Théophile Gautier
Mademoiselle de Maupin
Part II: Chapters 2 to 4
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
Chapter 2: D’Albert to Silvio
Well, my friend, I am home again! I have been neither to Cathay, Cashmere, nor Samarkand; and it is fair to say that I no more possess a mistress than ever. Though I raised my hand and swore a great oath that I would travel to the ends of the earth, I have not even passed the bounds of the city. I know not how I contrive it, but I have never been able to keep my word to anyone, not even myself: the Devil must have something to do with it. If I say: ‘I shall go there tomorrow’, I will most certainly fail; if I intend to visit the tavern, I arrive at church; if I wish to go to church, the road becomes tangled beneath my feet like a skein of thread, and I find myself in a wholly different place. I fast when I have decided to indulge in an orgy, and so on. I think, therefore, that what prevents me from having a mistress is that I have resolved to have one.
I must tell you about my expedition in detail: it is well worth the narrating. I had spent at least two full hours each day at my toilette. My hair was combed and curled, the few whiskers I had were trimmed and waxed, and, the emotion of desire somewhat enlivening the ordinary pallor of my face, I really looked quite well. Finally, after having carefully examined myself in the mirror to see if I was handsome enough, and whether my air was gallant enough, I left the house resolutely, my head held high, my chin raised, my gaze direct, one hand on my hip, making the heels of my boots clink like an infantry officer, elbowing the bourgeoisie, while appearing utterly victorious and triumphant.
I was like another Jason going to win the Golden Fleece. But, alas, Jason was more fortunate than I! Besides winning the fleece, he also won a beautiful princess and, so far, I have neither princess nor fleece.
I went, thus, through the streets, noticing all the women, approaching them, and gazing at them more closely when they seemed worth examining. Some assumed a grand and virtuous air and passed by without raising an eye. Others were at first surprised, and then smiled, if they had white teeth. Some turned round after a while to look at me, when they thought I was no longer looking at them, and blushed like cherries when they found themselves face to face with me. The weather was fine; crowds of folk were out for a walk. And yet, I must admit, despite all the respect I have for the most interesting half of the human race, what is commonly called the fair sex is devilishly ugly: out of a hundred women there was hardly a single passable one. This one had a moustache; that one had a blue nose; others had red marks instead of eyebrows; One was not badly made, but her face was red. The head of a second was charming, but she could have scratched her ear with her shoulder-blade; the third would have put Praxiteles to shame for the roundness and softness of certain contours, but she skated about on feet like Turkish stirrups. Another displayed the most magnificent shoulders one could meet with; on the other hand, her hands resembled, in shape and size, those enormous scarlet gloves that serve for a haberdashers’ sign. In general, how much weariness showed on those faces! How withered, etiolated, worn down, ignominiously, by petty passions, and petty vices! What expressions of envy, malicious curiosity, greed, and shameless coquetry! And how much uglier a woman who is not beautiful is than a man who is unhandsome!
I saw none of worth except a few grisettes; but there was more linen to rumple there than silk, and that is not what I am about. Truly, I believe that Man, and by Man, I mean Woman also, is the ugliest creature on earth. This quadruped that walks on its hind feet seems to me singularly presumptuous to rank itself, as if of right, the highest in all Creation. A lion, a tiger, is more beautiful than a man, and in many a species its individuals attain a beauty that is proper to them, which is extremely rare as regards human beings. How many monsters to produce an Antinous (the emperor Hadrian’s handsome favourite)! How many ugly Gotons (Margoton, a variant on Marguerite, i.e. a country-wench) for a beautiful Phyllis (see Virgil’s ‘Eclogues’).
I am very much afraid, my dear friend, that I will never embrace my ideal, and yet there is nothing extravagant or unnatural about that same. It is not the ideal of a ninth-grade schoolboy. I ask for neither ‘ivory globes’, nor ‘alabaster columns’, nor ‘azure snares’; I have employed in its composition neither lilies, snow, nor roses, neither jet nor ebony, coral, ambrosia, pearls, nor diamonds. I have left the stars of the sky alone, and not sought to pluck the sun from a summer sky. It is an almost bourgeois ideal, it is so simple, and it seems to me that with a sack or two of piastres I could find her ready-made and already realised in the nearest bazaar in Constantinople or Smyrna; she would probably cost me less than a horse or a pure-bred hound: and to think that I will not, because I feel I cannot! It is enough to render one furious, and I rage against fate, in the most profound state of anger.
You are not as mad as I am, you are happy; you have simply let your life run on without tormenting yourself, and have taken things as they came. You did not seek happiness, and yet it came to seek you; you are loved, and you love. I feel no envy; do not think that of me, at least; but I find myself less joyful in thinking of your happiness than I should be, and I say to myself, with a sigh, that I wish I might enjoy such a state.
Perhaps happiness passed me by, and I failed to see it, blind as I was; perhaps the voice spoke, and the noise of my internal tempest prevented my hearing. Perhaps I have been loved, in secret, by some humble heart that I have misunderstood, or even broken; perhaps I myself have been another’s ideal, the pole of some suffering soul, its dream by night, the object of its thoughts by day. If I had looked down at my feet, perhaps I would have seen some lovely Magdalene there with her jar of perfume, and her tear-drenched hair. I ran about, raising my arms to the sky, eager to gather the stars that fled from me, disdaining to pick the little daisy, amidst the dew and the grass, that opened its golden heart to me. I have committed a great fault: I have asked of love something other than love, that which it could not give. I forgot that Love was a naked god, and failed to understand the meaning of that magnificent symbolism. I asked him for brocaded robes, feathers, diamonds, a sublime mind, science, poetry, beauty, youth, supreme power, all that is not in Love’s gift; love can offer only itself, and he who wants something other from it, is not worthy of being loved.
I have doubtless been in too much haste; my hour is not yet come; the Lord who lent me life will surely not rob me of it without my having lived. What good is it to hand the poet a lyre without strings, or grant a man a life without love? The heavens cannot allow so great an inconsistency; and doubtless, at the appointed time, will place in my path the one I must love, and by whom I shall be loved. But why did love arrive before my mistress! Why am I thirsty without possessing a fountain from which to quench that thirst? Or why am I unable to fly, like birds in the desert, to some place where water exists? The world is, for me, a Sahara without wells or oases. My life lacks a single shaded corner to shelter me from the sun: I suffer all the ardour of passion without its ecstasies, without its ineffable delights; I know its torments, yet not its pleasures. I am jealous of what exists not; I pine for the shadow of a shadow; I breathe sighs that have no cause; my insomnia is devoid of the phantom I might adore; I shed tears that drench the ground, which is never dry; I grant the wind tender kisses that are not returned; I harm my eyesight trying to see an uncertain and deceptive form in the distance; I wait for what never arrives, and count the hours anxiously, as if I were party to some tryst.
Whoever you may be, angel or demon, virgin or courtesan, shepherdess or princess; whether you come from the north or the south, you whom I do not know, yet whom I love, oh, no longer force me to wait, or the flame will consume the altar, and you will find nothing in place of my heart but a heap of cold ash. Descend from the sphere where you dwell; quit the light-filled sky, consoling spirit, and cast the shade of your broad wings over my soul. You, woman whom I will love, come, that I may take you in my arms, empty for so long. Golden gates of the palace you inhabit, roll on your hinges; humble latch of your cabin, rise in the air; woodland branches, arching brambles, untwine yourselves; enchantment that surrounds the turret, charm uttered by some magician, let your spell be broken; open, crowded ranks, let her pass through!
O my ideal, arrive too late, and I may lack the strength to love you! My soul is like a dovecote full of doves. At every hour of the day, some desire flies forth. The doves return to the dovecote, but my desire does not return, in all its strength, to the heart. The sky’s azure whitens with the innumerable horde of my desires; they traverse space, from world to world, from sky to sky, seeking some love beside which to land and spend the night: hasten, my dream! Or you will find naught in the empty nest but the eggshells left behind by the fledglings that have flown.
My friend, my childhood companion, you are the only person to whom I can tell such things. Write to me that you pity me, and do not think me merely a hypochondriac. Console me, I have never needed it more. How worthy of envy are those who have a passion they are able to satisfy! The drunkard finds no cruelty in the bottle; he stumbles from the tavern to the gutter, and finds himself happier on his dung-heap than a king on his throne. The sensual man visits courtesans, seeking a love readily obtainable, or immodest refinements: painted cheeks, short skirts, dishevelled bodices, libertine talk, he is happy; his eyes widen, his lips are moist; he attains the highest degree of happiness, he feels the ecstasy of gross voluptuousness. The card-player needs only green baize and a greasy, worn deck of cards to procure that poignant anguish, those nervous spasms, that diabolical pleasure his dreadful passion brings. Such folk can sate or distract themselves; something impossible for me. The idea has taken such possession of me that I barely love the arts now, and poetry lacks charm for me; what once delighted me makes not the slightest impression.
I am beginning to believe that I am in the wrong. I demand of nature and society for more than either can give. What I seek has no existence, and I should not complain of failing to find it. However, if the woman we dream of lacks human form, what makes us love only her and not the rest, given we are human, and our instinct should draw us implacably to what is human? What conjured the idea of this imaginary woman? From what clay did we mould this invisible statue? Whence came the feathers we attached to the back of this chimera? What mystical bird laid, in a dark corner of our soul, the unseen egg from which our dream has hatched? What is this abstract beauty we feel, and cannot define? Why, before some woman who charms us, do we say she is beautiful, yet nonetheless find her ugly? Where is the model, the type, the inner pattern that serves as our point of comparison? For beauty is not an absolute idea, and is only appreciated through contrast. Was it in heaven that we saw her, shining like some star, or at the ball, in her mother’s shadow, the fresh bud of a rose, its petals opening? Was it in Italy or Spain? Was it here or there, yesterday or long ago? Was she an adored courtesan, a fashionable singer, a prince’s daughter, her proud and noble head bending beneath a heavy diadem of pearls and rubies? Was she that young and childlike face leaning from the window, amidst the nasturtiums and morning glories? To what school did the painting belong in which that beauty rose white and radiant from the dark shadows? Was it Raphael who drew those contours that please you? Was it Cleomenes (supposedly the sculptor of the Venus de’ Medici) who polished the marble that you adore? Are you in love with the goddess Diana, or the Madonna? Is your ideal an angel, a sylph, a woman? Alas! She is a little of all those things, and yet none of them exactly.
Those transparent tones, that radiant, charming freshness, that roseate flesh so full of life, that lovely blonde hair unfurled like a golden mantle, that sparkling laughter, those amorous dimples, these curves undulating like flames, that supple strength, that satin sheen, that ample form, those rounded arms, that smooth fleshy back, all that healthy beauty, Rubens portrayed. While Raphael alone could fill such chaste lineaments with that pale amber tone. Who else but he curved those broad eyebrows so fine and black, and thinned the lashes of those eyelids so modestly lowered? Had not Antonio Allegri (Correggio) something to do with your ideal? It is from him that the lady of your thoughts stole that warm matte whiteness which ravishes you. She posed for many an hour before the artist could capture the secret of that ever-blossoming angelic smile; the oval of her face was modelled on that of a nymph or a saint. The line of the hip, so voluptuously curved, is that of the sleeping Antiope (the mother of Amphion, see Antoine Watteau’s painting ‘Jupiter and Antiope’, Louvre). The full but slender hands could be those of Danaë (the mother of Perseus) or of Mary Magdalene. Dusty antiquity itself provided the material for the composition of your young chimera; those strong, supple loins that you embrace with such passion in dream were sculpted by Praxiteles. Your goddess purposely let the little tip of her charming foot escape the ashes of Herculaneum, so that her image would not be lame. Nature has also contributed her part. Through the prism of desire, you have viewed, here and there, beautiful eyes behind a blind, an ivory forehead pressed against a window-pane, a smiling mouth behind a fan. You have divined the shape of an arm from a hand, a knee from an ankle. What you saw was perfect: you assumed the rest resembled what you saw, and you completed it with aspects of other beauties seen elsewhere. Even the ideal beauty, realised by the old masters, was not enough for you, and you asked of the poets even more rounded contours, a more ethereal form, a more divine grace, a more exquisite refinement; you asked them to grant your phantom breath and speech, to gift her their capacity for love, reverie, joy and sadness, their melancholy and morbidity, their memories and hopes, their science and passion, mind and heart; you took all, and added, to crown that impossible vision, your own passion, intellect, dreams and thoughts. A star lent its rays, a flower its perfume, the palette its colours, poetry its harmony, the marble its form, and you your desire. How little a real woman, who eats, drinks, rises in the morning and retires at night, however adorable and full of grace she might be, could bear comparison with such a creature! One cannot reasonably hope to meet her, and yet one does hope, one does seek. What a singular blindness! It is sublime, or absurd. How I pity and admire those who ever pursue the reality of their dream, and who die content if they have kissed their chimera on the lips but once! But what a dreadful fate is that of those Columbuses who fail to discover their New World, of the lovers who fail to find their mistress!
Ah! If I were a poet, it is to those whose lives were wasted, whose arrows failed to hit the mark, who died without uttering the word they wished to say and without pressing the hand intended for them, to all that has miscarried, and passed unnoticed, to the smothered fire, genius without issue, the unknown pearl on the sea-bed, to all that has loved without being loved in return, to all that has suffered and not met with pity, that I would dedicate my song — it would prove a noble task.
