looking at Michael

Angelo's fresco of the _Last Judgment_, had seen nothing therein but

the episode of the lewd priests, and had veiled their faces, crying out

at the abomination of desolation!

Such people know nothing of the romance of Rodrigue except the couplet

of the snake.--If there is any nudity in a book or a picture, they go

straight to it as the swine to the mire, and pay no attention to the

blooming flowers or the golden fruit that hang within reach on all

sides.

I confess that I am not virtuous enough for that. Dorine, the

brazen-faced soubrette, may display before me her swelling bosom, I

certainly will not draw my handkerchief to cover it so that it cannot

be seen.--I will look at her bosom as at her face, and if it is fair

and well-shaped I will take pleasure in it.--But I will not touch

Elmire's dress to see if it is soft, nor will I push her reverently

upon the table as that poor devil of a Tartuffe did.

This great affectation of morality that reigns to-day would be very

laughable if it were not very tiresome.--Every _feuilleton_ becomes a

pulpit; every journalist a preacher; only the tonsure and the little

neckband are wanting. The weather is rainy and homiletic; one can

defend one's self against both by going out only in a carriage and

reading Pantagruel between one's bottle and one's pipe.

Blessed Jesus! what an outcry! what a frenzy!--Who bit you? who pricked

you? what the devil's the matter with you that you cry so loud, and

what has poor vice done to you that you should bear him such a grudge,

he is such a good fellow, so easy to live with, and asks nothing except

to be allowed to amuse himself and not bore others, if such a thing

can be? Act with vice like Serre with the gendarme: embrace and have

done with it all.--Believe me, you will be the better for it.--Eh! _Mon

Dieu_! my worthy preachers, what would you do without vice? You would

be reduced to beggary to-morrow, if the world should become virtuous

to-day.

The theatres would be closed to-night.--What would you take for the

subject of your _feuilleton_?--No more Opéra balls to fill your

columns,--no more novels to dissect; for balls, novels, plays, are the

real pomps of Satan, if we are to believe our holy Mother Church.--The

actress would dismiss her protector and could no longer pay you for

puffing her.--Nobody would subscribe to your newspapers; people would

read Saint Augustine, they would go to church, they would tell their

beads. That would be very praiseworthy, perhaps, but you would gain

nothing by it. If people were virtuous, what would you do with your

articles on the immorality of the age? You see plainly that vice is

good for something.

But it is the fashion nowadays to be virtuous and Christ-like, it is

an attitude people affect; they pose as Saint Jeromes just as they

used to pose as Don Juans; they are pale and wasted, they wear their

hair as the apostles did, they walk with folded hands and eyes glued

to the ground, they assume an expression sugared to perfection; they

have an open Bible on the mantel, a crucifix and consecrated box-wood

above their beds; they never swear, they smoke but little, and they

chew almost not at all.--With that they become Christians, they talk

about the sanctity of art, the lofty mission of the artist, the poesy

of Catholicism, about Monsieur de La Mennais, about the painters of

the angelic school, about the Council of Trent, about progressive

humanity, and about a thousand other fine things.--Some infuse a little

republicanism into their religion, they are not the least interesting.

They couple Robespierre and Jesus Christ in the most cheerful way and

amalgamate with praiseworthy gravity the Acts of the Apostles and the

decrees of the _Holy_ Convention--that is the sacramental title; others

add, for a final ingredient, some Saint-Simonian ideas.--These latter

are complete, they rest upon a square foundation; after them we can

look for nothing better. Human absurdity can go no farther,--_has ultra

metas_--etc. They are the Hercules Pillars of Burlesque.

Christianity is so in vogue by reason of the prevailing hypocrisy, that

even Neo-Christianity enjoys a certain amount of favor. They say that

it can boast thus far one recruit, Monsieur Drouineau included.

An extremely interesting variety of the moral journalist, properly

so-called, is the journalist with a female family.

He carries his modest sensitiveness to the point of anthropophagy, or

very nearly that.

His mode of procedure, although it seems at the first glance simple and

easy, is none the less clownish and superlatively entertaining, and

in my opinion it deserves to be handed down to posterity--to our last

nephews, as the old fogies of the so-called _Grand Siècle_ used to say.

In the first place, to pose as a journalist of this variety, you need

some few preliminary utensils--such as two or three legitimate wives,

a few mothers, as many sisters as possible, a full assortment of

daughters, and cousins innumerable.--The second requisite is a play or

novel of some sort, a pen, ink, paper, and a printer. Perhaps it would

be as well to have an idea or two and several subscribers; but you

can do without them, if you have a large stock of philosophy and the

shareholders' money.

When you have all these things you can set up as a moral journalist.

The two following recipes, varied to suit the occasion, will suffice

for the editorial part.

_Models of Virtuous Articles Concerning a First Performance._

"After the literature of blood, the literature of mud; after the morgue

and the galleys, the alcove and the brothel; after the rags stained

by murder, the rags stained by debauchery; after," etc. (according

to the necessity of the occasion and the available space, you can

continue in this vein from six lines to fifty or more),--"this is as

it should be.--This is where neglect of sacred doctrines and romantic

licentiousness lead: the stage has become a school of prostitution

where one dares not venture, save with fear and trembling, with a woman

one respects. You come upon the faith of an illustrious name, and you

are obliged to retire at the third act with your young daughter all

confused and abashed. Your wife hides her blushes behind her fan;

your sister, your cousin," etc. (The degrees of relationship may be

diversified at pleasure; it is enough that they be all females.)

NOTE.--There is one man who has carried morality so far as to say: "I

will not go to see that play with my mistress."--That man I admire and

love; I carry him in my heart, as Louis XVIII. carried all France in

his; for he has conceived the most triumphant, the most monumental,

the most insane, the most extravagant idea that has passed through the

brain of man in this blessed nineteenth century, which has seen the

birth of so many and such amusing ideas.

The method of dealing with a book is very expeditious and within the

range of every intellect:

"If you choose to read this book, lock yourself securely into your

own room; do not leave it lying on the table. If your wife and your

daughter should open it, they would be lost.--This is a dangerous

book, it advises vicious habits. It would have made a great success,

perhaps, in the time of Crébillon, in the houses of kept mistresses, at

a duchess's select supper-parties; but now that morals are purified,

now that the hand of the people has razed the rotten edifice of

aristocracy, and that,--etc., etc.--there must be in every work an

idea--an idea--yes, a moral and religious idea which--an exalted

and profound aim, answering to the needs of humanity; for it is a

deplorable thing that young writers should sacrifice the most sacred

things to success, and should expend their talent--a notable talent by

the way--in lewd descriptions that would make a captain of dragoons

blush."--(The virginity of the captain of dragoons is, after the

discovery of America, the most delightful discovery that has been made

for a long while.)--"The novel we are considering recalls Justine,

the philosophic Thérèse, Félicia, Compère Matthieu, the Contes de

Grécourt, the Priapées of the Marquis de Sade." The virtuous journalist

is immensely erudite in the matter of filthy novels;--I am very curious

to know why.

It may be obtained at Eugène Renduel's, Rue des Grands-Augustins, No.

22. A handsome volume in 8vo. with vignette. Price 7 francs 50 centimes.

_Eccò_,--_ecce_,--see it.

It is frightful to think that, through the fault of the newspapers,

there are many honest manufacturers who have only these two recipes to

live upon, they and the numerous families they employ.

Apparently I am the most monumentally immoral personage to be found

in Europe or elsewhere; for I can see nothing more licentious in the

novels and plays of the present day than in the novels and plays of an

earlier time, and I find it difficult to understand why the ears of the

gentlemen of the journals have suddenly become so Jansenically ticklish.

I do not believe that the most innocent newspaper man will dare to say

that Pigault-Lebrun, Crébillon Fils, Louvet, Voisenon, Marmontel, and

all other writers of novels and tales do not surpass in immorality,

since there is such a thing as immorality, the most dissolute and

licentious productions of Messieurs Such-an-one and So-and-so, whom I

do not name out of regard for their modesty.

One must be most notoriously false to his convictions not to agree to

that.

Let not the objection be made that I have cited names little known or

unfavorably known. If I have not mentioned the brilliant, imperishable

names, it is not because they will not support my assertion with the

weight of their great authority.

The novels and tales of Voltaire, aside from the question of merit, are

most assuredly no more suitable to be given as prizes to little slips

of boarding-school misses than are the immoral tales of our friend the

lycanthropist, or even the moral tales of the insipid Marmontel.

What do we find in the comedies of the great Molière? the sacred

institution of marriage--as the catechism and the newspapers call

it--scoffed at and ridiculed in every scene.

The husband is old, ugly, and peevish; he wears his wig awry; his coat

is out of fashion; he has a bill-headed cane, a nose smeared with

snuff, short legs, and a paunch as fat as a budget.--He stammers,

says nothing but foolish things, and does as many as he says; he sees

nothing, he hears nothing; his wife is kissed before his face, and he

has no idea what is going on; that state of things lasts until he is

well and duly proved a cuckold in his own eyes and in the eyes of the

whole audience, who are mightily edified and applaud in a way to bring

the walls down.

They who applaud the loudest are they who are the most married.

In Molière, marriage is named George Dandin or Sganarelle.

Adultery is Damis or Clitandre; there is no name sweet and charming

enough for it.

The adulterer is always young, handsome, well-made, and a marquis

at the very least. He enters from the wings humming the very latest

waltz; he takes one or two steps on the stage with the most deliberate,

all-conquering air imaginable; he scratches his ear with the pink nail

of his deftly spread little finger; he combs his lovely fair hair with

his tortoise-shell comb, and arranges his ruffles, which are of great

volume. His doublet and his hose are almost covered with bows and knots

of ribbon; his neckband is from the best maker; his gloves smell

sweeter than balsam and civet; his plumes cost a louis apiece.

How his eye sparkles and his cheek glows! how smiling his mouth! how

white his teeth! how soft and well cared for his hand!

He speaks, naught issues from his lips save poesy, perfumed gallantries

in the most refined style and with the most charming manner; he has

read the latest novels and knows all about poetry, he is brave, and

quick to draw his sword, he scatters gold with lavish hand.--And so

Angélique, Agnès, Isabelle, can hardly refrain from leaping on his

neck, well-bred and great ladies though they be; and so the husband is

regularly betrayed in the fifth act, and is very lucky that he was not

in the first.

That is how marriage is treated by Molière, one of the loftiest and

most serious geniuses who ever lived.--Do you think there is anything

stronger in the suits of _Indiana_ and of _Valentine_?

Paternity is even less respected, if that be possible. Witness Orgon,

Géronte, and all the rest of them.

How they are robbed by their sons, cheated by their valets! How their

avarice, their obstinacy, their idiocy are laid bare, without mercy for

their age!--What practical jokes! what mystifications.--How they are

taken by the shoulder and pushed out of life, poor old fellows, who

take a long time to die and refuse to give up their money! how much is

said about the immortality of parents! what arguments against heredity,

and how much more convincing they are than all this Saint-Simonian

declamation!

A father is an ogre, an Argus, a jailer, a tyrant, something that at

the best is good for nothing but to delay a marriage for three acts

until the final reconciliation.--A father is the ridiculous husband

perfected.--A son is never ridiculous in Molière; for Molière, like all

authors at all possible epochs, paid his court to the young generation

at the expense of the old.

And what of the Scapins, with their striped cloaks _à la Napolitaine_,

their caps tilted over their ears, their plumes sweeping the layers of

air,--are not they very pious, very chaste individuals, most worthy of

canonization?--The galleys are filled with honest folk who have not

done the fourth part of what they do. The knavery of Trialph is paltry

knavery compared with theirs. And the Lisettes, the Martons, _tudieu_!

what hussies!--The girls of the street are far from being as sharp,

as quick at prurient retort as they. How well they understand how to

deliver a note! what good watch they keep during assignations!--On my

word, they are invaluable girls, serviceable and shrewd advisers.

It is a charming company that walks and fidgets through those comedies

and imbroglios.--Duped guardians, cuckold husbands, lewd maids,

keen-witted valets, young ladies mad with love, dissolute sons,

adulterous wives; are not these quite as bad as the melancholy young

beaux and poor, weak women, oppressed and impassioned, of the dramas

and novels of the writers in vogue to-day?

And yet the denouements, minus the final blow of the dagger, minus the

regulation cup of poison, are as happy as the time-honored ending of a

fairy tale, and everybody, even the husband, is perfectly satisfied.

In Molière, virtue is always in disgrace, always being pummelled; it

is virtue that wears horns and turns her back to Mascarille; morality

barely shows its face once at the end of the play, in the somewhat

commonplace person of the gendarme Loyal.

All this that we have said is not intended to knock a chip off

Molière's pedestal; we are not mad enough to attempt to shake that

bronze colossus with our weak arms; we desired simply to show the pious

_feuilletonistes_, who are terrified by recent works and by those of

the romantic school, that the old classics, whom they urge us every day

to read and imitate, far surpass them in looseness and immorality.

To Molière we might easily add Marivaux and La Fontaine, those two

strongly-contrasted exponents of the French mind, and Regnier and

Rabelais and Marot, and many others. But it is not our purpose in

this place to prepare, from the standpoint of morality, a course in

literature for the benefit of the virgin minds of the _feuilleton_.

It seems to me that we should not raise such a hubbub for so small a

matter. Luckily we are not living in the days of the fair Eve, and we

cannot, in good conscience, be as primitive and patriarchal as people

were in the days of the ark. We are not little girls preparing for our

first communion; and when we play crambo, we do not answer _cream-pie_.

We are passably knowing in our innocence, and our virginity has been

on the town for a long while; those are things that one does not have

twice, and, whatever we may do, we cannot recover them, for there is

nothing in the world that runs faster than a fleeing virginity and a

vanishing illusion.

After all, perhaps there is no great harm in that, and knowledge of

everything is preferable to ignorance of everything. That is a question

that I leave for those who know more than I, to discuss. The fact

remains that the world has passed the age when one can feign modesty

and chastity, and I consider it too old a greybeard to play the child

and the virgin without making itself ridiculous.

Since its marriage to civilization, society has lost the right to be

artless and bashful. There are certain blushes that are all right for

the bridal bed, but can serve no further purpose the next day; for the

young wife thinks no more of the maiden, it may be, or if she does

think of her, it is a most improper thing and gravely endangers her

husband's reputation.

When I chance to read one of the fine sermons that have taken the place

of literary criticism in the public sheets, I sometimes feel great

remorse and dire apprehension, having on my conscience some paltry

equivocal stories, a little too highly spiced, such as a young man of

spirit and animation may have to reproach himself for.

Beside these Bossuets of the Café de Paris, these Bourdaloues of the

balcony at the Opéra, these Catos at so much a line, who berate the

present age in such fine fashion, I esteem myself the most infamous

villain that ever marred the face of the earth; and yet, God knows,

the list of my sins, capital as well as venial, with the usual blank

spaces and leads, would barely, even in the hands of the most skilful

publisher, make one or two octavo volumes a day, which is a small

matter for one who does not claim to be bound for paradise in the other

world and to win the Monthyon prize or be rose-maiden in this.

And then, when I think that I have met under the table, and elsewhere,

too, a considerable number of these dragons of virtue, I return to a

better opinion of myself, and I consider that, whatever faults I may

have, they have another which is, in my eyes, the greatest and worst of

all:--I refer to hypocrisy.

By looking carefully one might perhaps find another little vice to

add; but this is so hideous that I really hardly dare to name it. Come

nearer and I will breathe its name into your ear:--it is envy.

Envy, and nothing else.

It is envy that crawls and wriggles through all these paternal

homilies; however careful it may be to hide itself, you can see its

flat little viper's head from time to time gleaming above the metaphors

and rhetorical figures; you surprise it licking with its forked tongue

its lips blue with venom, you hear it hissing softly in the shadow of

an insidious epithet.

I am well aware that it is insufferably conceited to say that any one

envies you, and that a dandy who boasts of a conquest is almost as

nauseating.--I am not so boastful as to believe that I have enemies or

envious detractors; that is a piece of good fortune that is not given

to everybody, and I probably shall not enjoy it for a long time; so

I will speak freely and without reservation as one who is perfectly

disinterested in the matter.

An unquestionable fact, and easy of demonstration to those who may

doubt it, is the natural antipathy of the critic to the poet--of him

who does nothing to him who does something--of the drone to the bee--of

the gelding to the stallion.

You do not become a critic until the fact is established to your

own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet. Before descending to

the pitiful rôle of watching cloaks and counting strokes like a

billiard-marker or a tennis-court attendant, you have long courted the

Muse, you have tried to seduce her; but you have not sufficient vigor

for that; your breath has failed you and you have fallen back, pale and

broken-winded, to the foot of the sacred mountain.

I can conceive that antipathy. It is painful to see another take his

seat at the banquet to which you are not invited and lie with the woman

who would have none of you. I pity with all my heart the poor eunuch

who is compelled to assist at the delights of the Great Turk.

He is admitted to the most secret recesses of the Oda; he escorts the

sultanas to the bath; he sees their lovely bodies gleaming in the

silvery water of the great reservoirs, shedding streams of pearls

and smoother than agate; the most hidden charms are disclosed to him

unveiled. No one is embarrassed by his presence.--He is a eunuch.--The

sultan caresses his favorite before him and kisses her on her

pomegranate mouth.--In very truth his is a terribly false position and

he must be sadly embarrassed to keep himself in countenance.

It is the same with the critic who sees the poet walking in the garden

of poesy with its nine fair odalisques, and disporting himself

indolently in the shade of tall green laurels. It is very hard for him

not to pick up stones in the road to throw at him and wound him over

the wall, if he is skilful enough to do it.

The critic who has produced nothing of his own is a coward; he is like

an abbé paying court to a layman's wife: the layman cannot pay him back

in his own coin or fight with him.

I think that an account of the different methods of depreciating any

sort of work, resorted to during the last month, would be at least

as interesting as the story of Tiglath-Pileser, or of Gemmagog, who

invented peaked shoes.

There would be enough matter to fill fifteen or sixteen folio volumes,

but we will have pity on the reader and confine ourselves to a few

lines--a favor for which we demand more than everlasting gratitude.--In

a very remote age, lost in the darkness of time--it was fully three

weeks ago--the romance of the Middle Ages flourished principally in

Paris and the suburbs. The coat of arms was held in high esteem;

_coiffures à la Hennin_ were not despised and party-colored trousers

were thought well of; the dagger was priceless; the peaked shoe was

adored as a fetich.--There was nothing but ogive windows, turrets,

colonnettes, stained glass, cathedrals, and fortified châteaux;--the

characters were all _damoiselles_ and _damoiseaux_, pages and

varlets, beggars and swash-bucklers, gallant knights and ferocious

castellans;--all of which were more innocent certainly than innocent

games, and did absolutely no harm to anybody.

The critic did not wait for the second romance before beginning his

work of depreciation: as soon as the first appeared, he enveloped

himself in his robe of camel's hair, and sprinkled a bushel of ashes on

his head; then, in his loud, wailing voice, he began to cry:

"More Middle Ages, nothing but the Middle Ages! who will deliver me

from the Middle Ages, from the Middle Ages which are not the Middle

Ages?--Paste-board and terra-cotta Middle Ages, which have nothing of

the Middle Ages save the name!--Oh! these iron barons, in their iron

armor, with iron hearts in their iron breasts! Oh! the cathedrals with

their rose-work always in bloom and their stained glass in flower,

with their lace-work of granite, with their open-work trefoils, their

toothed gables, their chasubles of stone embroidered like a bride's

veil, with their tapers, their psalms, their glittering priests, with

their people on their knees, their rumbling organ, and their angels

soaring aloft and flapping their wings under the arches!--how they have

spoiled my Middle Ages, my refined, brightly-colored Middle Ages!--how

they have blotted it from sight under a layer of coarse plaster!--what

discordant colors!--Ah! ignorant daubers, who fancy you have created

an effect by splashing red upon blue, white upon black, and green

upon yellow, you have seen only the outer shell of the Middle Ages,

you have not divined the true meaning of the Middle Ages, the blood

does not circulate beneath the skin in which you have clothed your

phantoms, there is no heart in your steel corselets, there are no legs

in your tricot trousers, no stomach or breast behind your emblazoned

skirts; they are clothes that have the shape of men and that is

all.--So, down with the Middle Ages as they are presented to us by the

_fabricators_"--the great word is out, the _fabricators_!--"The Middle

Ages meet no need of the present day, we must have something else."

And the public, seeing how the _feuilletonistes_ snarled at the Middle

Ages, was seized with an ardent passion for the Middle Ages, which

they claim to have killed at a single blow. The Middle Ages invaded

everything, assisted by the obstruction of the newspapers:--dramas,

melodramas, novels, tales, poetry--there were even Middle-Age

vaudevilles, and Momus recited feudal mummeries.

Beside the romance of the Middle Ages flourished the carrion romance,

a very pleasing variety, which nervous _petites-maîtresses_ and blasé

cooks consumed in great numbers.

The _feuilletonistes_ speedily came flocking to the stench, like

crows to the carrion, and they tore with the beaks of their pens and

inhumanly put to death that poor species of novel, which asked nothing

more than to be allowed to prosper and putrefy in peace on the greasy

shelves of the book-stalls. What did they not say? what did they not

write?--Literature of the morgue or the galleys, an executioner's

nightmare, hallucination of a drunken butcher, or a convict-keeper with

the jail-fever! They benignly gave us to understand that the authors

were assassins and vampires, that they had contracted the vicious habit

of killing their fathers and mothers, that they drank blood from human

skulls, that they used the bones of the legs for forks and cut their

bread with a guillotine.

And yet they knew better than any one, from having frequently

breakfasted with them, that the authors of those charming slaughters

were excellent young men of family, very easy-going and in the best

society, white-gloved and fashionably near-sighted,--with a decided

preference for beefsteak over human cutlets, and more accustomed

to drink Bordeaux wine than the blood of young girls or new-born

children.--From having seen and touched their manuscripts, they knew

perfectly well that they were written with ink of great virtue upon

English paper, and not with blood from the guillotine upon the skin of

a Christian flayed alive.

But whatever they might say or do, the age was after carrion, and the

charnel-house suited them better than the boudoir; the reader would

bite at no hook that was not baited with a little body already turning

blue.--A state of things easily conceived; put a rose at the end of

your line and the spiders will have time to spin their webs in the

crook of your elbow before you catch the tiniest minnow; put on a worm

or a piece of rank cheese, and carp, barbel, perch, eels, will all leap

three feet out of water to snap at it.--Men are not so different from

fish as people generally seem to believe.

One would have said that the newspaper men had become Quakers,

Brahmins, or Pythagoreans, or bulls, they had been suddenly seized with

such a horror of red and of blood.--Never had they been known to be

in such a soft and melting mood;--it was cream and buttermilk.--They

admitted the existence of only two colors, sky-blue and apple-green.

Pink was only tolerated, and if the public would have allowed them to

do as they chose, they would have led it to the banks of the Lignon to

feed on spinach beside the sheep of Amaryllis. They had changed their

black frock-coats for the dove-colored jacket of Celadon or Silvander,

and surrounded their goose-feathers with clusters of roses and ribbons

after the style of a shepherd's crook. They let their hair float in the

wind like a child's, and had made themselves virgins according to the

recipe of Marion Delorme, and about as successfully as she.

They applied to literature the article in the Decalogue:

_Thou shalt not kill._

The least little dramatic murder was no longer permissible, and the

fifth act had become an impossibility.

They considered the poniard extravagant, poison monstrous, the axe

horrible beyond words. They would have liked dramatic heroes to live

to the age of Melchisedec; and yet it has been a recognized fact, from

time immemorial, that the object of every tragedy is to have a poor

devil of a great man, who cannot help himself, murdered in the last

act, just as the object of every comedy is to join in matrimony two

idiots of _jeunes premiers_ of about sixty years each.

It was about this time that I threw into the fire--after having taken

a duplicate, as almost always happens--two superb and magnificent

Middle-Age dramas, one in verse, the other in prose, in which the

heroes were quartered and boiled on the stage, which would have been

very entertaining and decidedly unusual.

To conform to their ideas, I have since composed an antique tragedy in

five acts called _Héliogabale_, the hero of which throws himself into

the privy, an extremely novel situation and one that has the merit of

introducing a bit of scenery not yet seen on the stage.--I have also

written a modern drama, very much superior to _Antoni,--Arthur,_ or

_L'Homme Fatal,_ where the providential idea arrives in the shape of

a Strasbourg pâté de foie gras, which the hero eats to the last crumb

after committing various rapes, and that, combined with his remorse,

brings on a frightful attack of indigestion of which he dies.--A moral

ending, if ever there was one, which proves that _God is just_, and

that vice is always punished and virtue rewarded.

As for the monstrosity species, you know how they have dealt with that,

how they have abused Han d'Islande the cannibal, Habibrah the obi,

Quasimodo the bell-ringer, and Triboulet, who is only a hunch-back--all

that family so strangely swarming--all those gigantic deformities whom

my dear neighbor sends crawling and leaping through the virgin forests

and the cathedrals of his romances. Neither the great strokes _à la_

Michael Angelo, nor the curiosities worthy of Callot, nor the effects

of light and shade after the fashion of Goya, could find favor before

them; they sent him back to his odes when he wrote novels, to his

novels when he wrote dramas: the ordinary tactics of journalists who

always praise what you have done at the expense of what you are doing.

A fortunate man, however, is he who is acknowledged to be superior,

even by the _feuilletonistes_, in all his works,--except, of course,

the particular one with whom they are dealing,--and who need only write

a theological treatise or a manual of cooking to have his plays admired.

Concerning the romance of the heart, the ardent, impassioned romance,

whose father is Werther the German, and its mother Manon Lescaut

the French-woman, we had a few words to say, at the beginning of

this preface, of the moral scurf that has fastened itself upon it in

desperation, on the pretext of religion and good morals. The critical

louse is like the body-louse that deserts the dead body for the living.

From the corpse of the Middle Ages the critics have passed on to the

living body of this age, whose skin is tough and hard and might well

break their teeth.

We think, notwithstanding a deep respect for the modern apostles,

that the authors of these so-called immoral novels, without being

so thoroughly married as the virtuous journalist, generally have a

mother, and that several of them have sisters and are provided with

an abundance of female relations; but their mothers and sisters do

not read novels, even immoral novels; they sew and embroider and look

after the house-keeping.--Their stockings, as Monsieur Planard would

say, are--entirely white: you can look at them on their legs--they are

not _blue_, and excellent Chrysale, who hated learned women so, would

suggest them as models to the skilled Philaminte.

As for these gentlemen's _wives_, as they have so many of them,

however spotless their husbands may be, it seems to my simple mind

that there are certain things they ought to know.--Indeed, it may well

be that their husbands have never shown them anything. In that case I

understand that they are bent upon keeping them in that useful state of

blessed ignorance. God is great and Mohammed is his prophet!--Women are

inquisitive creatures; may Heaven and morality grant that they gratify

their curiosity in a more legitimate way than that adopted by their

grandmother Eve, and do not go putting questions to the serpent!

As for their daughters, if they have been at boarding-school, I fail to

see what they can learn from these books.

It is as absurd to say that a man is a drunkard because he describes

an orgy, or a debauchee because he narrates a debauch, as to claim

that a man is virtuous because he has written a book on morals; we

see the contrary every day. It is the character that speaks, not the

author; his hero may be an atheist, that does not mean that he is an

atheist; he represents brigands as acting and talking like brigands,

but that does not make him a brigand. On that theory we should have

to guillotine Shakespeare, Corneille, and all the writers of tragedy;

they have committed more murders than Mandrin and Cartouche; we have

not done it, however, and, indeed, I do not believe that we shall

do it for a long time to come, however virtuous and moral criticism

may become. It is one of the manias of these little shallow-brained

scribblers always to substitute the author for the work, and to resort

to personalities, in order to give some paltry scandalous interest to

their miserable rhapsodies, which they are well aware that nobody would

read if they contained only their individual opinions.

We can hardly imagine the tendency of all this wailing, or what good

purpose all this indignation and snarling can serve--or who impels

these Messieurs Geoffroy on a small scale to set themselves up as the

Don Quixotes of morality, and, like genuine literary policemen, to lay

hands upon and club, in the name of virtue, every idea that appears in

a book with its mob-cap awry or its petticoats raised a little too

high.--It is very strange.

Whatever they may say, the present age is immoral,--if the word means

anything, which we much doubt,--and we require no other proof of it

than the quantity of immoral books it produces and the success they

meet with.--Books follow morals, morals do not follow books.--The

Regency produced Crébillon, not Crébillon the Regency. Boucher's

little shepherdesses were painted and immodest because the little

marchionesses of the day were painted and immodest.--Pictures are

painted after models, not models after pictures. Somebody or other

has said somewhere or other that literature and the arts have a

great influence on morals. Whoever he is, he is unquestionably a

great fool.--It is as if some one should say: "Green peas make the

springtime grow;" on the other hand, green peas grow because it is

spring, and cherries because it is summer. The trees bear fruit, the

fruit assuredly does not bear the trees--the law is everlasting and

invariable in its variations; the centuries succeed one another and

each bears its fruit, which differs from that of the preceding century;

books are the fruit of morals.

Beside the moral journalists, under this shower of homilies, as if it

were a summer shower in a park, there has arisen, between the boards of

the Saint-Simonian stage, a school of little mushrooms of a curious new

variety, of which we propose to give the natural history.

They are the utilitarian critics,--poor fellows whose noses were so

short that they would not hold spectacles, and who could not see to the

end of their noses.

When an author tossed upon their desk a volume of any sort,--novel

or poetry,--these gentry would lean back nonchalantly in their

chairs, balance them on their hind legs, sway back and forth, puffing

themselves out with a knowing air, and say:

"What purpose does this book serve? How can it be applied to securing

the moral and spiritual well-being of the most numerous and poorest

class? What! not a word of the needs of society, nothing civilizing

and progressive! How, instead of dealing synthetically with the great

problems of humanity, and following, through the events of history,

the phases of the regenerating, providential idea, can you waste

time writing poetry and novels which lead to nothing, and which do

nothing to help the generation forward in the pathway of the future?

How can you concern yourself about form and style and rhythm, in

presence of such grave interests?--What do we care for rhythm and

style and form? that is all right in its place!" (Poor foxes, they

are too green!)--"Society is suffering, it has a terrible gnawing at

the vitals;" (translate: no one will subscribe to the utilitarian

papers.) "It is for the poet to seek the cause of the trouble and cure

it. He will find a way by sympathizing heart and soul with humanity;"

(philanthropic poets! that would be something rare and charming.) "We

await the coming of that poet, we pray for his coming with all our

hearts. When he appears, his will be the acclamations of the multitude,

his the palm-leaves, his the wreaths, his the Prytaneum."

Very fine; but as we desire the reader to stay awake to the end of this

blessed preface, we will not continue this very close imitation of the

utilitarian style, which, by its nature, is unusually soporific, and

might advantageously replace laudanum and the discourses of the Academy.

No, fools, no, cretins and goitrous creatures that you are, a book does

not make gelatine soup;--a novel is not a pair of seamless boots; a

sonnet is not a syringe with a continuous stream; a drama is not a

railroad,--all essentially civilizing things and tending to assist

humanity along the pathway of progress.

By the bowels of all the popes, past, present, and to come, no, two

hundred thousand times no.

You cannot make a nightcap out of a metonymy, or wear comparisons by

way of slippers; you cannot use antithesis as an umbrella; unluckily

we have not the secret of clapping a few variegated rhymes upon the

stomach as we put on a waistcoat. I have a firm conviction that the ode

is a garment too light for winter, and that one would be no more warmly

clad with the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode, than the wife of

the cynic who was contented to have only her virtue as a chemise and

went about as naked as your hand, as history tells us.

The famous Monsieur de la Calprenède once had a coat, and when

some one asked what kind of cloth it was made of, he answered:

Silvandre.--_Silvandre_ was a play of his that had just been produced

with success.

Such arguments make one raise his shoulders above his head, higher than

the Duke of Gloucester's.

People who claim to be economists and who wish to rebuild society from

top to bottom, seriously put forward such trash.

A novel may be useful in two ways:--one material, the other spiritual,

if we may use such an expression with reference to a novel.--Its

material utility consists, first, of the few thousand francs that go

into the author's pocket, and ballast him so that neither the devil nor

the wind can whisk him away; to the publisher it is a noble race-horse

who stamps and rears with his cabriolet of ebony and steel, as Figaro

says; to the paper manufacturer, one more factory on some stream and

often the means of spoiling a fine site; to the printers, divers

hogsheads of logwood to put their windpipes in shape once a week; to

the circulating libraries, piles of big sous covered with proletariat

verdigris and a quantity of grease, which if it were carefully

collected and utilized would render the whale-fishery useless.--The

spiritual utility consists in this: that, while you are reading novels,

you fall asleep, and you are not reading utilitarian, virtuous, and

progressive newspapers, or other similar indigestible, stupefying drugs.

Let any one say after this that novels do not assist civilization.--I

will say nothing of the tobacco agents, grocers, and dealers in fried

potatoes, who have a very great interest in this branch of literature,

the paper used therein being, as a general rule, of a superior quality

to that used by the newspapers.

Verily it is enough to make one split one's sides with laughter to hear

messieurs the republican or Saint-Simonian utilitarians hold forth.--In

the first place, I should be glad to know the exact meaning of that

great lubberly substantive with which they daily lard the empty void

of their columns, and which serves them as a sort of shibboleth and

sacramental term:--Utility; what is the word, and to what is it applied?

There are two kinds of utilities, and the meaning of the word is always

relative. What is useful for one is not for another. You are a cobbler,

I am a poet.--It is useful for me to have my first line rhyme with my

second.--A dictionary of rhymes is of great utility to me; you have

no use for it in cobbling an old pair of boots, and it is fair to say

that a cobbler's knife would be of no great use to me in writing an

ode.--Now, you will remark that a cobbler is much above a poet, and

that we could get along better without the latter than without the

former. Without undertaking to cry down the illustrious profession of

cobbler, which I honor equally with the profession of constitutional

monarch, I will humbly confess that I should prefer to have my shoe

down at heel rather than to have my lines haltingly rhymed, and that

I should be more willing to go without boots than without poems. As I

rarely go out, and walk more readily on my head than on my feet, I wear

out fewer shoes than a virtuous republican who does nothing but run

from one government department to another trying to induce somebody to

toss him an office.

I know that there are those who prefer windmills to churches, and the

bread that feeds the body to that that feeds the soul. To them I have

nothing to say. They deserve to be economists in this world and also in

the other.

Is there anything absolutely useful on this earth and in this life that

we live? In the first place, there is very little use in one being

on the earth and living. I challenge the most erudite of the band

to say of what use we are, unless it be to subscribe neither to the

_Constitutionnel_ nor to a journal of any sort.

Secondly, the utility of our existence being admitted _a priori_, what

are the really useful things to maintain it? A plate of soup and a bit

of bread twice a day are all that we need to fill the stomach, in the

strict acceptation of the word. The man for whom a coffin six feet by

two will be enough and more than enough after his death, does not need

much more space during his life. A hollow cube, seven or eight feet

broad, long and deep, with a hole to breathe through, a single cell in

the hive, is all that he needs to lodge him and to keep the rain from

falling on his back. A quilt, rolled properly about his body, will

protect him from the cold as well as, yes, better than, Staub's most

stylish and elegant frock-coat.

With that a man can exist, theoretically. They say that one can live

on twenty-five sous a day; but to keep from dying is not living; and I

cannot see wherein a city organized on utilitarian principles would be

more agreeable to live in than Père La Chaise.

Nothing beautiful is indispensable to life.--If flowers should be

suppressed, the world would not suffer materially; and yet who could

wish that there were no flowers? I would rather give up potatoes than

roses, and I do not believe there is more than one utilitarian in the

world capable of digging up a bed of tulips to make room for cabbages.

What good purpose does female beauty serve? Provided that a woman is

well-developed physically, in a condition to receive a man and to

produce children, she will always be good enough for the economist.

What is the use of music? or painting? Who would be foolish enough to

prefer Mozart to Monsieur Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of

white mustard?

Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of;

everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some

need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak

nature.--The most useful part of a house is the privy.

I myself, with due respect to those gentlemen, am one of those to whom

superfluities are necessaries--and my liking for people and things is

in inverse ratio to the services they render me. I prefer a Chinese

vase, covered with dragons and mandarins, which is of no use to me

at all, to a certain other vase, which is useful to me; and that one

of my talents which I prize most highly is my inability to guess

riddles and charades. I would very willingly renounce my privileges

as a Frenchman and a citizen to see an authentic painting by Raphael,

or a beautiful nude woman: the Princess Borghese, for instance, when

she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she was in her bath. For

my part I would gladly consent to the return of that cannibal of

a Charles X., if he would bring me, from his castle in Bohemia, a

hamper of Tokay or Johannisberg, and I would agree that the suffrage

laws were broad enough, if some of the streets were more so and other

things less so.--Although I am not a born _dilettante,_ I prefer the

noise of squeaking fiddles and bass drums to that of Monsieur le

Président's bell. I would sell my trousers to buy a ring and my daily

bread for sweetmeats.--The most becoming occupation for a polished man

is, it seems to me, to do nothing, or to smoke his pipe or his cigar

analytically. I also have a high regard for those who play at skittles

and for those who write good poetry. You see that my principles are

very far from being utilitarian, and that I shall never become editor

of a virtuous newspaper unless I am converted, which would be droll

enough.

