The dream I was dreaming at the moment that she waked me in such pleasant fashion was not very far removed from the reality.—My chamber looked on the little lake I described just now. The window was surrounded by jasmin, which shook its stars over my floor in a silvery shower: large, exotic flowers swayed in the wind under my balcony as if to waft incense up to me; a vague, sweet perfume, composed of a thousand different perfumes, penetrated to my bed, from which I could see the water gleaming and flashing with millions of spangles; the birds chattered and warbled and whistled and chirped; it was a confusion of harmonious sounds like the hum and buzz of a fête.—Opposite, on a hill-side lying in the sunlight, was a smooth field of a golden green, with fat cattle feeding here and there, under the care of a small boy.—Higher up the hill and farther away were great patches of forest of a darker green, above which the bluish smoke of charcoal-kilns rose in spiral columns.

Every detail of the picture was calm and fresh and smiling, and wherever I turned my eyes, I saw only what was young and fair. My chamber was hung with chintz, with mats on the floor, and blue Japanese jars with rounded bodies and tapering necks, filled with strange flowers, artistically arranged on étagères and on the dark-blue marble chimney-piece; the fire-place also was filled with flowers. Panels above the doors, representing rural or pastoral scenes, bright-colored and daintily executed, sofas and divans in every nook and corner—and a lovely young woman, all in white, whose flesh gave a delicate pink tinge to the transparent dress where it came in contact with it: one can conceive nothing better calculated to give pleasure to the soul as well as to the eyes.

And so my gratified, careless glance wandered, with equal pleasure, from a magnificent jar thickly strewn with dragons and mandarins, to Rosette's slipper, and thence to the corner of her shoulder that glistened under the lawn; it rested on the fluttering stars of the jasmin and the white hairs of the willows on the bank, crossed the water and sauntered over the hill-side, then returned to the chamber to fix itself on the rose-colored ribbons of some shepherdess's long corset.

Through the openings in the foliage the sky showed millions of blue eyes; the water rippled gently and I gave myself up to the enjoyment of the moment, plunged in blissful tranquillity, saying nothing, with my hand still in Rosette's tiny hands.

It is of no use to talk: happiness is white and pink; it can hardly be represented otherwise. Delicate colors belong to it as of right. It has on its palette only sea-green, sky-blue and light yellow: its pictures are all light like those of the Chinese painters. Flowers, bright light, perfumes, a soft and velvety skin touching yours, a veiled melody coming from you know not where,—with those one can be perfectly happy; there is no way of being happy otherwise. I myself, who have a horror of the commonplace, who dream only of strange adventures, violent passions, frenzied bliss, unusual and difficult situations, I must be happy like an animal in that way, and, whatever I may do, I can find no other.

I beg you to believe that I made none of these reflections at the time; they have come to me since as I sat here writing to you; at that moment I thought of nothing but enjoying myself—the only occupation of a reasonable man.

I will not describe the life we lead here, it is easily imagined. There are walks under the great trees, violets and strawberries, kisses and little blue flowers, luncheons on the grass, readings and books forgotten under the trees; water parties with the end of a scarf or a white hand dipping in the stream, long ballads and long laughter repeated by the echoes of the bank;—the most Arcadian life imaginable!

Rosette overwhelms me with caresses and little attentions; more amorous than the dove in May, she twines about me and envelops me in her folds; she tries to let me breathe no other atmosphere than her breath and see no other horizon than her eyes; she maintains a very strict blockade and allows nothing to go in or out without permission; she has built a little guard-house beside my heart, from which she keeps watch on it night and day.—She says delightful things to me; she makes very complimentary speeches; she sits on my knee and acts in my presence exactly like a submissive slave before her lord and master; all of which suits me very well, for I like such little humble ways and I have a leaning toward Oriental despotism; she doesn't do the smallest thing without asking my opinion, and seems to have completely laid aside her own fancy and her will; she tries to divine my thought and anticipate it; she crushes me with her wit, her affection and her submission; she is perfect enough to throw out of the window.—How in the devil can I leave a woman so adorable without seeming to be a monster? It would be enough to discredit my heart forever.