How right Plato was in wishing to banish you from his Republic, and what harm you have done, O poets! How your ambrosia has rendered our absinthe even more bitter; and how even more arid and devastated life has seemed after gazing at the infinite perspective you revealed to us! How your dreams have inspired our dreadful struggle with reality! And how, during the combat, our hearts have been trodden and trampled by you, violent you athletes of verse!
We sit like Adam at the foot of the wall of the Earthly Paradise, on the steps of the stair that leads to the world you have created, a light brighter than sunlight glittering through the cracks of the door, hearing only a few vague, scattered notes of the seraphic harmony. Every time a chosen one enters or leaves in the midst of a flood of splendour, we crane our necks and try to catch a glimpse through the open door. The fairy-tale architecture there has its equal only in Arab tales. Rows of columns, overlapping arcades, pillars twisted into spirals, marvellously-cut foliage, hollowed-out trefoils, porphyry, jasper, lapis-lazuli, what more do we see? Dazzling reflections and transparencies, profusions of rare gemstones, sardonyxes, chrysoberyls, aquamarines, iridescent opals, azedarach beads, jets of crystal, torches that render the stars pale, a splendid vertiginous mist full of noise – every Assyrian luxury!
The door closes; we see nothing more, and our lowered eyes, full of corrosive tears, view once more this poor, barren, pallid ground, these ruined hovels, these folk in rags; the soul, mere arid rock where nothing germinates, lost amid all the miseries and misfortunes of reality Ah! If we could but fly there, if the steps of that fiery staircase did not scorch our feet; but alas, Jacob’s ladder can only be climbed by the angels!
What a fate! The poor man dies at the rich man’s door! What irony! A palace contrasted with a hut, the ideal with reality, poetry with prose! How deep the hatred the roots of which twist deep in the hearts of the wretched! What a gnashing of teeth must sound at night from their pallets, as the wind carries to their ears the sighs of the theorbos and the viola d’amore! Poets, artists, sculptors, musicians, why have you deceived us? Poets, why have you told us your dreams? Artists, why have you fixed on canvas the elusive phantom that rose from your heart to your head with the flow of your blood, and asked: ‘Is this her?’ Sculptors, why did you split marble from the cliffs of Carrara to have it express, eternally, before all eyes, your most secret and fleeting desires? Musicians, why did you hark, at night, to the songs of the stars and the flowers, and write them down? Why did you compose such beautiful things that the sweetest of voices, crying to us: ‘You, I love!’, seems hoarse as the grinding sounds of a saw, or the cawing of crows? A plague on you, impostors!... May the heavenly fire burn and destroy all those paintings, those poems, those statues, those scores...
Ah! My tirade, of interminable length, has strayed a little far from the epistolary style. What an outpouring! I have yielded to lyricism, my friend, and run on, ridiculously far, in the style of Pindar! All of this is far from my subject, which is, if I am not wrong, the glorious and triumphant story of the Chevalier D’Albert in pursuit of Daraïde, ‘the most beautiful princess in the world’, as the old tales say.
But in truth, the tale is so ill I am forced to resort to thoughts and digressions. I hope it will not always be so, and that before long the novel of my life will appear more knotted and tortuous than a Spanish imbroglio.
After wandering about from street to street, I resolved to seek out a friend of mine who has offered to introduce me to a house where, as he expresses it, one can see a world of pretty women, a view of the ideal enough to satisfy twenty poets. He says there is someone there to suit every taste: aristocratic beauties, each with the gaze of an eagle, sea-green eyes, a straight nose, a proudly-raised chin, regal hands, and the gait of a goddess; silver lilies mounted on golden stems; simple sweetly-scented violets pale in colour, with moist and lowered eyes, frail necks, and diaphanous flesh; lively and piquant beauties, rare beauties, beauties of every kind, for that house is a real seraglio, lacking only the eunuchs and their leader, the kislar agha. My friend tells me he has already entered into five or six affairs there. So many? That seems extreme, and I am much afraid of not achieving a like success; but De C*** claims it will be so, and that I will soon be more successful than I believe. I have, according to him, only one fault, which will be corrected with age, and by mixing in company, that is the fault of dreaming too much of a single woman, and not attending enough to the many. That might well be true. He says I will be perfectly amiable when I have rid myself of this one little fault. May the Lord grant it so! Women must think I despise them; since a compliment, which they would find adorable, and utterly charming, on the lips of another, angers them and displeases them on mine, as much as the most cutting epigram. That is no doubt what De C*** reproaches me for.
My heart was beating a little as I climbed the stairs, and I had barely recovered from my emotion when De C***, dragging me by the elbow, brought me face to face with a woman of about thirty years of age — quite beautiful — dressed with muted luxury, and an extreme pretension of childish simplicity, which did not prevent her from being painted with rouge, and crimson as a carriage wheel: she was the lady of the house.
De C***, adopting that shrill, mocking tone so different from his usual one, and which he deploys in society when he wishes to appear charming, said to her, with many demonstrations of ironic respect, in which the deepest contempt was visibly evident, partly in a low partly in a loud voice:
‘Here’s the young man I spoke of the other day, a man of very great merit; he’s of the highest birth, and it cannot be otherwise than agreeable to you to receive him; which is why I have taken the liberty of introducing him to you.’
‘Indeed, sir, you have done well,’ replied the lady, in the most outrageous mincing manner. Then she turned towards me, and, having looked me over, from the corner of her eye, like a connoisseur, and in a manner that made me blush to the ears, addressed me: ‘You may consider yourself always a guest, and visit whenever you have an evening to spare.’
I bowed rather awkwardly and stammered a few incongruous words which must have given her no high opinion of my abilities; other folk entered, which freed me from the awkwardness attached to my welcome. De C*** pulled me into a window- corner and began to lecture me, energetically.
What the Devil! You’ll compromise me; I announced you as a phoenix of wit, a man of unbridled imagination, a lyric poet, everything most transcendent and passionate, and you stand there like a tree-stump, without saying a word! What lack of eloquence! I thought you were given to a more fertile vein; come, loosen your tongue, babble at random; you need not say anything sensible or judicious, on the contrary, that could be harmful; speak, that is the thing; speak a great deal, speak for a good while; draw attention to yourself; set aside all fear and modesty; consider everyone here a fool, or almost, and don’t forget that the orator who wishes to succeed can never sufficiently despise his audience. Come, what think you of the mistress of the house?’
‘I already find her quite displeasing; and, though I spoke to her for barely three minutes, I was as bored as if I were her husband.’
‘Ah! That’s what you think?’
‘Why, of course.’
‘Is your repugnance for her quite insurmountable? So much the worse; it would have been good for you to woo her, even if only for a month; she is suave, and a decent young man can but be educated by her.’
‘Well, if I must,’ I said, rather piteously, ‘I’ll do so; but is it as necessary as you seem to think?’
‘Alas, yes! It is of the utmost necessity, and I will explain the reason. Madame de Thémines is quite the fashion now; she possesses all the ridiculousness of the age, and a superior manner, sometimes that of tomorrow, but never that of yesterday: she is perfectly up-to-date. People dress as she dresses, and she never wears what has once been worn. She is rich, moreover, and her carriages are fashioned in the best taste. She lacks wit, but commands a great deal of contemporary jargon; she has the liveliest tastes but little passion. People like her, but they do not move her; she has a cold heart and the mind of a libertine. As for her soul, if she has one, which is doubtful, it is of the darkest, and there is no act of wickedness or baseness of which she is incapable; but she is extremely clever and preserves appearances, just as much as is necessary, so that nothing can ever be proven against her. Thus, she will sleep with a man and not write him the simplest note thereafter. Also, her most intimate enemies find nothing to say of her, except that she uses too much rouge, and that certain parts of her person do not, in truth, possess all the charm they might seem to have – which is untrue.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘A good question! As anyone learns such things, by assuring myself of the reality.’
‘Then you too have slept with Madame de Thémines!’
‘Indeed! Why should I not have? It would have been the utmost impropriety if I had not. She has done me great service, and I am very grateful to her.’
‘I don’t understand what kind of service she can have done you...’
‘Are you really such an idiot?’ De C*** cried, gazing at me with the most comical expression in the world. ‘Indeed, it appears so. Must I teach you everything? Madame de Thémines is said, and rightly so, to have special access to certain places, and a young man whom she has taken up, and retained for some time, can present himself, boldly, anywhere, and be certain of not remaining long without entering into an affair, or two. Besides that ineffable benefit, there is another which is no less valuable, which is that, as soon as the women in her circle see you as Madame de Thémines’ official admirer, even though they may not possess the least liking for you, they will make it their duty and pleasure to tempt you away from that fashionable person; and, instead of the advances and approaches that you would have been obliged to make, you will be spoiled for choice, and necessarily become the target of all their teasing and flirting. However, if she inspires too strong a repugnance in you, ignore my advice. You are not required to woo her exactly, though it would have been polite and proper. But, if not, make your choice, swiftly, and address her that pleases you best, or seems easiest of conquest, since by delaying, you lose the benefit of your novelty, and the advantage it grants you, for a few days at least, over all the cavaliers here. None of these ladies understand passions that are born of intimacy, and develop slowly, in respect and silence: they are for love at first sight, and occult sympathy, a thing marvellously well devised to spare the trouble of resistance, and all those lengthy repetitions with which sentiment entwines the romance of love, and which merely postpone its conclusion, needlessly. These ladies are very economical in their employment of time, and it feels so precious to them that they would be troubled if they left a single minute of it unused. They have a longing to oblige the human race that cannot be too highly praised, and they love their neighbour as themselves, which is perfectly evangelical and meritorious; they are very charitable creatures, who would not, for anything in the world, cause a man to die of despair.
Three or four of them must already be determined in your favour, and I would kindly advise you to take yourself briskly in that direction, instead of amusing yourself by chatting with me in a window embrasure, which will scarcely aid you much further.’
‘But, my dear De C***, I am completely new to these things. I lack what it takes to distinguish at first glance a woman who favours me from one who does not; and I may blunder oddly, if you fail to grant me the benefit of your experience.’
‘Truly, you are of some nameless primitive race. I scarcely believe it possible to be as pastoral and bucolic as you, in the blessed century in which we live! What the devil are you doing with that pair of large dark pupils your eyes possess, which would be most effective, if you knew how to use them? Look there, in that corner by the fireplace, the little woman in pink who is toying with her fan: she has been eyeing you for a quarter of an hour with a most significant assiduity and fixity: none other could be indecorous in so superior a manner, or display such noble effrontery. She greatly displeases those women who despair of ever reaching her height of impudence, but, on the other hand, greatly pleases the men, who find in her all the piquancy of a courtesan. Indeed, she is charmingly depraved, full of wit, verve, and caprice. She would make an excellent mistress for a young man who is prejudiced in his taste. In eight days, she will rid your conscience of its scruples, and so corrupt your heart that you will never more appear ridiculous or wax elegiac. She is inexpressibly positive about everything; she penetrates everything with a rapidity and certainty of thought that astonish. That little woman is algebra incarnate, and is precisely what a dreamer and an enthusiast need. She will soon cure you of your misty idealism: great will be the service she will render you. And she will do so, moreover, with the greatest pleasure, for her very instinct is to disenchant poets.’ My curiosity being aroused by De C***’s description, I made my retreat, and, weaving between the groups of people, approached the lady and examined her most attentively. She could not have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Her figure was neat, but quite well built, though a little heavy; she had white and rounded arms, hands rather nobly shaped, a pretty and ever so charming foot, broad and glossy shoulders, a short neck, but what there was of it most satisfactory and yielding no poor idea of the rest; as for her hair, it was extremely shiny and of a bluish-black like jay’s wings; the corners of her eyes turned upwards sharply towards her temples, her nose was slender with wide nostrils, her mouth moist and sensual, with a small cleft on the lower lip, and an almost imperceptible down at its corners. And with all this, she possessed a liveliness, an animation, a healthy strength, and I know not what expression of luxury, skilfully tempered by coquetry and artifice, which rendered her, in short, a very desirable creature, more than justifying the very lively desire she had inspired, and did inspire every day.
I too desired her; yet I understood nonetheless that it was not this woman, however agreeable she was, who could realise my wish sufficiently for me to say: ‘I possess a mistress, at last!
I returned to De C***, and said: ‘The lady quite pleases me, and I might perhaps come to some arrangement with her. But, before saying anything specific and binding, I would have you be so kind as to show me those indulgent beauties who have been so good as to determine themselves in my favour, so I may choose. It would also please me, since you are serving as my tutor here, to add a few comments, and name their faults and qualities; the manner in which they should be addressed, and the tone to be adopted with them, so that I do not seem too much of a provincial or a literary man.’