Instead of awarding a Monthyon prize as a reward of virtue, I would

prefer to give, like Sardanapalus, that great philosopher who has been

so misunderstood, a handsome premium to the man who should invent a new

form of pleasure; for enjoyment seems to me the true aim of life and

the only useful thing in the world. God has so willed it, for it was He

who made women, perfumes, light, lovely flowers, good wines, prancing

horses, greyhounds, and Angora cats; nor did he say to his angels:

"Be virtuous," but: "Love;" and he gave us a mouth, more sensitive

than the rest of the skin, with which to kiss women, eyes uplifted to

see the light, a subtle sense of smell to inhale the soul of flowers,

well-knit thighs to press the sides of stallions and fly swifter than

thought without railroad or steamboat, delicate hands with which to

caress the long head of the greyhound, the velvety back of the cat,

and the gleaming shoulders of creatures of doubtful virtue; in a word,

he bestowed only upon us the threefold, glorious privilege of drinking

without being thirsty, of striking a light, and of making love at all

seasons, which distinguishes us from the brute much more than the

custom of reading newspapers and drawing maps.

_Mon Dieu_! what an idiotic thing is this alleged perfectibility of the

human race that is being dinned into our ears! One would say in truth

that man is a machine susceptible of improvements, and that the more

careful adjustment of a wheel, a counterpoise more conveniently placed,

might make it work more smoothly and more handily. When they have

succeeded in giving man a double stomach, so that he can chew his cud

like an ox, and eyes in the back of his head, like Janus, so that he

can see those who stick out their tongues at him behind his back, and

contemplate his _unworthiness_ in a less uncomfortable position than

that of the Venus Callipyges at Athens, and in planting wings on his

shoulder blades so that he will not be obliged to pay six sous to ride

in an omnibus; when they have given him a new organ, well and good:

then the word _perfectibility_ will begin to mean something.

Since all these fine ameliorations, what has been done that was not

done as well and better before the deluge?

Have we succeeded in drinking more than they drank in the days of

ignorance and barbarism--old style? Alexander, the doubtful friend

of the fair Hephæstion, was no small drinker, although there was no

_Journal des Connaissances Utiles_ in his day, and I am unable to

conceive how any utilitarian, unless he should become oïnopic and

more puffed out than the younger Lepeintre or a hippopotamus, could

drain the great beaker which he called Hercules' cup. The Maréchal

de Bassompierre, who emptied his long boot to the health of the

Thirteen Cantons, seems to me a singularly estimable personage in his

way and very hard to improve upon. What economist will enlarge our

stomachs so that they will hold as many beefsteaks as the late Milo

of Crotona, who ate an ox? The bill of fare at Véfour's Café Anglais,

or at any other culinary celebrity's that you choose, seems to me very

ill-supplied and commonplace compared to the menu of Trimalcion's

dinner.--At whose table in these days are a sow and her twelve

shoats served on a single platter? Who has eaten muræna and lampreys

fattened on man? Do you really think that Brillat-Savarin has improved

upon Apicius? Could Vitellius's big tripe-man find at Chevet's the

wherewithal to fill his famous Minerva's shield with pheasants' and

peacocks' brains, tongues of flamingoes and scarus livers?--The oysters

you eat at the Rocher de Cancale are such a great delicacy compared

with the oysters of Lucrin, for which a lake was made expressly.--The

little establishments in the suburbs kept by the marquises of the

Regency were wretched little boxes, if we compare them with the villas

of the Roman patricians at Baiæ, Capri, and Tibur. The Cyclopean

splendor of the great voluptuaries who erected everlasting monuments

for a day's pleasure should cause us to fall flat on our faces before

the genius of antiquity and erase forever from our dictionaries the

word _perfectibility._

Has a new capital crime been invented? Unfortunately there are only

seven of them as before, the number of the just man's backslidings for

one day, which is very moderate.--Indeed, I do not think that after a

century of progress, at the rate we are travelling, any lover would be

capable of renewing the thirteenth labor of Hercules.--Can a man be

agreeable to his divinity a single time oftener than in the days of

Solomon? Many very illustrious scholars and very respectable ladies

answer that question in the negative, and aver that amiability is on

the wane. Very good! if that is so, why do you talk of progress?--I

know that you will tell me that there is an Upper Chamber and a Lower

Chamber, that you hope that everybody will soon be an elector and the

number of representatives doubled or trebled. Do you think that there

are not enough mistakes in grammar made in the national tribune as it

is, and that the deputies are not numerous enough for the vile work

they have to do? I can hardly understand the utility of quartering

two or three hundred provincials in a wooden barrack, with a ceiling

painted by Monsieur Fragonard, there to botch and bungle nobody knows

how many absurd or atrocious little laws.--What difference does it

make whether it is a sabre, a holy-water sprinkler, or an umbrella

that governs us?--It is a club all the same, and I am amazed that

progressive men should dispute as to the kind of club that is to make

their shoulders tingle, when it would be much more progressive and less

expensive to break it and throw the pieces to all the devils.

The only one of you who has any common sense is a madman, a great

genius, an imbecile, a divine poet far above Lamartine, Hugo, and

Byron; it is Charles Fourrier, the phalansterian, who is all that in

his single person: he alone is logical and has the courage to carry

his theory through to its inevitable consequence.--He asserts, without

hesitation, that man will soon have a tail fifteen feet long with an

eye at the end of it; that surely is progress and will permit us to

do a thousand fine things we could not do before, such as killing

elephants without striking a blow, balancing ourselves on trees without

swings, as handily as the most expert ape, doing without sunshade or

umbrella by raising the tail above the head like a plume, as squirrels

do, who get along very well without umbrellas; and other prerogatives

too numerous to mention. Several phalansterians claim that they already

have a little tail that asks nothing better than to grow longer, if

only God gives them length of days.

Charles Fourrier has invented as many species of animals as George

Cuvier, the great naturalist. He invented horses that will be thrice

the size of elephants, dogs as large as tigers, fish capable of feeding

more people than the three small fishes of the Saviour, which the

incredulous Voltaireans believe were _poissons d'Avril_,[1] and I the

text of a noble parable. He has built cities beside which Rome, Tyre,

and Babylon are simply mole-hills; he has piled Babels one upon another

and built spiral stairways ascending among the clouds to a greater

height than all those in John Martinn's engravings; he has conceived I

cannot say how many orders of architecture and new sauces; he has drawn

a plan for a theatre which would seem immense even to Romans of the

Empire, and prepared a dinner menu that Lucius or Nomentanus might have

deemed sufficient for a dinner to their friends; he promises to create

new forms of pleasure and to develop the organs and the senses; he is

to make women fairer and more voluptuous, men more robust and sturdy;

he guarantees you children and proposes to reduce the population of the

world so that every one will be in easy circumstances; which is more

reasonable than to urge paupers to make other paupers, with the idea of

shooting them down in the streets when they breed too fast and sending

them bullets instead of bread.

Progress is possible in no other way.--All the rest is bitter mockery,

buffoonery without wit, which is not even calculated to deceive

gullible fools.

The phalanstery is really a step in advance of the abbey of Thélème,

and definitely relegates the earthly paradise to the ranks of those

things that are altogether superannuated and old-fashioned. The

Thousand and One Nights and Madame d'Aulnay's Tales alone can contend

successfully with the phalanstery. What fertility! what invention!

There is material there from which to supply marvels for three thousand

cartloads of romantic or classic poems; and our versifiers, whether

academicians or not, are paltry inventors compared to Monsieur Charles

Fourrier, the inventor of startling attractions.--This idea of making

use of impulses which people have hitherto sought to repress, is most

assuredly a lofty and powerful idea.

Ah! you say that we are making progress!--Suppose that a volcano

should open its maw to-morrow at Montmartre, and should make a

winding-sheet of ashes and a tomb of lava for Paris, as Vesuvius once

did for Stabia, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, and that, some thousand

years hence, the antiquaries of that day should make excavations and

exhume the corpse of the dead city, tell me what monument would remain

standing to bear witness to the splendor of the mighty entombed, the

Gothic Notre-Dame?--They would form truly a fine idea of our artistic

development when they cleared away the rubbish from the Tuileries,

redecorated by Monsieur Fontaine! The statues on Pont Louis XV. would

look splendid in the museums of those days. And were it not for the

pictures of the ancient schools and the statues of antiquity or the

Renaissance crowded together in the gallery of the Louvre, that long

shapeless conduit; were it not for the ceiling by Ingres, which would

show that Paris was not a Barbary camp or a village of Welches or

Topinamboux, the things that would be unearthed from the ruins would

be very interesting.--Short swords carried by National Guardsmen,

firemen's helmets, coins struck from pyriform dies, that is the kind

of thing they would find instead of the beautiful, curiously-carved

weapons that the Middle Ages left in the recesses of their towers and

ruined tombs, the medallions that fill the Etruscan vases and pave the

cellars of all Roman buildings. As for our wretched veneered furniture,

all the cheap boxes, naked and ugly and shabby, that we call commodes

or secretaries, and all our shapeless, fragile utensils,--I trust that

time would have been compassionate enough to destroy the last vestige

of them.

Once, this whim of erecting a magnificent, pretentious monument took

possession of us. In the first place we were obliged to borrow the plan

from the old Romans; and even before it was finished, our Panthéon

tottered on its legs like a child with the rickets and staggered like a

drunken man, so that we had to give it crutches of stone, otherwise it

would have measured its shameful length on the ground, in sight of all

the world, and would have given the nations something to laugh at for

more than a hundred francs.--We thought it better to set up an obelisk

on one of our squares; we had to go and filch it at Luxor, and we were

two years bringing it home. Old Egypt lined its roads with obelisks as

we line ours with poplars; it carried bundles of them under its arm as

the market-gardener carries bunches of asparagus, and carved a monolith

from the sides of its mountains of granite more easily than we make

tooth-picks or ear-picks. A few centuries ago Raphael was living and

Michael Angelo; now we have Monsieur Paul Delaroche, all because we

are progressing.--You boast of your Opéra; ten Opéras like yours could

dance a saraband in a Roman circus. Monsieur Martin, himself, with his

tame tiger and his poor gouty lion, sound asleep like a subscriber

to the _Gazette_, makes a very poor showing beside the gladiator of

antiquity. Take your benefit performances that last till two o'clock

in the morning--what do they amount to when you think of the games

that lasted a hundred days, of the plays in which real ships really

fought in real water; in which thousands of men conscientiously cut

one another in pieces;--aye, turn pale O heroic Franconi!--in which,

when the sea retired, the desert arrived with its roaring tigers and

lions, awe-inspiring supernumeraries who did duty but once; in which

the leading rôle was taken by some robust, athletic Dacian or Pannonian

whom they would very often have found it embarrassing to produce at

the end of the play, his sweetheart being a lovely and dainty Numidian

lioness who had fasted for three days?--Does it not seem to you that

the rope-dancing elephant was superior to Mademoiselle Georges? Do you

suppose Mademoiselle Taglioni is a better dancer than Arbuscula, and

Perrot better than Bathyllus? I am convinced that Roscius could have

given points to Bocage, excellent actor though he is,--Galeria Coppiola

played _ingénue_ rôles when she was more than a hundred years old. It

is fair to say that the oldest of our _jeunes premières_ is but little

more than sixty, and that Mademoiselle Mars shows no sign of progress

in that direction: they had three or four thousand gods in whom they

believed, and we have only one and we hardly believe in him; that is a

strange kind of progress.--Was not Jupiter a better man than Don Juan

and a much more successful seducer? Verily, I cannot see what we have

discovered or even improved.

After the progressive journalists, as if to serve as a foil to them,

come the blasé journalists, who are usually twenty or twenty-two years

old, who have never left their quarter and have as yet lain only with

their housekeeper. Everything bores them, tires them out; they are

sated, blasé, used up, inaccessible. They know beforehand what you

are going to say to them; they have seen, felt, heard, experienced

everything that it is possible to see, feel, hear, and experience; the

human heart has no corner so dark that they have not held a lantern

to it. They say to you with marvellous self-possession: "The human

heart is not like that; women are not made so; that character is

falsely drawn;"--or else: "What's this! always love or hatred! always

men and women! Can't you talk about something else? Why, man is worn

threadbare, and woman, more so, since Monsieur de Balzac took a hand.

"'Who will deliver us from men and women?'

"Do you think your fable is new, monsieur? it is new after the fashion

of the Pont-Neuf:[2] nothing in the world could be more common; I read

it somewhere or other;--when I was out at nurse or somewhere else;

it's been dinned into my ears for ten years.--By the way, monsieur,

understand that there's nothing I don't know, that everything is

worn threadbare for me, and that even if your idea were as virginal

as the Virgin Mary, I would swear, none the less, that I had seen it

prostituting itself on street corners to the vilest scribblers and the

most contemptible pedants."

Journalists of that stamp are responsible for Jocko, Le Monstre Vert,

Les Lions de Mysore, and a thousand other charming conceits.

They are constantly complaining of being obliged to read books and see

plays. Apropos of a paltry vaudeville, they will talk about flowering

almond-trees, limes that perfume the air, the breezes of spring, the

odor of the young foliage; they set up for lovers of nature after the

style of young Werther, and yet they have never set foot outside of

Paris and could not tell a cabbage from a beet.--If it is winter, they

prate about the joys of the domestic fireside, and the crackling fire,

and the andirons, and the slippers, and the reverie and the state

between sleeping and waking; they never fail to quote Tibullus's famous

line:

Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem,

by the aid of which they assume a knowing and at the same time

ingenuous air, the most fascinating thing imaginable. They pose as men

upon whom the work of men can no longer make any impression, whom the

emotions aroused by the drama leave as cold and hard as the knife with

which they cut their quills, but who exclaim, nevertheless, with Jean

Jacques Rousseau: "Ah! there's the periwinkle!" They profess fierce

antipathy to the colonels at the Gymnase, the American uncles, the

cousins, male and female, the sensitive old grumblers, the romantic

widows, and try to cure us of the vaudeville by proving every day by

the _feuilletons_ that all Frenchmen are not born wicked.--In truth,

we see no great harm in that, but the contrary, and we are glad to

acknowledge that the extinction of the vaudeville or the opera-comique

in France--national style--would be one of the greatest benefactions

that the press and Heaven could bestow.--But I should be very glad

to know what species of literature these gentlemen would allow to be

established in its place. To be sure, it could be no worse.

Others preach against false taste and translate Seneca the tragedian.

Lastly, and to close the procession, a new battalion of critics has

been formed, of a species never before seen.

Their formula for estimating a work is the most convenient, the most

elastic, the most malleable, the most peremptory, the most superlative,

and the most successful that a critic ever could have conceived. Zoilus

would certainly have lost nothing thereby.

Hitherto, when it has seemed desirable to depreciate a work of any

sort or to cast odium upon it in the eyes of the patriarchal and

simple-minded subscriber, the ordinary method has been to make false

or cunningly isolated quotations; to maim sentences and mutilate

lines in such a way that the author himself would have considered

himself the most ridiculous creature on earth; to bring accusations of

imaginary plagiarisms; to place passages from his book side by side

with passages from ancient or modern authors, which had not the least

connection therewith; to accuse him, after the style of a cook and with

innumerable solecisms, of not knowing his own language and of degrading

the French of Racine and Voltaire; to assert in all seriousness that

his book tended toward anthropophagy, and that readers would infallibly

become cannibals or have hydrophobia in the course of the week; but all

that was paltry, out of date, false and fossilized to the last degree.

By dint of having dragged along through _feuilletons_ and _Variétés_

articles, the charge of immorality became insufficient, and so unfit

for service that the _Constitutionnel_, a bashful and progressive

journal, as we know, was almost the only one that had the desperate

courage to continue to use it.

So they invented the criticism of the future, the Prospective

criticism. Can you imagine, at first thought, what a charming thing it

is and what a prolific imagination it indicates? The recipe is simple

and I can tell you what it is. The book that will be considered fine

and will be praised is the book that has not yet appeared. The one that

has just appeared is infallibly detestable. The one to appear to-morrow

will be superb; but it is always to-day. It is the same with this sort

of criticism as with the barber who had these words in huge letters for

his sign:

SHAVING FREE HERE TO-MORROW.

All the poor devils who read the placard promised themselves for the

next day the ineffable, sovereign sweetness of being barbered once in

their lives without unloosing their purse-strings: and the hair on

their chins easily grew half a foot during the night that preceded

that blessed day; but when they had the napkin around their necks, the

barber asked them if they had any money and bade them pay up, or he

would treat them like nut-pickers or apple-gatherers of Le Perche; and

he swore a mighty _sacre dieu_ that he would cut their throats with

his razor unless they paid him; and when the poor devils, whining and

whimpering, talked about the sign and the sacrosanct inscription:--"Ha!

ha! my little fatties!" said the barber, "you don't know so much

after all, and you'd much better go back to school! The sign says:

'To-morrow!' I'm no such whimsical fool as to shave for nothing to-day;

my confrères would say I was throwing away my trade.--Come another

time, come the week that has two Sundays together, and you'll find

everything all right. May I be called a niggardly fellow and a flat, if

I don't shave you for nothing, on the word of an honest barber."

Authors who read a prospective article in which an existing work is

attacked always flatter themselves that the book they are writing will

be the book of the future. They try to accommodate themselves, as

much as possible, to the ideas of the critic, and become socialists,

progressives, moralizers, palingenetics, mystics, pantheists,

buchezists, thinking in that way to escape the anathema; but the same

thing happens to them that happened to the barber's customers:--to-day

is not the eve of to-morrow. The to-morrow that we hear so much about

will never shine upon the world; for the formula is too convenient to

be abandoned so soon. Even while decrying the book of which they are

jealous and which they would be glad to annihilate, they put on the

gloves of the most generous impartiality. They apparently ask nothing

better than to approve and praise it, and yet they never do it. This

recipe is very superior to the one that we might call retrospective,

which consists in vaunting ancient works only--works which no one reads

and no one cares about--at the expense of modern books, which people do

think about and which wound their self-esteem more directly.

We said, before beginning this review of messieurs the critics, that

the material would fill fifteen or sixteen folio volumes, but that

we would content ourselves with a few lines; I am beginning to fear

that those lines will prove to be each two or three thousand fathoms

long and will resemble those thick, bulky pamphlets that a cannon-ball

would not make a hole through, which bear the perfidious title: "A

word concerning the Revolution," a word concerning this or that. The

history of the doings of the manifold loves of the goddess Madeleine

de Maupin, would run great risk of being elbowed out of the first

book, and you will understand that two whole volumes are not too much

to sing worthily the adventures of that lovely Bradamante.--That is

why, however much we may desire to continue the blazonry of the

illustrious Aristarchuses of the age, we will content ourselves with

the partial sketch we have drawn, adding a few reflections concerning

the good-nature of our easy-going confrères in Apollo, who, as stupid

as the Cassander of pantomime, stand still to receive the blows from

Harlequin's lath and the clown's kicks in the stern, without budging

any more than an idol.

They resemble a fencing-master, who should fold his arms behind his

back during a bout, and receive all his opponent's thrusts in his

unprotected breast without attempting a single parry.

It is like the trial of a cause in which the king's attorney only is

allowed to speak, or a debate in which no reply is permitted.

The critic puts forward this or that theory. He makes a great dash

and ostentatious display. Absurd, detestable, monstrous; it resembles

nothing, it resembles everything. A drama is produced, the critic goes

to see it; he finds that it bears no resemblance to the drama he had

constructed in his head on the strength of the title; thereupon he

substitutes, in his _feuilleton_, his own drama for the author's. He

interlards it with his erudite phrases; he relieves himself of all the

knowledge he has collected the day before in some library, and belabors

people to whom he ought to go to school, and the least of whom could

teach greater men than he.

Authors endure this with a magnanimity, a long-suffering which seems

to me truly inconceivable. After all is said and done, who are these

critics whose tone is so cutting, whose words are so peremptory, that

one would say they were veritable sons of the gods? they are simply

men who were our school-fellows, and who have evidently profited

less by their studies than we, since they have produced nothing and

can do nothing but befoul and spoil the work of others like genuine

Stymphalian vampires.

Would it not be worth while to criticise the critics? for those

disgruntled great men, who are so fond of playing the magnificent

and the fastidious, are far from being infallible like the Holy

Father. There would be matter enough to fill a daily newspaper of the

largest size. Their errors, historical or otherwise, their distorted

quotations, their mistakes in grammar, their plagiarism, their drivel,

their oft-repeated, ill-bred jests, their paucity of ideas, their

lack of intelligence and tact, their ignorance of the simplest

things which leads them to mistake the Piræus for a man and Monsieur

Delaroche for a painter, would furnish authors with ample material for

vengeance, without other labor than that of drawing a line under the

passages and reproducing them word for word; for one does not receive

a commission as a great writer with a commission as critic, and to

reproach others for errors in language or taste is not enough to ensure

one against making them himself; our critics prove it every day.--If

Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and other men of that stamp should become

critics, I could understand that people might go down on their knees

and worship them; but that Messieurs Z. K. Y. V. Q. X., or any other

letter of the alphabet between Alpha and Omega, should set themselves

up as little Quintilians and scold you in the name of morality and

good literature--that is what always disgusts me and sends me into

an unparalleled rage. I would like to have a police ordinance issued

prohibiting certain names from attacking certain others. To be sure, a

cat may look at a king, and Saint-Peter's at Rome, giant that it is,

cannot prevent the Transteverins from defiling its base in strange

fashion; but I do not believe, nevertheless, that it would be a bad

idea to inscribe upon certain monumental reputations:

NO FILTH DEPOSITED HERE.

Charles X. alone understood the question. By ordering the suppression

of newspapers he conferred a great service upon the arts and

civilization. Newspapers are in a certain sense courtiers or jobbers,

who interpose between artists and public, between king and people. We

know the fine things that resulted therefrom. This perpetual barking

and snarling benumbs inspiration and causes such a feeling of distrust

in the heart and mind, that no one dares place his confidence either

in a poet or in a government; the result being that royalty and poesy,

the two greatest things in the world, become impossible, to the great

detriment of the people, who sacrifice their well-being to the paltry

pleasure of reading every morning a few vile sheets printed on vile

paper, besmeared with vile ink, and filled with vile stuff. There

was no criticism of art under Julius II., and I never heard of any

_feuilleton_ on the subject of Daniel de Volterra, Sebastiano del

Piombo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Ghiberti della Porta, or Benvenuto

Cellini; and yet I think that, for people who had no newspapers, who

did not know the word _art_ or the word _artistic_, they had a fair

share of talent and acquitted themselves reasonably well at their

trade. The reading of newspapers hinders the growth of genuine scholars

and genuine artists; it is like daily dissipation that brings you,

enervated and weak, to the bed of the Muses, those harsh, exacting

damsels who will have none but fresh and lusty lovers. The newspaper

kills the book, as the book has killed architecture, as artillery has

killed physical courage and muscular strength. No one realizes the

pleasures that the newspapers deprive us of. They strip everything of

its virginity; they prevent us from having anything of our own, even

from owning a book all by ourselves; they deprive us of the pleasure

of being surprised at the theatre by telling us beforehand how every

play ends; they deprive us of the pleasure of spreading idle gossip and

tittle-tattle and slander, of inventing false news or peddling genuine

news for a whole week through every salon in society. They drone

ready-made opinions to us, do what we will, and warn us against things

we might like; by their means, dealers in phosphorous matches, although

they have poor memories, discuss literature as impertinently as

provincial academicians; by their means we hear, all day long, in place

of artless opinions or individual nonsense, ill-digested fragments of

newspapers, which resemble omelets half cooked on one side and burned

on the other,--and we are pitilessly stuffed with news three or four

hours old, which children at the breast already know; they deaden our

taste, they make us like those people who drink spiced brandy, and

those who swallow lemons and grape-stalks, and lose the flavor of the

most generous wines and cannot appreciate their delicate, perfumed

bouquet. If Louis-Philippe should suppress all literary and political

journals once for all, I should be infinitely grateful to him and I

would dash off on the spot a fine, rambling dithyramb, in soaring verse

with alternate rhymes; signed: "Your most humble and loyal subject,"

etc. Pray do not imagine that there would be no further interest in

literature; in the days when there were no newspapers, a quatrain

engrossed all Paris for a week, and a first performance for six months.

It is true that this step would result in the loss of advertisements

and puffs at thirty sous a line, and notoriety would be less sudden

and less overwhelming. But I have thought out a very ingenious way

of replacing advertisements. If, between now and the day when this

magnificent novel is placed on sale, my gracious sovereign shall

have suppressed the newspapers, I shall most assuredly make use of

it, and I anticipate wonders therefrom. When the great day arrives,

twenty-four mounted criers, in the livery of Renduel, with his address

on their backs and breasts, carrying banners in their hands with the

title of the novel embroidered on both sides, each preceded by a

drummer and kettle-drummer, will ride through the city, and, halting

on all the squares and corners, will shout in a loud, distinct voice:

"To-day, not yesterday or to-morrow, is placed on sale the admirable,

the inimitable, the divine and more than divine novel by the most

illustrious Théophile Gautier, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, which Europe,

not to mention other parts of the world and Polynesia, has been

awaiting so impatiently for a year and more. It is selling at the

rate of five hundred a minute, and editions follow one another from

half-hour to half-hour; the nineteenth is already on sale. A detachment

of municipal guards is stationed at the door of the shop, holding back

the crowd and preventing all confusion." Surely that would be worth as

much as three lines in the _Débats_ or the _Courrier Français_, between

advertisements of elastic belts, hoop-skirts, nursing-bottles with

indestructible teats, Regnault paste, and remedies for fluor albus.

_May, 1834._

[Footnote 1: April fools--literally, April fishes.]

[Footnote 2: New Bridge.]

MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN

I

You complain, my dear friend, of the infrequency of my letters.--What

would you have me write you except that I am well and that my affection

for you never changes?--Those are facts that you know perfectly well,

and that are so natural to my age and to the noble qualities that every

one recognizes in you, that it is almost absurd to send a paltry sheet

of paper a hundred leagues to say nothing more.--In vain do I cudgel my

brains, I know of nothing that is worth the trouble of repeating; mine

is the most monotonous life imaginable and nothing happens to break the

monotony. To-day leads up to to-morrow as yesterday led up to to-day;

and without claiming to be a prophet, I can boldly prophesy in the

morning what will happen to me in the afternoon.

This is how I arrange my day:--I rise, that goes without saying, and

that is the beginning of every day; I breakfast, I fence, I go out to

walk, I come home, I dine, make a few calls or amuse myself reading:

then I go to bed precisely as I did the day before; I go to sleep, and

as my imagination is not excited by unfamiliar objects, it supplies me

with none but threadbare, often repeated dreams, as monotonous as my

actual life: all this is not very entertaining, as you see. However,

I reconcile myself to this existence better than I should have done

six months ago.--I am bored, to be sure, but in a tranquil, resigned

fashion, which does not lack a certain agreeableness, which might well

be compared to those gray, mild autumn days in which one finds a secret

charm after the excessive heat of summer.

This sort of existence, although I have apparently accepted it, is

hardly suited to me, however, or, at all events, it bears but little

resemblance to the existence I dream of and consider myself well

adapted for.--Perhaps I am mistaken and am in reality adapted for no

other kind of life than this; but I can hardly believe it, for, if it

were my real destiny, I should more readily have adapted myself to it

and should not be so painfully bruised by its sharp corners in so many

places.

You know what a powerful attraction strange adventures have for me,

how I adore everything out of the common course, extravagant and

dangerous, and with what avidity I devour novels and tales of travel;

I doubt if there is on this earth a madder, more vagabond fancy than

mine; and yet, by some curious fatality or other, I have never had an

adventure, I have never made a journey. So far as I am concerned, the

tour of the world means the tour of the town in which I live; I touch

my horizon on every side; I am elbow to elbow with reality. My life is

that of the shell on the sand-bank, of the ivy clinging to the tree, of

the cricket on the hearth.--Verily, I am surprised that my feet have

never taken root.

Cupid is represented with a bandage over his eyes; Destiny should be

represented in the same condition.

I have for a valet a sort of rustic boor, loutish and stupid enough,

who has travelled as much as the north wind, who has been to the

devil, to every conceivable place, who has seen with his eyes all the

things of which I conceive charming ideas, and cares as little about

them as about a glass of water; he has been in the most extraordinary

situations; he has had the most amazing adventures that a man can have.

I make him talk sometimes, and I rage inwardly when I think that all

those fine things have happened to a clown who is capable neither of

sentiment nor reflection, and who is good for nothing but to do what he

does, that is to say, brush clothes and clean boots.

It is clear that that knave's life should have been mine.--For his

part, he considers me very fortunate, and his surprise is unbounded

when he sees how melancholy I am.

All this is not very interesting, my poor friend, and hardly worth the

trouble of writing, is it? But as you insist upon it that I must write

to you, I must tell you what I think and what I feel, and must give you

the history of my ideas, in default of events and acts.--It may be that

there will be little order and little novelty in what I shall have to

say to you; but you must blame nobody but yourself for it. You would

have it.

You are the friend of my childhood, I was brought up with you; we lived

our lives in common for a long, long while, and we are accustomed to

exchange our most secret thoughts. I can tell you, therefore, without

blushing, all the absurd things that pass through my unoccupied brain;

I will not add a word, I will not cut out a word, I have no self-love

with you. So I will be absolutely frank--even in petty, shameful

things; not before you, certainly, will I cover my nakedness.

Beneath the shroud of indifferent, depressed ennui to which I have

referred just now, there stirs sometimes a thought that is benumbed

rather than dead, and I have not always the sad and gentle tranquillity

that melancholy gives.--I have relapses and fall back into my old

attacks of agitation. Nothing in the world is so fatiguing as those

motiveless paroxysms, those aimless impulses.--On those days, although

I have no more to do than on any others, I rise very early in the

morning, before sunrise, I have such a feeling of being in a hurry, of

not having all the time I need; I dress in hot haste, as if the house

were on fire, tossing on my clothes at random and bewailing a wasted

minute.--Any one who happened to see me would think that I was going

to keep an assignation or to hunt for money.--Not at all.--I have no

idea where I shall go; but go I must, and I should think my salvation

endangered if I remained at home.--It seems to me as if somebody were

calling me outside, as if my destiny were passing through the street at

the moment and the question of my life or death were on the point of

being decided.

I go down with an air of surprise and alarm, clothes in disorder,

hair uncombed: people turn to look and laugh when they meet me, and

take me for a young rake who has passed the night at the ale-house or

elsewhere. I am drunk to all intent, although I have drunk nothing,

and I have the aspect of a drunken man even to the uncertain gait, now

slow, now fast. I go from street to street like a dog that has lost

his master, looking in every direction, ill at ease, on the alert,

turning at the slightest sound, gliding into the centre of every

group, heedless of the rebuffs of the people I jostle against, and

scrutinizing everything with a clear-sightedness that I do not possess

at other times.--Then all of a sudden it is made clear to me that I am

mistaken, that that surely is not the place, that I must go on farther,

to the other end of the town, Heaven knows where.--And I rush off as

if the devil were after me.--I touch the ground only with the tips of

my toes and I don't weigh an ounce.--Really I must be a strange sight

with my terrified, frantic manner, my waving arms and the inarticulate

cries I utter.--When I think it over in cold blood, I laugh at myself

with all my heart, which doesn't prevent me, I beg you to believe, from

doing it all over again on the first occasion.

If any one should ask me why I rush about so, I certainly should be

much embarrassed to answer. I am in no hurry to arrive, as I am going

nowhere. I am not afraid of being late, as I have no appointment.--No

one is waiting for me--and I have no possible reason for hurrying so.

Is it because an opportunity to love, an adventure, a woman, an idea,

a fortune, or anything else is missing in my life, and I am seeking it

unconsciously, impelled by a vague instinct? is my existence struggling

to complete itself? is it a longing to get away from myself and my

surroundings, the tiresomeness of my life and the wish for something

different? It is one of these, or perhaps all of them together.--At

all events, it is a very unpleasant experience, a feverish irritation

ordinarily succeeded by the most complete collapse.

I often have the idea that, if I had started an hour earlier, or if I

had quickened my gait, I should have arrived in time; that, while I was

passing through one street, the thing I was looking for passed through

another, and that a block of carriages was enough to make me miss what

I have been pursuing, regardless of everything else, for so long a

time.--You cannot imagine the intense melancholy and profound despair

into which I fall when I see that all this comes to nothing and that

my youth is passing and no prospect opening before me; thereupon all

my idle passions mutter in my heart and devour each other for lack of

better food, like the wild beasts in a menagerie whom the keeper has

forgotten to feed. Despite the stifled, unacknowledged disappointments

of every day, there is something within me that resists and will not

die. I have no hope, for, in order to hope, one must have a desire,

a certain propensity to wish that things should turn out in one way

rather than another. I desire nothing, for I desire everything. I do

not hope, or rather I have ceased to hope;--this is too absurd--and

it is absolutely one to me whether a thing is or is not.--I am

waiting--for what? I don't know, but I am waiting.

It is a shuddering sort of expectation, overflowing with impatience,

broken with somersaults and nervous movements, like the suspense of a

lover waiting for his mistress.--Nothing comes;--I fly into a passion

or begin to weep.--I am waiting for heaven to open and an angel to

descend and make some revelation to me, for a revolution to break out

and the people to give me a throne, for one of Raphaël's virgins to

step out of its canvas and come and embrace me, for relations that

I don't possess to die and leave me the wherewithal to set my fancy

afloat upon a sea of gold, for a hippogriff to snatch me up and bear me

away into unknown regions.--But whatever I am waiting for, it certainly

is nothing commonplace and ordinary.

It has gone so far that, when I return home, I never fail to ask: "Has

no one been here? is there no letter for me? nothing new?"--I know

perfectly well that there is nothing, that there can be nothing. That

makes no difference; I am always much surprised and much disappointed

when I receive the regular reply:--"No, monsieur--nothing at all."

Sometimes--very rarely, however--the idea takes a more definite

form.--It will be some lovely woman whom I don't know and who doesn't

know me, whom I have met at church or at the theatre and who has not

taken the slightest notice of me.--I rush all over the house, and until

I have opened the door of the last room--I hardly dare confess it, it

is so utterly absurd--I hope that she has come and is there.--It is

not conceit on my part.--I am so far from being conceited that several

women have taken a most affectionate interest in me--at least so others

have told me--when I had supposed them to be entirely indifferent to

me and never to have thought much about me.--That comes from another

source.

When I am not stupefied by ennui and discouragement my mind awakes

and recovers all its former vigor. I hope, I love, I desire, and my

desires are so violent that I imagine they will force everything to

come to them, as a powerful magnet attracts bits of iron although they

are at a great distance.--That is why I wait for the things I desire,

instead of going to them, and I often neglect opportunities that open

most favorably before my hopes.--Another than I would write the most

amorous note you can imagine to his heart's divinity, or would seek an

opportunity to approach her.--But I ask the messenger for the reply

to a letter I have not written, and pass my time constructing in my

brain situations most marvellously adapted to exhibit me to the woman

I love in the most unlooked-for and most favorable light.--I could

make a book thicker and more ingenious than the Stratagems of Polybius

of all the stratagems I invent to make my way to her presence and

reveal my passion to her. Generally it would be enough to say to one

of my friends: "Present me to Madame So-and-So," and to indulge in a

mythological compliment suitably punctuated with sighs.

After listening to all this, one would naturally think me a fit subject

for the Petites-Maisons; I am a sensible fellow enough, however, and

I haven't carried many mad ideas into execution. All this takes place

in the cellar of my brain, and all these ridiculous ideas are very

carefully buried in my lowest depths; no one notices anything on the

outside, and I am reputed to be a calm, cold young man, by no means

susceptible to female charms and indifferent to things affected by most

young men of my age; all of which is as far from the truth as society's

judgments usually are.