Oh! how I would like to catch her tripping, to find some grievance against her! how impatiently I await an opportunity for a quarrel! but there is no danger that the hussy will give me one! When I speak sharply to her, in a harsh tone, to bring about a quarrel, she answers me so sweetly, in such a silvery voice, with her eyes swimming in tears, and such a sad, loving expression, that I seem to myself to be more than a tiger, or at least a crocodile, and, inwardly raging, I am forced to ask her pardon.

She is literally murdering me with love; she puts me to the question and every day she draws closer the planks between which I am caught. She probably wants to drive me to tell her that I detest her, that she bores me to death, and that, if she doesn't leave me in peace, I will slash her face with my hunting crop. Pardieu! she will succeed, and if she continues to be as amiable, it will be before long or may the devil carry me off!

Notwithstanding all this fine show, Rosette is surfeited with me as I am with her; but as she has done some notoriously foolish things for me, she doesn't want to take to herself the discredit of a rupture in the eyes of the excellent corporation of sensible women. Every great passion claims to be everlasting, and it is very convenient to assume the credit of that everlastingness without suffering its disadvantages.—Rosette reasons thus:—"Here is a young man who has hardly a vestige of fondness left for me, and, as he is simple-minded and easy-going, he doesn't dare show it openly and doesn't know which way to turn: it is plain that I bore him, but he will wear his life out in the toils rather than take it on himself to leave me. As he is a poet after a fashion, he has his head full of fine phrases about love and passion, and considers himself bound in conscience to be a Tristan or an Amadis. Now, as nothing in the world is more insupportable than the caresses of a person one is beginning not to love—and to cease to love a woman is to hate her intensely—I propose to lavish them on him in a way to sicken him, and the result will be either that he will send me to the devil or will begin to love me again as he did on the first day, which he will take very good care not to do."

No reasoning could be better.—Isn't it charming to play the part of the abandoned Ariadne?—People pity you and admire you, and there are no imprecations strong enough for the infamous wretch who has been so inhuman as to abandon such an adorable creature; you assume an air of grieved resignation, you put your hand under your chin and your elbow on your knee so as to show off the pretty blue veins in your wrist. You wear your hair more dishevelled, and your dresses for some little time are of soberer hue. You avoid mentioning the ingrate's name, but you make roundabout allusions to him, at the same time heaving beautifully modulated little sighs.

A woman so good, so beautiful, so passionate, who has made such great sacrifices, who has done nothing worthy of blame, a chosen vessel, a pearl of love, a spotless mirror, a drop of milk, a white rose, an ideal essence to perfume a life;—a woman whom you should have adored on your knees, and who will have to be cut in little pieces after her death, to make relics:—such a woman to be abandoned iniquitously, villainously, fraudulently! Why a pirate would do no worse! To give her her death-blow!—for she certainly will die of it.—One must have a paving-stone in his breast, instead of a heart, to act so.

O men! men!

I say this to myself, but perhaps it's not true.

However great actresses women naturally are, I find it hard to believe that they carry it as far as that; and, when all is said, are all Rosette's demonstrations simply the exact expression of her sentiments for me?—However it may be, the continuation of the tête-à-tête is impossible, and the fair chatelaine has at last issued invitations to her acquaintances in the neighborhood. We are busily engaged making preparations to receive the worthy provincials.—Adieu, my dear fellow.

V

I was mistaken.—My evil heart, incapable of love, seized upon that reason to deliver itself from the burden of a gratitude it did not wish to bear; I joyfully grasped that idea to excuse myself to my own conscience; I clung fast to it, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Rosette was not playing a part, and if ever woman was true, she is the woman.—Ah! well! I am almost angry with her for the sincerity of her passion, which is an additional bond and makes a rupture more difficult or less excusable; I would prefer her to be false and fickle.