‘That I will,’ said De C***. ‘Observe that lovely melancholy swan who raises her neck so harmoniously and makes her sleeves flap like wings? She is modesty itself, all that is most chaste and virginal in the world; she has a brow of snow, a heart of ice, the looks of a Madonna, the expression of a Saint Agnes, a white dress, and the same soulfulness; she wears nothing in her hair but orange-blossoms or water-lilies, and is tethered to the earth by a mere thread. She has never had a sinful thought, and is profoundly ignorant of how men differ from women. The Holy Virgin is a mere bacchante compared to her, which, however, does not prevent her from having had more lovers than any woman I know, and that is saying a great deal, indeed. Examine the throat of that discreet person; it is a little masterpiece, and truly it is difficult to display so much while hiding more; tell me if, with all her modesty and prudishness, she is not ten times more indecent than the good lady on her left who bravely displays two hemispheres which, if joined together, could frame a full-size map of the world, or the other, on her right, décolleté down to the waist, who parades her nudity with an intrepidity full of charm? That virginal creature, if am not very mistaken, has already calculated what promise of love and passion your pallor and your dark eyes may hold; and what leads me to say so is that she has not once looked in your direction, at least in appearance; for she knows how to ply her gaze with such art, and glance so skillfully from the corner of her eye, that nothing escapes her; one might think she could see behind her head, for she knows perfectly well what transpires behind her. She is a feminine Janus. If you wish to succeed with her, you must leave behind your proud and careless manner. You must speak to her without looking at her, without making a movement, in a contrite attitude, and a stifled and respectful tone of voice; in this way, you can say anything you wish to her, provided it is suitably veiled, and she will freely permit all, first in speech, and then in action. But take care to roll your eyes, tenderly, when she lowers hers, and speak to her of the sweetness of platonic love, and the commerce of souls, while employing the least platonic and ideal of pantomimes in the world! She is very sensual, and very sensitive; kiss her as much as you like; but, in the most intimate abandonment, do not forget to call her madame at least three times per sentence: she fell out with me, because while lying on her bed I said something, I know not what, using a familiar form of address. The Devil! She is not an ‘honest’ woman for nothing.’
‘I lack the desire, from what you say, to risk the adventure: a prudish Messalina! Such an alliance would be monstrous and strange.’
‘Rather, as old as the hills, dear fellow! It is something you see every day; nothing is more common. You would do wrong not to settle for her. She has one overriding charm, which is that with her one always seems to be committing a mortal sin, and the slightest kiss seems as if it led to utter damnation; whereas with the others one scarcely believes one is even committing a venial sin, and often one can’t believe one is committing a sin at all. That is why I kept her longer than any mistress. I would still possess her, if she had not left me herself; she is the only woman who has escaped me, and I have a certain respect for her because of that. She displays little refinements of voluptuousness that could not be more delicate, and the great art of appearing to yield under duress what she grants most freely: which gives each indulgence the charm of a rape. You will find a dozen lovers here who will swear to you, on their honour, that she is the most virtuous creature in existence. Yet she is precisely the opposite. It is a curious study to anatomise that virtue among the pillows. Having been warned, you run no risk, and thus will not be so clumsy as to fall sincerely in love with her.’
‘How old is this lovely personage?’ I asked De C***, for it was impossible for me to determine her age merely by examining her, even with the most scrupulous attention.
‘Ah! Now you are asking. How old is she? That is a mystery, and the Lord alone knows. As for myself, who am proud of my skill in assigning an age to women, to the nearest hour, I have never been able to make out hers. I estimate, only roughly, that she may be between eighteen and thirty-six years of age. I have seen her in her finest dress, in her negligée, and beneath the linen, yet cannot tell you a thing in that regard. My science is at fault; the age she most often seems to be is eighteen, and yet that cannot be it. She has the body of a virgin and the soul of a courtesan, and to corrupt oneself so deeply and so comprehensively, takes a deal of time or innate genius; it requires a heart of bronze in a breast of steel: she has neither. So, I admit her to be thirty-six years old, but deep down know nothing.’
‘Has she not a close friend, who might grant you an insight on the matter?’
‘No. She arrived in the city two years ago. She came from the provinces or from abroad, I forget which, an admirable situation for a woman who knows how to turn it to advantage. With a face like hers, she can claim herself to be any age she wishes, and dates only from the day she arrived here.’
‘How pleasant in the extreme, especially when no impertinent wrinkle contradicts it, and when time, the great destroyer, is kind enough to lend itself to a falsification of the baptismal record.’
He pointed out a few more women, who, according to him, would favourably receive any request I might be pleased to address to them, and treat me with a particular show of philanthropy. But the woman in pink in the corner of the chimney, and the modest dove who served as her antithesis, were incomparably more worthwhile than all the others; and, if they did not have all the qualities which I seek, they had some of them, at least in appearance.
I conversed with them all evening, especially with the last I mentioned, and took care to cast my ideas in the most respectful mould; though she barely looked at me, I thought I saw her eyes gleam sometimes under the veils of her eyelashes, at some rather lively gallantries of mine, though dressed in the most modest gauze I dare risk, and a small, contained and stifled blush pass over her cheeks, two or three times, rather like that produced by a pink liqueur poured into a half-opaque glass. Her answers, in general, were sober, measured, but nevertheless acute and full of character, and indicated deeper thought than they expressed. All this was intermingled with reticence, part-phrases, and indirect allusion, each syllable having its intention, each silence its import; nothing in the world was more diplomatic and charming. And yet, however much pleasure I may have momentarily taken in it, I was unable to endure such conversation for long. One must be perpetually alert and on one’s guard, and what I like best in conversing is abandon and familiarity. We spoke first of music, which led us quite naturally to speak of opera, and then of women, then of love, a subject in which it is easier than in any other to find transitions from the general to the particular. We paid each other heartfelt compliments; you would have laughed to hear me. In truth, Amadis on the Hermitage Rock (see the chivalric romance ‘Amadís de Gaula’) was only a dull pedant compared to me. There were generous speeches, self-deprecations, and words of praise and devotion to make that Roman of the later Empire, Quintus Curtius, blush with shame. I had thought myself quite incapable of such transcendent and pathetic gibberish. I, exhibiting the most quintessential Platonism; does not that seem to you one of the most comical of things, the finest parody that could be seen? And then my air, sugared to perfection, those silly little playful touches you and I know! Good heavens! I had the appearance of scarcely intending a thing, and any mother who had listened to my addresses would not have hesitated to let me sleep beside her daughter; any husband would have entrusted his wife to me. It was the one evening of my life when I most displayed the appearance of being virtuous, and when I was the least so, in thought. I had deemed it more difficult to play the hypocrite, and utter things that were not meant to be believed. It must be quite an easy thing, in fact, or I must have a natural disposition for it, to have succeeded so agreeably at my first attempt. Indeed, I achieved some very fine moments.
As for the lady, she said many things, very delicately put, which, despite the air of candour with which she did so, proved a most consummate experience; one cannot form an idea of the subtlety of her discourse. The woman could split a hair in three lengthwise, and make fools of all the angelic and seraphic theologians. Moreover, from the manner of her conversation, it is impossible to believe she has even the shadow of a corporeal body. It is so immaterial, vaporous, ideal enough to weary one; and, if De C*** had not warned me of the creature’s ways, I would certainly have despaired of success in the matter, and would have remained at a pitiful distance. How on earth, also, when a woman informs you, for two hours and with the most detached air in the world, that love only lives on privation and sacrifice and other beautiful things akin to them, can you hope, in all decency, to persuade her to one day join you between the sheets, rouse your complexion, and discover whether you are made for each other? In brief, we parted on good terms, congratulating each other on the elevation and purity of our feelings.
The conversation with the other lady was, as you can imagine, of a completely opposite kind. We laughed as much as we talked. We mocked, most wittily, all the women who were present; in saying ‘we’ I am in error. I should have said ‘she’ mocked; a man never mocks at women well. I listened and approved, for it would be impossible to have drawn their figures more vividly, or colour the sketches more ardently; she created a more curious gallery of caricatures than I have ever seen. Yet despite the exaggeration, one senses the truth beneath; De C*** was quite right: this woman’s mission is to disenchant the poets. There is about her a prosaic atmosphere in which poetic ideas cannot thrive. She is charming, and sparkles with wit, and yet, beside her, one thinks only ignoble and vulgar thoughts. While talking with her, I felt a host of incongruous desires, impracticable of execution in the place where I found myself, such as having wine brought to me and getting drunk, while sitting her on one of my knees and kissing her throat; or lifting the hem of her skirt to see if her garter was above or below the knee; or singing a filthy refrain at the top of my voice; or smoking a pipe and breaking a few windows: or whatever. The whole animalistic part, the brute entire, rose in me; I would very willingly have spat on Homer’s Iliad and fallen on my knees before a whole ham. I now understand perfectly that allegory by which Circe changed Ulysses’ companions into swine. Circe was probably just such a temptress as my little woman in pink.
Shamefully, I felt great delight in feeling myself overcome by stupefaction; I did not struggle against it, I aided it with all my strength, so natural is corruption to Man, and so much mud is there in the clay from which he is made.
However, for a moment, I was afraid of the gangrene taking hold, and sought to quit my corrupter; but the floor seemed to have risen to my knees, and I was as if enshrined in place.
At last, I took it upon myself to depart, and, the evening being well advanced, returned home most perplexed and troubled, not knowing quite which I should choose. I hesitated between the prudish and the gallant. I had found voluptuousness in the one, and piquancy in the other; and, after a very detailed and thorough examination of my conscience, realised not that I loved them both, but that I desired them both, one as much as the other, with enough vivacity to induce reverie, and preoccupy my thoughts.
According to all appearances, my friend, I shall possess one of these two women, perhaps both, and yet I confess that the thought of possessing them only half-satisfies me: it is not that they are not very pretty, but at the sight of each of them nothing cried out within me, nothing quivered, nothing said: ‘It is she.’ I ‘recognised’ neither. However, I do not believe I will meet with any finer, as regards birth and beauty, and De C*** advises me to rest content. Assuredly, I will do so, and one or the other shall be my mistress, or the Devil take me, before too long; yet deep in my heart, a secret voice reproaches me for traducing my love, and accepting the first smile of a woman I love not, instead of searching tirelessly, the Earth over, in cloisters, dark corners, palaces and inns, for the one who was made for me, and whom the Lord destined for me, whether she be princess or servant, nun or woman of the world.
Then I tell myself that I am deluding myself; that, in the end, it is all the same whether I sleep with this woman or another; that the earth will not deviate from its course by one iota, nor the four seasons reverse their order in consequence; that nothing in the world is less important, and I a fool to torment myself with such nonsense: that is what I tell myself. But whatever I think, I am neither calmer nor more resolute.
Perhaps that is because I spend too much time alone, and the smallest details in a life as monotonous as mine acquire too great an importance. I listen to myself living, and thinking, far too much: I hear every beat of my arteries, every pulsation of my heart. By dint of close attention, I free my most elusive ideas from the murky vapour in which they float, and grant them a body. If I embraced action more, I would not perceive all these minor things, and would lack the time to observe my soul beneath the microscope, as I do all day long. The tumult of action would scatter the swarm of idle thoughts that flutter inside my brain, and deafen me with the buzzing of their wings: instead of chasing phantoms, I would grapple with realities; I would only ask of women what they can give, namely pleasure, and not seek to embrace I know not what fantastic idealisation adorned with cloudy perfection. This relentless attention of the eye of my soul to an invisible object has distorted my vision. I know not how to see what is, by dint of having gazed at what is not, and, tuned to the ideal, am completely myopic when faced with reality; thus, I have known women whom everyone assures me are ravishing, and who seemed to me far less so. I have admired paintings that are generally considered bad, while bizarre or unintelligible verses have given me more pleasure than the most gallant productions. I should not be surprised if, after having addressed so many sighs to the moon, and gazed wide-eyed at the stars, after having penned so many elegies and sentimental strophes, I were to fall in love with the lowliest of street-walkers or an ugly old woman; it would be a fine end. Reality would thus take revenge perhaps for the lack of care I have taken in courting her: would she not be well served, if I were to fall in love with, and display a fine romantic passion for, an old serving-woman or some abominable whore? Can you not see me strumming the guitar beneath a kitchen window, while supplanted by a scullion bearing the lapdog of some old dowager spitting out her last tooth? Perhaps, finding nothing in this world worthy of my love, I will end by adoring myself, like the late Narcissus of egoistic memory. To defend myself from so great a misfortune, I observe myself in all the mirrors and ponds I come across. In truth, with all my daydreams and aberrations, I suffer from the enormous fear of falling into the monstrous and the unnatural. It is a serious matter, and I must be careful. Farewell, my friend; I am going at once to the lady in pink, for fear of giving way to my usual contemplation. I think we shall not be much concerned with entelechy (study of the soul), and I believe that, if we indulge in something, it will certainly not be spiritualism, though she is very spirited: I have carefully rolled up, and placed in a drawer, the pattern of my ideal mistress, so as not to try its fit to my lady in pink. I wish to enjoy the beauties and merits the latter has in peace. I prefer to see her dressed in a garment that suits her, without trying to adapt that which I have, after all, tailored in advance for the lady of my thoughts. These are wise resolutions, I know not if I shall keep them. Once more, farewell.
Chapter 3: D’Albert to Silvio
I am head to toe the lover of the lady in pink; it is almost a state of being, a post, and it grants the world substance. I no longer appear like a schoolboy seeking an affair amidst aged women, one who dare not recite a madrigal to a woman, unless she is a hundred years old: I notice, since I settled on her, that I am much more respected, that other women speak to me with a jealous show of coquetry, and go to great lengths to encourage me. The men, on the contrary, are colder, and there is something hostile and constrained in the few words we exchange; they feel that they possess a rival in me, one already formidable, who might become more so. I recall many of them bitterly criticising my attire, claiming that I dressed in a way that was far too effeminate: that my hair was smoothed and curled with more care than was proper; that this, together with my beardless face, gave me a most ridiculously gentlemanlike air; that I affected rich and brilliant materials that smacked of the theatre, and that I resembled an actor more than a real human being: all the banalities that one utters so as to affirm one’s right to a lack of cleanliness, and the wearing of poor, ill-cut clothes. But all is mere jealousy, since the ladies find my hair the finest in the world, my garments in the best taste, and seem most willing to compensate me for the expenses that I incur on their behalf, for they are not foolish enough to believe that this degree of elegance has for its aim only my private beautification.