However, in spite of all the things that have happened to dishearten

me, some of my longings have been gratified, and from the small amount

of pleasure their gratification has afforded me, I have come to dread

the realization of the others. You remember the childish ardor of my

longing to have a horse of my own? my mother gave me one very recently;

he is as black as ebony, with a little white star on his face, flowing

mane and tail, glossy coat, slender legs, just exactly the horse I

wanted. When they brought him to me, it gave me such a shock, that I

was as pale as death, and unable to recover myself, for a good quarter

of an hour; then I mounted him, and started off at a gallop without

saying a word; I rode straight ahead through the fields for more than

an hour, in a state of ecstasy hard to conceive; I did the same every

day for more than a week, and, upon my word, I don't know why I didn't

founder him, or at least break his wind.--Gradually my intense zeal

slackened. I rode my horse at a trot, then at a walk, then I began to

ride so indifferently that he would frequently stop without my noticing

it: the pleasure was transformed to a habit much more quickly than I

supposed.--As for Ferragus--that is the name I gave him--he is really

the most beautiful creature you can imagine. The hair on his feet

is like the down on a young eagle; he is as active as a goat and as

gentle as a lamb. You will enjoy above all things taking a gallop on

him when you come here; and, although my passion for equestrianism has

grown decidedly cool, I am still very fond of him, for he has a very

estimable equine character and I very much prefer him to many human

beings. If you could hear his neigh of delight when I go to see him in

his stable, and how intelligent his eyes are when he looks at me! I

confess that I am touched by those marks of affection, and I put my arm

around his neck and kiss him as affectionately, on my word, as if he

were a lovely girl.

I had another longing also, more intense, more ardent, more constantly

awake, more dearly cherished, upon which I had built a fascinating

house of cards in my mind, a palace of chimeras, very often demolished,

and reared again with desperate constancy;--it was to have a

mistress--a mistress all my own--like the horse.--I cannot say whether

the realization of that dream would have cooled my ardor as speedily

as the realization of the other; I doubt it. But perhaps I am wrong,

perhaps I should have grown weary as quickly.--It is a peculiarity of

my disposition that I crave so frantically what I desire, although I

never do anything to procure it, that if by chance, or by any other

means, I attain the object of my desire, I am so afflicted with moral

weakness and confused to such an extent, that I feel faint and ill,

and have no strength left to enjoy it: so it is that the things that

come to me without my having wished for them ordinarily afford me more

pleasure than those I have most eagerly coveted.

I am twenty-two years old; I am not virgin.--Alas! nowadays nobody

is so at that age,--either in body--or in heart--which is much

worse.--Aside from those who afford pleasure to men for money, and

who ought not to count any more than a bad dream, I have had, here

and there, in some dark corner, divers virtuous, or almost virtuous

women, neither lovely nor ugly, neither young nor old, such as fall

in the way of a young man who has no settled attachment and whose

heart is disengaged.--With a little good will and a considerable dose

of romantic illusion, you can call that having a mistress, if you

choose.--So far as I am concerned, it is impossible, and if I should

have a thousand of that sort I should still consider my longing as far

from accomplishment as ever.

I have had no mistress, therefore, and my sole desire is to have

one.--It is a matter that disturbs me strangely; it isn't an

effervescent temperament, a boiling of the blood, the first glow of

virility. It is not woman that I want, it is a woman, a mistress; I

want her, I will have her, and before long; if I don't succeed, I

admit that I shall never get over it and that I shall retain an inward

timidity, a secret discouragement that will have a serious influence

on the rest of my life.--I shall consider myself lacking in certain

respects, inharmonious, incomplete--deformed in mind or heart; for,

after all, what I ask is no more than fair, and nature owes it to

every man. So long as I fail to gain my end, I shall look upon myself

as nothing more than a child, and I shall not have the confidence in

myself that I ought to have.--A mistress for myself, that is the _toga

virilis_ for a young Roman.

I see so many men, despicable in every respect, with lovely women whose

lackeys they are hardly worthy to be, that a blush rises to my cheeks

for the women--and for myself.--It gives me a pitiable opinion of

women to see them sully themselves with such blackguards who despise

and deceive them, rather than bestow themselves upon some loyal,

sincere young man who would deem himself very fortunate and would adore

them on bended knees; myself, for example. To be sure, that sort of

creature frequents salons, struts about in all weathers, and is always

sprawling over the back of some easy-chair, while I stay at home, with

my face against the window-pane, watching the river steam and the

mist rise, while rearing silently in my heart the perfumed sanctuary,

the marvellous temple in which I am to set up the future idol of my

soul.--A chaste and poetical occupation which makes women feel as

little kindly toward you as possible.

Women have very little liking for contemplative men and take strangely

to those who put their ideas into action. After all, they are not

wrong. Compelled by their education and social position to hold their

tongues and to wait, they naturally prefer those men who come to

them and talk, for they relieve them from an unnatural and wearisome

silence: I realize all that; but never as long as I live shall I be

able to make up my mind, as I see many men do, to leave my seat, walk

across a salon and say unexpectedly to a woman: "Your dress makes you

look like an angel," or: "Your eyes are particularly bright to-night."

All this does not make it any less essential for me to have a mistress.

I don't know who it will be, but I see no one among the women I know

who can fill that dignified and important position properly. I find in

them but very few of the qualities I must have. Those who are young

enough haven't sufficient beauty or charm of mind; those who are young

and beautiful are disgracefully and repulsively virtuous or lack the

necessary freedom of action; and then there is always some husband or

brother about, or a mother or an aunt, or I don't know what, who has

big eyes and long ears, and whom one must cajole or throw out of the

window.--Every rose has its grub, every woman has heaps of relations

whom you must get rid of like the caterpillars on a tree, if you want

to pluck the fruit of her beauty some day. There is not one of them,

even to the third cousins in the provinces, whom no one has ever seen,

who is not determined to maintain his or her dear cousin's immaculate

purity in all its snowy whiteness. That is nauseating, and I shall

never have the necessary patience to tear up all the rank weeds and lop

off the thorns that fatally obstruct the approaches to a pretty woman.

I don't care much for mammas and I care still less for little girls. I

must confess, too, that married women have very moderate attractions

for me.--There is a confusion and mixture in the latter case that

disgust me; I cannot endure the idea of going shares. The woman who has

a husband and a lover is a prostitute to one of them, often to both,

and then I could never consent to give place to another. My natural

pride would be incapable of stooping to such degradation. Never will

I go away because another man is coming. Though the woman should be

compromised and ruined, though we should fight with knives, each with

one foot on her body--I would remain.--Secret staircases, closets,

wardrobes, and all the machinery of adultery would be poor expedients

with me.

I am but little enamored of what is known as virgin purity, the

innocence of the flower of life, purity of heart, and other charming

things which sound most beautiful in verse; I call it all pure

nonsense, ignorance, imbecility, or hypocrisy.--Virgin purity, which

consists in sitting on the edge of a chair, with the arms pressed close

against the body, the eye on the point of the corset, and in speaking

only after permission from its grandparents, the innocence which has a

monopoly of uncurled hair and white dresses, the purity of heart which

wears the corsage high in the neck, because it has as yet no breast or

shoulders, do not seem to me, in very truth, a marvellously tempting

pleasure.

I am not at all anxious to teach little fools to say the alphabet of

love.--I am not old enough or corrupt enough to take any great pleasure

in that. I should have but ill-success, too, for I have never had the

knack of teaching anybody, even the things that I knew best. I prefer

women who can read freely, you get to the end of the chapter sooner;

and in all things, but especially in love, what one must consider, is

the end. In that respect I am much like those people who take a novel

by the tail and read the conclusion first, being prepared then to

go backward to the first page. That method of reading and loving has

its charm. One relishes the details better when one's mind is at ease

concerning the end, and reversing the natural order of things brings

the unexpected to pass.

So young girls and married women are excluded from the category.

Therefore we must select our divinity from among the widows.--Alas! I

am very much afraid that although we have nothing left but them, we

shall still fail to find what we want.

If I should fall in love with one of those pale narcissuses bathed in a

warm dew of tears and stooping with melancholy grace over the brand-new

marble gravestone of some husband happily and recently deceased, I

should certainly be, and in a very short time, as unhappy as the

defunct spouse in his lifetime. Widows, however young and charming

they may be, have one terrible inconvenience that other women have

not; the instant that everything does not go well with them and the

slightest cloud floats across the sky of love, they say at once, with

a high and mighty, contemptuous manner: "Oh! how you act to-day! You

are exactly like monsieur: when we quarrelled he never said anything

but that; it's very strange, you have the same tone and the same

expression; when you are angry, you can't imagine how much you resemble

my husband:--it's enough to make one shudder."--It's very pleasant to

have such things thrown in your face point-blank! There are some who

carry their impudence to the point of praising the departed like an

epitaph and extolling his heart and his leg at the expense of your

leg and your--heart.--With women who have only one or several lovers,

one has, at all events, the inestimable advantage of never hearing of

one's predecessor, which is no trifling consideration. Women have too

great an affection for what is proper and legitimate not to be very

careful to keep quiet under such circumstances, and all those matters

are relegated as speedily as possible to the old records.--It is always

understood that one is always a woman's first lover.

I do not consider that there is any serious answer to be made to

such a well-founded aversion. It is not that I look upon widows as

altogether unpleasing, when they are young and pretty and haven't put

off their mourning. There are the little languishing airs, the little

tricks of letting the arms fall, bending the neck and puffing up

like a half-fledged turtle-dove; a multitude of charming mannerisms

prettily veiled behind the transparent mask of crêpe, a coquetry of

despair so skilfully managed, sighs so adroitly husbanded, tears that

fall so in the nick of time and make the eyes so bright!--Certainly,

after my wine, if not before, the liqueur I love best to drink is a

lovely, clear, limpid tear trembling at the end of a dark or light

eyelash.--How is a man to resist that!--We don't resist it;--and then

black is so becoming to women!--The fair skin, poetry aside, turns to

ivory, snow, milk, alabaster, to everything pure and white on earth

that madrigal-makers can use: the dark skin has only a dash of brown,

full of animation and fire.--Mourning is good fortune for a woman, and

the reason why I shall never marry is that I am afraid my wife would

get rid of me in order to wear mourning for me.--There are women,

however, who do not know how to make the most of their affliction

and who weep in such a way as to make their noses red and to distort

their features so that they look like the grotesque figures we see

on fountains: that's a great stumbling-block. A woman must have many

charms and much art to weep agreeably; lacking those, she runs the

risk of not being consoled for a long time.--Nevertheless, great as

the pleasure may be of making some Artemisia unfaithful to the shade

of her Mausolus, I do not intend to choose definitely, from among

the lamenting swarm, the one whom I will ask to give me her heart in

exchange for mine.

I hear you say at that: "Whom will you take, then?--You won't have

unmarried girls nor married women, nor widows.--You don't love mammas;

I don't imagine that you love grandmammas any better.--Whom in the

devil do you love?"--That is the key to the charade, and if I knew

it I should not torment myself so. Thus far I have never loved any

woman, but I have loved and I do love _love._ Although I have had no

mistresses and the women I have had have aroused in me nothing but

desire, I have felt and I know the sensation of love itself: I do not

love this one or that one, one rather than another, but some one I

have never seen, who must exist somewhere, and whom I shall find, God

willing. I know what she looks like, and when I meet her I shall know

her.

I have very often imagined the place she lives in, the dress she wears,

the color of her eyes and her hair.--I can hear her voice; I should

know her step among a thousand others, and if, by chance, any one

should mention her name, I should turn to look; it is impossible that

she should not have one of five or six names I have assigned to her in

my head.

She is twenty-six years old--no more, neither less nor more.--She is

not ignorant and she has not yet become _blasé._ It is a charming age

at which to make love as it should be made, without puerile nonsense

and without libertinage.--She is of medium height. I don't like a giant

or a dwarf. I want to be able to carry my deity from the sofa to the

bed without assistance; but it would be unpleasant to me to have to

hunt for her there. She must be just tall enough to put her mouth to

mine for a kiss by standing on tiptoe. That is the proper height. As

for her size, she is rather plump than thin. I am a little of a Turk

on that point, and it would be very disagreeable to me to find an

angle where I was looking for a rounded outline; a woman's skin should

be well filled out, her flesh hard and firm as the pulp of an almost

ripe peach: the mistress I shall have is made in just that way. She

is a blonde with black eyes, the fair skin of a blonde and the rich

coloring of a brunette, something red and sparkling in her smile. The

lower lip a little thick, the pupil of the eye swimming in a sea of

aqueous humor, the throat well-rounded and small, the wrists slender,

the hands long and plump, the gait undulating like a snake rearing on

its tail, the hips full and flexible, the shoulders broad, the back of

the neck covered with down;--a refined and yet healthy style of beauty,

animated and graceful, poetic and human; a sketch by Giorgione executed

by Rubens.

This is her costume! she wears a dress of scarlet or black velvet

slashed with white satin or cloth of silver, an open corsage, a huge

ruff _à la_ Medici, a felt hat, capriciously dented like Helena

Systerman's, and long white feathers crisp and curled, a gold chain or

a stream of diamonds around her neck, and on all her fingers a number

of large rings of various enamels.

I would not waive a single ring or bracelet. The dress must be of

velvet or brocade; if I should allow her to descend to satin, it would

be the utmost concession I would make. I would rather rumple a silk

skirt than a cotton one, and pull pearls or feathers from a head than

natural flowers or a simple knot of ribbon; I am aware that the lining

of the cotton skirt is often at least as appetizing as that of the

silk skirt; but I prefer the latter.--And so, in my dreams, I have

taken for my mistress many queens, many empresses, many princesses,

many sultanas, many famous courtesans, but never middle-class women

or shepherdesses; and in my most vagabond desires, I have never taken

advantage of any one on a carpet of turf or in a bed of Aumale serge.

I consider that beauty is a diamond which should be mounted and set in

solid gold. I cannot imagine a lovely woman who has not a carriage,

horses, servants, and everything that one has with a hundred thousand

francs a year: there is a certain harmony between beauty and wealth.

One demands the other; a pretty foot calls for a pretty shoe, a pretty

shoe calls for carpets and a carriage, and so on. A lovely woman with

mean clothes in a wretched house is, to my mind, the most painful

spectacle one can see, and I could never fall in love with her. Only

the comely and the rich can fall in love without making themselves

ridiculous or pitiable.--On that principle few people have the right to

fall in love: I myself should be shut out first of all; however, that's

my opinion.

It will be evening when we meet for the first time--during a lovely

sunset;--the sky will have the bright orange-yellow and pale-green

tints that we see in some pictures by the great masters of the old

days: there will be a broad avenue of chestnuts in flower and venerable

elms all covered with ringdoves,--lovely trees clothed in cool dark

green, shadows full of mystery and moisture; here and there a statue or

two, some marble vases, standing out in their snowy whiteness against

the background of verdure, and a sheet of water in which the familiar

swan disports itself,--and in the background a château of brick and

stone as in the days of Henri IV., pointed, slate-covered roof, tall

chimneys, weather-cocks on every gable, long, narrow windows.--At one

of the windows, leaning in melancholy mood upon the balcony rail,

stands the queen of my heart in the costume I described to you a moment

ago; behind her is a little negro carrying her fan and her parrot.--You

see that nothing is lacking and that it is all utterly absurd.--The

fair one drops her glove;--I pick it up, kiss it and return it. We

engage in conversation; I display all the wit that I do not possess;

I say some charming things; she answers me, I retort; it is a display

of fireworks, a luminous shower of dazzling repartee.--In short, I

am adorable--and adored.--The supper hour arrives, she invites me to

join her;--I accept.--What a supper, my dear friend, and what a cook

my imagination is!--The wine laughs in the crystal goblet, the white

and gold pheasant smokes in a platter bearing her crest: the feast is

prolonged far into the night and you can imagine that I don't finish up

the night at home.--Isn't that a fine bit of imaginative work?--Nothing

in the world could be simpler, and upon my word it's very surprising

that it doesn't happen ten times rather than once.

[Illustration: Chapter I--_What a supper----The wine laughs in the

crystal goblet, the white and gold pheasant smokes in a platter bearing

her crest: the feast is prolonged far into the night and you can

imagine that I don't finish up the night at home._]

Sometimes it is in a great forest.--The hunt sweeps by; the horn rings

out, the pack gives tongue and crosses the path with the swiftness

of lightning; the fair one in a riding habit is mounted on a Turkish

horse, white as milk, spirited and swift beyond words. Although she is

an excellent horsewoman, he paws and curvets and rears, and she has

all the difficulty in the world in holding him; he takes the bit in

his teeth and rushes straight toward a precipice with her. I fall from

heaven for the express purpose of saving her, I stop the horse, I catch

the swooning princess in my arms, I bring her to herself and escort her

to her château. What well-born woman would refuse her heart to a man

who has risked his life for her?--None;--and gratitude is a cross-cut

that leads very quickly to love.

You will agree, at all events, that when I go into romance, I don't

stop half-way, and that I am as mad as it is possible for a man to be.

That is as it should be, for nothing in the world is more sickening

than rational madness. You will agree also that, when I write letters,

they are volumes rather than simple notes. I love whatever goes beyond

ordinary bounds in everything.--That is why I love you. Don't laugh too

much at all the nonsense I have scribbled; I lay aside my pen to carry

some of it into execution; for I recur always to my refrain! I mean to

have a mistress. I cannot say whether it will be the lady of the park

or the lady of the balcony, but I bid you farewell to go in quest of

her. My mind is made up. Though she whom I seek should hide herself in

the heart of the kingdom of Cathay or Samarcand, I shall find a way to

dislodge her. I will let you know of the success or non-success of my

undertaking. I hope that it will be success: give me your prayers, my

dear friend. As for myself, I dress up in my best coat, and go out of

the house determined not to return except with such a mistress as I

have in my mind.--I have dreamed long enough; now to work.

P.S.--Tell me something about little D----; what has become of him? no

one here knows anything about him; and give my compliments to your good

brother and all the family.

II

Well, my friend, I have come home again, I have not been to Cathay

or Cashmere or Samarcand;--but it is fair to say that I am no nearer

having a mistress than ever.--And yet I took myself by the hand, I

swore a mighty oath that I would go to the end of the world. I have

not even been to the end of the town. I don't know what the matter is

with me, but I have never been able to keep my word to anybody, even

to myself: it must be that the devil takes a hand in it. If I say: "I

will go there to-morrow," it is certain that I shall stay at home; if

I propose to go to the wine-shop, I go to church; if I start to go to

church, the roads get tangled under my feet like skeins of thread,

and I find myself in an entirely different place. I fast when I have

determined to have a debauch, and so it goes. Therefore I am inclined

to believe that what prevents me from having a mistress is that I have

determined to have one.

I must tell you about my expedition, step by step: it is well worth

the honors of narration. I had passed at least two full hours at my

toilet that day. I had had my hair combed and curled and my moustaches,

such as they are, twisted and waxed a little; and as the excitement

of longing imparted some slight animation to my ordinarily pale face,

really I was not so bad. At last, after scrutinizing myself attentively

in the mirror in different lights, to see if I was fine enough and if

my bearing was sufficiently gallant, I went resolutely forth with head

erect, chin well raised, eyes front, one hand on the hip, making the

heels of my boots ring like an _anspessade_, elbowing the bourgeois,

and with a flawlessly triumphant and all-conquering air.

I was like another Jason setting out to conquer the Golden

Fleece.--But, alas! Jason was more fortunate than I: besides the

conquest of the fleece, he made, at the same time, the conquest of a

beautiful princess, and I--I have neither fleece nor princess.

I walked through the streets, eying all the women, and hurrying toward

them and gazing at them at closer quarters when they seemed to me to be

worth the trouble of examining.--Some assumed their high and mighty

virtuous air and passed without raising their eyes.--Others were

surprised at first, then smiled if they had white teeth.--Some turned

after a little time, to look at me when they thought I was not looking

at them, and blushed like cherries when they found themselves face to

face with me.--It was a lovely day; there were quantities of people

out walking.--And yet I must confess, notwithstanding all the respect

I feel for that interesting half of the human race, which is called by

common consent the fair sex, it is, as a whole, devilishly ugly: out of

a hundred women there is hardly one who is passably good-looking. This

one had a moustache; that one had a blue nose; others had red spots

in place of eyebrows; one was not badly built, but she had a pimply

face. The head of another was charming, but she could scratch her ear

with her shoulder; a third would have put Praxiteles to shame with the

graceful roundness of certain outlines, but she stumbled along on feet

like Turkish stirrups. Another exhibited the most magnificent shoulders

imaginable; in revenge, her hands resembled in shape and size those

immense scarlet gloves that haberdashers use for signs.--Generally

speaking, what tired-looking faces! how worn and streaked they were,

withered by degrading petty passions and petty vices! What expressions

of envy, of malevolent curiosity, of avarice, of brazen coquetry! and

how much uglier is a woman who is not beautiful, than a man who is not

handsome!

I saw nobody worth looking at--except a few grisettes;--but they have

more cotton than silk to rumple, and they don't interest me.--In very

truth, I believe that man, and when I say man I include woman, is the

vilest animal on the face of the earth. That quadruped who walks on his

hind feet seems to me extraordinarily presumptuous to claim the first

place in creation as his undoubted right. A lion, a tiger, are finer

animals than men, and in their species many individuals attain all the

beauty that belongs to it. But such a thing rarely happens among human

beings.--How many abortions for one Antinous! how many Goths for one

Phyllis!

I am very much afraid, my dear friend, that I shall never be able to

embrace my ideal, and yet there is nothing extraordinary or unnatural

about it.--It is not the ideal of a third-form school-boy. I do not ask

for ivory globes or alabaster pillars, or azure veins; I have not used

in its composition either lilies, or snow, or roses, or jet, or ebony,

or coral, or ambrosia, or pearls or diamonds; I have left the stars

of heaven at rest, and I have not unhung the sun unseasonably. It is

almost a bourgeois ideal, it is so simple, and it seems to me that with

a bag or two of piastres I could find it all ready-made and realized in

the first bazaar I might happen upon at Constantinople or Smyrna; it

would probably cost me less than a blooded horse or dog; and to think

that I shall not get what I want, for I have a feeling that I shall

not! It is enough to drive a man mad, and I fly into the hottest sort

of a rage against fate.

You are not such a mad fool as I, you are fortunate;--you have simply

taken your life as it came, without tormenting yourself trying to shape

it, and you have dealt with things as they turned up. You haven't

sought for happiness, it has come in search of you; you love and are

loved.--I don't envy you;--for Heaven's sake, don't think that! but I

am not so happy as I ought to be when I think of your felicity, and I

say to myself, with a sigh, that I would like to enjoy felicity of the

same sort.

Perhaps my happiness passed by my side and I did not see it, blind that

I was; perhaps a voice spoke, and the uproar of my internal tempests

prevented me from hearing it.

Perhaps I have been loved in secret by some humble heart that I have

neglected or broken; perhaps I have myself been the ideal of another,

the pole-star of a suffering heart,--the dream of a night and the

thought of a day.--If I had looked at my feet, perhaps I should

have seen there some fair Magdalene with her box of ointment and

her dishevelled hair. I walked along with my arms raised to heaven,

longing to pluck the stars that fled from me, and scorning to pick

the little daisy that opened its golden heart in the dewy grass. I

have made a great mistake: I have asked love for something other than

love, something that it could not give. I forgot that love was naked,

I failed to grasp the meaning of that magnificent symbol.--I asked him

for brocade dresses, feathers, diamonds, sublime intellect, learning,

poesy, beauty, youth, supreme power--everything that is not love;--love

can offer naught but love, and he who seeks to extort anything else

from him is unworthy to be loved.

I have been in too much of a hurry, of course: my hour has not yet

come; God who lent me my life will not take it back without letting me

live. What's the use of giving a poet a lyre without strings, or man

a life without love? God cannot be guilty of such inconsistency; and

I have no doubt that when the allotted moment comes, He will place in

my path the woman I am to love and by whom I am to be loved.--But why

has love come to me before a mistress? Why am I thirsty when I have no

fountain at which to quench my thirst? or why can I not fly, like the

birds of the desert, to the spot where water is to be found? The world

to me is a Sahara without wells or date-trees. I have not in my whole

life a single shady nook to give me shelter from the sun: I suffer all

the ardors of passion without its ineffable ecstasy and delight; I know

its torments and have not its pleasures. I am jealous of something that

does not exist; I am ill at ease for the shadow of a shade; I heave

sighs that mean nothing; I have sleepless nights embellished by no

adored vision; I shed tears that flow to the ground without being wiped

away; I give the wind kisses that are not returned to me; I wear out my

eyes trying to distinguish a vague, deceitful shape in the distance; I

await what cannot come, and I count the hours with feverish anxiety as

if I had an appointment.

Whoever you be, angel or demon, virgin or courtesan, shepherdess or

princess, whether you come from north or south, you whom I do not know

but whom I love! oh! do not force me to wait longer, or the flame

will consume the altar, and you will find only a heap of cold ashes in

place of my heart. Descend from the sphere where you now are; leave the

crystal sky, O comforting spirit, and cast upon my heart the shadow of

your great wings. Come, woman that I love, come, and let me clasp about

you the arms that have been open so long. Ye golden doors of the palace

where she dwells, turn on your hinges; raise yourself, latch of her

humble cottage; untwine yourselves, ye branches of trees and thorns by

the road-side; be broken, ye enchantments of the turret, ye spells of

magicians; open, ranks of the common herd, and let her pass.

If you come too late, O my ideal! I shall not have the strength to love

you:--my heart is like a dovecote full of doves. Every hour of the day

some desire takes flight. The doves return to the dovecote, but my

desires do not return to my heart.--The azure sky is whitened by their

countless swarms; they wing their way through space, from world to

world, from sky to sky, seeking some love to light upon and pass the

night: haste, O my dream! or you will find naught in the empty nest

save the shells of the birds that have flown.

My friend, my childhood's companion, you are the only one to whom I

can say such things. Write me that you pity me and that you don't look

upon me as a hypochondriac; comfort me, I never was in greater need

of it; how greatly to be envied are they who have a passion they can

satisfy! The drunkard finds no cruelty in any sort of a bottle; he

falls from the wine-shop to the gutter and is happier on his dung-heap

than a king on his throne. The sensual man resorts to courtesans in

search of ready loves or shameless refinements of indecency: a painted

cheek, a short skirt, an exposed bosom, an obscene jest, he is happy;

his eye turns white, his lip is moist; he attains the height of his

happiness, he enjoys the ecstasy of his vulgar lust. The gambler needs

only a green cloth and a worn and greasy pack of cards to procure the

poignant excitement, the nervous spasms and the diabolical joy of

his ghastly passion. Such people can satisfy their cravings or find

distraction;--to me it is impossible.

This idea has taken such thorough possession of me that I no longer

care for the arts, and poetry has now no charm for me; the things that

used to be my delight do not make the least impression on me. I begin

to believe that I am wrong, I demand more of nature and society than

they can give. What I seek does not exist and I ought not to complain

because I cannot find it. However, if the woman we dream of does not

come within the conditions of human nature, how is it that we love only

her and not others, since we are men and our instinct should draw us

irresistibly toward them? What puts this imaginary woman into our head?

with what clay do we mould this invisible statue? where do we get the

feathers we fasten to the back of this chimera? what mystic bird laid

in a dark corner of our soul the unseen egg from which our dream was

hatched? what is this abstract beauty that we feel but cannot define?

why, before a woman who may be charming, do we sometimes say that she

is beautiful,--whereas we find her very ugly? Where is the model, the

type, the interior pattern that serves us as a point of comparison?

for beauty is always comparative and can be appreciated only by

contrast.--Was it in the sky that we saw her--in a star--at a ball

in the shadow of a mother, fresh bud of a leafless rose?--was it in

Italy or in Spain? was it here or there, yesterday or long ago? was it

the admired courtesan, the popular cantatrice, the prince's daughter?

a proud and noble head bending under a heavy diadem of pearls and

rubies? a young and childish face stooping over the nasturtiums and

volubilis in the window?--Of what school was the picture from which

that beauty looked forth, fair and beaming amid dark shadows? Was it

Raphael who caressed the contour that has caught your fancy? Was it

Cleomenes who polished the marble that you adore?--are you in love with

a Madonna or a Diana?--is your ideal an angel, a sylph, or a woman?

Alas! it is a little of all of these and it is none of them.

That transparent tint, that charming, blooming freshness, that flesh

wherein the blood and the life flow in abundance, that lovely fair

hair falling over the shoulders like a cloak of gold, that sparkling

laughter, those amorous dimples, that figure undulating like a

flame, that strength, that suppleness, that glistening satin, those

rounded outlines, those plump arms, that full, smooth back, that

whole appearance of blooming health belongs to Rubens.--Raphael alone

could have given that pale tinge of amber to such pure features. What

other than he drew the curves of those long, fine black eyebrows,

and spread out the lashes of those modestly lowered lids?--Do you

think that Allegri had no part in your ideal? From him the lady of

your thoughts stole the warm, ivory whiteness of complexion that

fascinates you. She stood long before his canvas to catch the secret

of the angelic smile that is always on her lips; she modelled her oval

features upon those of a nymph or a saint. That line of the hip that

undulates so voluptuously is taken from the sleeping Antiope.--Those

plump, well-shaped hands might be claimed by Danaë or Magdalen. Dusty

antiquity itself supplied much material for the composition of your

young chimera; those strong and supple loins, about which you twine

your arms so passionately, were carved by Praxiteles. The divinity left

everything for the express purpose of putting the toes of her charming

foot outside the ruins of Herculaneum, so that your idol should not be

lame. Nature also has contributed its share. You have seen here and

there, in the prismatic rays of desire, a beautiful eye behind a blind,

an ivory forehead pressed against a window, a mouth smiling behind a

fan.--You have divined the quality of the arm from the hand, of the

knee from the ankle. What you saw was perfect; you assumed that the

rest was like what you saw and you finished it out with bits of other

beauties gathered elsewhere.--Not even ideal beauty, as realized by

painters, is sufficient for you, and you must go and ask the poets

for outlines even more gracefully rounded, shapes more ethereal,

charms more divine, refinement more exquisite; you begged them to give

breath and speech to your phantom, all their love, all their musings,

all their joy and their sadness, their melancholy and their morbid

fancies, all their memories and all their hopes, their knowledge and

their passion, their mind and their heart; you took all these from them

and you added, to cap the climax of the impossible, your own passion,

your own mind, your dreams and your thoughts. The star lent its beams,

the flower its perfume, the palette its colors, the poet his harmony,

the marble its shape, and you, your longing.--How could a real woman,

who eats and drinks, who goes to bed at night and gets up in the

morning--however adorable and instinct with charm she may be--sustain

comparison with such a creature! We cannot reasonably hope for such

a thing, and yet we do hope for it and seek it.--What extraordinary

blindness! it is sublime or absurd. How I pity and admire those who

pursue the reality of their dream through everything and die content,

if only they have once kissed their chimera on the lips! But what a

frightful fate is that of the Columbuses who have not discovered their

world, and of lovers who have not found their mistress.

Ah! if I were a poet, I would consecrate my verses to those whose

existence is a failure, whose arrows have not reached the target,

who have died with the word they had to say still unsaid and without

pressing the hand that was destined for them; to all who have been

unsuccessful or have passed by unnoticed, to genius without issue,

stifled fire, the undiscovered pearl at the bottom of the sea, to all

who have loved without being loved, to all who have suffered and not

been pitied;--it would be a noble task.

How wise it was of Plato to wish to banish you from his republic,

and what harm you have done us, O poets! Your ambrosia has made our

absinthe more bitter than ever; and we have found our lives more arid

and more devastated after plunging our eyes into the vistas leading to

eternity that you open to us! What a terrible struggle your dreams have

brought upon our realities! and how our hearts have been stamped upon

and trampled under foot by those rude athletes!

We have seated ourselves like Adam at the foot of the walls of the

terrestrial paradise, on the steps of the staircase that leads to the

world you have created, seeing a light brighter than the sunlight

gleam through the chinks of the door, hearing vaguely some few

scattered notes of a seraphic harmony. Whenever one of the elect enters

or comes out amid a flood of glory, we stretch our necks trying to see

something through the open door. It is fairy-like architecture equalled

nowhere save in Arabian tales. Great numbers of pillars, superimposed

arches, fluted spiral columns, leaf-work marvellously carved, trefoils

hollowed out of the stone, porphyry, jasper, lapis-lazuli and Heaven

knows what! transparencies and dazzling reflections, a profusion of

strange stones, sardonyx, chrysoberyl, aquamarines, rainbow-hued

opals, azerodrach, jets of crystal, torches to make the stars turn

pale, a gorgeous vapor filled with noise and vertigo--genuine Assyrian

magnificence!

The door closes: you see no more--and you cast down your eyes, filled

with burning tears, to the poor, bare, lifeless earth, to the ruined

hovels, to the people in rags, to your own soul, an arid rock upon

which nothing grows, to all the woes and misfortunes of reality. Ah! if

we could only fly as far as that, if the steps of that fiery staircase

did not burn our feet; but alas! none but angels can climb Jacob's

ladder!

What a fate is that of the poor man at the rich man's door! what

ghastly irony in a palace opposite a hovel, the ideal opposite the

real, poetry opposite prose! what deep-rooted hatred must tighten the

knots at the bottom of the poor wretches' hearts! what a gnashing of

teeth there must be at night on their poor beds, when the wind brings

to their ears the sighing notes of the lutes and viols of love! Poets,

painters, sculptors, musicians, why have you lied to us? Poets, why did

you tell us your dreams? Painters, why did you place upon your canvas

the intangible phantom that ascended and descended between your heart

and your brain with the throbbing of your blood, and say to us: "This

is a woman." Sculptors, why did you procure marble from the bowels of

Carrara to make it express for all time, in the eyes of all men, your

most secret and most fleeting desire? Musicians, why did you listen to

the song of the stars and the flowers during the night, and note it

down? Why do you write such lovely ballads that the softest voice that

says to us: "I love you!" seems to us as hoarse as the rasping of a

saw or the cawing of a crow?--My curse on you, impostors!--and may the

fire from heaven burn and destroy all pictures, poems, statues, and

concerted pieces.--Ouf! there's a tirade of interminable length and a

little out of the ordinary epistolary style.--What a harangue!

I just gave full swing to the lyric impulse, my dear friend, and I have

been talking on stilts for a long, long time. All this is very far

from our subject, which is, if I remember rightly, the glorious and

triumphant history of the Chevalier d'Albert in pursuit of Daraïde,

the loveliest princess in the world, as the old romances say. But in

truth the story is so poor that I am compelled to have recourse to

digressions and reflections. I hope that it will not always be so, and

that, before long, the romance of my life will be more involved and

complicated than a Spanish imbroglio.

After wandering about from street to street, I decided to call on one

of my friends who was to present me at a house where, according to

what he told me, I should see a world of pretty women--a collection

of flesh and blood idealities--the wherewithal to satisfy a score

of poets.--There are some there to suit all tastes:--aristocratic

beauties with eagle glances, sea-green eyes, straight noses, chins

haughtily elevated, queenly hands, and the gait of a goddess; silver

lilies mounted upon golden stalks;--modest violets, pale of hue, sweet

of perfume, with melting, downcast eyes, slender neck, transparent

flesh;--animated, piquant beauties; devout beauties, beauties of all

sorts;--for the house is a genuine seraglio, minus the eunuchs and the

Kislar aga.--My friend tells me that he has already had five or six

affairs there--quite as many as that;--that seemed to me a prodigious

record and I am very much afraid that I shall not have the like

success; De C---- says yes, and that I shall succeed much better than

I shall care to. According to him I have only one fault, which I am

certain to correct as I grow older and go more into society--he says I

think too much of woman and not enough of women.--It may well be that

there's some truth in that.--He says that I will be perfectly lovable

when I rid myself of that little failing. God grant it! It must be that

women feel that I despise them; for a compliment, which they would

consider adorable and delightful to the last degree in the mouth of

another, in mine displeases them and makes them angry, as if it were

the most savage epigram. That probably has something to do with the

fault De C---- refers to.

My heart beat a little faster as I went up the stairs, and I had

barely recovered from my emotion when De C----, taking me by the

elbow, brought me face to face with a woman of about thirty--not

ill-looking--dressed with dissembled magnificence and extreme

affectation of childlike simplicity--which did not prevent her being

daubed with rouge like a carriage-wheel:--it was the lady of the house.

De C----, assuming the shrill, mocking voice which is so different from

his ordinary voice, and which he uses in society when he wants to be

fascinating, said to her, half aloud, with abundant demonstrations of

ironical respect, in which the most profound contempt could plainly be

detected:

"This is the young man of whom I spoke to you the other day--a man of

very distinguished merit; he is of unexceptionable birth and I think

that it cannot be otherwise than agreeable to you to receive him; that

is why I have taken the liberty to present him to you."

"Assuredly, monsieur, you have done well," rejoined the lady, with

a most outrageously affected manner. Then she turned to me, and

after looking me over out of the corner of her eye, like a clever

connoisseur, and in a way that made me blush to my ears, she said: "You

may consider yourself invited once for all, and come as often as you

have an evening to waste."

I bowed awkwardly enough, and stammered a few disconnected words which

could not have given her a very exalted opinion of my talents; other

persons came in and I was delivered from the ennui inseparable from an

introduction. De C---- led me to a window recess and began to lecture

me vigorously.