What an extraordinary position! You long to go, but you stay; you long to say: "I hate you," but you say: "I love you;"—your past urges you forward and prevents you from turning back or stopping. You are faithful and you regret it. An indefinable sense of shame prevents your abandoning yourself altogether to other acquaintances and leads you to compromise with yourself. You give to one all you can steal from the other and at the same time keep up appearances; the opportunities for meeting which formerly came about so naturally are very hard to find to-day.—You begin to remember that you have business of importance.—Such a perplexing situation as that is very painful, but it is much less so than my present situation.—When it is a new friendship that steals you from the old, it is easier to extricate yourself. Hope smiles sweetly upon you from the threshold of the house that contains your new-born love.—A fairer and rosier illusion hovers on its white wings over the scarce-closed tomb of its sister who has died; another flower, blooming more radiantly and of sweeter perfume, upon whose petals trembles a celestial tear, has suddenly sprung forth from among the withered calyxes of the old bouquet;—lovely, azure-hued perspectives open before you; avenues of fresh and unpretentious beeches stretch away to the horizon; there are gardens with white statues here and there, or a bench against an ivy-covered wall, lawns dotted with marguerites, narrow balconies, on whose rails you lean and gaze at the moon, and shadows cut by fleeting rays of light;—salons from which the daylight is excluded by heavy curtains;—all the darkness and isolation that the passion craves which dares not avow itself. It is as if your youth had come again. You have, moreover, a complete change of haunts and habits and persons; you feel a sort of remorse, to be sure; but the desire that flutters and hums about your head, like a bee in spring, prevents your hearing its voice; the void in your heart is filled and your memories are effaced by present impressions,—But in my case it is different: I love no one and it is from weariness and disgust with myself rather than with her that I wish I were able to break with Rosette.

My former ideas, which had become a little indistinct in my mind, are coming to the front again, more foolish than ever.—I am, as formerly, tortured by the longing to have a mistress, and, as formerly, even in Rosette's arms I doubt whether I have ever had one.—I see once more the lovely lady at her window, in her park of the time of Louis XIII., and the huntress on her white horse gallops along the forest path.—My ideal beauty smiles upon me from her hammock of clouds, I fancy that I recognize her voice in the song of the birds, in the rustling of the foliage; it seems to me that some one is calling me from every direction, and that the daughters of the air brush my face with the fringe of their invisible scarfs. As in the days of my agitation, I imagine that, if I should set out instantly and go somewhere very far away at great speed, I should reach some place where things that concern me are taking place and where my destiny is being decided.—I feel that somebody is impatiently awaiting my coming in some corner of the earth, I don't know where. Some suffering soul who cannot come to me is calling eagerly to me and dreaming of me; that is the reason of my uneasiness and of my inability to remain in one place; I am being violently drawn away from my centre. Mine is not one of those natures to which others flock, one of those fixed stars about which other radiant bodies gravitate; I must needs wander through the expanse of heaven like an erratic meteor, until I have fallen in with the planet whose satellite I am to be, the Saturn about whom I am to pass my ring. Oh! when will that union take place? Until then I cannot hope for rest or peace of mind, but I shall be like the bewildered, vacillating needle of a compass, seeking its pole.

I allowed my wing to be caught in the deceitful snare, hoping to leave only a feather there and to retain the power to fly away when it seemed good to me: nothing could be more difficult; I find myself covered by an invisible net, harder to break than the one forged by Vulcan, and the mesh is so fine and close that there are no openings through which I can escape. The net is large and roomy, however, and I can move about in it with an appearance of freedom; it is hardly perceptible except when you try to break it; but then it resists and becomes as firm as a wall of brass.

How much time I have lost, O my ideal! without the slightest effort to realize thee! How basely I have yielded to the temptation of a night's pleasure! and how little I deserve to meet thee!

Sometimes I think of forming another liaison; but I have no one in view; more frequently I make up my mind that, if I succeed in bringing about a rupture, I will never again involve myself in such bonds, and yet there is nothing to justify that resolution, for the present connection has been, to all appearance, a very happy one and I have no reason in the world for complaining of Rosette.—She has always been kind to me, and has behaved as well as any one could; she has been exemplarily faithful to me and has not given an opening for suspicion; the most alert and most anxious jealousy could have had no word of blame for her and must have slept in security.—A jealous man could have been jealous only of the past; in that direction, it is true, there was ample ground for jealousy. But luckily, jealousy of that sort is a very rare article, and one has quite enough to do to look after the present without going back to fumble under the ashes of extinct passion for phials of poison and cups of gall.—What woman could a man love, if he thought of all that?—You may have a sort of vague idea that a woman has had several lovers before you; but you say to yourself—a man's pride has so many tortuous folds and counterfolds!—that you are the first she has really loved, and that it was through a combination of fatal circumstances that she became connected with men unworthy of her, or else through a vague craving of a heart that sought to satisfy itself and changed because it had not met its affinity.