A portrait of a young lady in pink dress
Emile Eisman-Semenowsky (French, 1853 - 1918)
Artvee
The lady of the house seemed a little piqued by my choice, at first, which she had thought would necessarily fall on her, and she retained, for a few days, a certain bitterness (towards her rival only; for she still conversed with me in the usual manner), which manifested itself in a few little expressions of ‘my dear’, said in that dry, clipped manner that only women display, and by a few disparaging remarks about her rival’s dress uttered as loudly as possible, such as: ‘Your hairstyle is much too elevated, and not at all in keeping with your face’, or: ‘Your bodice is baggy under the arms; who on earth made that dress for you?’ or ‘Your eyes seem quite swollen; I find you utterly changed’, and a thousand other minor observations to which the other did not fail to retort with all the malice required whenever an opportunity presented itself, while, if the opportunity was delayed, creating one for herself, in which to return, and more, what had been dealt to her. But soon, another object having diverted the attention of our disdained Infanta, this little war of words ceased, and everything returned to normal.
I told you, briefly, that I am head to toe the lover of the lady in pink; that is insufficient for a man as punctilious as yourself. You will doubtless ask what her name is: as for that, I shall not tell you; but if you wish, for ease in telling the tale, and in memory of the colour of the dress in which I saw her for the first time, we shall call her Rosette; it is a pretty name: my little dog was named so.
You will desire to know, point by point, since you love precision in such matters, the story of my love for this beautiful Bradamante, and by what successive gradations I passed from the general to the particular, and from the state of simple spectator to that of actor; how, from the mere onlooker that I was, I became her lover. I shall satisfy your wish with the greatest of pleasure. There is nothing sinister in the tale; it is rose-coloured, and none sheds a tear, other than tears of pleasure; it will be neither tedious nor repetitious, and draws to an end with the haste and rapidity recommended by Horace (see Odes Book IV: I, verse 2); it is a true French romance. However, do not imagine that I took the citadel at the first assault. The princess, though very humane towards her subjects, is not as lavish with her favours as one might at first believe; she knows their worth too well not to make you work for them; She is also aware that a measure of delay adds liveliness to desire, and a degree of resistance adds spice to pleasure, and so knows better than to give herself to you at once, however lively the interest you have inspired in her.
To tell you the whole tale, I must to go a little further back. I gave you a fairly detailed account of our first meeting. I met her once, or twice, or perhaps three times more in the same house, before she invited me to hers; I had no need to be asked twice, as you can imagine; I visited her, discreetly at first, then a little more often, then even oftener and, finally, whenever the mood took me, and I must admit that it took me at least three or four times a day.
The lady, after only a few hours apart, always received me as if I had returned from the East Indies; an indulgence towards myself to which I could not have been more sensitive, and which obliged me to show my gratitude in a manner marked by the most gallant and tender attentions in the world, to which she responded with a will.
Rosette, since we agreed to call her that, is a woman of great spirit, who understands a man in the most amiable way. Though she delayed the ending to the chapter for some time, I was never once angry with her: which is truly marvellous; for you know the fine fury I enter into when I do not immediately achieve what I desire, and when a woman exceeds the period of time I have assigned in my head for her surrender. I know not how she managed it so; from the first interview she gave me to understand that her yielding was assured, and I was surer of the fact than if I had held the promise of it, written and signed by her own hand. It will perhaps be said that her boldness and ease of manner left the field free for the temerity of hope. I doubt that was the real reason: I have seen some women whose prodigious freedom of manner excluded, in its way, even the shadow of a doubt, yet who did not produce that effect on me, and before whom I felt a shyness and anxiety that was, to say the least, misplaced.
What renders me often far less amiable to the women I desire than to those who are indifferent to me is the passionate expectation of opportunity, and the feeling of uncertainty I possess regarding the chances of success of my project: it makes me gloomy, and casts me into a reverie which robs me of much of my strength, and of my presence of mind. When I witness the hours earmarked for some another occupation slipping away one by one, anger overtakes me, despite myself, and I cannot but utter dry and sour remarks, which sometimes descend into brutality and which set my affairs back a few hundred miles. With Rosette, I felt none of that. Never, even at moments when she most resisted me, did the idea cross my mind that she wished to escape my expressions of love. I allowed her to display all her little coquetries in peace, and rather endured the curb she chose to impose, lengthily, on my ardour: her rigour had something charming about it that consoled one completely, and in her most Hyrcanian cruelties one glimpsed a depth of humanity that hardly engendered any serious degree of fear. Honest women, and even many a less honest one, have a sullen and disdainful manner that I find wholly unbearable. They always seem ready to ring the bell and have you thrown out by their lackeys; and, in truth, it seems to me that a man who takes the trouble to court a woman (which is often not as pleasant a task as one would like to believe) little deserves to be treated in that way. Dear Rosette does not behave so; and I assure you she profits by it; she is the only woman with whom I have been able to be myself, and am conceited enough as to say that I have never felt so well. My mind has revealed itself to her freely; and, by the skill and fervour of her replies, she has made me discover in myself far more than I believed myself to possess, more perhaps than I actually do. It is true that I have acted in a rather unpoetic manner, that being scarcely possible with her; it is not, however, that she does not have her lyrical side, despite what De C*** has said of her; but she is so full of life, force, and movement, she seems to be so at ease in the environment in which she moves, that one does not wish to leave it so as to ascend to the clouds. She fills life so agreeably, and renders it so amusing to herself and others, that dreaming could offer no more.
A wondrous thing! I have known her for almost two months, and have only been bored when I was absent from her. You will agree that it is the work of no mediocre woman to produce such an effect, for usually women have the opposite effect on me, and please me far more from a distance than near to.
Rosette has the finest character in the world; with men of course, for with women she is as wicked as the Devil; she is cheerful, lively, alert, ready for everything, quite original in her speech, and always has some charming joke to relate unexpectedly: she is a delightful companion, more a pretty comrade with whom one sleeps than a mistress; and, if I were a few years older, and owned to a few less romantic ideas, it would be all the same to me, and I might even consider myself the luckiest mortal alive. But... but... that particle never announces anything pleasant, yet the impish and restrictive little word is unfortunately the one in all human languages that is most used; but…I am an imbecile, an idiot, a real goose, whom nothing ever satisfies, and who is always looking for noon at two o’clock; and, instead of being completely happy, I am only half so; half is already a great deal in this world, and yet I find it insufficient still.
In the eyes of all, I have a mistress that many desire and envy me for, and whom none would disdain. My desire is therefore apparently fulfilled, and I no longer have the right to quarrel with fate. However, it does not seem to me that I have the mistress I require; I understand it to be so rationally, but I feel it not; and, if someone were to ask me unexpectedly if I possessed a mistress, I believe I would answer ‘no’. Yet possession of a woman who has beauty, youth, and wit constitutes what, in all times and all countries, has been called, and is called, possessing a mistress, and I do not think there is any other way of doing so. Yet it does not prevent my having the strangest doubts in that regard, and to such a degree, that, if several people agreed to maintain that I am not Rosette’s favoured lover, despite the palpable evidence to the contrary, I would end by believing them.
Please refrain from imagining, given what I say, that I am lacking in love for her, or that she displeases me in any way: on the contrary, I love her greatly, and find her to be what anyone would find: a pretty and piquant creature. I simply don’t feel I possess her, that’s all. And yet no woman has given me so much pleasure, and if ever I have understood voluptuousness, it is in her arms. A single one of her kisses, the most chaste caress of hers, makes me tremble to the soles of my feet, and makes all my blood flow back to my heart. Make of that what you may. The matter is, however, exactly as I relate. But the human heart is full of such absurdities; and, if it were necessary to reconcile all the contradictions it contains, one would have a deal of work to do.
Whence can it arise? I truly know not. I can see her all day, and even all night, if I wish. I caress her as often as I desire; I can have her naked or dressed, in the city or in the country. She is inexhaustibly accommodating, and enters perfectly into all my whims, however odd they may be. One evening, I had a fancy to take her in the middle of the drawing-room, the chandelier and candles being lit, the fire alive in the fireplace, the armchairs arranged in a circle as for a grand reception, and she in her ball gown with her bouquet and fan, her diamonds on her fingers and about her neck, feathers on her head, and in the most splendid costume possible, while I myself was disguised as a bear. She consented. When all was ready, the servants were most surprised to receive the order to close the doors and let no one enter; they seemed not to understand in the least, and exited with a dazed expression which roused in us a deal of laughter. They assuredly thought their mistress decidedly mad; but what they thought, or did not think, was of little importance to us.
That evening was the most comical of my life. Imagine how I must have looked, with my plumed hat in my paw, rings on all my claws, and a little sword with a silver hilt adorned with a sky-blue ribbon? I approached the lovely girl; and, after making her the most graceful bow, I sat down beside her, and besieged her in every way. The musky madrigals, the exaggerated gallantries I addressed to her, all the phrases appropriate to the occasion, took on a singular tone as they passed through my bear’s muzzle; for I had donned a superb painted cardboard mask that I was soon obliged to hurl beneath the table, so adorable was my goddess that evening, and so much did I wish to kiss her hand, and more than her hand. The pelt followed the head in a brief while; for, not being used to being a bear, I felt very stifled, more than was necessary. Her ballroom attire soon followed, as you may imagine; feathers fell like snow around my little beauty, her shoulders emerged from her sleeves, her breasts from her corset, her feet from her shoes, and her legs from her stockings: her necklace rolled about the floor, and I believe a fresher dress was never more pitilessly crumpled and rumpled; that dress was of silver gauze, its lining of white satin. Rosette displayed on this occasion a heroism quite beyond that of her sex, which gave me the highest opinion of her. She attended the sack of her toilet like a disinterested witness, not showing for a single instant the least regret for her dress and her lace; On the contrary, she was wild in her gaiety, and she herself helped to tear and break whatever would not untie or unfasten swiftly enough for my liking and hers. Do you not find this a fine thing to add to the historical record, to sit alongside the most brilliant actions of the heroes of antiquity? It is the greatest proof of love that a woman can give her lover to avoid saying: ‘Take care not to crease or stain it’, especially if her dress is new. A new dress is a greater means of secure defence on a husband’s behalf than is commonly believed. Rosette must adore me, or own to a philosophy superior to that of Epictetus the Stoic.
Be that as it may, I believe I repaid Rosette the price of her dress, and more, in a currency which, though not valid among tradesmen, is nonetheless esteemed and prized. Her heroism well deserved such a reward. Besides, as a generous woman, she granted me what I granted her. I experienced a mad pleasure, almost to the point of convulsion, such as I did not believe myself capable of feeling. Those resounding kisses mingled with bursts of laughter, those quivering caresses full of impatience, all that acrid and irritating voluptuousness, that pleasure incompletely tasted, because of my costume and the situation, but a hundred times more intense than if I had been unfettered, affected my nerves so much I had spasms from which I had some difficulty recovering. You cannot imagine the proud and tender air with which Rosette looked at me while seeking to revive me, and the joyful and anxious manner in which she busied herself about me: her face still radiant with the pleasure she felt at producing a similar effect on me, at the same time as her eyes, all wet with sweet tears, testified to the fear she had of seeing me taken ill, and the interest she took in my health. She never seemed to me so beautiful as at that moment. There was something so maternal and chaste in her look that I completely forgot the more than Anacreontic scene that had just taken place, and knelt before her, asking her permission to kiss her hand; which she granted me with singular gravity and dignity.
Certainly, this woman is not as depraved as De C*** claims, and as she has often appeared to me; she is only corrupt in mind, not in her heart.
I have cited this scene to you among twenty others: it seems to me that after it one could, without excessive conceit, believe oneself to be the woman’s lover. Well! That is what I cannot do. I had scarcely returned home when this thought seized me again and began to work on me as ever. I remembered everything that I had done and seen done, perfectly. The slightest of gestures and poses, all the smallest details, were there, quite clear in my memory; I recalled everything, down to the most minor inflections of voice, the most elusive nuances of voluptuousness: only it seemed to me that it was not to myself, but rather to another, that all these things had happened. I was unsure as to whether or not it was not a mere illusion, a phantasmagoria, a dream, something I had read somewhere, or even some tale I had composed for myself, as I have often done. I feared to be the dupe of my own credulity, the plaything of some mystification; and, in spite of the testimony offered by my weariness, and the material proofs that I had not slept at home, I would have believed, willingly, that I had retired at the usual hour, and slept till morning.
I am most unhappy that I lack moral certainty with regard to something of which I have physical proof. It is usually the reverse, and it is the fact that proves the idea. I seek to prove the fact by virtue of the idea; I cannot; and although the thing is quite singular, it is so. It depends on myself, up to a certain point, whether or not I have a mistress; but I cannot force myself to believe that I possess one, while yet possessing her. If I lack the necessary faith, even for something so self-evident, it is as impossible for me to believe in such a simple fact as it is for me to believe in the Trinity. Faith is not acquired; it is a pure gift, a special grace from heaven.