"What the devil! you will get me into a scrape; I announced you as a

perfect phœnix of wit, a man of unbridled imagination, a lyric poet,

everything that is most transcendent and impassioned, and you stand

there like a ninny without lisping a word. What a wretched imagination!

I thought your vein was more fruitful; come, come, give your tongue

the rein, chatter away through thick and thin; you don't need to say

sensible, judicious things, on the contrary, they might injure your

chances; talk, that's the main thing; talk fast, talk all the time;

attract attention to yourself; throw aside all fear and all modesty;

fix it firmly in your head that all who are here are fools, or almost

that, and don't forget that an orator who wants to succeed cannot

despise his audience enough.--What do you think of the mistress of the

house?"

"I dislike her very much already; and although I talked with her hardly

three minutes, I was as bored as if I were her husband."

"Aha! that's what you think of her, eh?"

"Why, yes."

"Is your repugnance for her altogether insurmountable?--So much the

worse; it would have been decent for you to have her, if only for a

month; it's good form, and a young man with a little money can't get

into society except through her."

"Very good! I'll have her," I said piteously, "since it must be; but is

it as necessary as you seem to think?"

"Alas! yes, it is absolutely indispensable, and I will tell you why.

Madame de Thémines is the fashion now; she has all the absurd foibles

of the day in a superior way,--sometimes those of to-morrow, but never

yesterday's: she is thoroughly posted. People will wear what she

wears, and she never wears what any one else has worn. She is rich,

too, and her carriages are in the best taste.--She has no wit, but

much small-talk; she has very keen fancies and little passion. People

amuse her but do not move her; she has a cold heart and a dissolute

head. As for her soul--if she has one, which is doubtful--it is of

the blackest, and there is no malice and baseness of which she is

not capable; but she is extremely adroit and keeps up appearances,

just what is necessary to prevent anything being proved against her.

For instance, she will lie with a man, but she will never write him

the simplest kind of a note. Thus her most intimate enemies can find

nothing to say against her except that she applies too much rouge and

that certain parts of her person are not, in fact, so well rounded as

they seem to be--which is false."

"How do you know?"

"What a question!--how does one know that sort of thing except by

finding out for himself?"

"Then you have had Madame de Thémines?"

"Certainly I have! Why shouldn't I have had her? It would have been

most unseemly of me not to have her.--She has done me some very great

favors, and I am very grateful to her for them."

"I don't understand what kind of favors she can have done you."

"Are you really a fool?" said De C----, gazing at me with the most

comical expression imaginable.--"Faith, I am much afraid of it;

must I tell you everything? Madame de Thémines is considered, and

justly, to have special information in certain directions, and a young

man whom she has taken and kept for some time can present himself

boldly anywhere, and be sure that he won't be long without having

an affair--more likely two than one.--Aside from that ineffable

advantage, there is another hardly less great; and that is that, as

soon as the female members of this circle see that you are Madame de

Thémines' official lover, even though they have not the slightest

taste for you, they will consider it a pleasure and a duty to take you

away from a fashionable woman like her; and, instead of the advances

and manœuvres you would otherwise have to make, you will have an

embarrassment of riches, and you will necessarily become the focus of

all imaginable cajoleries and blandishments.

"However, if she arouses too strong a repugnance in you, don't take

her. You are not exactly obliged to do it, although that would be

courteous and proper. But make your choice quickly and attack the one

who pleases you best or seems to offer the most facilities, for by

delaying you will lose the benefit of novelty, and the advantage it

gives you over all the men here for a few days. All these ladies have

no conception of the passions that are born in private intercourse and

develop gradually in respect and silence; they are all for lightning

strokes and occult sympathies; a wonderfully well-conceived scheme

to avoid the ennui of resistance and all the long and wearisome

repetitions that sentiment mingles with the romance of love, and

which serve only to defer the conclusion to no purpose.--These ladies

are very saving of their time, and it seems so valuable to them

that they would be in despair at the thought of leaving a single

moment unemployed.--They have a craving to oblige the human race

which one cannot praise too highly, and they love their neighbor as

themselves--which is most meritorious and perfectly angelic; they are

very charitable creatures who would not, for anything in the world,

drive a man to die of despair.

"There must be three or four of them already who are _impressed_ in

your favor, and I advise you as a friend to press your advantage warmly

in that direction, instead of amusing yourself prattling with me in a

window-recess, which will not materially assist your prospects."

"But, my dear C----, I am altogether green in such matters, I haven't

the necessary experience of society to distinguish at first glance

a woman who is impressed from one who isn't; and I might make some

strange blunders unless you will assist me with your experience."

"Upon my word, you are a primitive creature without a name, and I

didn't suppose it was possible to be so pastoral and bucolic in the

blessed age we live in!--What the devil are you doing with that pair of

great black eyes of yours, which would produce a most stunning effect

if you knew how to use them?

"Just look over yonder, in the corner by the fire-place, at that little

woman in pink playing with her fan: she has been staring at you for

a quarter of an hour with most significant assiduity and fixity; no

one in the world but she can be indecent in so superior a fashion and

display such noble insolence. The women don't like her at all, for

they despair of ever reaching that height of impudence, but, on the

other hand, she is very popular with the men who find in her all the

piquant flavor of the courtesan.--To be sure, her depravity is of a

fascinating sort, she is full of wit and impulse and caprice.--She's an

excellent mistress for a young man who has prejudices.--Within a week

she will rid your conscience of all scruples and corrupt your heart to

such an extent that you will never make yourself ridiculous or indulge

in elegiacs. She has incredibly positive ideas on every subject;

she goes to the bottom of everything with astonishing rapidity and

accuracy of insight. The little woman is the incarnation of algebra;

she is precisely what a dreamer and an enthusiast needs. She will soon

cure you of your misty idealism: therein she will render you a great

service. She will do it with the greatest pleasure, however, for her

instinct leads her to disenchant poets."

My curiosity being aroused by De C----'s description, I emerged from

my retreat, and, gliding from group to group, approached the lady in

question and observed her closely,--she may have been twenty-five

or twenty-six years old. She was small, but well shaped, although a

little inclined to be stout; she had round, white arms, well-formed

hands and pretty feet, almost too small,--plump, polished shoulders,

breast but little exposed, but what there was, very satisfactory and

affording a favorable idea of the rest; her hair was extremely glossy

and of a blue-black shade like a jay's wing; the corner of the eye

was turned well up toward the temple, nose thin, nostrils very open,

mouth moist and sensuous, a little crease on the lower lip and an

almost imperceptible down at the corners. And with it all, vivacity,

animation, health, and an indefinable suggestion of wantonness adroitly

tempered by coquetry and tact, which made her a very desirable creature

and more than justified the very lively passions she had inspired and

continued to inspire every day.

I desired her; but yet I understood that that woman, agreeable as she

might be, was not my ideal, or could make me say: "At last I have a

mistress!"

I returned to De C---- and said: "I like her looks, and perhaps I may

come to an understanding with her. But, before saying anything definite

which will bind me, I would be very glad if you would have the kindness

to point out those indulgent beauties who are so condescending as to be

impressed with me, so that I may make my choice.--You will also oblige

me, as you are acting as showman on this occasion, by adding a little

descriptive notice and a list of their good and bad qualities; how I

must attack them and the tone I must adopt with them in order not to

seem too much like a provincial or a literary man."

"I most certainly will," said De C----. "Do you see that lovely,

melancholy swan who manages her neck so gracefully and makes her

sleeves move like wings? she is modesty itself, the most chaste and

virginal creature in the world; she has a snow-white brow, a heart

of ice, the expression of a madonna, the smile of an Agnes; she has

a white dress and a soul of the same color; she wears nothing but

orange-blossoms or water-lily leaves in her hair, and is attached to

earth only by a thread. She has never had an evil thought and has no

idea wherein man differs from woman. The Blessed Virgin is a Bacchante

beside her, all of which does not prevent her having had more lovers

than any woman I know, and that is certainly saying a good deal.

Just cast your eye on that discreet person's throat; it is a little

masterpiece, and really it is very difficult to show so much without

showing more; tell me if, with all her reserve and all her prudery,

she isn't ten times more indecent than that good lady at her left, who

bravely displays two hemispheres which, if they were united, would form

a life-size globe,--or the other one at her right, _décolletée_ to the

navel, who parades her nothingness with fascinating intrepidity?--That

virginal creature, unless I am very much mistaken, has already figured

out in her head how much love and passion your pallor and your black

eyes may be taken to promise; and my reason for saying so is that she

hasn't once looked in your direction, visibly at least; for she can

manage her pupils with such art and roll them into the corner of her

eyes so cleverly that nothing escapes her; one would think that she

looked through the back of her head, for she knows perfectly well what

is going on behind her.--She's a female Janus.--If you want to succeed

with her, you must lay aside anything like a free-and-easy, victorious

manner. You must talk to her without looking at her, without moving,

in a contrite attitude and in a subdued, respectful voice; in that way

you can say whatever you choose to her, provided that it is suitably

glossed over, and she will allow you to take the greatest liberties,

at first in words; afterward in deeds. Simply take care to roll your

eyes tenderly when hers are cast down, and talk to her about the joys

of platonic love and the communion of souls, while you employ with her

the least platonic and least ideal pantomime imaginable! She is very

sensual and very sensitive; kiss her as often as you choose, but don't

forget, even in the most intimate intercourse, to call her _madame_ at

least three times per sentence: she fell out with me, because, when I

was in her bed, I said something or other to her and called her _thou_.

What the devil! a woman is not virtuous for nothing!"

"After what you tell me I have no great desire to try my luck. A

prudish Messalina! an entirely novel and monstrous combination."

"Old as the world, my dear boy! it is seen every day and nothing is

more common.--You are wrong not to try your hand with her.--She has one

great charm, which is that with her you always seem to be committing a

deadly sin, and the least kiss seems altogether damnable; while with

others you think of it as nothing more than a venial sin, and often you

don't think you're doing anything wrong at all.--That is why I kept her

longer than any other mistress.--I should have her still if she had not

left me herself; she's the only woman who ever got ahead of me, and I

look upon her with a certain amount of respect on that account.--She

has the most delicate little refinements of pleasure and the great art

of appearing to be forced to grant what she grants very freely; which

gives to each of her favors the fascination of rape. You will find in

society ten of her lovers who will swear to you that she is one of the

most virtuous creatures on earth.--She is precisely the contrary.--It

is an interesting study to analyze that virtue of hers on a pillow.

Being forewarned, you run no risk, and you won't make the blunder of

falling in love with her in earnest."

"How old is this adorable creature?" I asked De C----, for it was

impossible to decide, even after examining her with the most careful

attention.

"Ah! there you are! how old is she? that's a mystery and God only knows

the clue. For my own part, and I pride myself on telling a woman's age

almost to a minute, I have never succeeded in finding out hers. I can

only estimate approximately that she is somewhere between eighteen

and thirty-six.--I have seen her in full dress, in déshabille, in her

linen, and I can tell you nothing in that connection: my knowledge is

at fault; the age that you would generally take her to be is eighteen,

and yet that can't be her age.--She is a combination of a virgin body

and the soul of a harlot, and she must have had much time or much

genius to corrupt herself so thoroughly and so speciously; she must

have a heart of brass in a breast of steel; but she has neither; that

makes me think that she is thirty-six, but in reality I know nothing

about it."

"Hasn't she any intimate friend who could enlighten you on the subject?"

"No; she arrived here two years ago. She came from the provinces or

from abroad, I don't know which--that is an admirable position for a

woman who knows how to make the most of it. With such a face as she

has, she can make herself any age she chooses and date only from the

day she arrived here."

"That certainly is a most agreeable state of things, especially when

some impertinent wrinkle doesn't give you the lie, and Time, the great

destroyer, is kind enough to connive at that falsification of the

certificate of baptism."

He pointed out several others, who, he said, would receive favorably

whatever requests it might please me to prefer to them, and would

treat me with peculiar philanthropy. But the woman in pink in the

chimney-corner and the modest dove who was her antithesis were

incomparably superior to all the others; and, if they had not all the

qualities I require, they had some of them, at least in appearance.

I talked all the evening with them, especially with the last, and I

took pains to cast my ideas in the most respectful mould;--although

she hardly looked at me, I fancied sometimes that I could see her eyes

gleaming behind the curtain of their lashes, and at some compliments

that I ventured to address to her, decidedly broad but shrouded in

the most modest gauze, I noticed just below the skin a tiny blush,

held back and stifled, not unlike the effect produced by pouring a

red liqueur into a glass that is half opaque.--Her replies were, in

general, sedate and well-weighed, but keen and bright, and they implied

much more than they expressed. The whole conversation was interspersed

with pauses, unfinished phrases; veiled allusions, every syllable had

its meaning, every pause its bearing; nothing could be more diplomatic

or more charming.--And yet, however great my pleasure in it for the

moment, I could not endure such a conversation very long. One must

be forever on the alert and on his guard, and what I like best in

conversation is ease, familiarity.--We talked first of music, which led

us naturally to speak of the Opera, then of women, and then of love,

a subject in which it is easier than in any other to find excuses for

transition from general principles to special instances.--We vied with

each other in amatory talk; you would have laughed to hear me. Verily,

Amadis on poor La Roche was no better than a dull pedant beside me.

It was generosity, abnegation, self-sacrifice enough to put the late

Curtius of Rome to the blush.--Really I didn't believe myself capable

of such transcendent humbug and bathos. Can you imagine anything more

ridiculous, a more perfect scene for a comedy, than myself indulging in

the quintessence of platonism? And then my sugary manner, my demure,

hypocritical little ways! _tubleu_! I looked as if I could never touch

anything, and any mother who had heard me argue wouldn't have hesitated

to let me lie with her daughter, any husband would have trusted his

wife with me. It was the one evening in all my life when I seemed to be

most virtuous and was least so. I thought it was more difficult than

that to be a hypocrite and say things one doesn't believe. It must be

very easy or else I must be strongly predisposed that way, to have

succeeded so satisfactorily at the first trial.--Really I have some

inspired moments.

As for the lady, she made many remarks, very shrewdly worded, which,

notwithstanding the innocent air with which she made them, denoted

a very extensive experience; you can't conceive the subtlety of her

distinctions. The woman would split a hair in three pieces lengthwise,

and make fools of all the angelic and seraphic pundits that ever were.

Indeed, from her way of talking, it was impossible to believe that she

has the shadow of a body.--It is all immaterial, vaporous, ideal enough

to break your arms; and if De C---- had not warned me beforehand of

the creature's manœuvring, I should certainly have despaired of the

success of my undertaking, and stood shamefacedly aside. How in the

devil, when a woman tells you for two hours, with the most indifferent

air you can imagine, that love lives only on privation and sacrifice

and other fine things of that sort, can you decently hope to persuade

her to get between two sheets with you some day to stir your blood and

see if you are made alike?

In short, we parted the best of friends, mutually congratulating each

other on the elevation and purity of our sentiments.

My conversation with the other was, as you will imagine, of a very

different tenor. We laughed as much as we talked. We made fun, and very

wittily too, of all the women there. When I say: "We made fun, and very

wittily too," I am wrong; I ought to say: "She made fun;" a man never

makes fun of a woman. I listened and approved, for it is impossible to

draw with more telling strokes or to apply colors more brilliantly; it

was the most interesting gallery of caricatures that I have ever seen.

In spite of the exaggeration, you felt the truth underneath; De C----

was quite right; that woman's mission is to destroy the illusions of

poets. There is an atmosphere of prose about her in which a poetic idea

cannot live. She is charming, sparkling with wit, and yet when you are

with her you think only of base, vulgar things; as I talked to her I

felt a crowd of desires, incongruous and impracticable in that place;

I felt like ordering wine and getting tipsy, taking her on my knee

and kissing her neck--like lifting up her skirt to see if her garter

was above or below the knee, like singing an obscene song at the top

of my voice, smoking a pipe or smashing the windows: the devil knows

what.--All the animal, all the brute rose in me; I would willingly

have spat on Homer's Iliad and thrown myself on my knees before a

ham.--I understand perfectly to-day the allegory of Circe changing the

companions of Ulysses to swine. Circe was probably a wanton like my

little woman in pink.

It is a shameful thing to say, but I felt a keen delight in the

consciousness that the brute nature was gaining the upper hand; I did

not resist it, I assisted it with all my strength, corruption is so

natural to man and there is so much mud in the clay of which he is

made.

[Illustration: Chapter II--_My conversation with the other was, as

you will imagine, of a very different tenor. We laughed as much as we

talked. We made fun, and very wittily too, of all the women there._]

And yet I was afraid for a minute of the gangrene that was gaining upon

me, and I tried to leave my corrupter; but the floor seemed to have

risen to my knees, and I was as if riveted to my place.

At last I made a determined effort and left her, and, it being then

very late, I returned home in dire perplexity, very much disturbed in

mind and with none too clear an idea what I ought to do.--I wavered

between the prude and the wanton.--I found piquancy in the one,

sensuousness in the other; and after a very close and very thorough

examination of my conscience I discovered, not that I loved them both,

but that I desired them both, one as much as the other, with sufficient

eagerness to indulge in reverie and preoccupation.

According to all appearances, O my friend! I shall have one of those

two women, perhaps I shall have them both, and yet I confess that I

am only half satisfied by possessing them; it isn't that they're not

very pretty, but at sight of them nothing cried out within me, nothing

throbbed, nothing said: "It is they;"--I did not recognize them.--And

yet I don't imagine that I shall find any one much better off in the

way of birth and beauty, and De C---- advises me to try my hand with

them. Most certainly I shall do it, and one or the other shall be my

mistress before long or may the devil fly away with me; but way down in

my heart a still small voice reproaches me for lying to my love and for

pausing thus at the first smile of a woman I do not love, instead of

seeking untiringly through the world, in cloisters and all sorts of bad

places, in palaces and taverns, the woman who was made for me and whom

God destines for me, be she princess or serving-maid, nun or courtesan.

Then I say to myself that I am indulging in chimeras, and that it's

very much the same after all, whether I lie with that woman or another,

that the earth will not swerve a hair's breadth from its course, and

that the seasons will not change their order on that account; that

nothing in the world is more indifferent to me, and that I am very

simple to torment myself about such trifles: that is what I say to

myself.--But it's of no use for me to talk, I am not a whit more easy

in my mind or more decided.

It may be because I live much alone and the smallest details take on

too much importance in a life so monotonous as mine. I give too much

heed to my living and thinking: I hear the throbbing of my arteries,

the beating of my heart; by dint of close attention I disengage my most

intangible ideas from the confused haze in which they float, and give

them a body.--If I had more to do I should not notice all these trivial

things and should not have time to look at my heart under a microscope,

as I do all day long. The din of action would drive away this swarm

of indolent thoughts that are flying about in my head and deafening

me with the buzzing of their wings: instead of pursuing phantoms I

should come to blows with realities; I should ask women for nothing

beyond what they can give--pleasure--and I should not try to embrace

some fanciful ideal decked out in hazy perfections.--This desperate

tension of the eye of my heart toward an invisible object has impaired

my sight. I am unable to see what is, from having stared at what is

not, and my eye, so keen for the ideal, is terribly short-sighted for

the real; so that I have known women whom everybody declared to be

most ravishing creatures, but who seemed to me very far from that. I

have greatly admired pictures generally considered to be daubs, and

fantastic or unintelligible verses have given me more pleasure than

the most courtly productions.--I should not be at all astonished if,

after addressing so many sighs to the moon and looking at the stars

with strained gaze, after perpetrating so many elegies and sentimental

apostrophes, I should fall in love with some vile girl from the street,

or some ugly old woman; that would be a great come-down!--Reality

will perhaps take its revenge thus for the little care I have taken

to pay court to it:--wouldn't it be a fine thing if I should conceive

a romantic passion for a scullery wench or a low, dirty trollop? Can

you imagine me playing a guitar under a kitchen window and supplanted

by a lackey carrying an old toothless dowager's pet cur?--Or perhaps,

finding nothing in this world worthy of my love, I shall end by adoring

myself, like the late Narcissus of selfish memory. To protect myself

from such a great disaster, I look at myself in every mirror and in

all the streams I pass. To tell the truth, as a result of musing and

mental wandering I am terribly afraid of being led into something

monstrous and unnatural. That is a serious matter and I must be on my

guard.--Adieu, my friend;--I am going at once to call on the pink lady,

for fear of relapsing into my usual state of meditation. I do not think

that we shall trouble ourselves very much about actualities, and if we

do anything it surely won't be in a spiritual direction, although she

is very spirituelle. I carefully roll up and put away in a drawer the

pattern of my ideal mistress in order not to try it upon this one. I

propose to enjoy tranquilly such good qualities and merits as she has.

I propose to leave her in a dress adapted to her figure, and not to try

to fit clothes to her that I have cut out, in case of emergency, for

the lady of my thoughts.--Those are very prudent resolutions, but I

don't know whether I shall keep to them.--Once more, adieu.

III

I am the titular lover of the pink lady; that is almost a profession,

an office, and it gives a man a firm footing in society. I no longer

look like a scholar seeking a mistress among a parcel of grandmothers

and afraid to sing a love-song to a woman unless she's a hundred

years old; I notice, since my installation, that I receive much more

consideration, that all the women talk to me with jealous coquetry and

go out of their way to smile on me.--The men, on the other hand, are

colder, and in the few words we exchange there is a touch of hostility

and constraint; they feel that they have in me an enemy already

formidable, who may become much more so.--I have heard that many of

them had bitterly criticised my way of carrying myself and said that my

style of dress was too effeminate; that my hair was curled and anointed

with more care than beseemed me; that that fact, taken in connection

with my beardless face, gave me a most absurd girlish appearance; that

I affected rich materials that smelt of the stage, and that I looked

more like an actor than a man: a parcel of trite, sneering remarks,

intended to justify themselves in being dirty and wearing wretched,

ill-fitting clothes. But all this serves only to make me the whiter,

and all the ladies consider that my hair is the finest in the world,

and that the niceties of my toilet are in the best taste, and they

seem strongly disposed to make up to me for all that I spend for

their benefit, for they are not fools enough to believe that all that

elegance has no other aim than my own private embellishment.

The lady of the house seemed at first a little offended at my choice,

which she thought must inevitably fall upon herself, and for some days

she was decidedly sour--to her rival only, for there was no change in

her manner to me--her spleen manifesting itself in divers little "My

dears," uttered in that dry, abrupt tone that women alone can master,

and in certain uncomplimentary remarks concerning her costume, made

in as loud a voice as possible, such as: "Your hair is done too high

and not at all to correspond with your face," or: "Your waist bags

under the arms; who in the world made that dress?" or: "You have black

rings under your eyes; it seems to me you are much changed;" and a

thousand other trivial observations to which the other did not fail to

retort with all desirable malignity when opportunity offered; and if

the opportunity was too slow in offering she made one for her own use

and returned, with interest, what she had received. But soon, another

object having distracted the attention of the slighted princess, the

little war of words ceased and everything resumed its usual order.

I said baldly that I was the pink lady's titular lover; that is not

enough for so accurate a man as you are. You will undoubtedly ask

me what her name is: as for that, I shall not tell you; but, if you

choose, to shorten the story and in memory of the color of the dress in

which I first saw her, we will call her Rosette; it's a pretty name; my

little dog has the same name.

You would like to know from point to point, for you love exactness in

all things, the story of our love-affairs with this fair Bradamante,

and by what successive steps I passed from the general to the

particular and from the condition of simple spectator to that of actor;

how, after being one of the audience, I became the lover. I will

gratify your desire with the very greatest pleasure. There is nothing

unpleasant in our romance; it is all rose-colored, and no tears are

shed except tears of pleasure; you will find no long descriptions or

repetitions, and everything moves on toward the end with the haste

and speed so urgently recommended by Horace;--it is a genuine French

romance.--Do not imagine, however, that I carried the citadel at the

first assault. The princess, although very humane to her subjects, is

not as lavish of her favors at first, as you might think; she knows

their value too well not to make you purchase them; she also knows

too well how a judicious delay sharpens the appetite and what relish

a semi-resistance adds to the pleasure, to abandon herself to you at

first, however keen the inclination you have aroused in her.

To tell the whole story at length, I must go back a little. I gave you

a very circumstantial account of our first interview. I had one or two,

perhaps three others in the same house, and then she invited me to call

on her; I did not make her repeat the invitation, as you can believe;

I went there at discreet intervals at first, then a little more

frequently, then still more so, and finally whenever the fancy seized

me, and I must confess that it seized me at least three or four times a

day.--The lady, after we had been parted a few hours, always received

me as if I had just returned from the East Indies; which fact touched

me as much as anything could and impelled me to show my gratitude in a

marked manner by the most gallant and tenderest words you can imagine,

to which she replied as best she could.

Rosette--as we have agreed to call her that--is a very bright woman and

has a most admirable appreciation of man; although she postponed the

end of the chapter for some time, I did not once lose my temper with

her: which is really marvellous, for you know how I fly into a passion

when I don't get what I want on the instant, and when a woman goes

beyond the time I have mentally allowed her in which to surrender.--I

have no idea how she did it at the first interview; she gave me to

understand that I should have her, and I was surer of her than if I had

had her written promise signed by her hand. You will say perhaps that

her bold and free-and-easy manners left the field free to rash hopes.

I do not think that that is the real motive: I have seen some women

whose prodigious freedom of manner excluded the last vestige of doubt,

who did not produce that effect upon me, and in whose presence I was

conscious of a timidity and uneasiness that were, to say the least,

misplaced.

The result is, generally speaking, that I am less amiable with the

woman I long to possess than with those who are indifferent to me;

it is because of the excitement of waiting for an opportunity and my

uncertainty as to the success of my project; that makes me gloomy and

casts me into a fit of musing which takes away much of my power of

pleasing and my presence of mind. When I see the hours I had set aside

for another purpose passing one by one, I am filled with anger in spite

of myself, and I cannot keep from saying very sharp, harsh things,

which sometimes go as far as brutality and put my affair back a hundred

leagues.

With Rosette I had no such feeling; never, even at the moment when she

resisted me most stubbornly, did I have the idea that she wanted to

escape from my love. I calmly allowed her to display all her little

coquetries, and I endured in patience the overlong delays to which it

pleased her to subject my ardor; there was something smiling in her

harshness that consoled you for it as much as possible, and in her most

Hyrcanian cruelties you could distinguish a background of humanity that

made it impossible for you to have any very serious fear.--Virtuous

women, even when they are not really virtuous at all, have a crabbed,

disdainful way which is perfectly unendurable to me. They have the

air of being always ready to ring and order their footmen to put you

out; and it seems to me, really, that a man who takes the trouble to

pay court to a woman--and it isn't always as agreeable as you may

think--doesn't deserve to be looked at in that way.

Dear Rosette has no such glances as that, not she; and I assure you

that she doesn't lose anything by it; she is the only woman with whom

I have ever been myself, and I am conceited enough to say that I have

never been so agreeable. My wit has displayed itself freely; and, by

the skill and fire of her retorts, she has led me to discover more than

I had any idea that I possessed, and more perhaps than I really do

possess.--To be sure, I haven't done much in the way of lyrics--that

is hardly possible with her; it is not that she has no poetic side,

notwithstanding what De C---- said of her; but she is so full of life

and strength and movement, she seems to be so well placed in her

present surroundings, that one has no desire to leave them for a flight

among the clouds. She fills one's real life so pleasantly and makes of

it something so entertaining to herself and others, that reverie has

nothing better to offer you.

A miraculous thing! I have known her nearly two months, and in those

two months the only times I have been bored have been when I was not

with her. You will agree that she can be no inferior woman to produce

such a result, for women usually produce exactly the opposite effect on

me and are much more agreeable to me at a distance than near at hand.

Rosette has the best disposition in the world, with men I mean, for

with women she's as wicked as a devil; she is bright, lively, alert,

ready for anything, very original in her way of speaking, and has

always some charming nonsense to tell you that you don't expect; she

is a delightful companion, a jolly comrade with whom you sleep, rather

than a mistress; and if I were a few years older and had fewer romantic

ideas, I should be perfectly satisfied, indeed I should deem myself

the most fortunate mortal on earth. But--but--that conjunction implies

nothing good, and unfortunately that little devil of a restrictive word

is the one most frequently employed in all human tongues;--but I am an

imbecile, an idiot, a downright booby, never content with anything and

always hunting mares' nests; and, instead of being altogether happy, I

am only half so;--half, that is a good deal for this world, and yet I

find it not enough.

In the eyes of the world I have a mistress whom several desire and envy

me, and whom no one would disdain. My desire is gratified, therefore,

in appearance, and I no longer have the right to pick a quarrel with

fate. However, it seems to me that I have no mistress; I can convince

myself that I have by arguing it out, but I do not feel it, and if

anybody should ask me unexpectedly if I had one, I think I should

answer no.--However, the possession of a woman who has beauty, youth,

and wit, constitutes what, in all times and in all countries, has

been and still is called having a mistress, and I think there is no

other way. That doesn't prevent my having the strangest doubts in that

connection, and it has gone so far that if several people should unite

to convince me that I am not Rosette's favored lover, I should end by

believing them in the face of the palpable evidence to the contrary.

Do not think from what I say that I do not love her or that she is

displeasing to me in any way; on the contrary, I am very fond of her

and I see in her what everybody else would see in her: a pretty,

alluring creature. I simply do not feel that I possess her, that is

all. And yet no woman ever gave me so much pleasure, and if I have ever

known bliss, it has been in her arms.--A single one of her kisses, the

most chaste of her caresses makes me shiver to the soles of my feet

and sends all my blood back to my heart. Explain it all if you can.

The facts, however, are as I tell them to you. But the human heart is

full of such absurdities; and if we were obliged to reconcile all the

contradictions it exhibits, we should have a heavy task on our hands.

How does it happen? Verily, I have no idea.

I see her all day, and all night too, if I choose. I bestow as many

caresses on her as I please; I have her naked or dressed, in town or

in the country. Her good humor is inexhaustible, and she enters heart

and soul into my whims however eccentric they may be; one evening the

fancy seized me to possess her in the middle of the salon, with all the

candles lighted, the fire blazing on the hearth, the chairs arranged

in a circle as if for a grand evening reception, she, in a _toilette

de bal_ with her bouquet and her fan, all her diamonds on her fingers

and her neck, feathers in her hair--the most magnificent costume

imaginable--and I dressed like a bear; she consented.--When everything

was ready, the servants were greatly surprised to receive orders to

close the doors and admit no one; they acted as if they had not the

slightest comprehension of what it all meant, and went away with a

dazed look that made us laugh heartily. They certainly thought that

their mistress was stark mad; but what they thought or did not think

mattered little to us.

That was the most burlesque evening of my whole life. Can you imagine

the appearance I must have presented with my hat and feather under my

paw, rings on every claw, a little silver-hilted sword and a sky-blue

ribbon on its hilt? I approached the fair one, and, having made her

a most graceful reverence, sat down beside her and besieged her in

due form. The flattering madrigals, the exaggerated compliments I

addressed to her, all the jargon suited to the occasion assumed a

strange significance in passing through my bear's muzzle; for I had

a superb head of painted cardboard which I was soon obliged to throw

under the table, my deity was so adorable that evening, and I longed

so to kiss her hand and something better than her hand. The skin soon

followed the head; for not being accustomed to play the bear, I was

stifled in it, more so than was necessary. Thereupon the ball-dress

had a fine time as you can imagine; the feathers fell like snow around

my beauty, the shoulders soon came out of the sleeves, the bosom from

the corset, the feet from the shoes, the legs from the stockings; the

unstrung necklaces rolled on the floor, and I believe that fresher

dress was never more pitilessly rumpled and torn; the dress was of

silver gauze and the lining of white satin. Rosette displayed on that

occasion a heroism altogether unusual to her sex, which gave me a most

exalted opinion of her. She looked on at the sack of her costume like

an uninterested witness, and did not for a single instant show the

slightest regret for her dress and her lace; on the contrary, she was

wildly gay, and assisted with her own hands in tearing and breaking

anything that wouldn't untie or unclasp quickly enough to suit my

taste and hers.--Doesn't this strike you as worthy to be handed down

in history beside the most brilliant deeds of the heroes of antiquity?

The greatest proof of love a woman can give her lover is to refrain

from saying to him: "Take care and not rumple me or spot my dress,"

especially if the dress be new.--A new dress is a greater source

of security to a husband than is commonly supposed. It must be that

Rosette adores me or else she is blessed with a philosophy superior to

that of Epictetus.

[Illustration: Chapter III--_Thereupon the ball-dress had a fine time as

you can imagine; * * * and I believe that fresher dress was never more

pitilessly rumpled and torn; the dress was of silver gauze and the

lining of white satin. Rosette displayed on that occasion a heroism

altogether unusual to her sex._]

Nevertheless I think that I paid Rosette the full value of her dress

and more, in coin which is none the less esteemed and valued because it

does not pass current with tradesmen. Such unexampled heroism surely

deserved such a recompense. However, like the generous creature she

is, she repaid what I gave her. I had a wild, almost convulsive sort

of pleasure, such as I did not believe myself capable of enjoying. The

resounding kisses mingled with bursts of laughter, the shuddering,

impatient caresses, all the piquant, tantalizing sensations, the

pleasure imperfectly enjoyed because of the costume and the situation,

but a hundred times keener than if there had been no obstacles,

produced such an effect on my nerves that I was seized with paroxysms

which I had some difficulty in overcoming.--You cannot conceive the

proud, affectionate way in which Rosette gazed at me as she tried to

soothe me, and the joyful yet anxious manner with which she lavished

attentions upon me: her face glowed with the pleasure that she felt

in producing such an effect upon me, while her eyes, swimming in

sweet tears, bore witness to her alarm at my apparent illness and the

interest she took in my health.--She had never seemed so beautiful to

me as at that moment. There was something so maternal and so chaste

in her glance that I entirely forgot the more than anacreontic scene

that had just taken place, and threw myself on my knees at her feet,

asking permission to kiss her hand; which permission she granted with

extraordinary dignity and gravity.

That woman certainly isn't as depraved as De C---- claims and as she

has often seemed to me to be; her corruption is in her mind and not in

her heart.

I have cited this scene from among twenty others: it seems to me that

after such an experience one can, without overweening conceit, believe

himself a woman's lover.--And yet I have not that feeling.--I had no

sooner returned home than that thought took possession of me and began

to work upon me as usual.--I remembered perfectly all that I had said

and heard, all that I had done and seen. The slightest gestures, the

most insignificant attitudes, all the most trivial details stood out

clearly in my memory: I remembered everything, even to the slightest

inflections of the voice, the most indescribable shades of enjoyment;

but it did not seem to me that all those things had happened to me

rather than to some one else. I was not sure that it was not all

an illusion, a phantasmagoria, a dream, or that I had not read it

somewhere or other, or even that it was not a story invented by myself

as I had invented many others. I dreaded being the dupe of my own

credulity or the plaything of some deception; and notwithstanding the

evidence of my weariness and the material proofs that I had not slept

at home, I could easily have believed that I had gone to bed at my

usual hour and slept till morning.

I am very unfortunate in my inability to acquire the moral certainty

of something of which I am physically certain. In ordinary cases the

contrary is the case and the fact proves the idea. I would like well to

prove the fact by the idea; I cannot do it; although it is a strange

thing, it is so. It rests with myself, to a certain extent, to have a

mistress; but I cannot force myself to believe that I have one, even

though that is the fact. If I have not the necessary faith in me, even

for a thing so palpable as that, it is just as impossible for me to

believe in so simple a fact as for another to believe in the Trinity.

Faith is not to be acquired, it is a pure gift, a special grace from

Heaven.

No one ever longed as I do to live the life of others and to assimilate

another nature to my own; no one ever had less success. Whatever I may

do, other men are little more than phantoms to me and I do not feel

their existence; but it is not the desire to understand their lives and

share in them that I lack. It is the power or the want of real sympathy

with anything on earth. The existence or non-existence of a person or

thing does not interest me enough to affect me in a perceptible and

convincing way. The sight of a man or a woman who appears before me

in flesh and blood leaves on my mind no more definite trace than the

fanciful vision of a dream: a pale world of shadows and of apparitions,

false or true, hovers about me, murmuring low, and in the midst of

them I feel as utterly alone as possible, for not one of them has any

effect upon me for good or evil, and they seem to me to be of a nature

altogether different from mine. If I speak to them and they make what

seems a sensible reply, I am as surprised as if my dog or my cat should

suddenly open his mouth and take part in the conversation: the sound

of their voices always astonishes me and I could easily believe that

they are only fleeting apparitions and I the mirror in which they are

reflected. Inferior or superior, I certainly am not of their kind.