Perhaps one can really love none but a virgin—a virgin in body and in mind—a fragile bud that has never been caressed as yet by any zephyr and whose carefully hidden breast has neither received the drop of rain nor the pearl of dew; a chaste flower that displays its white robe for you alone, a beautiful lily with a silver urn at which no desire has slaked its thirst and which has been gilded only by your sun, swayed by no breath but yours, watered by no hand but yours.—The glare of the noonday sun is less agreeable than the divine pallor of the dawn, and all the ardor of an experienced heart that knows what life is, yields the palm to the celestial ignorance of a youthful heart just awaking to love.—Ah! what a bitter, degrading thought it is that you are wiping away another's kisses, that there may not be a single spot upon that brow, those lips, that bosom, those shoulders, that whole body which is yours now, that has not been reddened and branded by other lips; that those divine murmurs which come to the relief of the tongue that can find no more words of love, have been heard before; that those excited senses did not learn their ecstasy and their delirium from you, and that away, away down in one of those recesses of the heart which are never visited, there lives an inexorable memory which compares the joys of an earlier day to the joys of to-day!

Although my natural nonchalance leads me to prefer the high roads to unbroken paths, and the public watering-trough to the mountain spring, I absolutely must try to love some virginal creature as spotless as the snow, as timid as the sensitive plant, who can only blush and look down; it may be that, from that limpid stream, which no diver has as yet investigated, I shall fish up a pearl of the fairest water, worthy to be a pendant to Cleopatra's; but, in order to do that, I should have to cast off the bond that binds me to Rosette,—for I am not likely to realize that longing with her,—and to tell the truth, I do not feel strong enough to do it.

And then, too, if I must make the confession, there is at the bottom of my heart a secret, shameful motive, which dares not show itself in broad daylight, but which I must tell you of, since I have promised to conceal nothing from you, and a confession, to be deserving of credit, must be complete;—the motive I speak of has much to do with all this uncertainty.—If I break with Rosette, some time must necessarily pass before her place is filled, however easy of access the class of women may be among whom I shall seek her successor; and I have fallen into a habit of enjoying myself with her which it will be hard for me to break off. To be sure I have the resource of courtesans; I liked them well enough in the old days and I did not hesitate to resort to them under such circumstances;—but to-day they disgust me beyond measure and make me ill.—So I must not think of them, and I am so softened by indulgence, the poison has penetrated so deep into my bones that I cannot bear the idea of being one or two months without a woman.—That is pure egoism of the basest kind; but it is my opinion that the most virtuous men, if they would be perfectly frank, would have to make nearly a similar confession.

That is the true secret of my captivity and, if it weren't for that, Rosette and I would long ago have fallen out for good and all. Indeed it is such a deathly bore to pay court to a woman, that I haven't the heart to attempt it. To begin again the charming idiocies I have already said so many times, to play the adorable once more, to write notes and reply to them; to escort the charmer, in the evening, to some place two leagues away; to catch cold in your feet and your head standing in front of the window watching a beloved shadow; to sit upon a sofa calculating how many thicknesses of tissue separate you from your goddess; to carry bouquets and go the round of the ball-rooms to reach the point where I now am, is a vast deal of trouble!—It's about as well to remain in one's rut.—What is the use of leaving it, only to fall into another exactly like it, after much unnecessary agitation and untold trouble? If I were in love, the thing would go of itself and it would all seem perfectly delightful to me; but I am not, although I have the most earnest desire to be; for, after all, there is nothing but love in the world; and if pleasure, which is only its shadow, has so many allurements for us, what must the reality be? In what an ocean of ineffable bliss, in what seas of pure, unalloyed delight must they swim whose hearts Love has pierced with one of his gold-tipped arrows, and who burn with the delicious warmth of a mutual flame!