No one has ever desired to live the lives of others, or to assume another nature as greatly as I have; no one has ever succeeded less. Whatever I do, other men prove little more than phantoms to me, and I fail to register their existence; yet it is not the desire to know their lives, and participate in them, that I lack. It is a lack of attraction to, or real sympathy for, anything. The existence or non-existence of an object or a person fails to interest me enough for me to be affected by it in a tangible and convincing manner. The sight of a real man or woman leaves no stronger a trace on my soul than the fantastic vision seen in a dream: around me there stirs a pale world of shadows and semblances, false or true, which murmur dully, and in the midst of which I find myself as alone as can be, for none act on me for good or ill, and they seem to me to be of an entirely different nature to mine. If I speak to them and they answer me with something that contains more or less common sense, I am as surprised as if my dog or cat suddenly spoke, and joined in the conversation: the sound of people’s voices always astonishes me, and I could willingly believe them to be but fleeting appearances, of which I am the objective mirror. Inferior or superior, I am certainly not of their species. There are times when I recognise only the Lord above me, and others when I judge myself scarcely the equal of the wood-louse under its stone or the mollusc on its sandbank; but in whatever mental state I find myself, elevated or lowered, I have never been able to persuade myself that others are truly my equals. When someone calls me ‘sir’, or when speaking of me someone says: ‘This fellow, here’ it seems very odd to me. My very name seems to me a name floating in the air, which is not my true name. However quietly it may be pronounced and amidst the loudest cacophony, I turn around, suddenly, executing a convulsive, feverish, awkward movement for which I have never been able to fully account. Is it the fear of finding in this man, who knows my name and who is now distinguishable from the crowd, my antagonist, or my enemy?
It was especially when I lived with a woman that I felt most deeply how my nature inevitably rejected all association and alliance. I am like a drop of oil in a glass of water. Turn and stir it as much as you like, the oil will never mix with it; it will divide into a hundred thousand little globules which reunite and rise to the surface at the first sign of calm: a drop of oil, a glass of water, such is my story. Voluptuousness itself, that diamantine chain which binds all beings, that devouring fire which melts the rock and metal of the soul, and makes it dissolve in liquid tears, just as material fire, all-powerful as it is, melts iron and granite, has never been able to tame or soften me. However keen my senses, my soul, which is female, is an enemy to my body, and the unhappy couple, like many another couple, legal or illegal, live in a state of perpetual war. A woman’s arms, the finest things on earth, they say, are but weak ties where I am concerned, and I have never been further from my mistress than when she held me to her heart. I felt I was suffocating, that is all.
How often I have been angry with myself! How many efforts I have made not to be so! How I have exhorted myself to be tender, loving, passionate! How often I have grasped my soul by the hair, and dragged her to my lips in the midst of a kiss! Whatever I did, my soul always drew back, wiping her metaphorical lips as soon as I released her. What torture for my poor soul to witness my physical debauchery, and be seated, endlessly, at feasts where she is given not a thing to eat!
As regards Rosette, I resolved, once and for all, to determine whether I am or am not wholly unsociable, and whether I could take enough interest in the existence of another, to believe in them. I have pushed the experiment to the point of exhaustion, and have failed to resolve my doubts. With her, my pleasure is so keen that the soul often finds itself, if not moved, at least distracted, which somewhat impairs my accuracy of observation. Despite all, I have recognised that such pleasure fails to penetrate the skin, and that I experience only an epidermal enjoyment, in which the soul participates merely out of curiosity. I feel pleasure, because I am young and ardent; but this pleasure comes from me and not from the other. The cause is in myself, rather than in Rosette.
No matter how hard I tried, I could not escape myself for a moment. I am still what I was, that is to say, something filled with ennui, and exuding ennui, which displeases me greatly. I have not been able to rouse my brain to the idea of another, my soul to feelings for another, my body to the pain or pleasure the other knows. I am a prisoner within myself, and all flight is impossible: the prisoner desires to escape, the wall asks nothing better than to crumble, the door than to open and grant him passage; I know not what fatality holds each stone, implacably, in place, each bolt in its iron mounting; it is as impossible for me to admit someone to my house as it is for me to enter others’ houses myself; I can neither make nor receive visits, and I live in the saddest isolation amidst the crowd: my bed may not be widowed, but my heart ever is.
Ah! Not to be able to change oneself by a single particle, a single atom; not to be able to feel the blood of others flow in one’s veins; to see always with one’s own eyes, and neither better, nor further, nor otherwise; to hear sounds with the same ears, and experience but the one emotion; to touch with the same fingers; to perceive things that vary with the same invariable organ; to be condemned to the same timbre of voice, to the return of the same tones, the same phrases the same words, and not to be able to flee, to hide from oneself, to take refuge in some corner where one’s self cannot follow; to be forced always to guard oneself, to dine and sleep with oneself, to be the same man for twenty new women; to play, in the midst of the strangest situations, in the drama of our life, an obligatory character, whose role is known by heart; to think the same things, to have the same dreams: what torment, what tedium!
I have wished for the magic horn of a Tibetan lama, the hat of Fortunatus, the staff of Abaris, the ring of Gyges; I would have sold my soul to snatch a magic wand from the hand of some fey, and have never desired anything so much as to meet in the hills, like Tiresias the soothsayer, those serpents that change one’s sex; and I envy most, as regards the monstrous and bizarre gods of India, their perpetual avatars and their innumerable transformations.
I began by wanting to be some other man; then, reflecting that I could, by analogy, foresee more or less what I would feel, and so not experience the hoped-for surprise and change, my preference was to become a woman; this idea always struck me whenever I had a mistress who was not wholly ugly; for an ugly woman is like a man to me, and in moments of pleasure I would have gladly changed roles, for it betrays one’s impatience not to be aware of the effect one produces, and to judge the enjoyment of others only by one’s own. These thoughts and many others have often given me, at moments when it was quite out of place, a meditative and dreamy air, which has caused me to be accused, quite wrongly, of coldness and infidelity.
Rosette, who fortunately knows nothing of all this, believes me to be the most amorous man on earth; she mistakes impotent fury for passion, and lends herself as best she can to all the experimental whims that pass through my head.
I have done all I could to convince myself that I possess her: I have tried to plunge into her heart, but have always halted at the first step, at her skin, or her lips. Despite the intimacy of our bodily relations, I feel, deeply, that we have nothing at all in common. Never have ideas like mine spread their wings in that young and smiling head; never has that heart full of life and ardour, which swells a palpitating breast so firm and pure, beaten in unison with mine. My soul has never united with her soul. Cupid, the god with hawk’s wings, has failed to kiss Psyche on her lovely ivory brow. No! This woman is not my mistress.
If you knew all I have tried, seeking to force my soul to share the love my body experiences! With what fury I sank my mouth against her mouth, drenched my arms in her hair; how tightly I clasped her curved and supple waist. Like ancient Salmacis, the lover of young Hermaphroditus, I tried to merge her body with mine; I drank her breath and the warm tears that voluptuousness poured from the over-full chalices of her eyes. The more our bodies entwined, and the more intimate our embraces, the less I loved her. My soul, observing sadly, looked with an air of pity on this deplorable union to which she was not invited, or veiled her brow in disgust and wept silently under the hem of her mantle. Perhaps all this is because, I do not love Rosette, in truth, however worthy of being loved she might be, and however much I might want to.
To rid myself of the thought of myself, I haunted circles in which it was improbable that I would encounter myself, and tried, not being able to scatter my individual being to the four winds, to disorient my mind so that I would no longer recognise myself. I met with little success, and my devil of a self follows me obstinately; there is no way of ridding myself of it; I lack the recourse of making it say, as when faced with receiving other importunate people, that I am away from home, or have left for the country.
I took my mistress while bathing, and played Triton as best I could, the sea being a large marble tub. As for the Nereid, what she displayed accused the water, transparent as it was, of not being transparent enough for the exquisite beauty of the things it hid. I took her at night, by moonlight, in a gondola to the accompaniment of music, a thing common enough in Venice, but most unusual here; and in her carriage, galloping along, amidst leaps and jolts and the noise of the wheels, sometimes illuminated by the lanterns, sometimes plunged in deepest darkness, a situation not without a certain piquancy, which I recommend to you: yet I forget, you are a venerable patriarch, and would never yield to such refinements. I entered her house by the window, though the door-key was in my pocket; I had her come to me in broad daylight; and, finally, I compromised her in such a way that no one now (except myself, of course) doubts that she is my mistress.
Because of my inventiveness which, if I were older, would seem like the recourse of a jaded libertine, Rosette adores me, principally, and above all others. She sees in it the ardour of impatient love which nothing can contain, and which is ever the same despite the diversity of times and places. She sees in it the constantly renewed effect of her charms, and her triumphant beauty, and, in truth, I wish she were right, and it were not my fault, nor hers to be fair, that she is not.
The only fault I find with her is that I am but myself. If I were to tell her so, she would quickly reply that it is precisely my greatest merit, in her eyes; which would be a response more obliging than rational.
Once, at the start of our relationship, I thought I had reached my goal: for a moment I thought I had loved. I had loved, my friend! I was alive, in that moment alone, and, if it had been an hour, I would have become godlike. We were out for a ride, I, mounted on my dear Ferragus, she, on a snow-coloured mare with the look of a unicorn, so slender its feet and neck. We were in a great avenue of elms of prodigious height; the sun was setting, pale but warm, its rays filtering through the foliage; ultramarine patches gleamed here and there amidst the dappled clouds; great streaks of pale blue traced the edges of the horizon, and changed to the tenderest apple-green, where they met the orange glow of the sunset. The sky’s appearance was charming and singular; the breeze brought us a scent of wildflowers, that could not have been more ravishing. From time to time a song-bird flew in front of us, crossing our path. The Angelus rang softly, from the bell of some unseen village church, and the silvery sounds which reached us, attenuated by distance, possessed an infinite sweetness. Our mounts walked side by side at equal speed such that one did not outpace the other. My heart expanded; my soul overflowed my body. I had never been so happy. I said nothing, nor did Rosette, and yet we had never understood each other so well. We were so close to each other that my leg touched the flank of Rosette’s horse. I leant towards her, and put my arm round her waist; She made a like movement on her side, and threw her head back on my shoulder. Our mouths met. Oh, what a chaste and delicious kiss! Our horses were still walking freely, their loose bridles around their necks. I felt Rosette’s arm slacken, and her loins relax more and more. I myself was weakening, and close to fainting. Ah! I assure you that, at that moment, I hardly thought whether I was myself or another. We rode along like this to the end of the path, where the sound of footsteps made us suddenly resume our positions; some acquaintances, were there, also on horseback, who met and spoke with us. If I had possessed my pistols, I think I would certainly have shot them dead.
The Cascades at Tivoli, with a Storm Approaching (1824)
Abraham Teerlink (Dutch, 1776-1857)
Rijksmuseum
I looked at them with a dark and furious air, which must have seemed strange indeed. After all, I was wrong to be so angry with them, for they had unwittingly done me the service of interrupting my pleasure at the very moment when, by its very intensity, it was about to turn to pain or be ruined by its own violence. The science of halting in time is not granted the respect it is due. Sometimes, while lying with a woman, one puts one’s arm beneath her waist: it is at first a mounting pleasure to feel the warmth of her body, the soft and velvety flesh of her thighs, the polished ivory of her flanks, and to close one’s hand on her chest which swells and quivers. The lovely woman falls asleep in that charming and amorous position; the arch of her loins becomes less pronounced; her throat relaxes; her chest reflects the deeper and more regular breathing of sleep; her muscles relax, her face is lost in her hair. However, she presses against your arm more, you realise that she is a woman and not a sylph, but would not remove your arm for anything in the world, there are many reasons why: the first is that there is risk in waking a woman next to whom one is lying; one must be in a position to substitute for the delightful dream that she is doubtless experiencing an even more delightful reality; the second is that by rousing her, so as to remove your arm, you are implying that she is heavy, and bothering you, which is dishonest, or are giving her to understand that you are weak and tired, an extremely humiliating thing, which will discredit you infinitely in her mind; the third is that, as one has found pleasure in this position, one mistakenly believes that by maintaining it one will be able to experience more of the same. Your poor arm finds itself trapped beneath the mass which oppresses it, the blood stops circulating, the sinews tighten, and numbness grips it accompanied by the prick of its million needles: you are a kind of inferior Milo of Croton, caught in his tree-stump, and the mattress, and your lover’s back, accurately represent the two sides of that stump which sprang together. Dawn finally breaks, and delivers you from your martyrdom, and you leap from the rack with greater eagerness than a husband descending from the nuptial scaffold. Such is the history of many a passion, and that of every pleasure.
Nonetheless, despite the interruption caused by these acquaintances, or because of it, never have I felt such delight: I truly felt myself to be another. Rosette’s soul had plunged, entire, into my body. My soul had left me, and entered her heart, as her soul had entered mine. Doubtless, they had met in passing, during that long equestrian kiss, as Rosette has since called it (most annoyingly, by the way), and had twined and merged, as intimately as the souls of two mortal creatures can do on this grain of perishable mud. Angels must surely kiss in this way, and true paradise lie not in heaven, but rather on the lips of a loved one.
I waited in vain for another such moment, and prompted its return, but without success. We often went for rides in that wooded avenue, attended by fine sunsets; the trees were as leafy, the birds sang the same tunes, but we found the sunlight dull, the foliage yellowed: the birdsong seemed harsh and discordant, there was no longer harmony within us. We reined in our horses to a walk, and tried the same kiss. Alas! Our lips alone were joined, and it was but a ghost of the former one. The beautiful, sublime, divine, and only true kiss I had ever given and received had fled forever. Since that day, I have always, on returning from a ride through the woods, felt an inexpressible depth of sadness. Rosette, as cheerful and playful as she ever is, cannot escape the feeling either, and her reverie is betrayed by a delicately-creased little pout, which is at least a match for her smile.