There are moments when I recognize none but God above me, and others

when I deem myself hardly the equal of the earthworm under its stone or

the mollusk on its sand-bank; but whatever my frame of mind, exalted or

humble, I have never been able to persuade myself that men were really

my fellows. When any one calls me _monsieur_, or, in speaking of me,

refers to me as _that man_, it always seems strange to me. My very name

seems to me but an empty one and not my real name; and yet, no matter

how low it may be uttered, amid the loudest noise, I turn suddenly with

a convulsive and peevish eagerness which I have never been able to

explain.--Is it the dread of finding in the man who knows my name, and

to whom I am no longer simply one of the common herd, an antagonist or

an enemy?

It is when I have been living with a woman that I feel most strongly

how utterly my nature repels every sort of alliance and mixture. I am

like a drop of oil in a glass of water. No matter how much you turn it

and shake it, the oil will never mix with the water; it will separate

into a hundred thousand little globules which will unite again and

rise to the surface the instant it becomes calm: the drop of oil and

the glass of water epitomize my history. Even lust--that diamond chain

that binds all human beings together, that consuming fire that melts

the stone and metal of the heart and causes them to fall in tears as

material fire melts iron and granite--all powerful as it is, has never

been able to subdue or move me. And yet my senses are very sharp; but

my heart is a hostile sister to my body, and the ill-mated couple, like

every possible couple, lawfully or unlawfully united, lives in a state

of constant warfare.--A woman's arms, the strongest of all earthly

bonds, so it is said, are to me very weak fetters, and I have never

been farther from my mistress than when she was straining me to her

heart.--I was stifled, that's the whole story.

How many times have I been angry with myself! What superhuman efforts

have I made to be different! How I have exhorted myself to be

affectionate, lover-like, passionate! how often I have taken my heart

by the hair and dragged it to my lips in the middle of a kiss! Whatever

I do, it always recoils, wiping the kiss away, as soon as I release my

hold. What torture for that poor heart to look on at the orgies of my

body and to be constantly compelled to sit through banquets at which it

has nothing to eat!

It was when I was with Rosette that I determined, once for all, to

ascertain if I am not hopelessly unsociable, and if I can take enough

interest in another person's existence to believe in it. I exhausted

the whole category of experiments, and I have not succeeded in solving

my doubts to any great extent. With her my pleasure is so keen that my

heart often finds itself diverted at least, if not touched, a state of

things that impairs the accuracy of observations. After all, I have

discovered that it didn't go below the skin and that my enjoyment

was confined to the epidermis, the heart participating only through

curiosity. I have pleasure because I am young and ardent; but the

pleasures came from myself and not from another. Its source was in

myself rather than in Rosette.

It is of no use for me to struggle, I cannot go out of myself for a

single moment. I am still what I was, that is to say, a very tired,

very tiresome creature, who disgusts me exceedingly. I have failed

utterly to introduce into my brain the idea of another human being,

into my heart, another's emotion, into my body, another's pain or

pleasure. I am a prisoner in myself and all escape is impossible: the

prisoner longs to escape, the walls ask nothing better than to crumble,

and the doors to open before him; but some inexplicable fatality keeps

every stone immovable in its place, every bolt in its groove; it is as

impossible for me to admit any one to my quarters as to go myself to

others; I cannot make or receive calls, and I live in the most absolute

solitude amid the multitude: my bed may not be widowed, but my heart

always is.

Ah! to be unable to increase one's size by a single line, by a single

atom; to be unable to admit others' blood into one's veins; to see

always with one's own eyes, never clearer, never farther, never

otherwise; to hear sounds with the same ears and the same sensation;

to touch with the same fingers; to perceive changing objects with

an unchangeable organ; to be doomed to the same tone of voice, the

repetition of the same sounds, the same phrases, the same words, and

not to be able to fly, to escape one's self, to take refuge in some

corner where no one can follow; to be compelled to keep always to one's

self, to dine and lie alone--to be the same man to twenty different

women; to play, throughout the most complicated situations of the drama

of your life, a part that is forced upon you, whose lines you know

by heart; to think the same things, to have the same dreams:--what

torture, what ennui!

I have longed for the horn of the Tangut brothers, for Fortunatus's

hat, Abaris's bâton, Gygès's ring; I would have sold my soul to

snatch the magic wand from a fairy's hand, but I have never longed so

intensely for anything as to meet on the mountain, like Tiresias the

soothsayer, those serpents who can change the sex of mortals, and what

I most envy in the strange, monstrous gods of the Indies are their

constant incarnations and innumerable transformations.

I began by longing to be another man; then, as I reflected that I

could, by analogy, foresee almost exactly what I should feel and

therefore not experience the change and the surprise I expected, I

concluded that I would prefer to be a woman; that idea always occurred

to me when I had a mistress who was not ugly; for an ugly woman is like

a man to me, and in my moments of enjoyment I would gladly have changed

my rôle, for it is very annoying to know nothing about the effect one

produces and to judge of others' pleasure only by one's own. Such

reflections and many others have often given me, at moments when it

was most inappropriate, a meditative, dreamy air, which has caused me

to be accused most unjustly of coldness and infidelity.

Rosette, who, very luckily, doesn't know all this, believes me to

be the most amorous man on earth; she takes that impotent _frenzy_

for a frenzy of passion, and she does her utmost to humor all the

experimental caprices that pass through my brain.

I have done all that I possibly could to convince myself that she

belongs to me. I have tried to go down into her heart, but I have

always stopped on the first step of the staircase, at her flesh or her

mouth. Despite the intimacy of our corporeal relations, I feel that we

have nothing in common. Never has an idea of the same tenor as mine

spread its wings in that youthful, smiling head; never has that heart,

overflowing with life and fire, whose palpitations cause that firm,

white breast to rise and fall, beaten in unison with my heart. My soul

has never coalesced with hers. Cupid, the god with the hawk's wings,

has not kissed Psyche on her fair ivory brow. No!--that woman is not my

mistress.

If you know all that I have done to compel my heart to share the

love of my body! with what frenzy I have glued my mouth to hers

and wound my arms in her hair, and how tightly I have embraced her

rounded, supple figure. Like Salmacis of old, enamored of the young

Hermaphrodite, I have tried to melt her body and mine together; I have

drunk her breath and her warm tears that bliss forced from the brimming

chalice of her eyes. The more inextricably our bodies were intertwined,

the closer our embrace, the less I loved her. My heart, sitting sadly

by, looked on with a pitying air at that deplorable union to which it

was not bidden, or veiled its face in disgust and wept silently behind

the skirt of its cloak. All this is attributable perhaps to the fact

that I do not really love Rosette, worthy to be loved though she be,

and anxious as I am to love her.

To rid myself of the idea that I was myself, I transported myself to

most unusual surroundings, where it was altogether unlikely that I

should meet myself, and being unable to cast my individuality to the

dogs, I tried to expatriate it so that it would no longer recognize

itself. I have had but moderate success therein, for that devil of

a myself follows me persistently; there is no way of getting rid of

him; I haven't the resource of sending word to him, as I do to other

uncomfortable callers, that I am not at home or that I have gone into

the country.

I have had my mistress in the bath and I have played the Triton as

best I could.--The sea was a huge marble tub. As for the Nereid, what

she showed accused the water, transparent though it was, of not being

sufficiently so for the exquisite beauty of what it concealed.--I have

had her at night, by moonlight, in a gondola with music.

That would be very commonplace at Venice, but here it is anything but

that.--In her carriage, with the horses going at a gallop, amid the

rattling of the wheels, the leaping and jolting, sometimes by the

light of lanterns, sometimes in the densest darkness.--That doesn't

lack a certain stimulating interest and I advise you to try it: but I

forget that you are a venerable patriarch, and that you don't indulge

in such refinements.--I have climbed in at her window when I had the

key to the door in my pocket.--I have made her come to my apartments

in broad daylight, in fact, I have compromised her so thoroughly that

no one--myself excepted, be it understood--now doubts that she is my

mistress.

By reason of all these inventions which, if I were not so young, would

resemble the expedients of a blasé old rake, Rosette adores me far

and away above all others. She sees therein the ardor of a teasing

passion that nothing can restrain, and that is always the same despite

the changes of time and place. She sees therein the constantly renewed

effect of her charms and the triumph of her beauty, and, in truth, I

would that she were right, and it is neither my fault nor hers--I must

be just--that she is not.

The only wrong I have done her consists in being myself. If I told her

that, the child would reply at once that that is my greatest merit in

her eyes; which would be more courteous than sensible.

Once--it was in the beginning of our liaison--I believed that I had

gained my end, for a moment I believed that I loved her--I did love

her.--O my friend, I have never lived except during that moment, and

if it had lasted an hour I should have become a god. We had ridden out

together in the saddle, I on my dear Ferragus, she on a snow-white mare

that looks like a unicorn, her feet are so delicate and her body so

slender. We rode along a broad avenue of elms of prodigious height; the

sun poured down upon us, bright and warm, sifting through the serrated

foliage; ultra-marine patches showed here and there amid the fleecy

clouds, broad bands of pale blue lay along the horizon, changing to a

most delicate apple-green when they encountered the golden rays of the

setting sun. The appearance of the sky was unusual and fascinating; the

breeze wafted to our nostrils an indefinable perfume of wild flowers

delicious beyond words. From time to time a bird rose in front of us

and flew singing along the avenue. The church-bell of an invisible

village softly rang the Angelus, and the silvery notes, which came

but faintly to our ears because of the distance, were inexpressibly

sweet. Our horses were going at a foot pace, and they walked side by

side in such perfect step that neither of them was an inch ahead of the

other.--My heart dilated and my soul overflowed upon my body. I had

never been so happy. I did not speak, nor did Rosette, and yet we never

understood each other so perfectly. We were so close together that my

leg touched her horse's side. I leaned toward her and put my arm about

her waist; she made a similar movement and rested her head against my

shoulder. Our mouths met; O such a chaste, delicious kiss! Our horses

walked on, the reins lying on their necks. I felt Rosette's arms relax

and her body yield more and more. I knew that my own strength was

failing me, and I was near fainting.--Ah! I promise you that at that

moment I cared but little whether I was myself or somebody else. We

rode in that way to the end of the avenue, where the sound of footsteps

caused us abruptly to resume our natural positions; some of our

acquaintances, also in the saddle, rode up and spoke to us. If I had

had my pistols, I believe I should have fired at them.

I glared at them with a fierce, lowering expression that must have

seemed very strange to them. After all, I was wrong to be so angry

with them, for they had unwittingly done me the service of cutting

my pleasure short at the moment when, by its very intensity, it

was certain to become pain or to sink under its violence. The

science of stopping in time is not regarded with all the respect

it deserves.--Sometimes, as you lie with a woman, you put your arm

under her waist: at first it is a most blissful sensation to feel the

pleasant warmth of her body, the soft, velvety flesh of her sides, the

polished ivory of her hips, and to press your hand against her breast

which throbs and quivers. The fair one falls asleep in that voluptuous,

charming posture; the curve of her loins becomes less pronounced,

the agitation of her bosom is calmed, her sides rise and fall with

the freer, more regular respiration of sleep, her muscles relax, her

face is hidden by her hair.--Meanwhile the weight upon your arm grows

heavier, you begin to observe that she is a woman, not a sylph; but you

would not remove your arm for anything on earth. There are many reasons

for that: the first is that it is dangerous to wake a woman with whom

one is lying; one must be prepared to substitute for the blissful dream

she is probably dreaming, a more blissful reality; the second is that,

if you ask her to raise herself so that you can take away your arm,

you tell her indirectly that she is heavy and discommodes you--which

is not polite--or else you give her to understand that you are feeble

and overdone--an extremely humiliating admission for you and likely

to lower you greatly in her mind; the third is that, as you have had

pleasure in that position, you think that if you retain the position

the pleasure may be renewed, wherein you are mistaken. The poor arm is

caught under the mass that crushes it, the blood is checked, the nerves

are distended and numbness pricks you with its countless needles: you

are a sort of Milo of Crotona on a small scale, and the mattress and

the back of your divinity are a sufficiently accurate representation

of the two parts of the tree that have reunited. Day comes at last to

deliver you from your martyrdom and you leap out of that instrument

of torture more eagerly than ever husband descended from the nuptial

scaffold.

That is the history of many passions. It is the history of all

pleasures.

However that may be--despite the interruption or because of the

interruption--never had such a blissful sensation fallen to my lot: I

felt that I was really somebody else. Rosette's soul in its entirety

had entered into my body. My soul had left me and filled her heart

as hers had filled mine. They had met, no doubt, during that long

equestrian kiss, as Rosette dubbed it afterward--to my annoyance by the

way--and had penetrated and mingled as inextricably as the souls of two

mortal creatures can upon a morsel of perishable clay.

Angels surely must kiss like that, and the real paradise is not in

heaven but on the lips of the woman we love.

I have waited in vain for such a moment and have tried unsuccessfully

to lead up to a repetition of it. We have often ridden together

through the avenue of elms at sunset on lovely evenings; the trees had

the same verdure, the birds sang the same song, but to us the sun

seemed dull, the foliage withered: the song of the birds had a harsh,

discordant sound, we were no longer in harmony with it all. We brought

our horses to a walk and we tried the same kiss.--Alas! only our lips

met and it was only the spectre of the former kiss.--The beautiful,

the sublime, the divine, the only real kiss I have given and received

in my whole life had flown away forever. Since that day I have always

had an inexpressibly sad feeling on returning from the forest. Rosette,

light-hearted madcap that she naturally is, cannot avoid the feeling

and her reverie betrays itself by a sweet little pout, which is at

least as attractive as a smile.

Scarcely anything but the fumes of wine and a great blaze of candles

enable me to shake off these fits of depression. We both drink like

men condemned to death, silently and glass after glass, until we have

swallowed the necessary amount; then we begin to laugh and mock most

heartily at what we call our sentimentality.

We laugh--because we cannot weep. Ah! who will succeed in sowing a tear

in my parched eye?

Why did I enjoy that evening so? It would be very hard for me to say.

I was the same man, Rosette the same woman. It was not my first

experience on horse-back, nor hers; we had already watched the sun set

and the spectacle had touched us no more than a picture, which one

admires or not according as the colors are more or less brilliant.

There is more than one avenue of elms and chestnuts in the world, and

that was not the first one we had ridden through; what then caused us

to find such a sovereign fascination there, what metamorphosed the dead

leaves into topazes, the green leaves into emeralds, gilded all those

whirling atoms and changed into pearls all the drops of water scattered

over the greensward, what imparted such sweet melody to the tones of

a bell that was usually discordant and to the twittering of countless

young birds?--There must have been a very penetrating flavor of poesy

in the air, as even our horses seemed to catch the scent of it.

And yet nothing in the world could be more pastoral and more simple:

a few trees, a few clouds, five or six clumps of wild thyme, a woman,

and a sunbeam over all like a gold chevron on a coat of arms.--There

was neither surprise nor bewilderment in my sensations. I knew

perfectly well where I was. I had never been to that precise spot, but

I remembered perfectly the shape of the trees and the position of the

clouds, the white dove that flew across the sky I had seen flying in

the same direction; the little silvery bell, which I then heard for

the first time, had often tinkled in my ears, and its voice seemed

to me like the voice of a friend; although I had never been there,

I had many times passed through that avenue with princesses mounted

on unicorns; my most voluptuous dreams rode there every evening and

my desires had exchanged kisses absolutely like the one exchanged by

myself and Rosette.--There was nothing new to me in that kiss; but it

was as I had thought it would be. It was perhaps the only time in my

life that I have not been disappointed and that the real has seemed to

me as beautiful as the ideal.--If I could find a woman, a landscape,

a building, anything that corresponded as closely to my desires as

that moment corresponded to the moment I had dreamed of, I should have

no reason to envy the gods, and I would gladly renounce my box in

paradise.--But, in truth, I do not believe that any man of flesh and

blood could have an hour of such exquisite enjoyment; two kisses like

that would pump a whole life dry and leave a complete void in a heart

and a body.--But no such consideration as that would stop me; for, not

being able to prolong my life indefinitely, I am ready to die, and I

should prefer to die of pleasure rather than of old age or ennui.

But that woman doesn't exist.--Yes, she does exist; it may be that only

a wall separates us.--Perhaps I jostled her in the street yesterday or

to-day.

In what does Rosette fall short of being that woman? In this, that I do

not believe she is. By what fatality do I always have for mistresses,

women that I do not love? Her neck is smooth enough to set off the

most beautifully-wrought necklaces; her fingers are taper enough to do

honor to the loveliest and richest rings; the ruby would blush with

pleasure to gleam on the pink lobe of her delicate ear; the cestus of

Venus would fit her waist; but Love alone has the secret of tying his

mother's scarf.

All Rosette's merit is in herself, I have attributed nothing to

her that she has not. I have not cast over her beauty the veil of

perfection with which love envelops the loved one;--the veil of Isis is

transparent beside that veil. Naught but satiety can raise the corner

of it.

I do not love Rosette; at least my love for her, if I have any, does

not resemble the ideal I have formed of love. It may be that my ideal

is not a just one, I do not dare to say. Certain it is that it makes me

insensible to the merits of other women, and I have desired no other

with any consistency since I have had her. If she has any reason to be

jealous, it is of phantoms only, about which she worries very little,

and yet her most formidable rival is my imagination; that is something

which, with all her shrewdness, she will probably never discover.

If women only knew!--How many infidelities the least fickle lover is

guilty of to the most adored mistress!--It is to be presumed that they

pay us back in full and more; but they do as we do and say nothing.

A mistress is a necessary subject, who ordinarily disappears under

flourishes and embroidery. Very often the kisses you give her are not

for her; you embrace the idea of another woman in her person, and she

profits not infrequently--if it can be called profiting--by the desires

aroused by another. Ah! my poor Rosette, how many times you have served

as a body to my dreams and given reality to your rivals; to how many

infidelities have you unwittingly been accessory! If you could have

imagined, at times when my arms clasped you so tightly, when my mouth

was most closely united to yours, that your beauty and your love had

nothing to do with my passion, that the thought of you was a hundred

leagues from my mind; what if some one had told you that those eyes,

veiled with amorous languor, were cast down simply in order not to look

at you and not to banish the illusion that you served only to complete,

and that, instead of being a mistress, you were simply an instrument of

lust, a means of assuaging a desire impossible of realization!

O divine creatures, ye lovely virgins, slender and diaphanous,

who lower your periwinkle eyes and clasp your lily hand in the

pictures with golden backgrounds of the old German masters, ye

stained-glass saints, ye missal martyrs who smile so sweetly amid

the convolutions of the arabesques, and come forth so fresh and fair

from the flower-bells!--O ye lovely courtesans lying all naked in

your hair on beds strewn with roses, beneath great purple curtains,

with your bracelets and necklaces of huge pearls, your fan and your

mirrors, gleaming in the shadow in the fiery rays of the setting

sun!--ye dark-skinned maidens of Titian, who display so wantonly your

undulating hips, your firm, round thighs, your polished breasts and

your supple and muscular loins!--ye antique goddesses, who rear your

white phantoms in the shady corners of gardens!--ye are a part of my

seraglio; I have possessed you all in turn.--Sainte Ursule, I have

kissed your hands on the fair hands of Rosette; I have toyed with the

black hair of the Muranese and Rosette never had such a hard task to

rearrange her hair: I have been with you more than Acteon was, O virgin

Diana, and I have not been changed to a stag: it was I who replaced

your handsome Endymion!--What a multitude of rivals whom she does not

suspect and upon whom she cannot be revenged! yet they are not all

painted or carved!

Women, when you notice that your lover is more affectionate than usual,

that he presses you in his arms with unwonted emotion; when he rests

his head upon your knees and raises it to look at you with moist and

wandering eyes; when enjoyment serves only to augment his desire and

he stifles your voice with his kisses as if he dreaded to hear it, be

sure that he simply does not know that you are there; that he has, at

that moment, an assignation with a chimera which you make palpable, and

whose part you play.--Many chamber-maids have profited by the love that

queens inspire.--Many women have profited by the love that goddesses

inspire, and a commonplace reality has often served as the pedestal

for an ideal idol. That is why poets habitually take dirty trollops for

mistresses.--You can lie ten years with a woman without ever seeing

her; that is the history of many great geniuses, whose ignoble or

obscure connections have caused the world to wonder.

I have been unfaithful to Rosette in no other way than that. I have

been false to her only for pictures and statues and she has been

equally concerned in the treachery. I have not the slightest material

sin upon my conscience with which to reproach myself. I am, in that

respect, as white as the snow-capped Jungfrau, and yet, while not in

love with anybody, I would like to be with some one. I do not seek the

opportunity, but I shall not be sorry if it comes; if it should come,

I might not use it, perhaps, for I have an innate conviction that it

would be the same with another, and I prefer that it should be so

with Rosette than with any other; for, take away the woman, I still

have a jolly companion, witty, and very agreeably depraved; and that

consideration is not one of the least of those that restrain me, for,

in losing the mistress, I might be distressed to find that I had lost

the friend.

IV

Do you know that it will soon be five months, yes, fully five months,

five eternities that I have been the titular Celadon of Madame Rosette?

That is admirable to the last degree. I would not have believed myself

to be so constant, nor would she, I will wager. We are in very truth a

couple of plucked pigeons, for only turtle-doves are capable of such

affection. How we have cooed! how we have pecked at each other! what

pictures of clinging ivy! what a charming existence _à deux!_ Nothing

could be more touching, and our two poor little hearts might have been

placed on a dial pierced by the same spit, and as though trembling in a

gust of wind.

Five months' tête-à-tête, so to speak, for we see each other every

day and almost every night--the door being always closed to visitors;

doesn't it make your flesh creep simply to think of it? Well! to the

glory of the incomparable Rosette be it said, I am not greatly bored,

and those months will doubtless prove to be the most agreeable in my

life. I do not think it would be possible to entertain more constantly

and more successfully a man who has no passion in his heart, and

God knows what pitiable idleness it is that is attributable to an

empty heart! You cannot imagine that woman's expedients. She began

by taking them from her mind, then from her heart, for she loves me

to adoration.--With what skill she makes the most of the slightest

spark and how well she knows how to fan it into a conflagration!

how adroitly she guides the slightest impulses of the heart! how

she transforms languor into tender reverie! and by what roundabout

roads does she bring back to her the mind that is slipping away!--It

is marvellous!--And I admire her as one of the greatest geniuses

imaginable.

I have been to her house in very bad humor, sulky, looking for a

quarrel. I have no idea how the witch did it, but in a very few minutes

she had compelled me to say flattering things to her, although I hadn't

the slightest desire to do it, to kiss her hands and laugh with all my

heart, although I was horribly angry. Can you conceive of such tyranny

as that?--However, adroit as she is, the tête-à-tête cannot last much

longer, and in the course of the last fortnight I have frequently

done what I never did before--open the books on the chimney and on

the table and read a few lines during the pauses in the conversation.

Rosette has noticed it, it has alarmed her so that she has had hard

work to dissemble her feelings, and she has taken all the books out of

her room. I confess that I regret them, although I dare not ask for

them.--The other day--an alarming symptom!--some one called while we

were together, and instead of flying into a rage as I used to do at the

beginning, I was conscious of a sort of pleasure. I was almost affable:

I kept up the conversation when Rosette tried to let it languish so

that monsieur would take his leave, and when he had gone I ventured to

say that he didn't lack wit and that he was a very agreeable fellow.

Rosette reminded me that only two months before I had found the same

man intensely stupid and the most annoying idiot on earth, to which I

had no reply to make, for I did actually say it; and I was right, too,

despite the apparent contradiction: for the first time he disturbed

a charming tête-à-tête, and the second he came to the assistance of

a conversation that was exhausted and running dry--on one side at

least--and spared me for that day a tender scene that I was tired of

acting.

That is the point at which we now are; it is a serious state of

things, especially when one of the two is still in love and is

clinging desperately to the remains of the other's love. I am in great

perplexity. Although I am not in love with Rosette, I am very, very

fond of her, and I should hate to do anything to cause her pain. I wish

her to believe, as long as possible, that I love her.

In gratitude for all the hours to which she has lent wings, in

gratitude for the love she has given me for pleasure, I wish it.--I

shall deceive her; but is not pleasurable deceit preferable to painful

truth?--for I shall never have the heart to tell her that I do not love

her. The empty shadow of love on which she is feeding seems to her so

adorable and so dear, she embraces the pale spectre with such rapture

and effusion that I do not dare cause it to vanish; and, yet I am

afraid that she will discover at last that it is only a phantom. This

morning we had an interview which I propose to repeat in dramatic form

for greater accuracy, and which makes me fear that I cannot prolong our

liaison very long.

The scene is Rosette's bed. A sunbeam streams through the curtains: it

is ten o'clock. Rosette has one arm under my neck and lies perfectly

still for fear of waking me. From time to time she rises a little

on her elbow and leans over my face, holding her breath. I see all

this through my eyelashes, for I have been awake an hour. Rosette's

night-dress has a neck ruffle of Malines lace which is all torn: it

has been a stormy night; her hair protrudes in disorder from under her

little cap. She is as pretty as a woman can be, when one doesn't love

her and is lying in bed with her.

ROSETTE (_seeing that I am awake)._

Oh! sleepyhead!

I (_yawning_).

Ah-h-h!

ROSETTE.

Don't yawn like that or I won't kiss you for a week.

I.

Oh!

ROSETTE.

It seems, monsieur, that you don't care much whether I

kiss you or not.

I.

Yes, I do.

ROSETTE.

How indifferently you say it!--All right; you can depend

upon it that I won't touch you with the end of my lips for

a week to come.--To-day is Tuesday: not till next Tuesday.

I.

Nonsense!

ROSETTE.

What's that? nonsense?

I.

Yes, nonsense! you'll kiss me before night, or I shall die.

ROSETTE.

You die! What a silly fellow!--I have spoiled you,

monsieur.

I.

I shall live.--I am not silly and you have not spoiled

me--quite the contrary. In the first place I demand the

instant suppression of _monsieur;_ I know you well enough

for you to call me by my name and speak in the language of

intimates.

ROSETTE.

I have spoiled you, D'Albert.

I.

Very good.--Now put your mouth over here.

ROSETTE.

No, next Tuesday.

I.

Well, well! has it come to this, that we exchange

caresses, calendar in hand? We are both a little too young

for that.--Come, your mouth, my child, or I shall get a

crick in my neck.

ROSETTE.

No.

I.

Ah! you want me to force you, mignonne; _pardieu_! then I

will force you. The thing is feasible, although perhaps it

has never been done.

ROSETTE.

Impertinent!

I.

Notice, my lovely one, that I was courteous enough to say

_perhaps;_ that was very good of me.--But we are getting

away from the subject. Put down your head. Hoity-toity!

what is all this, my favorite sultana? and what means the

sulky expression on your face? It is a pleasure to kiss a

smile and not a pout.

ROSETTE. (_stooping to kiss me)._

How do you expect me to laugh? you say such harsh things

to me!

I.

My purpose is to say very tender things to you. Why should

I say harsh things?

ROSETTE.

I don't know; but you do say them.

I.

You mistake meaningless jests for harshness.

ROSETTE.

Meaningless! You call it meaningless, do you? everything

has a meaning in love. I tell you I would rather have you

beat me than laugh as you do.

I.

Then you would like to see me weep?

ROSETTE.

You always go from one extreme to the other. No one asks

you to weep, but to talk reasonably and drop that tone of

persiflage that becomes you so ill.

I.

It is impossible for me to talk reasonably and not joke;

I'll beat you, if that's what you want!

ROSETTE.

Do it.

I (_giving her a little tap or two on the shoulder)._

I would rather cut off my own head than mar your adorable

little body and make blue stripes on that lovely white

back.--However much a woman may enjoy being beaten, my

goddess, I swear that you shan't be.

ROSETTE.

You don't love me any more.

I.

That doesn't follow very logically from what precedes;

it's almost as logical as to say: "It rains, so don't give

me my umbrella;" or: "It's cold, open the window."

ROSETTE.

You don't love me, you have never loved me.

I.

Aha! the plot thickens; you don't love me any more and you

have never loved me. That is rather contradictory; how can

I cease to do a thing which I never began to do?--You see,

my little queen, you don't know what you are saying and

you are perfectly ridiculous.

ROSETTE.

I longed so to have you love me that I helped to deceive

myself. It is easy to believe what one desires; but now

I see that I am mistaken. You made a mistake yourself;

you mistook liking for love and desire for passion. It's

something that happens every day. I bear you no ill will

for it: it wasn't your fault that you weren't in love with

me; my own lack of charm is all that I have to blame.

I ought to have been prettier, more playful, more of a

flirt; I ought to have tried to rise to your level, O my

poet! instead of trying to pull you down to mine: I was

afraid of losing you among the clouds, and I dreaded lest

your head should steal your heart from me. I imprisoned

you in my love and I thought that, if I gave myself to you

utterly, you would keep a little something of me--

I.

Move away a little, Rosette; your leg burns me--you're

like a hot coal.

ROSETTE.

If I annoy you, I'll get up.--Ah! stony heart, drops of

water pierce the stone, but my tears have no effect on

you. (_She weeps_).

I.

If you weep like that, you will certainly make a bathtub

of our bed.--A bathtub, did I say? an ocean.--Can you

swim, Rosette?

ROSETTE.

Villain!

I.

Oho! now I am a villain! You flatter me, Rosette, I

haven't that honor. I am a blithesome bourgeois, alas!

and I have never committed the least crime; I have done a

foolish thing, perhaps, in loving you to distraction; that

is all.--Are you absolutely determined to make me repent

that?--I have loved you and I love you now as much as I

can. Since I have been your lover I have always walked

in your shadow: I have given you all my time, my days

and my nights. I have indulged in no high-flown phrases

with you because I don't care for them except when they

are written; but I have given you a thousand proofs of my

affection. I won't speak of the most scrupulous fidelity,

for that goes without saying; but I have lost a pound and

three-quarters since you have been my mistress. What more

do you want? Here I am in your bed; I was here yesterday,

I shall be here to-morrow. Is that the way a man acts

with a woman he doesn't love? I do whatever you want; you

say: "Go," and I go; "stay," and I stay; I am the most

admirable lover in the world, it seems to me.

ROSETTE.

That is just what I complain of--you are the most perfect

lover in the world.

I.

What have you to reproach me for?

ROSETTE.

Nothing; and I would prefer to have some reason to

complain of you.

I.

This is an extraordinary quarrel.

ROSETTE.

It's much worse than that.--You don't love me.--I can

do nothing about it, nor can you.--What remedy have I

for that? Certainly I would prefer to have something to

forgive you for.--I would scold you; you would apologize

as best you could and we should make up.

I.

That would be all clear gain for you. The greater the

crime, the more imposing the reparation.

ROSETTE.

You know very well, monsieur, that I am not yet reduced to

that, and that if I chose, at this moment, although you

don't love me and we are quarrelling--

I.

Yes, I agree that it is purely the result of your kindness

of heart.--Be a little kind now; that would be better than

syllogizing over our heads as we are doing.

ROSETTE.

You want to cut short a conversation that embarrasses you;

but by your leave, my good friend, we will be content with

talking.

I.

That's a cheap repast.--I assure you that you are making

a mistake, for you are distractingly pretty, and I have

sensations.

ROSETTE.

Which you can describe some other time.

I.

Aha! my adorable, you have become a little Hyrcanian

tigress, have you? your cruelty to-day is beyond

words!--Have you been taken with the fever to set yourself

up as a vestal? It would be an amusing whim.

ROSETTE.

Why not? stranger whims have been known; but this

much is sure, I shall be a vestal so far as you are

concerned.--Understand, monsieur, that I give myself only

to people who love me or who I think love me.--You are in

neither position.--Allow me to rise.

I.

If you rise, I shall rise too.--You will have the trouble

of going back to bed, that's all.

ROSETTE.

Let me go!

I.

_Pardieu_, no!

Rosette (_struggling)._

Oh! you shall let me go!

I.

I venture, madame, to assure you of the contrary.

ROSETTE (_seeing that she is not the stronger)._

All right! I will stay! you squeeze my arms so

tight!--What do you want of me?

I.

I think you know.--I would not allow myself to put in

words what I allow myself to do; I have too much respect

for decency.

ROSETTE (_already beyond the power to defend herself_).

On condition that you will love me dearly--I surrender.

I.

It's a little late to strike your flag, when the enemy is

already in the citadel.

ROSETTE (_half swooning, throwing her arms around my

neck_).

Unconditionally. I rely on your generosity.

I.

You do well.

At this point, my dear friend, I think it would not be amiss to place

a line of asterisks, for the rest of the dialogue could hardly be

translated except by onomatopœia.

* * * * *

The sunbeam has had time, since the opening of the scene, to make the

tour of the bedroom. A pleasant, penetrating odor of linden-trees

comes up from the garden. It is as beautiful a day as can be imagined;

the sky is as blue as an Englishwoman's eye. We rise, and, after

breakfasting with a good appetite, we take a long drive in the country.

The clear air, the beauty of the landscape and the aspect of nature in

her joyous mood instilled enough sentimentality and tenderness into my

soul to make Rosette agree that, after all, I have something in the

shape of a heart like other men.

Have you never noticed how the shade of the woods, the plashing of

fountains, the singing of birds, a bright and laughing landscape, the

odor of the leaves and flowers, all the paraphernalia of eclogues

and descriptive poems which we have agreed to despise, none the less

retain a secret influence over us, however depraved we may be, which

it is impossible for us to resist? I will tell you in confidence,

under seal of the most profound secrecy, that I surprised myself very

recently in a most provincial state of emotion in connection with a

nightingale's song. It was in D----'s garden; the sky, although it

was night, was almost as bright as at noonday; it was so measureless

and so transparent that one's glance easily penetrated to God. It

seemed to me as if I could see the folds of the angels' robes on the

white windings of the Milky Way. The moon had risen, but a great tree

hid it completely; it riddled the dark foliage with a million little

luminous holes and showered more spangles about than ever glittered

upon a marchioness's fan. A silence laden with faint sounds and sighs

filled the garden--perhaps this resembles pathos, but it is not my

fault;--although I saw nothing save the bluish gleam of the moon, it

seemed to me as if I were surrounded by a whole population of phantoms,

unknown yet adored, and I had no feeling of loneliness, although there

was no one but myself on the terrace.--I was not thinking, I was not

dreaming, I was blended with my surroundings and I felt myself shiver

with the foliage, glisten with the water, gleam with the moonbeams,

bloom with the flowers; I was no more myself than the tree, the

streamlet, or the four-o'clock. I was all of them at once, and I do

not think it possible to be more thoroughly removed from one's self

than I was at that moment. Suddenly, as if something extraordinary

had happened, the leaf ceased to flutter at the end of the branch,

the drop of water from the fountain remained suspended in the air and

did not fall. The silvery thread, starting from the edge of the moon,

stopped on the way; my heart alone beat with such resonance that it

seemed to fill the whole vast space with clamor.--My heart ceased to

beat and there was such a profound silence that you could have heard

the grass grow, and a word spoken in an undertone two hundred leagues

away. And then the nightingale, who probably was awaiting that moment

to begin his song, emitted from his little throat a note so shrill and

piercing that I heard it with my breast no less than with my ears. The

sound spread quickly through the crystalline expanse, until that moment

as still as death, and created a harmonious atmosphere, wherein the

other notes that followed it flew to and fro, flapping their wings.--I

understood what he said as perfectly as if I had known the secret of

the bird language. The story of the loves I have not found was what the

nightingale sang. Never was a truer story told or told with greater

fulness. He did not omit the smallest detail, the most imperceptible

shade. He told me what I had not been able to tell myself, he explained

what I had not been able to understand; he gave voice to my reverie

and compelled the phantom, hitherto dumb, to reply. I knew that I was

beloved, and a thrill most languorously drawn out informed me that I

should soon be happy. It seemed to me that I could see the white arms

of my beloved extended toward me through the trills and quavers of his

song and beneath the shower of notes, in a moonbeam.

She rose slowly before me with the perfume of the heart of a

hundred-petalled rose.--I will not try to describe her beauty. It is

one of those things that words decline to attempt. How describe the

indescribable? how paint that which has neither form nor color? how

note down a voice without quality and speechless?--I have never had

so much love in my heart; I would have pressed nature to my bosom, I

embraced the empty void as if my arms were clasped about a virgin form;

I kissed the air that blew upon my lips, I swam in the magnetic fluids

that exhaled from my glowing body. Ah! if Rosette had been there, what

adorable rhapsodies I would have indulged in! But women never know

enough to arrive at the opportune moment.--The nightingale ceased

to sing; the moon, who could keep awake no longer, pulled her cap of

clouds over her eyes, and I left the garden; for the cool night air was

beginning to make itself felt.

As I was cold, I naturally thought that I should be warmer in Rosette's

bed than my own, and I went to lie with her.--I let myself in with my

pass-key, for everybody in the house was asleep.--Rosette herself had

fallen asleep, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that it was over a

volume uncut, of my latest poems. She had both arms under her head, her

mouth half open and smiling, one leg stretched out and the other partly

curled up, in an attitude instinct with ease and grace; she was so

lovely that I mortally regretted that I was no longer in love with her.