Beside Rosette I feel that insipid tranquillity, that sort of slothful well-being which results from the satisfaction of the senses, but nothing more; and that is not enough. Often that voluptuous indolence turns to torpor, and that tranquillity to ennui; thereupon I fall into aimless meditation and dull, spiritless reveries that weary and harass me;—it is a state of things that I must put an end to at any price.

Oh! if I could only be like some of my friends, who kiss an old glove with ecstasy; who are made perfectly happy by a clasp of the hand; who would not exchange for a sultana's jewel-case a few wretched flowers half-withered by the heat of the ball-room; who cover with tears and sew into their shirt, where it will rest against the heart, a note written in an inelegant style and so stupid that you would think it was copied from the Parfait Secrétaire; who adore women with large feet and apologize for them on the ground that they have noble souls! If I could follow tremblingly the vanishing folds of a dress, or wait for a door to open in order to see a cherished white apparition pass in a blaze of light; if a word spoken beneath the breath would make me change color; if I had the virtue to go without my dinner so as to arrive sooner at a rendezvous; if I were capable of killing a rival or fighting a duel with a husband; if by a special dispensation of Providence, I were endowed with the power of considering ugly women clever, and those who are ugly and stupid as well, pleasant and agreeable; if I could make up my mind to dance the minuet and to listen to sonatas played by young ladies on the harpsichord or harp; if my capacity should rise to the height of learning ombre and reversis; in short, if I were a man and not a poet—I certainly should be much happier than I am; I should be less bored myself and should bore others less.

I have never asked but one thing of women—beauty; I am very willing to go without intellect and soul.—In my eyes a beautiful woman is always intellectual;—she knows enough to be beautiful, and I know no other knowledge as valuable as that.—It takes many sparkling sentences and keen shafts of wit to equal the value of the flash of a lovely eye. I prefer a pretty mouth to a pretty speech, and a well-modeled shoulder to a virtue, even one of the theological sort; I would give fifty souls for a dainty foot, and all poetry and all the poets for the hand of Joanna of Aragon, or the brow of Foligno's virgin.—Above all things I adore a beautiful figure; to my mind beauty is manifest Divinity, palpable happiness, heaven come down to earth.—There are certain undulations of outline, certain turns of the lip, a certain droop of the eyelids, certain inclinations of the head, certain elongations of the profile which enchant me beyond all expression and fix my attention for whole hours.

Beauty, the only thing that cannot be acquired, inaccessible forever to those who haven't it at first; an ephemeral and fragile flower that grows without being sown, a pure gift from heaven!—O beauty, the most radiant diadem with which chance can crown the human brow—thou art admirable and precious like everything that is beyond man's reach, like the azure of the firmament, like the gold of the star, like the perfume of the seraphic lily!—Man may change his stool for a throne, may conquer the world; many have done it; but who could fail to kneel before thee, thou pure personification of God's thoughts?

I ask only beauty, it is true; but I must have beauty so perfect that I probably shall never find it. I have seen here and there women who were admirably beautiful in some respects but only mediocre in others, and I have loved them for what was best in them, ignoring the rest; it is a difficult task, however, and painful, to suppress thus the half of one's mistress, and to amputate mentally the ugly or commonplace portions of her anatomy, limiting one's glances to what points of beauty she may have.—Beauty is harmony, and a woman who is equally ugly in all parts is often less disagreeable to look at than one who is unevenly beautiful. Nothing offends my sight so much as an unfinished masterpiece, or beauty in which something is lacking; a grease-spot is less offensive upon coarse sackcloth than upon rich silk.

Rosette is not ill-favored; she might be considered beautiful, but she is far from realizing the ideal of my dreams; she is a statue, several portions of which have been completed. The others are not so sharply cut from the block; there are some parts brought out with much skill and charm, and others more carelessly and hurriedly. To ordinary eyes the statue seems entirely completed and perfectly beautiful; but a more careful observer soon discovers places where the work is not close enough, and outlines which need to be touched and retouched many times by the workman's nail before attaining the purity that belongs to them;—it is for love to polish the marble and complete it, which is equivalent to saying that I shall not be the one to do it.