Only the wine’s bouquet, and the bright glow of the candles, can recall me from my melancholy. We both drink like folk condemned to death, silently, beside each other, till we have reached the degree of inebriation we require; then we begin to laugh, and mock what we term our ‘sentimentality’ with all our hearts. We laugh, because we cannot cry. Ah! What could make a tear spring from the depths of my moisture-less eye?
Why did I attain so great a degree of pleasure that evening? It is difficult to say. Yet I was the same man, Rosette the same woman. It was not the first time she and I had ridden there. We had already viewed the sunset before, and that spectacle affected us no more than the sight of a painting that one admires, according as the colours seem more or less brilliant. There are plenty of avenues lined with elms and chestnut-trees in the world, and this was not the first we had ridden down; what, then, had led us to find such sovereign charm there? What had metamorphosed the dead leaves to topaz gems, the green leaves to emeralds; had gilded all the quivering motes of dust; had changed to pearls the drops of dew scattered over the lawn; and wrought such sweet harmony from the sounds of the usually discordant bell, and the chirping of I know not what fledgling birds? There must have been some penetrating form of poetry in the air, something our very horses seemed to feel.
Yet nothing in the world, however, could have been more pastoral, and commonplace: a few trees, a few clouds, five or six sprigs of wild thyme, a woman, and a shaft or two of sunlight, each like a golden chevron on a coat of arms. I felt, moreover, neither surprise nor astonishment. I recognised it all. I had never visited the place, but I remembered to perfection the shape of the leaves, the disposition of the clouds, that white dove that crossed the sky, flying in the same direction; that particular little silver bell, which I yet heard for the first time, had often tinkled in my ear, and its voice seemed to me the voice of a friend; I had, without ever having passed that way, travelled the path many times with a princess mounted on her unicorn; the most voluptuous of my dreams rode there every evening, and there my desires had exchanged kisses identical to that which Rosette and I exchanged. The kiss was nothing new to me; it was just as I had imagined it to be. It is perhaps the one time in my life I have not been disappointed, and reality has seemed to me as beautiful as the ideal. If I could but find a woman, a landscape, a work of architecture, something that responded to my innermost desire as perfectly as that moment corresponded to the moment I had dreamed of, I would have nothing to envy the gods, and I would very willingly renounce my place in paradise. But, in truth, I cannot believe a creature of flesh and blood could endure such penetrating pleasure for an hour; two kisses like that would consume an entire existence, and create an utter void in soul and body. Which is not a consideration that would stop me from repeating it, however; for, since I cannot prolong my life indefinitely, it is the same to me whether I live or die, and I would rather die of pleasure than of old age or ennui. But such a woman does not exist. And yet, she must; I am perhaps only separated from her by a thin wall. I may have rubbed shoulders with her yesterday or today.
What does Rosette lack that prevents her being that woman? She lacks my belief in her being so. What fatality is it that makes me forever take, as mistress, a woman I do not love? Her neck is polished enough to hang the most exquisitely crafted necklace from it; her fingers are slender enough to do honour to the finest and richest rings; a ruby would blush with pleasure if it could shine at the vermilion tip of her delicate ear; her waist would suit Venus’ girdle; but Amor alone knows how to tie his mother’s sash.
The merit Rosette possesses is her own, I have lent her nothing. I have not veiled her beauty with that perfect love which envelops the beloved; the veil of Isis is transparent compared to it. Only satiety can lift its corner.
I feel no love for Rosette; or at least the love I have for her, if I do possess any, bears no resemblance to the idea I had formed of love. Perhaps my idea is unjust. I dare not probe it. Notwithstanding that, she renders me completely insensible to the merit of other women, and I have desired no one else, in any consistent manner, since I possessed her. If she has reason to be jealous, it is of a phantom only, which can trouble her little, and yet the product of my imagination is her most formidable rival; something which, with all her subtlety, she may never realise.
If women only knew! How many infidelities the least fickle of lovers commits, however he adores his mistress! It is to be presumed that women repay the compliment many times over; that they do as we do, but say nothing. A mistress is an obligatory accessory who ordinarily vanishes beneath the flourishes and embroideries. Very often the kisses one grants her are not intended for her; it is the idea of some other woman that is embraced in her person, and she benefits more than once (if it can be called a benefit) from desire inspired by another. Ah! How many times, poor Rosette, you have served to embody my dream, and granted reality to your rival; how many were the infidelities to which you have been, involuntarily, the sole accomplice! What if you had known, at the moment when my arms clasped you so strongly, when my mouth was pressed most closely to yours, that your beauty and love had naught to do with it, that the thought of you was a thousand miles from me; what if you had been told that the lids of these eyes, veiled by amorous languor, were lowered so as not to see you, and so dispel the illusion you served only to complete, and that instead of being a mistress you were merely an instrument of voluptuousness, the means of my achieving, through self-deception, a desire impossible to realise!
O celestial creatures, beautiful, frail, diaphanous virgins, who lower eyes like periwinkles, and join your lily-white hands, on the golden ground of paintings of the old German masters; saints of the stained-glass windows; martyrs of the missals; who smile so sweetly amidst the scrolled arabesques, and who emerge so blonde and fresh from the bells of flowers! O you, beautiful courtesans, lying naked, tangled in your hair, and strewn with roses, before wide purple curtains, with your bracelets, and necklaces of rare pearls, your fans, and your mirrors to the shadows of which the sunset brings a glimpse of fire! Dark daughters of Titian, who so voluptuously display your undulating hips to us, your firm, hard thighs, your polished bellies, your supple, muscular loins! Ancient goddesses, white phantoms rising in the garden’s shade! You are all part of my seraglio; I have possessed each of you in turn. Saint Ursula, I have kissed your hands in kissing those beautiful hands of Rosette’s; I have toyed with the dark tresses of La Muranese (a Venetian courtesan, from the isle of Murano, who posed for Titian. See also Alfred de Musset’s poem ‘Portia’: III), and never has Rosette had so much trouble re-arranging her hair; virginal Diana, I have viewed you more often than Actaeon did, and yet have not been changed into a stag: it is I who took the place of your beautiful Endymion! How many rivals a woman fails to guard herself against, and on whom she can exact no revenge! And they are not always painted or sculpted!
Women, when your lover appears more tender than usual, and embraces you with extraordinary emotion; when he buries his head in your lap, and raises it to look at you with moist, unfocussed eyes; when pleasure only increases his desire, and he stifles your speech with his kisses, as if he feared to hear your voice, you may be certain that he scarcely knows you are there; that he has, at that moment, rendezvoused with a chimera that in you is rendered palpable, and whose part you play. Many a chambermaid has profited from the love inspired by a queen. Many a mere woman has profited from the love inspired by a goddess, vulgar reality serving as a base for the adored ideal. That is why poets commonly take little nobodies for mistresses. One can sleep with a woman for ten years without ever noticing her; such is the story of many a great genius whose ignoble or obscure relationships have astonished the world.
I have only been unfaithful to Rosette in that way. I have only betrayed her for paintings and statues, and she has been half-complicit in the betrayal. I have not the slightest material sin on my conscience with which to reproach myself. I am, in this respect, as white as the snowy Jungfrau, yet, without being in love with anyone, I long to be in love with someone. I am not seeking the opportunity, yet, equally, would not be sorry if it presented itself; if it appeared, I would fail to take advantage of it perhaps, for I possess the deep conviction that all would be the same with another woman, and I prefer to have it be so with Rosette than anyone else; for, marriage being out of the question, at least a pretty companion remains, full of wit, and most agreeably free of moral constraint; and that consideration is not one of the least which curbs my restlessness, since, in losing the mistress, I would be sorry to lose the friend.
Chapter 4: D’Albert to Silvio
Do you know, for almost five months now — yes, five whole months, equalling five eternities — I have been Madame Rosette’s Céladon (see Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral novel ‘L’Astrée’, 1607-27) completely? It is the finest thing. I would never have believed myself capable of such constancy, she neither, I wager. We are in truth a pair of clipped pigeons, for only turtledoves display such tenderness. Have we not cooed, and pecked at each other! What ivy-like twining! What a life as one! Nothing in the world could prove more touching, and our poor little hearts could have been set on a plinth, threaded on the same needle, beside an eternal windblown flame.
Five months, alone together so to speak, for we saw each other every day, and almost every night — the door forever closed to others; isn’t the thought of it enough to make one’s skin crawl! Well! This must be said in praise of the incomparable Rosette, I was not too bored, and that time we had together will doubtless be recalled as the period of my life spent most pleasantly. I cannot believe it possible to occupy the time of a man who lacks all passion in a more sustained and amusing manner, and Lord knows how terrible the idleness is that stems from an empty heart! You have no idea of that woman’s resources. They spring from her mind, and then from her heart, for she treats me with adoration. With what art she profits from the slightest spark, and knows how to kindle a fire! How skillfully she capitalises on the slightest tremor of one’s spirit! How readily she can turn one’s languor into a tender reverie! And by how many devious paths does she draw back to herself the spirit retreating from her! It is wondrous! And I admire her as one of the greatest living geniuses.
I could arrive at her house, sullen, in a bad mood, and seeking a quarrel; I know not how the witch managed it, but after a few minutes she had obliged me to speak in a gallant manner, though I had not the slightest desire to do so, to kiss her hands, and to laugh whole-heartedly, despite my dreadful anger. Can you imagine such tyranny? Yet, however clever she proves, our tête-à-tête could not last for ever, and in this last fortnight, I happened quite often to open one of the books on her table, something she had not seen me do before, and to read a few lines when the conversation faltered. Rosette noted this, and was filled with terror, an emotion which she had difficulty in concealing, and she had all the books removed from her study in consequence. I confess I regret their absence, though I dare not request them again. The other day — a frightening symptom — a visitor arrived while we were together, and, instead of waxing furious as I had at first, I felt a flicker of joy. I was almost kind: I maintained the conversation with him, which Rosette was trying to put an end to so as to oblige the gentleman to depart, and after he had left, I claimed he showed no lack of wit, and that I had found his company quite pleasant. Rosette reminded me that only two months ago I had found him utterly stupid, the most annoying fool on earth, to which I had no answer, for in truth I had said exactly that; and yet I was right, despite the apparent contradiction: for on the first occasion he had disturbed our charming tête-à-tête, but on the second he had interrupted a tired and languid conversation (on my side at least), and spared me, for that day, a scene of tenderness that was exhausting to maintain.
There we are; the situation is serious, especially when one of the two is still enamoured and desperately clings to the remnants of the other’s love. I am greatly perplexed. Though I am not enamoured of Rosette, I have a very great affection for her, and would not wish to do anything that would cause her pain. I would wish her to believe, for as long as possible, that I do indeed love her.
In gratitude for all these hours to which she has granted wings, in gratitude for the love she has been pleased to show me, I will act so. It will deceive her; but is not a pleasant deception better than a distressing truth? And I will never have the heart to tell her that I love her not. The idle shadow of love on which she feeds seems so adorable, so dear to her, that she embraces the pale spectre with such intoxication and effusiveness I dare not cause it to vanish; however, I am afraid she will realize, in the end, that it is, after all, only a phantom. This morning, we carried on a conversation, which I will report in dramatic form, for greater accuracy; one which made me fear I will not be able to maintain the liaison much longer.
The scene is that of Rosette’s bed. A shaft of sunlight penetrates the curtains: it is ten o’clock. Rosette has one arm beneath my neck, and refrains from stirring for fear of waking me. From time to time, she raises herself a little on her elbow, and leans her face over mine, holding her breath. I see all this through the mesh of my eyelashes, for I have not slept for the last hour. Rosette’s nightgown has Mechlin lace at the neck which is all torn: the night has been stormy; her hair escapes confusedly from her little cap. She is as pretty as a woman can be whom one does not love, and beside whom one is lying.
Rosette (finding I am no longer asleep). — ‘Oh, you cheat!’
Myself (yawning). — ‘Ahhhhh!’
Rosette. — ‘Don’t yawn like that, or I won’t kiss you for a week.’
Myself. — ‘Pffff!’
Rosette. — ‘It seems, sir, that you prefer me not to kiss you?’
Myself. — ‘Yes, indeed.’
Rosette. — ‘How casual you are! Fine; count on me not touching your lips for a week. Today is Tuesday: so, till next Tuesday.’
Myself. — ‘Bah!’
Rosette. — ‘Bah?’
Myself. — ‘Yes! Bah!’ Kiss me before this evening, or I’ll die.’
Rosette. — ‘You’ll die! What conceit! I’ve spoiled you, sir.’
Myself. — ‘I’ll live then. I’m not conceited, and you’ve not spoiled me; on the contrary. Firstly, the suppression of that ‘sir’ is requested; I know you well enough for you to call me by my name, and address me informally.’
Rosette. — ‘I’ve spoiled you, D’Albert!’
Myself. — ‘Good. Now bring your mouth closer.’
Rosette. — ‘No, not till next Tuesday.’
Myself. — ‘Come, now! Are we going to caress each other with the calendar in our hands? We are far too young for that. Here; your mouth, my dear, or I’ll get a stiff neck.’
Rosette. — ‘No.’
Myself. — ‘Ah! You want to be taken by force, my darling! You may be, though perhaps you’ve never experienced it before.’
Rosette. — ‘Impertinent!’
Myself. — ‘Note, my darling, that I have shown you the courtesy of a ‘perhaps’; which is most honest of me. But we stray from the subject. Show me your face. Let me see: what is this, my favourite Sultana? What a sullen expression is there! I like to kiss a smile, not a pout.’
Rosette (bending down to kiss me). — ‘Why should I smile? You speak so harshly!’