As I looked at her I reflected that I was as stupid as an ostrich.

I had what I had so long desired, a mistress as entirely my own as

my horse and my sword, young, pretty, amorous and clever; with no

stern-principled mother, no father with a decoration, no cross-grained

aunt, no swaggering brother, and with the priceless advantage of a

husband duly sealed and nailed up in a fine oaken casket lined with

lead, the whole covered over with a large block of hewn granite, which

is not to be despised; for, after all, it is a very doubtful pleasure

to be caught in the act in the middle of a blissful paroxysm, and to

complete one's sensations on the pavement, after describing an arc of

40 to 45 degrees, according to the floor on which you happen to be;--a

mistress as free as the mountain air and rich enough to indulge in

the most exquisite refinements and luxuries, and, moreover, free from

anything like moral ideas, never talking about her virtue as she tries

a new posture, nor of her reputation, any more than if she had never

had one; with no intimate female friends, and despising all women

almost as much as if she were a man, entertaining a very low opinion of

platonic affection and making no secret of it, and always playing with

her heart in the game; a woman who, if her lines had fallen in another

sphere, would indubitably have become the most admirable courtesan on

earth and dimmed the glory of the Aspasias and Imperias!

Now, that woman, so made, was mine. I did what I chose with her; I

had the key to her room and her drawer; I broke the seals of her

letters; I had taken away her name and given her another. She was my

chattel, my property. Her youth, her beauty, her love, all belonged

to me; I used them, I abused them. I made her go to bed in the daytime

and sit up at night, if the whim seized me, and she obeyed simply,

without any affectation of making a sacrifice, and without assuming

the air of a resigned victim.--She was attentive, caressing, and--a

most extraordinary thing!--absolutely faithful; that is to say, if in

the days when I was lamenting that I had no mistress, six months ago,

any one had given me a glimpse of such happiness, even in the distant

future, I should have gone mad with joy and tossed my hat up to knock

at the gates of heaven, in token of my delight. And now that I have

that happiness, I am cold; I am hardly conscious that I have it, I

am _not_ conscious of it, and my present position makes so little

impression upon me that I often doubt if I have changed my position at

all. If I should leave Rosette, I am convinced in my inmost soul that,

at the end of a month, perhaps less, I should have so thoroughly and

carefully forgotten her, that I shouldn't know whether I had ever known

her or not! Would she do the same? I think not.

I reflected, as I say, upon all these things, and impelled by a sort

of repentant feeling, I deposited on the fair sleeper's brow that

most chaste and melancholy kiss that ever young man bestowed upon

young woman--just on the stroke of midnight. She moved slightly, the

smile about her mouth became a little more pronounced, but she did not

wake. I undressed slowly, and, creeping under the clothes, stretched

myself out by her side like a snake. The coolness of my body startled

her; she opened her eyes, and, without speaking, put her mouth to mine

and twined herself about me so completely that I was warmed in less

than no time at all. All the poetry of the evening changed to prose,

but to poetic prose at all events. That night was one of the sweetest

sleepless nights I ever passed. I can hope for no more such.

We still have pleasurable moments, but they must be led up to and

prepared for by some outside incident like this, and in the beginning I

did not need to have my imagination excited by gazing at the moon and

listening to the nightingale, in order to have all the pleasure one can

have when one is not really in love. There are as yet no broken threads

in our woof, but there are knots here and there, and the chain is not

nearly so smooth as it was.

Rosette, who is still in love, does what she can to avert all these

inconveniences. Unfortunately there are two things in the world that

cannot be guided: love and ennui.--For my own part I make superhuman

efforts to conquer the drowsiness that steals over me in spite of

myself, and like the provincials who fall asleep at ten o'clock in

Parisian salons, I keep my eyes as wide open as possible and hold up

my eyelids with my fingers!--nothing serves the purpose and I take

conjugal liberties that are most unpalatable.

The dear child, who found the rural expedition so successful the other

day, took me off to her country estate yesterday.

It would not be out of place, perhaps, to give you a little description

of the aforesaid estate, which is very attractive; it will lighten up

all this metaphysics a little, and then, too, we must have a background

for the characters, and figures will not stand out in relief against

an empty void, or against the vague shade of brown with which painters

fill up the field of their canvas.

The approach is very picturesque.--Driving through a broad avenue,

lined with venerable trees, you come to a star, the centre of which is

marked by a stone obelisk surmounted by a sphere of gilded copper:

five roads form the points of the star. Then the land suddenly

descends. The road plunges down into a narrow valley, with a small

stream flowing at the bottom, which is crossed by a bridge of a single

span; then, ascends the opposite slope, where the village lies, whose

slated church-tower can be seen among the thatched roofs and the

rounded tops of the apple-trees. The view is not very extensive, for it

is limited on both sides by the crest of the hill, but it is bright and

pleasant and rests the eye.--Beside the bridge there is a mill and a

tower-shaped structure built of red stone: almost incessant barking and

the sight of a brach-hound or two and some young terriers with crooked

legs warming themselves in the sun before the door, would inform you

that it was the head-keeper's abode, if the buzzards and martens nailed

to the shutters could leave you for a moment in doubt. At that point an

avenue of sorb-trees begins; the red berries attract clouds of birds;

as there is little passing, there is only a band of white in the middle

of the road; all the rest is covered with short, fine moss, and, in the

double rut made by carriage wheels, little grasshoppers, as green as

emeralds, buzz and hop about.

After driving some little distance along this avenue you come to a

painted iron fence, with gilt trimmings, and bristling with spikes

and _chevaux de frise._ Thence the road leads to the château--which

is still invisible, for it is buried in verdure like a bird in its

nest--but its progress is leisurely and it frequently turns aside to

visit a brook and a fountain, a dainty summer-house or a point from

which a fine view can be had, crossing and recrossing the stream over

Chinese or rustic bridges. The inequality of the land and the dams

built for the purposes of the mill cause several waterfalls some four

or five feet in height, and you can imagine nothing more delightful

than to hear the splashing of all these cascades close beside you, but

generally out of sight, for the osiers and elders that line the bank

form an almost impenetrable curtain. But all that part of the park is,

so to speak, only the antechamber of the other part: unfortunately, a

public highway passes through the estate and cuts it in two, a drawback

for which a very ingenious remedy has been devised. Two high crenelated

walls, provided with barbicans and loopholes in imitation of a ruined

fortress, stand on each side of the road; connected with a tower on

the château side, completely covered by gigantic ivy plants, is a

genuine drawbridge which is lowered every morning, by iron chains, upon

the opposite bastion. You drive through a lovely ogive archway inside

the tower, and thence into the second enclosure, where the trees,

which have not been cut for more than a century, are of extraordinary

height, with gnarled trunks swathed in parasitic plants--the handsomest

and most curious trees I have ever seen. Some have leaves only at

the very top like broad umbrellas; others taper toward the top like

plumes; others, on the contrary, have a large tuft of foliage near

the bottom, from which the naked trunk rises toward the sky like a

second tree planted in the first; you would say it was the foreground

of a landscape painting or flies painted for a scene on the stage, the

trees are so curiously misshapen;--ivies that reach from one to another

and hug them so tight as to choke them, mingle their dark hearts with

the green leaves and seem like their shadow. Nothing can be more

picturesque. The stream widens at that spot, so as to form a little

lake, and it is so shallow that you can see, through the transparent

water, the lovely aquatic plants that carpet its bed. There are

nymphæas and lotuses swimming nonchalantly in the purest crystal with

the reflection of the clouds and the weeping-willows that lean over

the bank: the château is on the other side, and yonder little skiff,

painted apple-green and bright red, will save you a long detour to the

bridge. The château is a collection of buildings built at different

periods with gables of unequal heights and a multitude of little

turrets. One ell is of brick with stone trimmings; another portion is

in the rustic style, with quantities of excrescences and vermiculated

work. Another ell is entirely modern; it has a flat Italian roof with

vases and a tile balustrade, and a canvas porch in the shape of a tent.

The windows are all of different sizes and do not correspond; there

are some of all styles, even the trefoil and ogive, for the chapel

is Gothic. Certain parts are trellised, like Chinese houses, with

trellises painted different colors, covered with climbing honeysuckle,

jasmin, nasturtiums, and virgin's bower, whose tendrils look familiarly

in at the chamber windows and seem to put out their hands to you as

they say good-morning.

Despite this lack of regularity, or rather because of it, it is a

fascinating structure; at least, one does not see it all at a single

glance; there is an opportunity for choice and one is always on the

lookout for something one has not seen.

This château, with which I was not familiar, for it is twenty leagues

from town, pleased me immensely at first sight, and I was extremely

grateful to Rosette for conceiving the admirable idea of selecting such

a nest for our love.

We arrived just at nightfall; and, as we were tired, after eating a

hearty supper there was nothing we were so anxious to do as to go to

bed--in separate rooms, mind you, for we intended to sleep in good

earnest.

I was dreaming some rose-colored dream, full of flowers and sweet

perfumes and birds, when I felt a warm breath on my forehead and a kiss

descend upon it with quivering wings. A slight smacking of the lips

and a pleasant moisture on the spot breathed upon led me to think that

I was not dreaming: I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was

Rosette's cool, white neck, as she leaned over the bed to kiss me. I

threw my arms around her waist and returned her kiss more passionately

than I had done for a long while.

She went and drew the curtain and opened the window, then returned and

sat on the edge of my bed, holding my hand in hers and playing with

my rings. Her costume was marked by the most coquettish simplicity.

She was without corsets or skirt, and had absolutely nothing on save

a lawn _peignoir_ as white as milk, very ample and full; her hair was

held in place on top of her head by a little white rose of the sort

that has only three or four petals; her ivory feet were encased in

embroidered slippers of brilliant, diversified colors, as small as they

possibly could be, although they were too large for her, and without

quarterings like those of the young Roman dames. I regretted, when I

saw her so, that I was already her lover and hadn't the prospect still

before me.

[Illustration: Chapter IV--_She went and drew the curtain and opened the

window, then returned and sat on the edge of my bed, holding my hand

in hers and playing with my rings. Her costume was marked by the most

coquettish simplicity._]

The dream I was dreaming at the moment that she waked me in such

pleasant fashion was not very far removed from the reality.--My

chamber looked on the little lake I described just now. The window

was surrounded by jasmin, which shook its stars over my floor in

a silvery shower: large, exotic flowers swayed in the wind under

my balcony as if to waft incense up to me; a vague, sweet perfume,

composed of a thousand different perfumes, penetrated to my bed, from

which I could see the water gleaming and flashing with millions of

spangles; the birds chattered and warbled and whistled and chirped;

it was a confusion of harmonious sounds like the hum and buzz of a

fête.--Opposite, on a hill-side lying in the sunlight, was a smooth

field of a golden green, with fat cattle feeding here and there, under

the care of a small boy.--Higher up the hill and farther away were

great patches of forest of a darker green, above which the bluish smoke

of charcoal-kilns rose in spiral columns.

Every detail of the picture was calm and fresh and smiling, and

wherever I turned my eyes, I saw only what was young and fair. My

chamber was hung with chintz, with mats on the floor, and blue Japanese

jars with rounded bodies and tapering necks, filled with strange

flowers, artistically arranged on étagères and on the dark-blue marble

chimney-piece; the fire-place also was filled with flowers. Panels

above the doors, representing rural or pastoral scenes, bright-colored

and daintily executed, sofas and divans in every nook and corner--and

a lovely young woman, all in white, whose flesh gave a delicate pink

tinge to the transparent dress where it came in contact with it: one

can conceive nothing better calculated to give pleasure to the soul as

well as to the eyes.

And so my gratified, careless glance wandered, with equal pleasure,

from a magnificent jar thickly strewn with dragons and mandarins,

to Rosette's slipper, and thence to the corner of her shoulder that

glistened under the lawn; it rested on the fluttering stars of the

jasmin and the white hairs of the willows on the bank, crossed the

water and sauntered over the hill-side, then returned to the chamber

to fix itself on the rose-colored ribbons of some shepherdess's long

corset.

Through the openings in the foliage the sky showed millions of blue

eyes; the water rippled gently and I gave myself up to the enjoyment of

the moment, plunged in blissful tranquillity, saying nothing, with my

hand still in Rosette's tiny hands.

It is of no use to talk: happiness is white and pink; it can hardly be

represented otherwise. Delicate colors belong to it as of right. It has

on its palette only sea-green, sky-blue and light yellow: its pictures

are all light like those of the Chinese painters. Flowers, bright

light, perfumes, a soft and velvety skin touching yours, a veiled

melody coming from you know not where,--with those one can be perfectly

happy; there is no way of being happy otherwise. I myself, who have

a horror of the commonplace, who dream only of strange adventures,

violent passions, frenzied bliss, unusual and difficult situations, I

must be happy like an animal in that way, and, whatever I may do, I can

find no other.

I beg you to believe that I made none of these reflections at the time;

they have come to me since as I sat here writing to you; at that moment

I thought of nothing but enjoying myself--the only occupation of a

reasonable man.

I will not describe the life we lead here, it is easily imagined. There

are walks under the great trees, violets and strawberries, kisses

and little blue flowers, luncheons on the grass, readings and books

forgotten under the trees; water parties with the end of a scarf or

a white hand dipping in the stream, long ballads and long laughter

repeated by the echoes of the bank;--the most Arcadian life imaginable!

Rosette overwhelms me with caresses and little attentions; more amorous

than the dove in May, she twines about me and envelops me in her folds;

she tries to let me breathe no other atmosphere than her breath and see

no other horizon than her eyes; she maintains a very strict blockade

and allows nothing to go in or out without permission; she has built

a little guard-house beside my heart, from which she keeps watch on

it night and day.--She says delightful things to me; she makes very

complimentary speeches; she sits on my knee and acts in my presence

exactly like a submissive slave before her lord and master; all of

which suits me very well, for I like such little humble ways and I have

a leaning toward Oriental despotism; she doesn't do the smallest thing

without asking my opinion, and seems to have completely laid aside her

own fancy and her will; she tries to divine my thought and anticipate

it; she crushes me with her wit, her affection and her submission; she

is perfect enough to throw out of the window.--How in the devil can I

leave a woman so adorable without seeming to be a monster? It would be

enough to discredit my heart forever.

Oh! how I would like to catch her tripping, to find some grievance

against her! how impatiently I await an opportunity for a quarrel!

but there is no danger that the hussy will give me one! When I speak

sharply to her, in a harsh tone, to bring about a quarrel, she answers

me so sweetly, in such a silvery voice, with her eyes swimming in

tears, and such a sad, loving expression, that I seem to myself to be

more than a tiger, or at least a crocodile, and, inwardly raging, I am

forced to ask her pardon.

She is literally murdering me with love; she puts me to the question

and every day she draws closer the planks between which I am caught.

She probably wants to drive me to tell her that I detest her, that she

bores me to death, and that, if she doesn't leave me in peace, I will

slash her face with my hunting crop. Pardieu! she will succeed, and if

she continues to be as amiable, it will be before long or may the devil

carry me off!

Notwithstanding all this fine show, Rosette is surfeited with me as I

am with her; but as she has done some notoriously foolish things for

me, she doesn't want to take to herself the discredit of a rupture

in the eyes of the excellent corporation of sensible women. Every

great passion claims to be everlasting, and it is very convenient

to assume the credit of that everlastingness without suffering its

disadvantages.--Rosette reasons thus:--"Here is a young man who has

hardly a vestige of fondness left for me, and, as he is simple-minded

and easy-going, he doesn't dare show it openly and doesn't know which

way to turn: it is plain that I bore him, but he will wear his life out

in the toils rather than take it on himself to leave me. As he is a

poet after a fashion, he has his head full of fine phrases about love

and passion, and considers himself bound in conscience to be a Tristan

or an Amadis. Now, as nothing in the world is more insupportable than

the caresses of a person one is beginning not to love--and to cease to

love a woman is to hate her intensely--I propose to lavish them on him

in a way to sicken him, and the result will be either that he will send

me to the devil or will begin to love me again as he did on the first

day, which he will take very good care not to do."

No reasoning could be better.--Isn't it charming to play the part of

the abandoned Ariadne?--People pity you and admire you, and there are

no imprecations strong enough for the infamous wretch who has been so

inhuman as to abandon such an adorable creature; you assume an air of

grieved resignation, you put your hand under your chin and your elbow

on your knee so as to show off the pretty blue veins in your wrist. You

wear your hair more dishevelled, and your dresses for some little time

are of soberer hue. You avoid mentioning the ingrate's name, but you

make roundabout allusions to him, at the same time heaving beautifully

modulated little sighs.

A woman so good, so beautiful, so passionate, who has made such great

sacrifices, who has done nothing worthy of blame, a chosen vessel, a

pearl of love, a spotless mirror, a drop of milk, a white rose, an

ideal essence to perfume a life;--a woman whom you should have adored

on your knees, and who will have to be cut in little pieces after her

death, to make relics:--such a woman to be abandoned iniquitously,

villainously, fraudulently! Why a pirate would do no worse! To give her

her death-blow!--for she certainly will die of it.--One must have a

paving-stone in his breast, instead of a heart, to act so.

O men! men!

I say this to myself, but perhaps it's not true.

However great actresses women naturally are, I find it hard to believe

that they carry it as far as that; and, when all is said, are all

Rosette's demonstrations simply the exact expression of her sentiments

for me?--However it may be, the continuation of the tête-à-tête is

impossible, and the fair chatelaine has at last issued invitations to

her acquaintances in the neighborhood. We are busily engaged making

preparations to receive the worthy provincials.--Adieu, my dear fellow.

V

I was mistaken.--My evil heart, incapable of love, seized upon that

reason to deliver itself from the burden of a gratitude it did not

wish to bear; I joyfully grasped that idea to excuse myself to my own

conscience; I clung fast to it, but nothing could be farther from the

truth. Rosette was not playing a part, and if ever woman was true, she

is the woman.--Ah! well! I am almost angry with her for the sincerity

of her passion, which is an additional bond and makes a rupture more

difficult or less excusable; I would prefer her to be false and fickle.

What an extraordinary position! You long to go, but you stay; you

long to say: "I hate you," but you say: "I love you;"--your past

urges you forward and prevents you from turning back or stopping.

You are faithful and you regret it. An indefinable sense of shame

prevents your abandoning yourself altogether to other acquaintances

and leads you to compromise with yourself. You give to one all you

can steal from the other and at the same time keep up appearances; the

opportunities for meeting which formerly came about so naturally are

very hard to find to-day.--You begin to remember that you have business

of importance.--Such a perplexing situation as that is very painful,

but it is much less so than my present situation.--When it is a new

friendship that steals you from the old, it is easier to extricate

yourself. Hope smiles sweetly upon you from the threshold of the house

that contains your new-born love.--A fairer and rosier illusion hovers

on its white wings over the scarce-closed tomb of its sister who has

died; another flower, blooming more radiantly and of sweeter perfume,

upon whose petals trembles a celestial tear, has suddenly sprung forth

from among the withered calyxes of the old bouquet;--lovely, azure-hued

perspectives open before you; avenues of fresh and unpretentious

beeches stretch away to the horizon; there are gardens with white

statues here and there, or a bench against an ivy-covered wall, lawns

dotted with marguerites, narrow balconies, on whose rails you lean and

gaze at the moon, and shadows cut by fleeting rays of light;--salons

from which the daylight is excluded by heavy curtains;--all the

darkness and isolation that the passion craves which dares not avow

itself. It is as if your youth had come again. You have, moreover,

a complete change of haunts and habits and persons; you feel a sort

of remorse, to be sure; but the desire that flutters and hums about

your head, like a bee in spring, prevents your hearing its voice; the

void in your heart is filled and your memories are effaced by present

impressions,--But in my case it is different: I love no one and it is

from weariness and disgust with myself rather than with her that I wish

I were able to break with Rosette.

My former ideas, which had become a little indistinct in my mind, are

coming to the front again, more foolish than ever.--I am, as formerly,

tortured by the longing to have a mistress, and, as formerly, even in

Rosette's arms I doubt whether I have ever had one.--I see once more

the lovely lady at her window, in her park of the time of Louis XIII.,

and the huntress on her white horse gallops along the forest path.--My

ideal beauty smiles upon me from her hammock of clouds, I fancy that

I recognize her voice in the song of the birds, in the rustling of

the foliage; it seems to me that some one is calling me from every

direction, and that the daughters of the air brush my face with the

fringe of their invisible scarfs. As in the days of my agitation,

I imagine that, if I should set out instantly and go somewhere very

far away at great speed, I should reach some place where things that

concern me are taking place and where my destiny is being decided.--I

feel that somebody is impatiently awaiting my coming in some corner of

the earth, I don't know where. Some suffering soul who cannot come to

me is calling eagerly to me and dreaming of me; that is the reason of

my uneasiness and of my inability to remain in one place; I am being

violently drawn away from my centre. Mine is not one of those natures

to which others flock, one of those fixed stars about which other

radiant bodies gravitate; I must needs wander through the expanse of

heaven like an erratic meteor, until I have fallen in with the planet

whose satellite I am to be, the Saturn about whom I am to pass my ring.

Oh! when will that union take place? Until then I cannot hope for rest

or peace of mind, but I shall be like the bewildered, vacillating

needle of a compass, seeking its pole.

I allowed my wing to be caught in the deceitful snare, hoping to leave

only a feather there and to retain the power to fly away when it seemed

good to me: nothing could be more difficult; I find myself covered by

an invisible net, harder to break than the one forged by Vulcan, and

the mesh is so fine and close that there are no openings through which

I can escape. The net is large and roomy, however, and I can move about

in it with an appearance of freedom; it is hardly perceptible except

when you try to break it; but then it resists and becomes as firm as a

wall of brass.

How much time I have lost, O my ideal! without the slightest effort to

realize thee! How basely I have yielded to the temptation of a night's

pleasure! and how little I deserve to meet thee!

Sometimes I think of forming another liaison; but I have no one in

view; more frequently I make up my mind that, if I succeed in bringing

about a rupture, I will never again involve myself in such bonds,

and yet there is nothing to justify that resolution, for the present

connection has been, to all appearance, a very happy one and I have

no reason in the world for complaining of Rosette.--She has always

been kind to me, and has behaved as well as any one could; she has

been exemplarily faithful to me and has not given an opening for

suspicion; the most alert and most anxious jealousy could have had no

word of blame for her and must have slept in security.--A jealous

man could have been jealous only of the past; in that direction, it

is true, there was ample ground for jealousy. But luckily, jealousy

of that sort is a very rare article, and one has quite enough to do

to look after the present without going back to fumble under the

ashes of extinct passion for phials of poison and cups of gall.--What

woman could a man love, if he thought of all that?--You may have a

sort of vague idea that a woman has had several lovers before you;

but you say to yourself--a man's pride has so many tortuous folds and

counterfolds!--that you are the first she has really loved, and that

it was through a combination of fatal circumstances that she became

connected with men unworthy of her, or else through a vague craving of

a heart that sought to satisfy itself and changed because it had not

met its affinity.

Perhaps one can really love none but a virgin--a virgin in body and in

mind--a fragile bud that has never been caressed as yet by any zephyr

and whose carefully hidden breast has neither received the drop of rain

nor the pearl of dew; a chaste flower that displays its white robe for

you alone, a beautiful lily with a silver urn at which no desire has

slaked its thirst and which has been gilded only by your sun, swayed

by no breath but yours, watered by no hand but yours.--The glare of the

noonday sun is less agreeable than the divine pallor of the dawn, and

all the ardor of an experienced heart that knows what life is, yields

the palm to the celestial ignorance of a youthful heart just awaking to

love.--Ah! what a bitter, degrading thought it is that you are wiping

away another's kisses, that there may not be a single spot upon that

brow, those lips, that bosom, those shoulders, that whole body which is

yours now, that has not been reddened and branded by other lips; that

those divine murmurs which come to the relief of the tongue that can

find no more words of love, have been heard before; that those excited

senses did not learn their ecstasy and their delirium from you, and

that away, away down in one of those recesses of the heart which are

never visited, there lives an inexorable memory which compares the joys

of an earlier day to the joys of to-day!

Although my natural nonchalance leads me to prefer the high roads to

unbroken paths, and the public watering-trough to the mountain spring,

I absolutely must try to love some virginal creature as spotless as the

snow, as timid as the sensitive plant, who can only blush and look

down; it may be that, from that limpid stream, which no diver has as

yet investigated, I shall fish up a pearl of the fairest water, worthy

to be a pendant to Cleopatra's; but, in order to do that, I should have

to cast off the bond that binds me to Rosette,--for I am not likely to

realize that longing with her,--and to tell the truth, I do not feel

strong enough to do it.

And then, too, if I must make the confession, there is at the bottom

of my heart a secret, shameful motive, which dares not show itself in

broad daylight, but which I must tell you of, since I have promised to

conceal nothing from you, and a confession, to be deserving of credit,

must be complete;--the motive I speak of has much to do with all this

uncertainty.--If I break with Rosette, some time must necessarily pass

before her place is filled, however easy of access the class of women

may be among whom I shall seek her successor; and I have fallen into

a habit of enjoying myself with her which it will be hard for me to

break off. To be sure I have the resource of courtesans; I liked them

well enough in the old days and I did not hesitate to resort to them

under such circumstances;--but to-day they disgust me beyond measure

and make me ill.--So I must not think of them, and I am so softened

by indulgence, the poison has penetrated so deep into my bones that I

cannot bear the idea of being one or two months without a woman.--That

is pure egoism of the basest kind; but it is my opinion that the most

virtuous men, if they would be perfectly frank, would have to make

nearly a similar confession.

That is the true secret of my captivity and, if it weren't for that,

Rosette and I would long ago have fallen out for good and all. Indeed

it is such a deathly bore to pay court to a woman, that I haven't

the heart to attempt it. To begin again the charming idiocies I have

already said so many times, to play the adorable once more, to write

notes and reply to them; to escort the charmer, in the evening, to

some place two leagues away; to catch cold in your feet and your head

standing in front of the window watching a beloved shadow; to sit upon

a sofa calculating how many thicknesses of tissue separate you from

your goddess; to carry bouquets and go the round of the ball-rooms

to reach the point where I now am, is a vast deal of trouble!--It's

about as well to remain in one's rut.--What is the use of leaving it,

only to fall into another exactly like it, after much unnecessary

agitation and untold trouble? If I were in love, the thing would go

of itself and it would all seem perfectly delightful to me; but I am

not, although I have the most earnest desire to be; for, after all,

there is nothing but love in the world; and if pleasure, which is only

its shadow, has so many allurements for us, what must the reality be?

In what an ocean of ineffable bliss, in what seas of pure, unalloyed

delight must they swim whose hearts Love has pierced with one of his

gold-tipped arrows, and who burn with the delicious warmth of a mutual

flame!

Beside Rosette I feel that insipid tranquillity, that sort of slothful

well-being which results from the satisfaction of the senses, but

nothing more; and that is not enough. Often that voluptuous indolence

turns to torpor, and that tranquillity to ennui; thereupon I fall into

aimless meditation and dull, spiritless reveries that weary and harass

me;--it is a state of things that I must put an end to at any price.

Oh! if I could only be like some of my friends, who kiss an old glove

with ecstasy; who are made perfectly happy by a clasp of the hand; who

would not exchange for a sultana's jewel-case a few wretched flowers

half-withered by the heat of the ball-room; who cover with tears and

sew into their shirt, where it will rest against the heart, a note

written in an inelegant style and so stupid that you would think it

was copied from the _Parfait Secrétaire_; who adore women with large

feet and apologize for them on the ground that they have noble souls!

If I could follow tremblingly the vanishing folds of a dress, or wait

for a door to open in order to see a cherished white apparition pass

in a blaze of light; if a word spoken beneath the breath would make

me change color; if I had the virtue to go without my dinner so as to

arrive sooner at a rendezvous; if I were capable of killing a rival

or fighting a duel with a husband; if by a special dispensation of

Providence, I were endowed with the power of considering ugly women

clever, and those who are ugly and stupid as well, pleasant and

agreeable; if I could make up my mind to dance the minuet and to listen

to sonatas played by young ladies on the harpsichord or harp; if my

capacity should rise to the height of learning ombre and _reversis_;

in short, if I were a man and not a poet--I certainly should be much

happier than I am; I should be less bored myself and should bore others

less.

I have never asked but one thing of women--beauty; I am very willing to

go without intellect and soul.--In my eyes a beautiful woman is always

intellectual;--she knows enough to be beautiful, and I know no other

knowledge as valuable as that.--It takes many sparkling sentences and

keen shafts of wit to equal the value of the flash of a lovely eye. I

prefer a pretty mouth to a pretty speech, and a well-modeled shoulder

to a virtue, even one of the theological sort; I would give fifty souls

for a dainty foot, and all poetry and all the poets for the hand of

Joanna of Aragon, or the brow of Foligno's virgin.--Above all things

I adore a beautiful figure; to my mind beauty is manifest Divinity,

palpable happiness, heaven come down to earth.--There are certain

undulations of outline, certain turns of the lip, a certain droop of

the eyelids, certain inclinations of the head, certain elongations of

the profile which enchant me beyond all expression and fix my attention

for whole hours.

Beauty, the only thing that cannot be acquired, inaccessible forever

to those who haven't it at first; an ephemeral and fragile flower that

grows without being sown, a pure gift from heaven!--O beauty, the most

radiant diadem with which chance can crown the human brow--thou art

admirable and precious like everything that is beyond man's reach,

like the azure of the firmament, like the gold of the star, like the

perfume of the seraphic lily!--Man may change his stool for a throne,

may conquer the world; many have done it; but who could fail to kneel

before thee, thou pure personification of God's thoughts?

I ask only beauty, it is true; but I must have beauty so perfect that

I probably shall never find it. I have seen here and there women who

were admirably beautiful in some respects but only mediocre in others,

and I have loved them for what was best in them, ignoring the rest; it

is a difficult task, however, and painful, to suppress thus the half

of one's mistress, and to amputate mentally the ugly or commonplace

portions of her anatomy, limiting one's glances to what points of

beauty she may have.--Beauty is harmony, and a woman who is equally

ugly in all parts is often less disagreeable to look at than one who is

unevenly beautiful. Nothing offends my sight so much as an unfinished

masterpiece, or beauty in which something is lacking; a grease-spot is

less offensive upon coarse sackcloth than upon rich silk.

Rosette is not ill-favored; she might be considered beautiful, but

she is far from realizing the ideal of my dreams; she is a statue,

several portions of which have been completed. The others are not so

sharply cut from the block; there are some parts brought out with much

skill and charm, and others more carelessly and hurriedly. To ordinary

eyes the statue seems entirely completed and perfectly beautiful; but

a more careful observer soon discovers places where the work is not

close enough, and outlines which need to be touched and retouched many

times by the workman's nail before attaining the purity that belongs to

them;--it is for love to polish the marble and complete it, which is

equivalent to saying that I shall not be the one to do it.

However, I do not confine beauty to this or that particular form or

contour.--The manner, the gesture, the gait, the breath, the coloring,

the voice, the perfume, everything that is a part of life enters into

the composition of beauty in my estimation; everything that sings or

shines or perfumes the air is rightfully a part of beauty.--I love rich

brocades, gorgeous stuffs with their ample and stately folds; I love

great flowers and jars of perfume, transparent running water and the

gleaming surface of fine weapons, blooded horses and the great white

dogs that we see in Paul Veronese's pictures. I am a genuine heathen in

that respect, and I do not adore misshapen gods;--although I am not at

heart exactly what is called irreligious, there are few who are in fact

worse Christians than myself. I do not understand the mortification

of the flesh that forms the essence of Christianity, I consider it a

sacrilegious act to lay hands upon God's work, and I do not believe

that the flesh is wicked, since He Himself moulded it with His own

fingers and in His own image. I think but little of the long sober-hued

frocks from which only a head and two hands emerge, or of the pictures

in which everything is drowned in shadow except some one radiant brow.

I want the sun to shine everywhere, to have as much light and as little

shadow as possible, the bright colors to gleam, the lines to undulate,

the nude body to exhibit itself proudly and the flesh not to lie

hidden, since it, as well as the spirit, is a never-ending hymn to the

praise of God.

I can understand perfectly the wild enthusiasm of the Greeks for

beauty; and for my part I can see nothing absurd in the law that

compelled the judges to listen to the arguments of the lawyers in some

dark place, lest their noble bearing, the grace of their gestures and

attitudes should prejudice the judges in their favor and throw undue

weight into the scales.

I would buy nothing of an ugly shopwoman; I give alms more freely to

beggars whose rags and emaciation have a touch of the picturesque.

There is a little fever-ridden Italian, as green as an unripe lemon,

with great black and white eyes that take up half of his face;--you

would say he was an unframed Murillo or Espagnolet exposed for sale on

the sidewalk by a second-hand dealer:--he always gets two sous more

than the others. I would never whip a handsome horse or a handsome dog,

and I would not care for a friend or a servant who is not pleasant

to look at.--It is downright torture to me to look at ugly things or

ugly people.--Bad taste in architecture, a piece of furniture of ugly

shape, prevent my enjoying myself in a house, however comfortable and

attractive it may otherwise be. The best wine seems to me almost sour

in an ungraceful glass, and I confess that I would prefer the most

unsubstantial broth on one of Bernard of Palissy's enamelled plates

to the most toothsome game on an earthen platter.--The exterior of

things has always exerted a powerful influence upon me, and that is

why I avoid the society of old men; they irritate me and affect me

disagreeably because they are wrinkled and deformed, although some

of them have some special beauty; and in the pity that I feel for

them there is much disgust;--of all earthly ruins, the ruin of man is

assuredly the saddest to contemplate.

If I were a painter--and I have always regretted that I am not--I

should people my canvases with none but goddesses, madonnas, nymphs,

cherubim, and loves. To devote one's brush to painting portraits,

unless of beautiful people, seems to me a crime against the majesty of

the art; and, far from seeking to duplicate those mean or ugly faces,

those insignificant or vulgar heads, I should incline toward ordering

the originals to be cut off. The ferocity of Caligula, if diverted in

that direction, would seem to me almost praiseworthy.

The only thing on earth that I have desired with any constancy, is to

be beautiful.--By beautiful, I mean as beautiful as Paris or Apollo.

To have no deformity, to have features almost regular, that is to

say, to have the nose in the centre of the face and neither flat nor

hooked, eyes that are neither red nor bloodshot, a mouth of suitable

dimensions, is not to be beautiful: on that theory I should be, and I

consider myself as far removed from my ideal of virile beauty as if

I were one of the puppets that strike the hour on church-bells; if I

had a mountain on each shoulder, the crooked legs of a terrier and

the muzzle of a monkey, I should resemble it as closely. Often and

often I sit and look at myself in the mirror, for hours at a time,

with incredible fixity and close scrutiny, to see if my face has not

improved in some degree; I wait for the outlines to make a movement and

straighten out or take on a more graceful and purer curve, for my eye

to brighten and swim in a more sparkling fluid, for the hollow that

separates my forehead from my nose to fill up, and for my profile thus

to become as simple and regular as the Greek profile; and I am always

greatly surprised that it does not happen. I am always in hopes that

some spring or autumn I shall cast off my present shape as a serpent

casts his old skin.--To think that I need so little to be handsome and

that I never shall be! What! half a hair's breadth, the hundredth or

the thousandth part of a hair's breadth more or less in one place or

another, a little less flesh on this bone, a little more on that--a

painter or sculptor would have it all arranged in half an hour. What

was it that made the atoms of which I am composed crystallize in this

way or that? Why need that outline bulge out here and sink in there,

and why was it necessary that I should be thus and not otherwise?--Upon

my word if I had chance by the throat, I believe I would strangle

him.--Because it pleased a vile mass of I don't know what to fall from

I don't know where and coagulate stupidly into the awkward creature

that I visibly am, I shall be miserable forever! Isn't it the most

absurd and pitiful thing in the world? How is it that my soul, although

eagerly longing to do so, cannot let the poor carcass that it now holds

erect, fall prostrate, and enter into and animate one of those statues

whose exquisite beauty saddens and ravishes it? There are two or three

people whom it would give me the greatest pleasure to assassinate,

taking care, however, not to bruise or mar them, if I knew the word by

which souls are made to pass from one to another.--It has always seemed

to me that, in order to do what I wish--and I don't know what I do

wish--I needed very great and perfect beauty, and I fancy that if I had

had it, my life, which is so entangled and harassed, would have been

just the same.

We see so many lovely faces in pictures!--why is not one of them

mine?--so many charming faces disappearing under the dust and decay of

time in the recesses of old galleries! Would it not be better for them

to leave their frames and bloom anew on my shoulders? Would Raphaël's

reputation suffer greatly if one of the angels whom he drew in swarms

flying about in the deep blue of his pictures, should turn his mask

over to me for thirty years? There are so many parts of his frescoes,

and among them some of the most beautiful, that have scaled off and

fallen because of their age! No one would notice. What have the silent

beauties to do that hang around those walls, and at whom men scarcely

cast an absent-minded glance? and why has not God or chance the wit to

do what a man does with a few hairs stuck in the end of a stick and

pigments of different colors mixed together on a board?

My first sensation before one of those marvellous faces whose painted

glance seems to look through you and into infinite space beyond, is

profound amazement and admiration not unmixed with terror: tears

fill my eyes, my heart beats fast; then, when I have become a little

accustomed to it and have penetrated farther into the secret of its

beauty, I mentally draw a comparison between it and myself; deep down

in my soul jealousy writhes in knots more intricate than a viper's, and

it is with the utmost difficulty that I refrain from throwing myself

upon the canvas and tearing it in pieces.

To be beautiful, that is to say, to have in yourself such a charm

that every one smiles upon you and welcomes you; that every one is

prepossessed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion, even

before you have spoken; that you have only to pass through a street

or show yourself on a balcony to raise up friends or mistresses for

yourself in the crowd. To have no need to be lovable in order to be

loved, to be exempt from all the expenditure of wit and complaisance

which ugliness makes incumbent upon you, and to be excused from having

the thousand and one moral qualities that one must have to supplement

physical beauty--what a superb, magnificent gift!

And he who should combine supreme strength with supreme beauty, who,

beneath Antinous's skin, should have the muscles of Hercules,--what

more could he desire? I am sure that with those two things and the

mind that I now have I should be emperor of the world within three

years!--Another thing that I have longed for almost as much as beauty

and strength is the gift of transporting myself from one place to

another with the swiftness of thought. Angelic beauty, the strength of

the tiger and the wings of the eagle, and I should begin to conclude

that the world is not so badly organized as I used to think.--A

beautiful mask to charm and fascinate the prey, wings to pounce down

upon it and carry it off, nails to tear it to pieces;--so long as I

have not those I shall be unhappy.

All the passions and all the tastes I have had have been simply

disguised forms of those three desires. I have loved weapons, horses,

women: weapons to replace the muscles I had not; horses to serve as

wings; women, so that I might possess in some one the beauty that I

lacked myself. I sought in preference the most ingeniously deadly

weapons, and those whose wounds were incurable. I have never had

occasion to use any of the krises or yataghans, yet I like to have

them around me; I take them from their scabbards with an indescribable

sense of security and power, I lay about me in every direction with

the greatest energy, and if by chance I see the reflection of my face

in a mirror, I am astonished at its ferocious expression.--As for

my horses, I override them so that they must either founder or say

why.--If I hadn't given up riding Ferragus he would have died long

ago, and it would be a pity, for he's a fine beast. What Arabian steed

ever had limbs so fleet as my desire? In women I have not looked below

the exterior, and as those whom I have seen thus far are a long way

from fulfilling my ideal of beauty, I have fallen back upon pictures

and statues; which, after all, is a pitiful expedient when one's

senses are so inflammable as mine. However, there is something grand

and noble about loving a statue, for it is a perfectly disinterested

love, you have to dread neither satiety nor distaste with your triumph,

and you cannot reasonably hope for a second miracle like the story of

Pygmalion.--The impossible always had a charm for me.

Is it not strange that I, who am still in the fairest months of youth,

who have not even used the simplest things, much less abused anything,

have reached such a degree of satiety that I am tempted only by what

is unusual or difficult of accomplishment?--That satiety follows

enjoyment is a natural law and easily understood. Nothing is more

easily explained than that a man who has eaten heartily of every dish

at a banquet should no longer be hungry and should try to stimulate

his benumbed palate by the thousand stings of condiments or dry wines;

but that a man who has just taken his seat at the table and has

hardly tasted the first course, should already be assailed with that

superb disgust, should be unable to touch without vomiting any except

highly-seasoned dishes, and should like only gamey meats, cheese

with blue streaks running through it, truffles and wine that smells

of the flint, is a phenomenon that can result only from a peculiar

constitution; it is as if a child of six months should deem his nurse's

milk insipid and refuse to suck anything but brandy. I am as exhausted

as if I had performed all the prodigious feats of Sardanapalus and yet

my life has been apparently very chaste and peaceful; it is a mistake

to think that possession is the only road leading to satiety. We arrive

there also through desire, and abstinence is more exhausting than

excess.--Such a desire as mine is more fatiguing than possession. Its

glance envelops and penetrates the object which it longs to have and

which gleams above it, more swiftly and more deeply than if it were

in contact with it. What more could use teach it? what experience can

equal that constant, passionate contemplation?

I have gone through so much, although I have travelled very little,

that only the steepest peaks tempt me now. I am attacked by the disease

that fastens upon nations and powerful men in their old age--the

impossible. Anything that I can do has not the slightest attraction

for me. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, ye great Romans of the Empire, whom

posterity has so ill understood, and whom the pack of ranters pursues

with its yelping, I suffer with your disease and I pity you with all

the pity I have left in my heart! I, too, would like to bridge the sea

and pave its waves; I have dreamed of burning cities to illuminate my

fêtes; I have longed to be a woman to learn new forms of pleasure. Thy

golden palace, O Nero, is only a filthy stable beside the palace I

have built; my wardrobe is better furnished than thine, Heliogabalus,

and much more magnificent.--My circuses are noisier and bloodier than

yours, my perfumes more acrid and more penetrating, my slaves more

numerous and of better figure; I also have nude courtesans harnessed to

my chariot, I have walked over men's bodies with as disdainful heel as

you. Colossi of the ancient world, there beats behind my feeble ribs a

heart as great as yours, and if I had been in your places I would have

done all that you have done and perhaps more. How many Babels have I

piled one upon another to reach the sky, to cudgel the stars and spit

upon all creation! Why am I not God--as I cannot be man?

Oh! I believe that I shall need a hundred thousand centuries of

nothingness to rest from the fatigue of these twenty years of

life.--God in heaven, what stone will You roll down upon me? into what

darkness will You plunge me? from what Lethe will You make me drink?

beneath what mountain will You entomb the Titan? Am I destined to

breathe a volcano through my mouth and to cause earthquakes when I turn

from side to side?

When I think of this, that I was born of a gentle, resigned mother,

simple in her tastes and manners, I am surprised that I did not burst

her womb when she was carrying me. How does it happen that none of her

calm, pure thoughts passed into my body with the blood she transmitted

to me? and why must it be that I am the son of her flesh only, not of

her mind? The dove begat a tiger who would like to have all creation

fall a prey to his claws.

I grew up amid the most chaste and tranquil surroundings. It is

difficult to imagine an existence in a setting so pure as mine. My

years were passed in the shadow of my mother's easy-chair, with my

little sisters and the house-dog. I saw about me only the kindly,

placid faces of old servants who had grown gray in our service and

were in a certain sense hereditary, of grave, sententious relations or

friends, dressed in black, who placed their gloves one after another

in their hat brims; a few aunts of uncertain age, plump and neat and

sedate, with dazzling linen, gray skirts, thread mitts, and hands upon

their waist-bands like people of a religious turn of mind; furniture

severely simple to the point of melancholy, bare oak wainscoting,

leather hangings--a gloomy, sober-hued interior such as some Flemish

masters have painted. The garden was damp and dark; the box that marked

the divisions, the ivy that covered the walls, and a few firs with

bare branches were entrusted with the duty of representing verdure

there and had but ill success; the brick house, with its very high

roof, although roomy and in good condition, had something dull and

drowsy about it. Certainly nothing could be better adapted to prepare

one for a secluded, austere, melancholy life than such a place of

abode. It seemed as if all the children brought up in such a house

must inevitably end by becoming priests or nuns: ah well! in that

atmosphere of purity and repose, amid that gloom and meditation, I

rotted away little by little, without any outward sign, like a medlar

on the straw. In the bosom of that upright, pious, saintly family I

reached a horrible depth of depravity.--It was not contact with the

world, for I had never seen it; nor the fire of passion, for I was

benumbed in the icy sweat that oozed from those stout walls.--The worm

did not crawl from the heart of another fruit to my heart. It came to

life of itself where my pulp was thickest and gnawed and furrowed it

in every direction: but nothing appeared outside and warned me that

I was tainted at the core. I had neither spot nor worm-hole; but I

was all hollow inside and nothing remained but a thin bright-colored

pellicle, which the slightest blow would have broken.--Is it not an

inexplicable thing that a child born of virtuous parents, brought up

with care and judgment, kept at a distance from everything bad, should

become perverted all by himself to such an extent, and reach the point

I have reached? I am sure that, even if you should go back to the sixth

generation, you would not find among my ancestors a single atom like

those of which I am made. I do not belong to my own family; I am not an

offshoot of that noble trunk, but a poisonous toadstool planted among

its mossy roots on some dark, stormy night; and yet no one ever had

more aspirations, more impulses towards the beautiful than I, no one

ever tried more obstinately to spread his wings; but every attempt has

made my fall the greater and the things that should have saved me have

been my ruin.

Solitude has a worse effect upon me than society, although I desire

the first more than the second. Whatever takes me out of myself is

salutary; society bores me, but it tears me by force from the vain

reverie whose winding staircase I ascend and descend, with bent head

and folded arms. And so, since one tête-à-tête came to an end and there

have been people here with whom I am compelled to put some constraint

upon myself, I am less subject to my black moods and am less tormented

by those immeasurable longings that pounce upon my heart like a swarm

of vultures, as soon as I am left for a moment without occupation.

There are some very pretty women and one or two young men who are very

pleasant and jovial; but of all this swarm of provincials, the one who

has the most charm for me is a young cavalier who arrived two or three

days ago. He took my fancy at the very first, and I became fond of him

simply from seeing him alight from his horse. It is impossible to be

more graceful; he is not very tall, but slender and well set-up; there

is something supple and undulating in his gait and his movements,

which is pleasing beyond expression; many women would envy him his

hand and foot. His only defect is that he is too beautiful and has too

delicate features for a man. He is blessed with a pair of the loveliest

and blackest eyes in the world, which have an expression impossible

to define and a glance that it is not easy to sustain; but, as he is

very young and has no sign of a beard, the softness and perfection

of the lower part of his face temper somewhat the vivacity of those

eagle eyes; his glossy, brown hair falls over his neck in great curls

and gives his head a character of its own.--Here then at last is one

of the types of beauty I have dreamed of, made flesh, and actually

before my eyes! What a pity that it's a man, or what a pity that I am

not a woman! This Adonis, who, in addition to his lovely face, has a

very keen intellect of very wide range, still enjoys the privilege of

having at the service of his bright remarks and his jests, a voice of a

silvery and penetrating quality which it is difficult to hear without

emotion.--He is really perfect.--It seems that he shares my taste for

beautiful things, for his clothes are very rich and well chosen, his

horse very spirited and a thoroughbred; and, in order that everything

might be complete and well assorted, he had behind him, riding a pony,

a page of some fourteen or fifteen years, fair-haired, pink-cheeked,

pretty as a seraph, who was half asleep, and so exhausted by his long

ride that his master was obliged to lift him from his saddle and carry

him to his room in his arms.

Rosette welcomed him very warmly and I think she has formed a plan

to use him to arouse my jealousy and thus kindle the tiny flame that

is sleeping under the ashes of my passion. However redoubtable such

a rival may be, I am little inclined to be jealous of him, and I am

so attracted to him that I would gladly abandon my love to secure his

friendship.

[Illustration: Chapter V--_A page of some fourteen or fifteen years,

fair-haired, pink-cheeked, pretty as a seraph, who was half asleep, and

so exhausted by his long ride that his master was obliged to lift him

from his saddle and carry him to his room in his arms._]

VI

At this point, with the permission of the indulgent reader, we propose

to abandon for some little time to his meditations, the worthy

personage who has thus far occupied the stage all by himself and has

spoken in his own behalf, and to adopt the ordinary form of the novel,

reserving the right, however, to resume the dramatic form hereafter,

if occasion should arise, and to draw still farther upon the species

of epistolary confession that the aforesaid young man addressed to his

friend, being fully persuaded that, however penetrating and sagacious

we may be, we certainly cannot know so much about him as he knows about

himself.

The little page was so overdone that he slept in his master's arms,

and his little head, with its hair all in disorder, rolled from side

to side as if he were dead. It was some distance from the stoop to the

apartment set aside for the new arrival, and the servant who escorted

him offered to take his turn at carrying the child; but the young

gentleman, to whom the burden seemed no more than a feather-weight,

thanked him and declined to relinquish it; he laid him gently on the

couch, taking the utmost care to avoid waking him; a mother could have

done no better. When the servant had retired and the door was closed,

he knelt beside him and tried to remove his boots; but his little feet

were so swollen and painful that the operation was a difficult one,

and the pretty sleeper uttered from time to time vague, inarticulate

exclamations, like a person who is on the point of waking; thereupon

the young gentleman would stop and wait until he was sound asleep

again. The boots yielded at last and the most important point was

gained; the stockings made little resistance.--This operation at an

end, the master took the child's feet and placed them side by side on

the velvet covering of the sofa; surely they were the two loveliest

feet in the world, no larger than that, white as new ivory, and

reddened a little by the pressure of the boots in which they had been

imprisoned seventeen hours--feet that were too small for a woman and

looked as if they had never walked; the part of the leg that could be

seen was round, plump, smooth, transparent, delicately veined, and of

the most exquisitely graceful shape--a leg worthy of the foot.

[Illustration: Chapter VI--_The pretty sleeper uttered from time to time

vague, inarticulate exclamations, like a person who is on the point of

waking; thereupon the young gentleman would stop and wait until he was

sound asleep again. The boots yielded at last and the most important

point was gained; the stockings made little resistance._]

The young man, still on his knees, gazed at the two little feet with

amorous, admiring intentness; he stooped, raised the left one and

kissed it, then the right one and kissed that; then, from kiss to kiss,

he ascended the leg to the place where the clothes began.--The page

raised his long lashes slightly and cast an affectionate, sleepy glance

at his master, in which there was no trace of surprise.--"My belt hurts

me," he said, passing his finger under the ribbon; and he fell asleep

again.--The master loosened the belt, placed a cushion beneath the

page's head, and finding that his feet, which had been burning hot,

were a little cold, he wrapped them carefully in his cloak, drew an

arm-chair close to the sofa and sat down. Two hours passed thus, the

young man watching the sleeping child and following the shadow of his

dreams on his brow. The only sounds to be heard in the room were his

regular breathing and the ticking of the clock.

It was certainly a very lovely picture. In the contrast between the two

types of beauty there was an opportunity for effect, of which a skilful

painter might have made good use.--The master was as beautiful as a

woman--the page as lovely as a young girl. The round, rosy face, set

in its frame of hair, resembled a peach among its leaves; it had the

same fresh and velvety look, although the fatigue of the journey had

lessened somewhat its usual brilliancy; the half-open mouth disclosed

two rows of small teeth of a milky whiteness, and beneath the full,

gleaming temples a network of blue veins crossed and recrossed; his

eyelashes, like the golden threads around the heads of virgins in

missals, reached almost to the middle of his cheeks; his long, silky

hair resembled both gold and silver--gold in the shadow, silver in the

light; his neck was at the same time plump and slender, and gave no

sign of the sex indicated by his clothes; two or three buttons of his

doublet were unbuttoned to enable him to breathe more freely and as the

fine shirt of Dutch lawn beneath was open, a glimpse was afforded of

an inch or two of firm rounded flesh of admirable whiteness, and the

beginning of a certain curved line difficult to account for on a young

boy's breast; upon looking closely one might have discovered also that

his hips were a little too fully developed.--The reader will form what

opinion he chooses; these are simple conjectures that we put forward;

we have no better information on the subject than he, but we hope

to learn something more in a short time, and we promise to keep him

fully informed of our discoveries.--Let the reader, if his sight is

keener than ours, bury his eyes under the lace of that shirt and decide

conscientiously whether the contour is too swelling or not; but we warn

him that the curtains are drawn and that there is a sort of half-light

in the room, ill-adapted to that sort of investigation.

The young gentleman was pale, but his was a golden pallor, full of

strength and vitality; his eyes swam in a crystalline blue fluid; his

straight, thin nose imparted a wonderful air of pride and energy to his

profile, and the flesh was of so fine a texture that it allowed the

light to pass through it on the edge; his mouth wore the sweetest smile

at certain moments, but ordinarily it was arched at the corners, curving

in rather than out, as in some of the faces we see in the pictures of

the old Italian masters; a detail that gave a charmingly disdainful

expression to his face, a _smorfia_ alluring beyond words, an air of

childish sulkiness and ill humor, very unusual and very fascinating.

What were the bonds that united the master to the page and the page to

the master? Assuredly there was something more between them than any

conceivable affection between master and servant. Were they friends

or brothers?--In that case, why this masquerading?--It would have been

difficult for any one witnessing the scene we have just described to

believe that those two individuals were just what they seemed to be and

nothing more.

"Dear angel, how he sleeps!" murmured the young man; "I don't believe

he ever travelled so far in his life. Twenty leagues in the saddle,

and he so delicate! I'm afraid that he will be sick with fatigue. But

no, it will amount to nothing; to-morrow there will be no sign of it;

he will have recovered his brilliant color and will be fresher than

a rose after the rain.--How handsome he is like that! If I weren't

afraid of waking him I would eat him up with kisses. What a fascinating

dimple he has in his chin! what fine, white skin!--Sleep soundly, sweet

treasure.--Ah! I am downright jealous of your mother, and I wish I had

brought you into the world.--He can't be sick? No, his breathing is

regular and he doesn't stir.--But I believe some one knocked."

In fact, some one had knocked twice, as gently as possible, on the

panel of the door.

The young man rose, but, fearing that he might be mistaken, waited for

a repetition of the knocking before opening the door.--Two more taps

followed, a little more pronounced, and a soft female voice said, in a

very low tone:--"It is I, Théodore."

Théodore opened the door, but with less eagerness than a young man

naturally exhibits about admitting a woman whose voice is soft and

who knocks mysteriously at his door at nightfall.--The open door gave

passage to--whom do you suppose?--to the mistress of the perplexed

D'Albert, to the Princess Rosette in person, rosier than her name, and

her bosom as deeply moved as ever woman was upon entering a handsome

youth's room in the evening.

"Théodore!" said Rosette.

Théodore lifted his finger and placed it on his lips so as to represent

a statue of silence, and, pointing to the sleeping child, led her into

the adjoining room.

"Théodore," continued Rosette, who seemed to take strange pleasure

in repeating the name, and at the same time to be collecting her

thoughts,--"Théodore," she continued, retaining the hand the young man

had offered her to lead her to her chair, "so you have returned at

last? What have you been doing all the time? where have you been?--Do

you know that it is six months since I saw you! Ah! Théodore, that is

not right; we owe some consideration, some pity to those who love us,

even if we do not love them."

THÉODORE.

What have I been doing.--I have no idea.--I have gone

away and come home, I have waked and slept, I have sung

and wept, I have been hungry and thirsty, I have been too

warm and too cold, I have been bored, I have less money

and am six months older--I have lived, that's the whole of

it.--And how about yourself, what have you been doing?

ROSETTE.

I have loved you.

THÉODORE.

Have you done nothing but that?

ROSETTE.

Absolutely nothing.--I have made a bad use of my time,

haven't I?

THÉODORE.

You might have made a better use of it, my poor Rosette;

for example, you might have loved some one who could

return your love.

ROSETTE.

I am unselfish in love as in everything.--I don't lend

love at interest; it is a pure gift on my part.

THÉODORE.

That is a very rare virtue and one that can exist only

in a noble heart. I have often wished that I could

love you, especially as you desire it; but there is an

insurmountable obstacle between us which I cannot tell

you.--Have you had any other lover since I left you?

ROSETTE.

I have had one whom I still have.

THÉODORE.

What sort of a man is he?

ROSETTE.

A poet.

THÉODORE.

The devil! who is this poet, and what has he written?

ROSETTE.

I haven't a very clear idea--a volume that nobody knows

anything about, and that I tried to read one evening.

THÉODORE.

So you have an unpublished poet for a lover?--That must

be interesting.--Is he out at elbows, does he wear dirty

linen and rumpled stockings?

ROSETTE.

No; he dresses very well, washes his hands and has no

ink-spots on the end of his nose. He's a friend of C----;

I met him at Madame de Thémines',--you know, that tall

woman, who plays the child and puts on such innocent airs.

THÉODORE.

And might one know the name of this eminent personage?

ROSETTE.

Oh! _Mon Dieu_, yes! he is the Chevalier d'Albert.

THÉODORE.

Chevalier d'Albert! I think that was the young man who was

on the balcony when I alighted from my horse.

ROSETTE.

Precisely.

THÉODORE.

And who examined me so closely.

ROSETTE.

Himself.

THÉODORE.

He's a very good-looking fellow.--And he has not made you

forget me?

ROSETTE.

No. Unfortunately you are not one of those whom one

forgets.

THÉODORE.

He loves you dearly no doubt?

ROSETTE.

I am not so sure of that.--There are moments when you

would think he loved me very dearly; but at heart he

doesn't love me, and he is not far from hating me, for

he is angry with me because he can't love me.--He did as

many others before him have done; he developed a very

keen taste for passion, and was greatly surprised and

disappointed when his desire was surfeited.--It is a

mistake to think that two people must mutually adore each

other because they have lain together.

THÉODORE.

And what do you propose to do with this lover who is not a

lover?

ROSETTE.

What we do with bygone quarters of the moon or with last

year's fashions.--He hasn't courage enough to leave me

the first, and although he does not love me in the true

sense of the word, he is bound to me by the habit of

enjoyment, and those are the habits it is hardest to

break. If I don't assist him, he is quite capable of

conscientiously submitting to be bored with me till the

last judgment and beyond; for he has within him the germ

of all noble qualities; and the flowers of his soul ask

naught but an opportunity to bloom in the sunshine of

everlasting love.--Really I am very sorry that I did not

prove to be the sunbeam for him. Of all my lovers whom I

have not loved, I love him the most; and, if I were not

as kind-hearted as I am, I would not give him back his

liberty, but I would still keep him.--But that is what I

will not do; I am finishing with him at this moment.

THÉODORE.

How long will it last?

ROSETTE.

A fortnight, three weeks, but at all events not so long

as if you had not come.--I know that I shall never be

your mistress.--There is, you say, an unknown reason for

that, to which I would bow if it were possible for you to

disclose it to me. Thus I am forbidden to entertain any

hope in that direction, and yet I cannot make up my mind

to be another man's mistress when you are here; it seems

to me like a profanation, and as if I should not have the

right to love you.

THÉODORE.

Keep this lover for love of me.

ROSETTE.

If it will give you pleasure I will do it.--Ah! if you

could have been mine, how different my life might have

been from what it has been!--The world has a very false

idea of me, and I should have lived and died without

any one suspecting what I am--except you, Théodore,

the only one who has understood me and been cruel to

me.--I have never wanted any one but you for a lover,

and I have never had you. O Théodore, if you had loved

me, I should have been virtuous and chaste, I should

have been worthy of you; instead of that, I shall leave

behind me--if any one remembers me--the reputation of a

dissolute woman, a sort of courtesan, who differed from

her of the gutter only in rank and fortune.--I was born

with the highest aspirations; but nothing depraves one

so much as being unloved.--Many people despise me who

have no idea what I have had to suffer before reaching my

present position.--Being sure that I shall never belong to

the man I would prefer above all others, I have allowed

myself to float with the current, I have not taken the

trouble to defend a body that could not be yours.--As for

my heart, no one has had it and no one ever will. It is

yours, although you have broken it;--and I am different

from the majority of women who believe themselves virtuous

provided they have not passed from one bed to another,

in this respect--although I have prostituted my flesh, I

have been faithful in heart and soul to the thought of

you.--At all events I shall have made some few people

happy, I shall have caused white-robed illusions to dance

about some pillows. I have innocently deceived more than

one noble heart. I have been so miserable at being spurned

by you, that I have always been horrified at the thought

of compelling any one else to undergo such torture. That

is the sole worthy motive of adventures which are commonly

attributed to a spirit of libertinage pure and simple!--I,

a libertine! O society!--If you knew, Théodore, how

intensely painful it is to feel that your life is a

failure, that you have let slip your chance of happiness,

to see that everybody misunderstands you and that it is

impossible to make people change their opinion of you,

that your most estimable qualities are tortured into

defects, your purest essences into deadly poisons, that

nothing except the evil in you has transpired; to have

found doors always open to your vices and always closed

to your virtues, and to have been unable to bring to

perfection, amid such a wilderness of hemlock and aconite,

a single lily or a single rose! you know nothing of that,

Théodore.

THÉODORE.

Alas! alas! Rosette, what you have just said includes the

history of the whole world; the best part of us is that

which remains within us and which we cannot display.--It

is the same with poets.--Their noblest poem is the one

they have not written; they carry more poems to the grave

than they leave in their library.

ROSETTE.

I shall carry my poem to the grave with me.

THÉODORE.

And I mine.--Who has not written one at some time in his

life? who is so fortunate, or so unfortunate, as not to

have composed his in his head or in his heart?--Even

headsmen may have composed poems, all moist with tears of

the tenderest sensibility; poets perhaps have composed

some that would be suited to headsmen, so bloody and

monstrous they are.

ROSETTE.

Yes.--White roses can fitly be placed on my grave. I have

had ten lovers, but I am a virgin, and I shall die a

virgin. Many virgins, on whose graves there is a constant

snow of jasmine and orange blossoms, were veritable

Messalinas.

THÉODORE.

I know what a noble creature you are, Rosette.

ROSETTE.

You only in all the world have seen what I am; for you

have seen me under the influence of a love that is

perfectly genuine and very deep-rooted, as it is hopeless;

and no one who has not seen a woman in love can say what

she is; that is the one thing that consoles me in my

bitterness of spirit.

THÉODORE.

And what does this young man think of you, who is your

lover to-day in the eyes of the world?

ROSETTE.

The mind of a lover is a gulf deeper than the Bay of

Portugal, and it is very difficult to say what there is

in the depths of a man; if the lead were attached to a

line a hundred fathoms long and every fathom unreeled, it

would still sink without meeting anything to stop it. Yet

I have touched bottom several times with this man, and

the lead has sometimes brought up mud, sometimes lovely

shells, but most frequently mud and fragments of coral

mixed together.--As to his opinion of me, it has varied

greatly; he began where others leave off, he despised me;

young men with vivid imaginations are likely to do that.

There is always a tremendous fall in the first step they

take, and the passage from their chimera to reality cannot

be made without a shock.--He despised me and I entertained

him; now he esteems me and I bore him. In the early days

of our liaison he saw only the commonplace side of me, and

I think that the certainty of meeting with no resistance

had much to do with his determination. He seemed in great

haste to have an affair, and I thought at first that it

was a case of a full heart seeking only an opportunity to

overflow, one of those vague passions that a man has in

the May of youth and that impel him, in default of women,

to throw his arms around the trunks of trees, and to

kiss the flowers and grass in the fields.--But it wasn't

that;--he simply passed through me to reach something

else. I was a means to him, and not an end.--Beneath the

fresh exterior of his twenty years, beneath the first down

of adolescence, he concealed profound corruption. He was

tainted to the core; he was a fruit containing nothing

but ashes. In that young and lusty body was a heart as

old as Saturn--a heart as incurably wretched as heart

ever was.--I confess, Théodore, that I was frightened and

that I was almost taken with vertigo as I looked into

the black depths of that existence. Your sorrows and

mine are nothing compared to those. If I had loved him

more I should have killed him. Something irresistibly

attracts and summons him--something that is not of this

world or in this world, and he cannot rest day or night;

and like the heliotrope in a cellar, he twists about to

turn toward the sun which he cannot see.--He is one of

those men whose mind was not completely dipped in the

waters of Lethe before being attached to his body, but

retains memories of the eternal beauty of the heaven from

which it comes--memories that work upon it and torment

it--and remembers that it once had wings and now has feet

only.--If I were God, I would deprive of poetry for two

eternities, the angel guilty of such negligence.--Instead

of being under the necessity of building a castle of

bright-colored cards in which to shelter a fair, youthful

fancy for a single spring, it was necessary to erect a

tower higher than the eight temples of Belus piled one

upon another. I had not the strength, I pretended not

to have understood him, and I let him flutter about on

his wings in search of a peak from which he could take

flight into boundless space.--He thinks I have noticed

nothing of all this, because I have fallen in with all his

caprices without seeming to suspect their object. Being

unable to cure him, I determined--and I hope that I shall

receive credit for it some day before God--to give him at

least the happiness of believing that he was passionately

loved.--He aroused in me so much pity and interest that I

was easily able to assume a tone and manner sufficiently

affectionate to deceive him. I have played my part like a

consummate actress; I have been playful and melancholy,

sensible and voluptuous; I have feigned anxiety and

jealousy; I have shed false tears, and I have summoned

flocks of ready-made smiles to my lips. I have arrayed

this counterfeit of love in the richest stuffs; I have

taken him to drive through the avenues of my parks; I have

requested all my birds to sing as he passed, and all my

dahlias and daturas to bend their heads in salutation; I

have sent him across my lake on the silvery back of my

darling swan; I have concealed myself inside the manikin

and bestowed my voice, my wit, my youth and beauty upon it

and given it such a seductive appearance that the reality

fell far short of my deception. When the time comes to

shatter this hollow statue, I shall do it in such a way

that he will think the wrong is all on my side and so will

have no remorse. I shall be the one to make the pinhole

through which the air with which the balloon is filled

will make its escape.--Is not that sanctified prostitution

and honorable deception? I have in a glass jar some

tears that I have collected just as they were about to

fall.--They are my jewel-case and my diamonds, and I shall

present them to the angel who comes for me to lead me

before God.

THÉODORE.

They are the loveliest that can glisten on a woman's

neck. A queen's jewels are less precious than they. For

my own part, I believe that the ointment Magdalen poured

on Christ's feet was made of the tears of those she had

comforted, and I believe, too, that the Milky Way is

strewn with such tears, and not, as has been said, with

drops of Juno's milk.--Who will do for you what you have

done for him?

ROSETTE.

No one, alas! since you cannot.

THÉODORE.

O dear heart! would that I could!--But do not lose hope.

You are lovely and still very young. You have many avenues

of lindens and flowering acacias to pass through before

reaching the damp road lined with box and leafless trees,

which leads from the tomb of porphyry in which your happy

dead years will be buried, to the tomb of rough and

moss-covered stone where they will hasten to bestow the

remains of what once was you, and the wrinkled, tottering

spectres of the days of your old age. You still have much

of the mountain of life to climb and it will be long

before you reach the zone where the snow begins. You

are now only at the level of aromatic plants, of limpid

cascades over which the iris suspends its tri-colored

arches, of stately green oaks and sweet-smelling larches.

Mount a little higher and from that point, with the

broader horizon spread out before you, perhaps you will

see the blue smoke rising above the roof beneath which

he who will love you sleeps. You must not, in the very

beginning, despair of life, for vistas open in our destiny

which we had ceased to expect. Man, in his life, has

often made me think of a pilgrim toiling up the winding

stairway of a Gothic tower. The long granite serpent winds

upward in the darkness, every coil a stair. After a few

circumvolutions the little light that came from the door

dies out. The shadow of the houses, which are not yet

passed, does not allow the loopholes to admit the sun:

the walls are black and moisture oozes from them; you

seem rather to be going down into a dungeon from which

you are never to come forth, than ascending to the turret

which, from below, seemed to you so slender and graceful,

covered with lace-work and embroidery as if it were about

starting for the ball.--You hesitate whether you ought

to go higher, the damp shadows weigh so heavily upon

your forehead.--A few more turns of the staircase and

more frequent openings cast their golden trefoils on the

opposite wall. You begin to see the notched gables of the

houses, the carving of the entablatures, the strange forms

of the chimneys; a few steps more and your eye overlooks

the whole city; it is a forest of steeples, of spires and

towers, bristling upon all sides, toothed and slashed and

hollowed, stamped as with dies, and allowing the light to

shine through their numberless apertures. The domes and

cupolas raise their rounded forms like a giant's breasts

or the skulls of Titans. The islets formed by houses and

palaces appear through shadowy or luminous openings. A

few steps more and you will be on the platform; and then

you will see, beyond the walls of the city, the green

fields, the blue hill-sides and the white sails on the

changing ribbon of the stream. A dazzling light bursts

upon you, and the swallows fly hither and thither, close

at hand, with their joyous twitter. The distant sounds

reach your eyes like a soothing murmur or the hum of a

swarm of bees; all the bells scatter their necklaces of

pearls of sound through the air; the breezes bring you

the odors of the neighboring forest and of the mountain

flowers: it is all light and melody and perfume. If your

feet had been weary or discouragement had seized upon

you, and you had remained on a lower step or had turned

back and gone down again, that spectacle would have been

lost to you.--Sometimes, however, the tower has only a

single opening, in the centre or at the top.--The tower of

your life is built so.--In that case you must have more

obstinate courage, perseverance armed with sharper nails,

to cling, in the darkness, to the protruding stones, and

to reach the opening, resplendent with light, through

which the eye embraces the surrounding country; or it

may be that the loopholes have been filled up, or no one

has thought to cut them, and then you must go on to the

summit; but the higher one goes without looking out, the

more extended the horizon seems, and the greater the

surprise and pleasure.

ROSETTE.

O Théodore, God grant that I may soon reach the point

where the window is! For a long, long time I have been

following the winding staircase in the most profound

darkness; but I am afraid the opening has never been

cut and I must climb to the very top; and suppose this

staircase with the countless stairs should end at a

walled-up doorway, or an arch closed by blocks of stone?

THÉODORE.

Do not say that, Rosette, do not think it.--What architect

would build a stairway that led nowhere? Why imagine that

the placid Architect of the world was stupider and less

far-sighted than an ordinary architect? God makes no

mistakes and forgets nothing. It is incredible that He

should have amused Himself by playing a trick upon you

and shutting you up in a long stone tunnel without exit

or opening. Why should you suppose that He would haggle

with such poor ants as we are over our paltry momentary

happiness and the imperceptible grain of millet that falls

to each of us in this immeasurable universe?--In order to

do that He must be as savage as a tiger or a judge; and if

we were so obnoxious to Him, He would simply have to bid

a comet turn aside a little from its path and annihilate

us all with a hair of its tail. How the devil can you

think that God diverts Himself by spitting us all on a

gold pin as the Emperor Domitian did with flies?--God

isn't a concierge or a church-warden, and although He is

old, He is not yet in His dotage. All such petty malice

is beneath Him and He is not foolish enough to show off

His smartness to us and play tricks on us.--Courage,

Rosette, courage! If you are out of breath, stop a bit and

take breath and then continue your upward course; perhaps

you have only a score more steps to climb to reach the

embrasure from which you will see your happiness.

ROSETTE.

Never! oh never! and if I reach the top of the tower, it

will only be to hurl myself from it.

THÉODORE.

Banish these gloomy thoughts that flutter about you like

bats, and cast the opaque shadow of their wings on your

fair brow, my poor afflicted one. If you want me to love

you, be happy, and do not weep. (_He draws her gently to

his side and kisses her on the eyes_).

ROSETTE.

What a misfortune for me that I ever knew you! and yet, if

I could live my life over, I would still prefer to have

known you.--Your harshness has been sweeter to me than

the passion of other men; and, although you have made me

suffer intensely, all the pleasure I have ever had has

come to me from you; through you I have caught a glimpse

of what I might have been. You have been a flash of

light in my darkness, and you have illuminated many dark

places in my soul; you have opened new perspectives in my

life.--I owe it to you that I know what love is,--unhappy

love, it is true; but there is a melancholy and profound

fascination in loving without being loved, and it is

pleasant to remember those who forget us. It is a joy

simply to be able to love, even when one loves alone, and

many die without having had it, and often they who love

are not the most to be pitied.

THÉODORE.

They suffer and feel their wounds, but at all events

they live. They have some interest in life; they have

a star about which they gravitate, a pole toward which

they ardently extend their hands. They have something to

long for; they can say to themselves: "If I reach that

point, if I obtain that, I shall be happy."--They suffer

frightful agony, but when they die, they can at least say

to themselves: "I am dying for him."--To die thus is to

be born again. The really unhappy, the only ones who are

irreparably so, are they whose wild embrace takes in the

whole universe, they who want everything and nothing, and

who would be embarrassed and speechless if an angel or

fairy should descend to earth and say suddenly to them:

"Express one wish and it shall be gratified."

ROSETTE.

If a fairy should come I know what I would ask her.

THÉODORE.

You know, Rosette, and therein you are happier than I, for

I do not know. There are in my heart many vague longings,

which become confounded with one another and give birth

to others which eventually consume them. My desires are a

cloud of birds that fly aimlessly this way and that; yours

is an eagle that has its eyes on the sun and is prevented

by lack of air from soaring upward on its outspread wings.