Myself. — ‘I didn’t intend to. Why do you think I do?’
Rosette. — ‘I don’t know, you tell me.’
Myself. — ‘You mistake harmless pleasantries for harshness.’
Rosette. — ‘Harmless! You call them harmless? Everything may harm love. I’d rather you beat me than laugh at me as you.’
Myself. — ‘So, you’d rather see me cry?’
Rosette. — ‘You always run from one extreme to the other. I’m not asking you to cry, simply to speak rationally and leave off that mocking tone; it suits you ill.’
Myself. — ‘It’s impossible for me to speak rationally, and not mock; so, I’ll beat you instead, if that’s what you prefer.’
Rosette. — ‘Do, then.’
Myself (patting her shoulders gently). — ‘I’d rather cut off my own head than mar your adorable body, and bruise the whiteness of that charming back. My goddess, however much pleasure you may take in being beaten, in truth, I cannot.’
Rosette. — ‘You don’t love me anymore.’
Myself. — ‘That doesn’t follow at all; it’s as logical as saying: it’s raining, don’t hand me my umbrella, or: it’s cold, open the window wide.’
Rosette. — ‘You don’t love me; you never have.’
Myself. — ‘Ah! The matter grows complicated: you no longer love me, you never have. That’s rather contradictory: how can I cease doing something I never began? You see, my queen, you haven’t a clue what you’re saying; you’re being utterly absurd.’
Rosette. — ‘I longed to be loved by you so much, I chose to delude myself. One easily believes what one wants is true; but now I see I was clearly mistaken. You deceived yourself; you had a taste for loving, a desire for passion. It happens every day. I can’t blame you: it wasn’t your fault you weren’t in love; it’s my lack of charm I must blame. I should have been lovelier, more playful, more coquettish; I should have tried to ascend to your level, my poet, instead of trying to make you descend to mine: I was afraid of losing you in the clouds, and I feared your mind would steal your heart from me. I imprisoned you with love, and thought, by giving myself to you entirely, that you yet would feel something …’
Myself. — ‘Rosette, lean back a little; your thigh is burning me, you’re a scorching coal.’
Rosette. — ‘If I’m bothering you, I’ll quit the bed. Oh! Heart of stone; drops of water pierce rock, but my tears can’t penetrate you. (She weeps.)
Myself. — ‘If you weep like that, you’ll definitely turn our bed to a bath. What am I saying, a bath? An ocean. Can you swim, Rosette?’
Rosette. — ‘Scoundrel!’
Myself. — ‘Come now, I, a villain! You flatter me, Rosette, I have not deserved that honour: I’m a good-natured member of the bourgeoisie, alas, and I’ve never committed the smallest crime; I’ve done one foolish thing perhaps, which is to have loved you madly: that’s all. Would you have me repent at all costs? I’ve loved you, and I love you, as much as I’m able. Since I’ve been your lover, I’ve always walked in your shadow: I’ve spent all my time with you, my days, my nights. I’ve not uttered fine sentences with you, because I only like to write them down; but I’ve given you a thousand proofs of my tenderness. And of the most perfect fidelity; that goes without saying; and then, I’ve lost several pounds since you’ve been my mistress. What more do you want? Here I am, in your bed; I was here yesterday, I’ll be here tomorrow. Is that how one behaves with people one cannot love? I do all that you want. Say go, and I’ll go; stay and I’ll stay; I’m the most admirable lover in the world, it seems to me.’
Rosette. — ‘That is precisely what I complain of — the most perfect lover in the world, in fact.’
Myself. — ‘What have you to reproach me for?’
Rosette. — ‘Nothing, yet I’d rather have something to complain of.’
Myself. — ‘Here’s a strange quarrel, indeed.’
Rosette. — ‘The truth is much worse. You don’t love me. I can’t do a thing about it, nor can you. What could we do? Certainly, I’d prefer to forgive you for some fault or other. I’d scold you; you’d apologise as best you could, and we’d make up.’
Myself. — ‘The benefit would be all yours. The greater the crime, the greater the reparation.’
Rosette. — ‘You know very well, sir, t I am not yet reduced to using that resource, even if I wished to right now, even though you do not love me, and we quarrel...’
Myself. — ‘Yes, I agree it’s your clemency that prevails... Please me, a little; that would be better than endless syllogising.’
Rosette. — ‘Ah, you’d like to cut short a conversation that’s embarrassing you; but, my fine friend, we will content ourselves with talking, if you please.’
Myself. — ‘That’s a cheap trick. I assure you. You’re wrong; you’re ravishingly pretty, and I do have feelings for you...’
Rosette. — ‘Which you’ll only speak of another time.’
Myself. — ‘Darling, what a little Hyrcanian tigress you are today, a creature of unparalleled cruelty! Have you a craving to become a Vestal Virgin, an original whim, to be sure?’
Rosette. — ‘Why not? There have been stranger ones; but I’ll indeed become a Vestal Virgin where you’re concerned. Know, sir, I only give myself to people who love me, or by whom I believe I’m loved. You are neither of those two cases. Allow me to rise.’
Myself. — ‘If you do, then I will too. You’ll have gained the trouble of retiring again: that’s all’.
Rosette. — ‘Leave me, sir!’
Myself. — ‘Certainly not!’
Rosette (struggling). — ‘Oh! Let me go!’
Myself. — ‘I dare assure you, madam, I shall not’.
Rosette (finding she is the weaker). — ‘Well! I’ll stay. You’re holding my arm too tight! What do you want from me?’
Myself. — ‘I think you know. I dare not say what I’ll do; I respect basic decency far too much.’
Rosette (unable to defend herself). — ‘On condition you’ll love me deeply... I surrender…’
Myself. — ‘It’s a little late to capitulate, when the enemy’s already within.’
Rosette (throwing her arms around my neck, half swooning) … unconditionally!... I trust in your generosity.’
Myself. — ‘That’s good.’
Here, my dear friend, I think it would not be out of place to set a line of dots, since the rest of this dialogue could hardly be translated except by onomatopoeia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Since this scene began, the shaft of sunlight, has had time to make its way around the room. A sweet and penetrating scent of lime-blossom enters from the garden. The weather is the most beautiful imaginable; the sky is as blue as an Englishwoman’s eyes. We rise, and, after having breakfasted with great appetite, take a long walk in the countryside. The transparency of the air, the splendour of the countryside, and the sight of joyful nature infuse my soul with enough sentiment and tenderness for Rosette to agree that, after all, I possess a heart of some kind, just like everyone else.
Have you noticed how woodland shade, the fountains’ murmur, birdsong, smiling perspectives, the scent of the foliage and the flowers, all the descriptive trappings of eclogue we have agreed to ridicule, nevertheless exercise over us, however depraved we may be, an occult power which it is impossible to resist? I will confide, under the seal of greatest secrecy, that I surprised in myself, quite recently, a most provincial feeling of tenderness towards the nightingale which was pouring out its song. It was in the garden at ***; the sky, though completely dark, possessed a clarity almost equal to that of the finest day; it was so deep and transparent that my gaze easily penetrated the heavens. It seemed to me that I saw the last folds of angels’ robes floating on the white sinuosities of the Milky Way. The moon was up, though a large tree hid it entirely, whose black foliage was riddled with a million little luminous holes, and to which were attached more bits of glitter than a marquise’s fan ever bore. A silence full of sounds, and stifled sighs cloaked the garden (a touch of pathos, but that is not my fault). Though I saw nothing but the bluish light of the moon, I seemed to be surrounded by a population of adored but unnamed phantoms, and though no one else occupied the terrace but myself, I felt I was not alone. I ceased to think, I dreamed no dream, I simply merged with the natural world about me. I felt myself shivering with the leaves, shimmering with the water, shining with the moonlight, blossoming with the flowers; I was, myself, no more than tree, water, nocturnal beauty. I was all of those things, and I think it impossible to be more absent from oneself than I, at that moment. As if something extraordinary was occurring, the leaves suddenly ceased to tremble on the branch, the fountain’s water-drops remained suspended in the air and ceased to fall. The silvery threads, which the moon shed, seemed suspended in the air: my heart alone beat on, with a sonority that seemed to fill the vastness of space. My heart missed a beat, and such a silence fell that one might have heard the grass growing, or caught a word whispered a hundred miles away. Then the nightingale, which had, probably, awaited that very moment to begin its song, uttered a note so high-pitched, so resonant, from its little throat that I heard it in my chest as well as my ears. It pierced the silent, crystalline sky, creating an atmosphere in which the notes that followed fluttered harmoniously, beating their wings. I understood what the bird was singing, perfectly, as if I possessed the secret of its language. It was the tale of a love I had never experienced. Never was a story truer or more exact. It omitted not the smallest detail, the most imperceptible nuance. It spoke what I had not been able to tell myself, it explained all I had lacked the power to understand; it gave voice to my reveries, and allowed the phantom, mute till then, a response. I knew I was loved, and those languid flourishes assured me I would find happiness and soon. It seemed to me that I saw, in a ray of moonlight, amidst the trilling of that song, beneath the rain of notes pouring over me, the white arms of my beloved. She appeared, slowly, perfumed like the heart of a many-petalled rose. I will not try to describe her beauty. There are things no words can express. How to say the unsayable? How to paint that which has neither form nor colour? How to record a voice without words or timbre?
Dame (Alice) Ellen Terry (‘Choosing’) (1860s)
George Frederic Watts (English, 1817 - 1904)
Artvee
Never have I felt so much love in my heart; I could have pressed all Nature to my breast, I could have clasped the void in my arms as if I embraced a virginal waist; I could have kissed the air that flowed over my lips; I could have swum in the perfume that issued from my radiant body. Ah! If only Rosette had been there! What adorable gibberish I would have spouted! But women never know how to arrive at the perfect moment. The nightingale ceased to sing; the moon, which could stay no longer, drew a veil of cloud over her eyes, and I departed the garden; for the night chill was beginning to grip me.
Feeling the cold, I naturally thought I would be warmer in Rosette’s bed than my own, sleeping beside her. I entered using my master-key, as everyone there was asleep, Rosette as well, and had the satisfaction of seeing that an uncut volume of my latest poems lay next to her on the bed. Her two arms stretched above her head, her mouth smiling, half-open, and with one leg extended, the other slightly bent, her abandoned pose was yet full of grace; she looked so well thus that I felt a mortal regret at not being more deeply in love with her.
Gazing at her, I felt stupid as an ostrich. I possessed what I had desired for so long, a mistress as much my own as my horse or my sword; a mistress young, pretty, amorous, and witty, without the encumbrance of a highly-principled mother, or a much-decorated father, a surly aunt, or a brother skilful with the blade, but possessing the ineffable charm of having owned to a husband now duly nailed and sealed in a fine oak, lead-lined coffin, and covered with a large cut-stone block, a thing not to be disdained; since it is, after all, scarcely diverting to be caught in the midst of a voluptuous act, and forced to complete one’s performance on the pavement, having described, in one’s fall, a greater or lesser arc according to the floor one was on; a mistress as free as the mountain air, wealthy enough to command the most exquisite forms of refinement and elegance, and lacking, moreover, a single moralistic thought; never speaking to you of her virtue while attempting a new posture, nor of her reputation any more than if she had never possessed one; intimate with no other women, and despising them all almost as much as if she were a man; thinking little of Platonism, and not hiding the fact, and always entering whole-heartedly into the game; a woman who, if she had been placed in another sphere, would undoubtedly have been the most admirable of courtesans in all the world, such as to eclipse the glory of an Aspasia (Pericles’ mistress) or an Imperia Cognati (a famous early sixteenth-century courtesan, in Rome)!
Now, this accomplished woman was mine. I did with her as I wished; I had a key to her room and her chest of drawers; I unsealed her letters; I had erased her own name, and endowed her with another. She was my ‘thing’, my property. Her youth, her beauty, her love, belonged to me. I used and abused them. If the fancy took me, I obliged her to sleep all day and rise at night, and she obeyed, simply, without it seeming a sacrifice, and without taking on the resigned air of a victim. She was attentive, caressing, and (a monstrous thing), wholly faithful. All this is to say, that if, six months ago, when I was lamenting not having a mistress, someone had granted me a glimpse, even distantly, of such happiness, I would have been mad with joy, and would have sent my hat flying to the sky in delight. Well! Now it is won, my happiness leaves me cold; I barely feel it, I fail to feel it, and the situation in which I find myself means so little to me I often doubt whether I have changed my state at all. If I were to leave Rosette, my inner conviction is that, after a month, perhaps less, I would have forgotten her so thoroughly and completely I would no longer recall if I had known her or not! Would she feel the same on her part? — I think not.
Reflecting on all this, and with a sort of feeling of repentance, I placed the most chaste and melancholy kiss a young man has ever granted a young woman at the stroke of midnight, on the forehead of my beautiful sleeper. She gave a little movement; the smile on her mouth became a little more pronounced, but she remained asleep. I undressed slowly, and, slipping beneath the covers, stretched myself out beside her like a snake. The coolness of my body startled her; she opened her eyes and, without speaking, pressed her mouth to mine, and twined herself so tightly around me that I was warmed in less than no time. All the evening’s lyricism turned to prose, but a poetic prose at least. That night was one of the finest, sleepless nights I have spent: I cannot hope for the like again.
We still share pleasant moments, but they have to be brought about, and to unfold, due to some external circumstance of that sort, while before I never needed to be inspired by moon-gazing or hearing the nightingale sing to win all the pleasure one can when one is not truly in love. There are no broken threads in the weft yet, but there are knots here and there, and the warp is not nearly so smooth.