Ah! if I could only know what I want; if the idea that

haunts me would stand out clear and well-defined from

the mist that envelops it; if the lucky or unlucky star

would appear in the depths of my sky; if the light I am to

follow would shine out through the darkness, a deceitful

will-o'-the-wisp or a friendly beacon; if my column of

fire would go on before me, even though it were through

a desert without manna and without springs of water; if

I knew where I am going, even though my path ends at a

precipice!--I would prefer the wild flights of accursed

huntsmen through bogs and thickets, to this absurd and

monotonous stamping and pawing. To live thus is to follow

a trade like that of the horses with bandages over their

eyes, who turn the wheel of a well, and travel thousands

of leagues without seeing anything or changing their

position.--I have been turning a long while, and the

bucket ought to be at the top.

ROSETTE.

You resemble D'Albert in many ways, and, when you speak,

it seems to me sometimes as if he were speaking.--I

have no doubt that, when you know him better, you will

become much attached to him; you cannot fail to suit each

other.--He is tormented as you are, by these same aimless

impulses; he is head over ears in love but does not know

with what; he would like to ascend to Heaven, for the

earth seems to him like a stool hardly fit for one of his

feet to rest upon, and he has more pride than Lucifer

before his fall.

THÉODORE.

I was afraid at first that he was one of those poets, of

whom there are so many, who have driven poetry off the

face of the earth, one of those stringers of false pearls

who see nothing in the world but the last syllables of

words, and who, when they have made _ombre_ rhyme with

_sombre, flame_ with _âme_, and _Dieu_ with _lieu_, fold

their arms and legs conscientiously and permit the spheres

to accomplish their revolutions.

ROSETTE.

He is not one of that kind. His verses are beneath him and

do not contain his thought. You would form a very mistaken

idea of his nature from what he has written; his real

poem is himself, and I don't know if he will ever produce

another. He has, in the depths of his mind, a seraglio of

choice ideas which he surrounds with a triple wall, and

of which he is more jealous than ever sultan was of his

odalisques.--He puts in his poetry only those ideas that

he holds in light esteem, or with which he has become

disgusted; he makes his verse the door through which he

expels them and the world receives only those for which he

has no further use.

THÉODORE.

I can understand his jealousy and his modesty.--Just as

many men do not care for the love they have had until they

no longer have it, or for their mistresses until they are

dead.

ROSETTE.

It is so hard for one to have anything to one's self in

this world! every candle attracts so many moths, every

treasure attracts so many thieves!--I love the silent men

who carry their ideas to the grave and do not choose to

abandon them to the filthy kisses and shameless handling

of the vulgar crowd. Those lovers please me best who do

not carve their mistress's name on the bark of any tree,

who confide it to no echo, and who, while they sleep, are

haunted by the fear that they may utter it in a dream. I

am one of that number; I have not divulged my thoughts

and no one shall know my love.--But it is almost eleven

o'clock, my dear Théodore, and I am preventing your taking

rest that you must sadly need. When I am obliged to leave

you I always have a feeling of oppression at my heart, and

it seems to me as if it were the last time I should ever

see you. I postpone it as long as I can; but I always have

to go at last. Good-night, for I am afraid D'Albert may

be looking for me; good-night, my dear friend.

Théodore put his arm around her waist and thus escorted her to the

door; there he stopped and followed her a long time with his glance;

the corridor was lighted at intervals by small windows with narrow

panes, through which the moon shone, making alternate light and dark

patches of fantastic shape. At each window Rosette's pure, white form

gleamed like a silvery phantom; then it vanished to appear, even more

brilliant, a little farther away; at last it disappeared altogether.

Théodore stood for some moments motionless, with folded arms, as

if buried in profound meditation; then he passed his hand over his

forehead and threw back his hair with a jerk of his head, returned to

his room, and went to bed after kissing the brow of the page, who was

still asleep.

VII

As soon as the daylight entered Rosette's room, D'Albert made his

appearance, with an eagerness that was not usual with him.

"Here you are," said Rosette, "I would say very early, if you could

ever arrive early.--To reward you for your gallantry I present you my

hand to kiss."

And she drew from beneath the sheet of Flemish linen trimmed with lace

the prettiest little hand that was ever seen at the end of a plump,

well-shaped arm.

D'Albert kissed it with compunction:--"And the other, little sister,

are we not to kiss that too?"

_"Mon Dieu_, yes! nothing is easier. I am in my Sunday humor to-day;

here."--And she extended her other hand with which she tapped him

lightly on the lips.--"Am I not the most obliging woman on earth?"

"You are grace itself, and temples of white marble should be erected to

you in thickets of myrtle.--Really, I am very much afraid that the same

thing will happen to you that happened to Psyche, and that Venus will

be jealous of you," said D'Albert, taking the fair one's hands in one

of his and raising them together to his lips.

"How you say all that without taking breath! any one would think it was

something you had learned by heart," said Rosette, with a delicious

little pout.

"No; you deserve to have the phrase turned expressly for you, and

you were made to pluck the virgin bloom from compliments," rejoined

D'Albert.

"Oho! whatever is the matter with you to-day? are you ill that you are

so gallant? I fear you are dying. Do you know that when one's character

suddenly changes, and without any apparent reason, it is an evil omen?

Now it is a well-known fact, to all the women who have taken the pains

to love you, that you are usually as morose as a man can be, and it is

no less certain that at this moment you are as charming as a man can

be, and inexplicably amiable.--Really, I think you are pale, my poor

D'Albert: give me your arm and let me feel your pulse;" and she pushed

back his sleeve and counted the pulsations with mock gravity.--"No,

you are perfectly well and you haven't the slightest symptom of fever.

In that case I must be furiously pretty this morning! Go and find my

mirror so that I can see how far your gallantry is justified."

D'Albert brought a small mirror from the toilet-table and placed it on

the bed.

"In truth," said Rosette, "you are not altogether wrong. Why don't you

write a sonnet on my eyes, _Monsieur le Poète._ You have no excuse

for not doing it. Just see how unfortunate I am! to have eyes like

these and a poet like this, and to be left without sonnets just as if

I were one-eyed and had a water-carrier for a lover! You don't love

me, monsieur; you have never written so much as an acrostic sonnet for

me.--And my mouth, what do you think of that? I have kissed you with

that mouth and perhaps I will kiss you with it again, my dark-browed

beauty; and upon my word, it is a favor that you hardly deserve--I am

not speaking of to-day, for to-day you deserve anything;--but, to talk

about something beside myself, you are incomparably fresh and comely

this morning, you look like a brother of Aurora, and, although it is

hardly daylight, you are already arrayed in your best clothes as if for

a ball. Can it be that you have designs upon me? and do you meditate

dealing an unexpected and final blow to my virtue? do you propose to

make a conquest of me? But I forget that you have already done that,

and that it's ancient history."

"Don't joke like that, Rosette; you know that I love you."

"Why, that depends. I don't know it; and you?"

"I know it perfectly well, and from such symptoms that, if you should

have the kindness to forbid me your door, I should try to prove it

to you, and I venture to flatter myself that I should do it most

triumphantly."

"Not that way: however anxious I may be to be convinced, my door will

remain open; I am too pretty to be shut up behind closed doors; the sun

shines for one and all, and my beauty shall be like the sun to-day, if

you approve."

"Upon my honor I strongly disapprove; but act as if I approved as

strongly. I am your very humble slave, and I lay my wishes at your

feet."

"That is as jolly as can be; continue to entertain such sentiments and

leave your key in your door to-night."

"Monsieur le Chevalier Théodore de Sérannes,"--said a huge negro,

putting his round, good-humored face between the wings of the

folding-door, "desires to pay his respects to you and begs that you

will deign to receive him."

"Admit Monsieur le Chevalier," said Rosette, pulling the sheet up to

her chin.

Théodore went first to Rosette's bed and made a very low and graceful

courtesy, which she returned with a friendly nod; then he turned to

D'Albert, whom he also saluted in an off-hand, courteous manner.

"What were you talking about?" said Théodore. "It may be that I

interrupted an interesting conversation: go on, I beg, and tell me in a

few words what it is all about."

"Oh, no!" Rosette replied with a mischievous smile; "we were talking

business."

[Illustration: Chapter VII--_"Admit Monsieur le Chevalier," said Rosette,

pulling the sheet up to her chin._

_Théodore went first to Rosette's bed and made a very low and graceful

courtesy, which she returned with a friendly nod; then he turned to

D'Albert, whom he also saluted in an off-hand, courteous manner._]

Théodore seated himself at the foot of Rosette's bed, for D'Albert

had taken his place at her pillow, by right of having arrived first.

The conversation wandered for some time from subject to subject, very

bright and gay and animated, and that is why we do not report it; we

should be afraid that it would lose too much in being transcribed. The

manner, the tone, the vivacity of speech and gesture, the countless

ways of uttering a word, the effervescent wit, like the foam of

champagne which sparkles and evaporates at once, are details that

it is impossible to note down and reproduce. We leave that hiatus

for the reader to fill, and he will certainly acquit himself of the

task better than we could do. Let him imagine here five or six pages

filled with whatever is most capricious, most refined, most curiously

original, most ingenious and most sparkling in the way of conversation.

We are well aware that we are resorting to an artifice which reminds

one a little of that resorted to by Timanthes, who, in despair of ever

being able to reproduce Agamemnon's face, threw some drapery over his

head; but we prefer to be timid rather than imprudent.

It would not perhaps be amiss to inquire into the motives that had led

D'Albert to rise so early, and what spur had impelled him to call upon

Rosette at as unseasonable an hour as if he had still been in love.--It

would appear as if it were a slight attack of secret, unconfessed

jealousy. To be sure he cared but little for Rosette, indeed he would

have been very glad to be rid of her,--but he preferred to leave her

voluntarily and not to be left by her, a thing which always inflicts a

deep wound on a man's pride, although his first flame may be utterly

extinct.--Théodore was such a well-favored cavalier that it was

difficult to view his appearance on the scene while a liaison was in

progress without apprehending what had in fact happened many times,

that is to say, that all eyes would turn in his direction and the

hearts follow the eyes; and, strangely enough, although he had taken

away many women, no lover had harbored the enduring resentment that

men usually feel for those who have supplanted them. There was in his

whole behavior such winning charm, such unaffected grace, a something

so gentle and so dignified, that even men were touched by it. D'Albert,

who had come to Rosette's room, intending to speak very sharply to

Théodore, if he should meet him there, was greatly surprised to find

that he did not feel the slightest sensation of anger in his presence,

and that he was inclined to receive with warmth the advances he made.

In half an hour's time, you would have said that they had been friends

from boyhood, and yet D'Albert felt in his inmost heart, that if

Rosette was destined ever to love, she would love that man, and he had

every reason to be jealous, for the future at least, for he did not

suspect anything at present. What would he have thought, had he seen

the fair creature in a white _peignoir_ gliding like a night-moth on a

moonbeam into the handsome youth's room, and coming out three or four

hours later with mysterious precautions? He might well, in very truth,

have deemed himself more unfortunate than he really was, for it is a

thing rarely seen that a pretty, lovelorn young woman comes forth from

the bedroom of a no less attractive young man, exactly the same as when

she went in.

Rosette listened to Théodore with much attention and as one listens to

a person one loves; but what he said was so entertaining and upon so

many different subjects, that her attention was perfectly natural and

easily explained. And so D'Albert took no offence at it. Théodore's

manner toward Rosette was courteous and friendly, but nothing more.

"What shall we do to-day, Théodore?" said Rosette, "suppose we go for a

row on the river? what do you think? or shall we hunt?"

"To hunt is less depressing than to glide over the water side by side

with some tired swan and thrust the water-lily leaves aside to right

and left,--don't you think so, D'Albert?"

"I think perhaps I should enjoy gliding down the river in the skiff

quite as much as racing madly in the trail of some poor beast; but

wherever you go, I will go; what we have to do now is to allow Madame

Rosette to rise and don a suitable costume."

Rosette made a sign of assent and rang for her maid to come and dress

her. The two young men left the room arm in arm, and it was easy to

guess, from seeing them on such good terms, that one was the titular

lover and the other the loved lover of the same person.

Soon everybody was ready. D'Albert and Théodore were already mounted

in the first court-yard, when Rosette, in a riding-habit, appeared at

the top of the steps. She had assumed with the costume, a sprightly,

resolute air that was immensely becoming to her; she leaped into the

saddle with her ordinary agility and gave her horse a smart blow with

her crop, so that he darted away like an arrow. D'Albert spurred after

her and soon overtook her. Théodore allowed them some little start,

being sure of catching them up whenever he chose. He seemed to be

waiting for something and turned back frequently toward the château.

"Théodore! Théodore! come on! are you riding a wooden horse?" cried

Rosette.

Théodore urged his horse to a gallop and diminished the distance

between him and Rosette, but did not join her.

He continued to look back at the château, which they were beginning

to lose sight of; a little cloud of dust, in the centre of which

something that they could not as yet distinguish was moving very

rapidly, appeared at the end of the road. In a few moments the cloud

reached Théodore's side, and, opening like the classic clouds of the

Iliad, disclosed the fresh and rosy face of the mysterious page.

"Come, Théodore, come!" cried Rosette again; "give your tortoise the

spur and join us."

Théodore gave his horse the rein, and in a second, the animal, who was

pawing and rearing impatiently, had passed D'Albert and Rosette by

several lengths.

"Who loves me follows me," said Théodore, leaping a fence four feet

high. "Well, well, _Monsieur le Poète_," he said, when he was on the

other side, "you don't jump? but they say your steed has wings."

"Faith, I prefer to ride around; I have only one head to break after

all; if I had several I would try," D'Albert replied with a smile.

"No one loves me then, as no one follows me," said Théodore, bringing

the arched corners of his mouth even lower than usual. The little page

looked up at him reproachfully with his great blue eyes, and drove his

heels into his horse's sides.

The horse gave a tremendous leap.

"Yes! some one," said the child from the other side of the fence.

Rosette cast a strange glance at the boy and blushed up to her eyes;

then, with a furious blow of the crop on the mare's neck, she leaped

the barrier of green apple wood that barred the path.

"Do you think that I don't love you, Théodore?"

The child darted an oblique, stealthy glance at her and rode up to

Théodore.

D'Albert was in the middle of the path--and saw nothing of all this;

for, from time immemorial, it has been the privilege of fathers,

husbands and lovers to see nothing.

"Isnabel," said Théodore, "you are mad, and so are you, Rosette! You

didn't take enough start for your jump, Isnabel, and you, Rosette,

just missed catching your dress on the posts.--You might have killed

yourself."

"What difference would it make?" rejoined Rosette, in such a

melancholy, despairing tone that Isnabel forgave her for having leaped

the barrier.

They rode on for some distance and reached the crossroads where the

huntsmen and the pack were to meet them. Six arched paths, cut through

the dense forest, met at a little stone tower with six sides, on

each of which was carved the name of the road that ended there. The

trees rose so high that they seemed to be trying to spin the woolly,

fleecy clouds that a brisk breeze carried hither and thither over their

towering tops; tall, thick grass and impenetrable thickets provided

hiding-places and strongholds for the game, and the hunt promised to

be a successful one. It was a true forest of an earlier age, with

oaks more than a hundred years old, such trees as we never see, now

that we no longer plant trees and have not the patience to wait for

those that are planted to grow;--a hereditary forest, planted by

great-grandfathers for fathers, by fathers for grandsons, with paths

of enormous width, the obelisk surmounted by a ball, the rock-work

fountain, the inevitable pool, and the keepers with powdered wigs,

yellow leather breeches and sky-blue coats;--one of those dense,

dark forests in which the white, glossy coats of Wouvermans' great

horses stand out in bold relief, and the flaring mouths of the hunting

horns _à la Dampierre_ that Parrocel loves to paint on the backs of

his huntsmen.--A multitude of dogs' tails, shaped like crescents or

reaping-hooks, waved frantically about in a dusty cloud. The signal

was given, the dogs, straining at their leashes, were uncoupled, and

the hunt began.--We shall not undertake to describe with precision

the detours and doublings of the stag through the forest;--we do not

even feel sure whether it was a stag seven years old, and, despite

our investigations on that point, we have not been able to satisfy

ourselves--which is really distressing.--Nevertheless we can but think

that in such a forest, so venerable, so dark, so seignorial, there

could be none but seven-year stags, and we do not see why the one after

which the four principal characters in this romance were galloping on

horses of different colors, and _non passibus æquis_, should not have

been such a one.

The stag ran, like the true stag that he was, and some fifty dogs or

more that followed at his heels were no slight spur to his natural

swiftness of foot. The pace was so fleet that only an occasional bark

could be heard.

Théodore, being the best mounted and the best rider, kept on the heels

of the pack with incredible zeal. D'Albert was close behind him.

Rosette and the little page Isnabel followed, falling farther and

farther behind.

The interval was soon so great that they could not hope to join their

companions.

"Suppose we stop for a moment and let our horses take breath," said

Rosette. "The hunt is going toward the pond and I know a crossroad by

which we can reach there as soon as they do."

Isnabel drew in his little mountain pony, who put down his head, shook

his forelock down over his eyes and began to paw the gravel with his

hoofs.

The little creature presented a most striking contrast to Rosette's

mare; he was as black as night, she as white as white satin; his mane

and tail were bristly and unkempt; her mane was tied with blue ribbons

and her tail combed and curled. She looked like a unicorn, he like a

spaniel.

There was the same marked difference between the riders as between

their steeds.--Rosette's hair was as black as Isnabel's was fair; her

eyebrows were very clearly marked and very prominent; those of the

page were hardly darker than his skin and resembled the down on a

peach.--The coloring of the one was as brilliant and enduring as the

light at noonday; the other had the transparent blushing hue of early

dawn.

"Suppose we try now to overtake the hunt?" said Isnabel; "the horses

have had time to recover their breath."

"Come on!" replied the pretty Amazon, and they galloped away through a

narrow transverse path leading to the pool; the two horses ran neck and

neck and filled the whole path.

On Isnabel's side, a gnarled and twisted tree stretched out a huge

branch like an arm, and seemed to shake its fist at the riders.--The

child did not see it.

"Look out!" cried Rosette, "lean forward on your saddle! you will be

unhorsed."

The warning came too late; the branch struck Isnabel in the middle of

the body. The violence of the blow caused him to lose his stirrups,

and, as his horse galloped on and the branch was too stout to bend, he

was brushed from his saddle and thrown rudely back.

The child fainted on the spot.--Rosette, terribly frightened, leaped

from her horse and knelt beside the page, who gave no sign of life.

His cap had fallen off and his lovely, rippling fair hair lay spread

about over the gravel in every direction.--His little open palms looked

as if they were made of wax, they were so devoid of color. Rosette

knelt beside him and tried to restore him to consciousness.--She had

no salts or flask with her and her embarrassment was great. At last

she discovered a deep rut in which the rain-water had collected and

clarified; she dipped her fingers in it, to the great alarm of a little

toad that was the naiad of that stream, and shook a few drops on the

young page's blue-veined temples.--He did not seem to feel them, and

the pearls of water rolled down his white cheeks as a sylph's tears

roll down the leaf of a lily. Rosette, thinking that his clothes

might distress him, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his doublet and

opened his shirt to give his lungs freer play.--Thereupon Rosette saw

something that would have been the most agreeable of surprises to a

man, but that seemed very far from affording her any pleasure--for her

brows contracted and her upper lip trembled slightly;--she saw a snowy

white breast, which was as yet undeveloped, but which made the fairest

promises and already fulfilled many of them; a smooth and rounded

breast, as white as ivory, and in the language of the Ronsardists,

delicious to look at, more delicious to kiss.

[Illustration: Chapter VII--_Rosette, thinking that his clothes might

distress him, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his doublet and opened his

shirt to give his lungs freer play.--Thereupon Rosette saw something

that would have been the most agreeable of surprises to a man, but that

seemed very far from affording her any pleasure_----]

"A woman!" she exclaimed, "a woman! ah! Théodore!"

Isnabel--for we will continue to call him by that name, although it

was not his--began to show some signs of life and languidly raised

his long eyelashes; he was not wounded in any way, he was simply

stunned.--He soon sat up and, with Rosette's assistance, was able to

stand and remount his horse, which had stopped as soon as he felt that

his rider was gone.

They rode slowly to the pool, where they found the remainder of

the hunting party. Rosette in a few words told Théodore what had

happened.--He changed color several times during her recital, and

throughout the rest of the ride he kept his horse close beside

Isnabel's.

They returned to the château betimes; the day that had begun so

joyously, had a decidedly melancholy ending.

Rosette was in a meditative mood and D'Albert seemed as deeply

engrossed in his reflections. The reader will soon learn what had given

rise to them.

VIII

No, my dear Silvio, I have not forgotten you; I am not one of those

who go through life without a backward glance; my past follows me and

encroaches upon my present, and almost upon my future; your friendship

is one of the sunlit spots that stand out most clearly on the blue

horizon of my later years; often, from the peak on which I stand, I

turn to gaze upon it with a feeling of ineffable melancholy.

Oh! what lovely weather it was!--how angelically pure we were!--Our

feet hardly touched the ground, we had wings on our shoulders, as it

were, our desires carried us away and the fair halo of youth around our

foreheads trembled in the breeze of spring.

Do you remember the little island covered with poplars at the spot

where the river forms a little arm?--To reach it we had to cross

a long, very narrow plank that bent in the middle, with a strange

sensation; an excellent bridge for goats and little used, in fact,

except by them: it was a delightful spot.--Short, thick grass where

the forget-me-not opened its pretty little blue twinkling eye, a path,

as yellow as nankeen, that served as a belt for the green robe of the

islet and encircled its waist, the constantly moving shadow of aspens

and poplars, were not the least charms of that paradise;--there were

great pieces of linen that the women stretched out to whiten in the

dew;--one would have said they were square patches of snow.--And the

little dark, sun-burned girl whose great wild eyes sparkled so brightly

under her long locks, and who ran after the goats, threatening them

with her osier switch when they were on the point of walking on the

linen she was watching--do you remember her?--And the sulphur-colored

butterflies, with their irregular, hesitating flight, and the

kingfisher we tried so many times to catch, that had its nest in the

clump of alders; and the banks sloping to the river, with the steps

roughly hewn in the rock, with their posts and stakes, all green at

the bottom and almost always closed by a hedge of plants and branches?

How smooth and clear the water was! how the golden gravel glistened

at the bottom! and how pleasant it was to sit on the bank and dabble

our toes in the stream! The water-lily, with its golden flowers

unfolding gracefully, seemed like green hairs floating on the gleaming

back of some nymph in the bath.--The sky gazed at its reflection in

that mirror with azure smiles and transparent rifts of pearl-gray

of most bewitching beauty, and at every hour in the day there were

turquoise blues, golden yellows, fleecy whites and flickering shades

in inexhaustible variety.--How I loved those flocks of ducks with the

emerald necks that sailed incessantly from bank to bank and caused an

occasional wrinkle on that glassy surface!

And how well adapted we were to be the figures in that landscape!--how

attached we became to those sweet, restful scenes, and how easily we

harmonized ourselves with them! Springtime without, youth within, the

sun on the turf, a smile on the lips, snow-white blossoms on all the

bushes, fair illusions blooming in our minds, a modest flush upon our

cheeks and on the eglantine, poetry singing in our hearts, invisible

birds humming among the trees, bright light, cooing doves, perfumes, a

thousand confused murmurs, the beating of the heart, the water stirring

a pebble, a wisp of grass or a thought springing up, a drop of water

rolling down the side of a flower, a tear flowing from beneath an

eyelid, a sigh of love, the rustling of a leaf;--what evenings we have

passed there, walking slowly, so near the edge that we often had one

foot in the water and the other on land!

Alas!--that lasted a very short time, in my case at least; for you,

while acquiring the knowledge of a man, were able to retain the

innocence of a child.--The seed of corruption that was within me

developed very rapidly, and the gangrene pitilessly devoured all that

was pure and saintlike about me. The only good that remained was my

friendship for you.

I am accustomed to conceal nothing from you--neither acts nor thoughts.

I have laid bare before you the most secret fibres of my heart; however

strange, absurd, eccentric the movements of my mind, I must needs

describe them to you; but, in truth, my sensations for some time past

have been so strange that I hardly dare confess them to myself. I

told you at some time that I was afraid that by dint of seeking the

beautiful and straining every nerve to attain it, I should fall into

the impossible or the horrible.--I have almost reached that point;

when, then, shall I get clear of all these currents that cross and

recross one another and drag me to right and left; when will the deck

of my vessel cease to tremble under my feet and to be swept by the

waves of every storm? where shall I find a haven in which I can cast

anchor, and an immovable rock out of reach of the waves, whereon I can

dry myself and wring the spray from my hair?

You know how ardently I have sought physical beauty, what importance I

attach to physical form, and what affection I have conceived for the

visible world; it must be because I am too corrupt and too _blasé_

to believe in moral beauty, and to pursue it with any constancy.--I

have completely lost the power to distinguish between good and evil,

and, by force of depravity, I have almost reverted to the ignorance

of the savage and the child. In fact, nothing seems praiseworthy or

blameworthy to me, and the most extraordinary actions surprise me but

little. My conscience is a deaf mute. Adultery seems to me the most

innocent thing in the world; I find it quite natural that a girl should

prostitute her person; it seems to me that I would betray my friends

without the slightest remorse, and I should not have the slightest

scruple in kicking over a precipice people who annoyed me, if I were

walking on the brink with them.--I could witness the most atrocious

scenes with indifference, and there is something that is not unpleasant

to me in the sufferings and woes of humanity.--I have the same

sensation of acrimonious, bitter joy when some great disaster falls on

the world, that one feels when one takes revenge for an old insult.

O world, what hast thou done to me that I should hate thee so? Who has

so filled me with gall against thee? what did I expect from thee that

I should bear thee such rancor for having deceived me? what high hope

didst thou disappoint? what eaglet's wings didst thou clip?--What doors

shouldst thou have opened that have remained closed, and which of us

two has failed the other?

Nothing touches me, nothing moves me;--I no longer feel, when I hear

the story of a heroic action, the sublime shudder that used to run over

me from head to foot.--Indeed, it all seems to me a little foolish.--No

accent is deep enough to tighten the relaxed fibres of my heart and

make them vibrate:--I look upon the tears of my fellow-mortals with the

same eye that I look upon the rain, unless they are of a particularly

beautiful water and the light is reflected prettily in them and they

are flowing down a lovely cheek.--Dumb animals are almost the only

creatures for which I have a slight remnant of compassion. I would

allow a peasant or a servant to be soundly whipped, but I could not

stand by and see the same treatment inflicted on a horse or dog in my

presence; and yet I am not evil-minded, I have never injured anybody

on earth and I probably never shall; but that is due rather to my

nonchalance and my sovereign contempt for all those people whom I do

not like, which does not permit me to interest myself even to the

extent of injuring them.--I abhor the whole world in bulk, and there

are only one or two in the whole lot whom I deem worthy to be hated

specially.--To hate a person is to be as much disturbed about him as

if you loved him;--it is to set him apart, to distinguish him from

the common herd; it is to be in a state of violent excitement because

of him; it is to think of him by day and dream of him by night; it

is to bite at your pillow and gnash your teeth as you think that he

exists; what more do you do for any one you love? Would you take the

same amount of trouble to please a mistress that you take to ruin an

enemy?--I doubt it--in order to hate one person intensely, one must

be in love with some other person. Every great hatred serves as a

counterpoise to a great love: and whom could I hate, when I love nobody?

My hatred is, like my love, a confused, general sentiment that seeks to

apply itself to some object and cannot; I have within me a treasure of

hatred and love which I don't know what to do with, and which weighs

horribly upon me. If I can find no place to bestow one or the other

or both of them, I shall burst and break apart, like a bag filled too

full of money, which rips at the seams and spills its contents.--Oh!

if I could detest some one, if one of the stupid men with whom I live

would insult me in such a way as to make my old viper's blood boil in

my frozen veins, and force me out of this dull drowsiness in which I am

stagnating; if thou, old witch with the palsied head, wouldst bite me

in the cheek with thy rat's teeth and infect me with thy venom and thy

madness; if some one's death could be my life;--if the last heart-beat

of an enemy writhing under my foot could send a delicious thrill

through my hair, and the odor of his blood smell sweeter to my thirsty

nostrils than the aroma of flowers, oh! how gladly would I renounce

love, and how happy I would deem myself!

Deadly embraces, tiger-bites, the hug of a boa-constrictor, an

elephant's foot placed upon a breast that is crushed and flattened

beneath it, the poisoned tail of the scorpion, the milky juice of the

Euphorbia, the curved kris of the Javanese, blades that gleam at night

and extinguish their gleam in blood--I call upon you now, it is you who

shall replace for me the leafless roses, the moist kisses and the warm

embrace of love!

I love nothing, as I have said, but alas! I am afraid of loving

something.--It would be a hundred thousand times better to hate than

to have such a love!--I have found the type of beauty that I have so

long dreamed of.--I have found the body of my phantom; I have seen it,

it has spoken to me, I have touched its hand, it exists; it is not a

chimera. I knew that I could not be mistaken and that my presentiments

never lied.--Yes, Silvio, lam living beside the dream of my life;--my

chamber is here, its chamber is there; I can see from here the curtain

trembling at its window, and the light of its lamp. Its shadow has just

passed across the curtain: in an hour we shall sup together.

Those lovely Turkish eyelashes, that clear, profound gaze, that warm

hue of pale amber, that long glossy black hair, that nose, of proud and

delicate shape, those joints and extremities, supple and slender after

the manner of Palmegiani, the graceful curves and the pure oval contour

that give such an air of aristocratic refinement to a face--all that

I longed for and would have been overjoyed to find distributed among

five or six persons, I have found united in a single person!

The thing that I adore most fervently among all earthly things is a

lovely hand.--If you could see the hand of my dream! such perfection!

such dazzling whiteness! such soft skin! such penetrating moisture! the

ends of the fingers so admirably tapered! the half-moon of the nails

so clearly marked! such polish and such brilliant color! you would say

they were the inner petals of a rose;--Anne of Austria's hands, so

vaunted and famous, were no more than the hands of a turkey-keeper or

scullery-maid compared with these.--And then what grace, what art in

the slightest movements of the hand! how gracefully the little finger

bends and stays a little apart from its tall brothers!--The thought of

that hand drives me mad and makes my lips quiver and burn.--I close my

eyes to avoid looking at it; but with its delicate fingers it seizes my

eyelashes and raises the lids, causing countless visions of ivory and

snow to pass before me.

Ah! doubtless it is Satan's claw gloved in that satin skin; it is some

mocking demon making sport of me; there is witchcraft in it.--It is too

monstrously impossible.

That hand--I propose to go to Italy, to see the pictures of the great

masters, to study, compare, draw, become a painter in short, in order

to be able to reproduce it as it is, as I see it, as I feel it; it will

perhaps serve the purpose of ridding me of this sort of obsession.

I longed for beauty; I did not know what I asked for.--It is like

trying to look at the sun without eyelids, it is like trying to

handle flames.--I suffer horribly.--To be unable to assimilate this

perfection, to be unable to pass into it and to cause it to pass into

me, to have no means of reproducing it and of making it feel!--When

I see anything beautiful, I want to touch it with my whole self,

everywhere and at the same time. I want to sing of it and paint it, to

carve it and write of it, to be loved by it as I love it; I want what

cannot be and never can be.

Your letter made me ill--very ill--forgive me for saying it.--All the

pure, tranquil happiness that you enjoy, the walks in the reddening

woods,--the long conversations, so affectionate and tender, that end

with a chaste kiss on the forehead; the serene, isolated life; the

days that pass so quickly that night seems to come before its time,

make the constant internal agitation in which I live seem even more

tempestuous.--So you are to be married in two months; all the obstacles

are removed, you are sure now of belonging to each other forever.

Your present felicity is augmented by all the happiness in store for

you. You are happy and you are certain of being happier soon.--What a

destiny is yours!--Your beloved is beautiful, but what you have loved

in her is not the mortal, palpable beauty, material beauty, but the

invisible, immortal beauty, the beauty that does not grow old, the

beauty of the soul.--She is full of charm and innocence; she loves

you as such souls know how to love.--You never looked to see if the

golden shade of her hair resembled the golden hair painted by Rubens or

Giorgione; but it pleased you because it was her hair. I will wager,

happy lover that you are, that you have no idea whether your mistress

is of the Grecian or Asiatic type, English or Italian.--O Silvio! how

rare are the hearts that are content with pure and simple love and

desire neither a hermitage in the forest nor a garden on an island in

Lago Maggiore.

If I had the courage to tear myself away from here, I would go and pass

a month with you; perhaps I should become purified in the air that

you breathe, perhaps the shade of your avenues would bring a little

coolness to my burning brow; but no, it is a paradise in which I must

not set foot.--Hardly ought I to be allowed to gaze from afar, over

the wall, at the two fair angels who are walking there, hand in hand,

eyes fixed upon eyes. The devil can enter Eden only in the shape of a

serpent, and, dear Adam, for all the happiness on earth, I would not be

the serpent of your Eve.

What frightful upheaval has taken place in my soul of late! who has

transformed my blood and changed it to venom? O monstrous thought, that

puttest forth thy pale green twigs and umbels of hemlock in the glacial

shadow of my heart, what poisoned wind deposited there the seed from

which thou didst spring? This, then, was what was in store for me, this

is the end of all the roads that I so desperately attempted!--O fate,

how thou dost mock at me!--All those upward flights of the eagle toward

the sun, those pure flames aspiring to reach the sky, that divine

melancholy, that profound, restrained passion, that worship of beauty,

that refined and curious fancy, that unquenchable and ever-rising

flood from the interior fountain, that ecstasy borne upon wings always

spread, that reverie blooming brighter than the hawthorn in May--all

the poesy of my youth, all those beautiful and rare gifts were

destined to serve no other purpose than to place me beneath the lowest

of mankind.

I longed to love.--I went about like a madman, calling and invoking

love;--I writhed in frenzy because of my feeling of helplessness;

I set my blood on fire, I dragged my body about in the gutters of

debauchery;--I strained to my arid heart until I almost stifled her,

a woman, young and beautiful, who loved me.--I ran after the passion

that avoided me. I prostituted myself, and I acted like a virgin who

should venture into an evil place, hoping to find a lover among those

whom depravity led thither, instead of waiting patiently, in dignified,

silent retirement, until the angel whom God has set aside for me

should appear in a radiant penumbra, a heavenly flower in her hand.

All these years that I have wasted in puerile agitation, in running

hither and thither, in seeking to force nature and time, I should have

passed in silence and meditation, in trying to make myself worthy to

be loved;--that would have been wisely done;--but I had scales over

my eyes and I marched straight to the precipice. I already have one

foot suspended over the void, and I believe that I shall soon lift the

other. It is useless for me to resist, I feel that I must roll to the

bottom of this new abyss that has opened within me.

Yes, it was thus that I imagined love. I feel now what I had

dreamed.--Yes, there are the delightful yet terrible sleepless

nights when the roses were thistles and the thistles roses; there

are the sweet misery and the miserable joy, the ineffable trouble

that encompasses you in a golden cloud and makes objects waver

before your eyes as drunkenness does, the ringing in the ears in

which you always hear the last syllable of the loved one's name, the

pallor, the flushes, the sudden shivering, the burning and freezing

perspiration;--all those are there; the poets do not lie.

When I am about to enter the salon where we usually meet, my heart

beats so violently that you can see it through my clothes and I am

obliged to hold it back with both hands for fear it will escape me.--If

I see my dream at the end of a path and in the park, the distance

vanishes at once and I have no idea what becomes of the road: it must

be that the devil takes me or that I have wings.--Nothing can distract

my thoughts: if I read, her image comes between the book and my

eyes;--I mount my horse, I gallop over the country, and it always seems

to me that I feel its long hair mingling with mine in the wind, hear

its hurried respiration, and feel its warm breath upon my cheek. The

image possesses me and follows me everywhere, and I never see it more

clearly than when it is not before my eyes.

You pitied me for not being in love--pity me now because I am in love;

and above all because I love what I love. What a misfortune, what a

crushing blow upon my already blasted life!--what an insensate, guilty,

hateful passion has taken possession of me!--It is a shameful thing for

which I shall never cease to blush. It is the most deplorable of all my

aberrations, I cannot imagine it, I cannot understand it, everything

within me is in confusion and bewilderment; I have no idea who I am

nor who others are, I doubt whether I am a man or a woman, I have a

horror of myself, I feel strange, inexplicable impulses, and there are

moments when it seems to me that my reason is going, and when the idea

of my existence abandons me altogether. For a long time I have been

unable to believe in anything; I have listened to myself and watched

myself closely. I have tried to disentangle the skein that has become

entangled in my soul. At last, through all the veils in which it was

enveloped, I have discovered the ghastly truth--Silvio, I love--Oh! no,

I can never tell you--I love a man!