Rosette, who is still in love, does what she can to ward off these irritations. Unfortunately, there are two things in the world that are impossible to control: love and ennui. For my part, I make superhuman efforts to overcome the drowsiness that overcomes me in spite of myself, and, like those provincials who fall asleep at ten o’clock in city salons, I open my eyes as wide as possible, and raise my eyelids with my fingertips! Nothing works, and I descend into a marital torpor that could not be more unpleasant. The dear girl, finding herself face to face with my rural state, carted me off to the countryside yesterday.
It may not be out of place for me to give you a short description of the aforementioned countryside, which is quite pretty; it would relieve us a little of all this grey metaphysics, and besides, a background is necessary on which to place figures, and figures lack prominence set against the void, or that vague brown tint with which painters fill the field of their canvasses.
The approach to our destination was most picturesque. We arrived, via a wide road lined with ancient trees, at a starlike intersection whose centre was marked by a stone obelisk surmounted by a gilded copper ball: five tracks run from the points of the star. Our road descended suddenly, and plunged into a narrow valley, the bottom of which was occupied by a small river spanned by a bridge with a single arch, then rapidly climbed the opposite slope, on which the village is situated, whose slate bell-tower can be seen rising between thatched roofs and the rounded tops of apple trees. The horizon is not very open, being bounded, on both sides, by the crest of the ridge but it is pleasant, and restful on the eye. Next to the bridge, are a mill, and a building in red sandstone in the form of a tower. Endless barking, and a few pointers and young basset-hounds, their legs outspread warming themselves in the sun before the door, inform you that this is the gamekeeper’s lodge, if the buzzards and weasels nailed to the shutters have failed to resolve your uncertainty. Here begins an avenue of rowan-trees whose scarlet fruits attract flocks of birds; as no one passes that way often, there is merely a white strip in the centre, the rest being covered with short, fine moss, while, in the double rut traced by the wheels of the carriages, small green frogs like lumps of chrysoprase hop about and croak. After walking awhile, one finds oneself in front of an iron gate which has been gilded and painted, and whose two halves are wrought with artichoke-leaf decorations and display spiked frames. The track then heads towards the château, which is as yet invisible, buried in greenery like a bird’s nest, without hurrying you along too swiftly however, as it often winds about to visit a stream or a fountain, an elegant kiosk or a fine viewpoint, crossing and recrossing the river on rustic or Chinese bridges. The unevenness of the terrain, and the presence of dams built to feed a mill, means that in several places the river drops four or five feet, and nothing is more pleasant than to listen to these waterfalls murmuring beside you as you go, most often unseen, since the willows and elderberry trees which line the bank form an almost impenetrable curtain. Yet all this section of the park is, in a way, only the antechamber to the other part: a wide road which transects the property unfortunately cuts it in two, a disadvantage which has been remedied in a most ingenious way. Two high crenellated walls, filled with barbicans and loopholes in imitation of a ruined fortress, rise on either side of the road; and from a tower, on the château side, to which a gigantic covering of ivy clings, hangs a real drawbridge, lowered every morning, on iron chains. We passed through a beautiful ogival arch to the interior courtyard of the keep, and from there into a second enclosure, where the trees, which have not been trimmed for more than a century, are of extraordinary height, their gnarled trunks swaddled with parasitic plants, and are the most beautiful and singular I have ever seen. Some have foliage only at the crown, and end in large umbrellas while others taper to plumes: yet others, on the contrary, have near their trunk a large tuft from which the stripped bole rises towards the sky like a second tree planted on the first; they look like the foreground of a landscape painting, or the wings of a theatre decoration, so curiously deformed are they; ivies, which stretch from one to the other, and embrace them to the point of suffocation, mingle their dark leaves with the green of the trees, and seem to form their shadows. Nothing in the world is more picturesque. The river widens at this point to form a small lake, and its shallowness allows you to distinguish, through translucent water, the lovely aquatic plants which carpet its bed. There are water-lilies and lotuses floating nonchalantly in the pure crystal among the reflections of clouds, and weeping willows that lean from the bank. The château is located on the far side of the river, and a little boat painted apple-green and bright red saves you from making a rather long detour seeking a bridge. The château consists of an assemblage of buildings, constructed at different times, with unequal gables and a host of small pinnacles. The main pavilion, constructed of brick with stone corners, is of a rustic order, covered with bossages and vermiculation. A second pavilion is completely modern, with a flat Italianate roof, a tiled balustrade with stone vases, and a tent-shaped canopy of ticking: the windows are of different sizes, and fail to correspond; they are of all kinds: there are even trefoils and ogives, for the chapel is Gothic. Certain portions are latticed, like Chinese houses, with screens painted in various colours, over which honeysuckle, jasmine, nasturtiums and Virginia creeper climb, their twigs entering familiarly into the rooms, and seeming to reach out their hands to you in welcome,
Despite this lack of regularity, or rather because of it, the appearance of the whole is charming: at least, there is always more to see, and plenty to choose from, and one is forever finding some feature one had not noticed. This dwelling, of which I had not known previously, since it is some fifty miles away, pleased me at first, and I was grateful to Rosette for the excellent idea of choosing such a nest for our amours.
We arrived at nightfall; and, since we were tired, and after having supped with a great appetite, we had nothing more urgent to do than to seek our separate beds, intending to sleep undisturbed.
I was lost in a rose-coloured dream, full of birds, flowers, and perfumes, when I felt a warm breath on my forehead, and a kiss descending there with fluttering wings. The touch of sweet lips, and a soft, moist sensation made me judge myself awake. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was Rosette’s fresh, white neck bowed over the bed, as she kissed me. I threw my arms round her waist, and returned her kiss more lovingly than I had for a long time.
She went to draw the curtain, and open the window, then returned to sit on the edge of the bed, holding my hand between hers, and toying with my rings. Her dress was of the most coquettish simplicity. She was free of corset, and petticoat, and had absolutely nothing on but a large cambric peignoir, milk-white in colour, worn quite loose, and densely pleated; her hair was fastened, on top of her head, with a small white rose of the kind whose leaflets only have three or four leaves; her ivory feet were clad in tapestry slippers ,in bright and variegated colours, as neat as possible though still too large, and backless, like those of young women in Rome. I regretted, seeing her so, being her lover already, and not about to become one.
The dream that occupied my brain, when she came to wake me so pleasantly, was not so distant from reality. For my room overlooked the little lake I described. Jasmine framed the window, its stars like a silver shower falling to the parquet floor: the urns of large alien flowers swung beneath my balcony as if to drown me in incense; a sweet, vague odour, composed of a thousand different perfumes, penetrated to my bed, from where I could see the water shimmering and trembling in thousands of glittering points; the birds piped and chattered, chirped and whistled, making a harmonious but confused noise like the hum of a festival. Opposite, on a hill slope lit by the sun, spread a golden green lawn, over which some large oxen, scattered here and there, grazed under the guidance of a little boy. High above and further away, one could see immense patches of woodland of a darker green, from which rose, in spirals, bluish smoke from the charcoal-burners’ pits.
All in this scene was calm, fresh and smiling, and wherever I looked, I saw nothing but youth and beauty. My room was hung with Persian carpets, mats covered the floor, on which sat blue Japanese pots with rounded bellies and tapering necks, full of rare flowers. Flowers were also artistically arranged on all the shelves and above the fireplace of Turkish marble; the door panels represented scenes of a rural or pastoral nature in bright colours and of charming design, and there were sofas and divans in every corner. Here too was the lovely woman, all in white, whose form delicately pressed against her translucent dress where it touched: one could imagine nothing more sweetly designed to please the spirit, as well as the eyes.
Thus, my idle and satisfied gaze passed, with equal pleasure, from a magnificent pot painted with dragons and mandarins to Rosette’s slippers, and from there to the angle of her shoulder which gleamed beneath the cambric; fixed itself next, on the trembling stars of jasmine, the blonde leaves of the weeping-willows on the shore, then crossed the water and scanned the hillside, and returned to the room to attach itself to the rose-coloured bows of some shepherdess’s full corset.
Through the shreds of foliage, the sky opened its thousands of blue eyes; the water gurgled gently, and I, I let myself be carried away by joy, plunged in quiet ecstasy and unspeaking, my hand always pressed between Rosette’s two little hands.
No matter what one thinks, happiness is pink and white; it can hardly be represented in any other manner. Soft colours belong to it by right. It has on its palette, otherwise, only the green of water, the blue of the sky, and the yellow of straw: its paintings are all daylight, like those of the Chinese masters. Flowers, gentle light, sweet perfumes, and soft silky skin touching yours, a veiled harmony from who knows where; with all that one is perfectly happy; and one can be happy in no other way. I myself, who abhor the commonplace, who dream only of strange adventures, strong passions, delirious ecstasies, strange and difficult situations, I must find happiness thus, and whatever I do can find no other way to achieve it.
Please believe none of these thoughts occupied my mind at the time; it was after the fact, and while writing to you, that they came to me; at the time, I was only occupied with enjoying myself, the only worthwhile occupation of a rational man.
I shall not describe the life we lead here; it is easy to imagine. Walks in the depths of the woods, violets and strawberries, kisses and little blue flowers, picnics on the grass, all books and reading forgotten beneath the trees; — parties on the water, with a trailing scarf or a white hand dipping in the current, drawn-out songs and drawn-out laughter echoing along the shore; the most Arcadian life imaginable!
Rosette smothers me with attentive caresses; cooing more than a dove in the month of May, she hangs about me, and her body folds itself about me; she seeks to ensure that I have no other air to breathe than her breath, and no other horizon than her eyes; her blockade is strict, she lets nothing enter or leave without her permission; she has built a guardhouse next to my heart, from which she keeps watch night and day. She utters delightful things; she writes me most gallant madrigals; she sits by my knee and behaves exactly like a humble slave before her lord and master: which suits me well enough, for I like such submissive ways and am inclined towards Oriental despotism. She does not the smallest thing without taking my advice, and seems to have completely renounced her own wishes and will; she seeks to divine my thoughts and anticipate them; she wearies me with her wit, tenderness, and complaisance; she is so perfect one wishes to hurl her from the window. How the Devil can I break with such an adorable woman without seeming to be a monster? It would be enough to discredit me forever.
Oh! How I wish to find fault with her, to prove her in the wrong! How impatiently I await the opportunity for an argument! But there is no danger of the little rogue providing one! When I speak to her abruptly and harshly, so as to start one, she answers me in so gentle a tone, so silvery a voice, with such moist eyes, and so sad and loving an air, that I seem to myself a tiger, or at least a crocodile, and, though furious, am forced to ask her forgiveness.
She is literally killing me with love; she torments me, and every day tightens the net in which I am caught. She will force me to tell her I hate her, that she bores me to death, and, if she will not leave me alone, to lash her face with my whip. Heavens! She may succeed, and, if she continues behaving so amiably, Devil take me, it will not be too long before she does.
Despite appearances, Rosette is sated with me as I with her; but, as she has committed stupendous follies for me, she seeks not to incur, in the eyes of the company of honest and sensitive women, the fault of having caused a rupture. Every great passion pretends to be eternal, and it is useful to command the benefit of such pretence without being disadvantaged. Rosette reasons thus: ‘Here is a young man who has only the remnants of feeling towards me, but, being rather good-natured and naive, he dares not show it openly, and knows not how to bring the affair to an end; it is obvious he finds me boring, but he would sooner die of pain, than take it upon himself to leave me. As is the poet’s way, his head is filled with beautiful phrases regarding love and passion, and he feels obliged, in conscience, to be a Tristan or an Amadis. Now, as nothing in the world is more unbearable than the caresses of a person you have fallen out of love with (and to love a woman no longer is to hate her violently), I shall lavish the like on him, in such a way as to cause him indigestion, and force him, whatever happens, to send me to the Devil, or love me again as he did on the first day, a thing which he will studiously avoid.
Nothing could be better. Will it not be charming to play Ariadne, abandoned on her isle? People take pity on you, they admire you, they lack a sufficient supply of imprecations to heap on the infamous person who has been so monstrous as to abandon so adorable a creature; one assumes a resigned and sorrowful air, one places one’s hand on one’s chin, and props one’s elbow on one’s knee, so as to highlight the pretty blue veins in one’s wrist. One does one’s hair as if in mourning and dresses, for a while, in darker colours. One avoids pronouncing the name of the ungrateful person, but may make indirect allusions to it, while uttering admirably-modulated little sighs.
A woman so good, so beautiful, so passionate, who has made such endless sacrifices, who cannot be reproached for the slightest thing, a chosen vessel, a pearl of love, a spotless mirror, a shower of milk, a white rose, an ideal essence to perfume a life; a woman whom a man should worship on his knees, and who should be cut into little pieces after her death, so as to fashion relics: to quit her, iniquitously, fraudulently, villainously! Why, a Corsair could do no worse! Deal her the death blow, for she will surely die of it! A lover would have to have a stone in his chest, instead of a heart, to behave so. Oh, Men! Men! I tell myself so; and yet perhaps it is not true.’
However fine women naturally prove as actresses, I find it hard to believe that they are so to that extent; and, in the end, are not all Rosette’s outpourings only an exact expression of her feelings for me? In any event, to continue our tête-à-tête is no longer feasible, since the château’s lovely mistress has sent out invitations to her acquaintances in the neighbourhood. We are busy making preparations to receive those worthy provincials, male and female. Farewell, dear friend.
The End of Part II of Gautier’s ‘Mademoiselle de Maupin’