However, I do not confine beauty to this or that particular form or contour.—The manner, the gesture, the gait, the breath, the coloring, the voice, the perfume, everything that is a part of life enters into the composition of beauty in my estimation; everything that sings or shines or perfumes the air is rightfully a part of beauty.—I love rich brocades, gorgeous stuffs with their ample and stately folds; I love great flowers and jars of perfume, transparent running water and the gleaming surface of fine weapons, blooded horses and the great white dogs that we see in Paul Veronese's pictures. I am a genuine heathen in that respect, and I do not adore misshapen gods;—although I am not at heart exactly what is called irreligious, there are few who are in fact worse Christians than myself. I do not understand the mortification of the flesh that forms the essence of Christianity, I consider it a sacrilegious act to lay hands upon God's work, and I do not believe that the flesh is wicked, since He Himself moulded it with His own fingers and in His own image. I think but little of the long sober-hued frocks from which only a head and two hands emerge, or of the pictures in which everything is drowned in shadow except some one radiant brow. I want the sun to shine everywhere, to have as much light and as little shadow as possible, the bright colors to gleam, the lines to undulate, the nude body to exhibit itself proudly and the flesh not to lie hidden, since it, as well as the spirit, is a never-ending hymn to the praise of God.

I can understand perfectly the wild enthusiasm of the Greeks for beauty; and for my part I can see nothing absurd in the law that compelled the judges to listen to the arguments of the lawyers in some dark place, lest their noble bearing, the grace of their gestures and attitudes should prejudice the judges in their favor and throw undue weight into the scales.

I would buy nothing of an ugly shopwoman; I give alms more freely to beggars whose rags and emaciation have a touch of the picturesque. There is a little fever-ridden Italian, as green as an unripe lemon, with great black and white eyes that take up half of his face;—you would say he was an unframed Murillo or Espagnolet exposed for sale on the sidewalk by a second-hand dealer:—he always gets two sous more than the others. I would never whip a handsome horse or a handsome dog, and I would not care for a friend or a servant who is not pleasant to look at.—It is downright torture to me to look at ugly things or ugly people.—Bad taste in architecture, a piece of furniture of ugly shape, prevent my enjoying myself in a house, however comfortable and attractive it may otherwise be. The best wine seems to me almost sour in an ungraceful glass, and I confess that I would prefer the most unsubstantial broth on one of Bernard of Palissy's enamelled plates to the most toothsome game on an earthen platter.—The exterior of things has always exerted a powerful influence upon me, and that is why I avoid the society of old men; they irritate me and affect me disagreeably because they are wrinkled and deformed, although some of them have some special beauty; and in the pity that I feel for them there is much disgust;—of all earthly ruins, the ruin of man is assuredly the saddest to contemplate.

If I were a painter—and I have always regretted that I am not—I should people my canvases with none but goddesses, madonnas, nymphs, cherubim, and loves. To devote one's brush to painting portraits, unless of beautiful people, seems to me a crime against the majesty of the art; and, far from seeking to duplicate those mean or ugly faces, those insignificant or vulgar heads, I should incline toward ordering the originals to be cut off. The ferocity of Caligula, if diverted in that direction, would seem to me almost praiseworthy.

The only thing on earth that I have desired with any constancy, is to be beautiful.—By beautiful, I mean as beautiful as Paris or Apollo. To have no deformity, to have features almost regular, that is to say, to have the nose in the centre of the face and neither flat nor hooked, eyes that are neither red nor bloodshot, a mouth of suitable dimensions, is not to be beautiful: on that theory I should be, and I consider myself as far removed from my ideal of virile beauty as if I were one of the puppets that strike the hour on church-bells; if I had a mountain on each shoulder, the crooked legs of a terrier and the muzzle of a monkey, I should resemble it as closely. Often and often I sit and look at myself in the mirror, for hours at a time, with incredible fixity and close scrutiny, to see if my face has not improved in some degree; I wait for the outlines to make a movement and straighten out or take on a more graceful and purer curve, for my eye to brighten and swim in a more sparkling fluid, for the hollow that separates my forehead from my nose to fill up, and for my profile thus to become as simple and regular as the Greek profile; and I am always greatly surprised that it does not happen. I am always in hopes that some spring or autumn I shall cast off my present shape as a serpent casts his old skin.—To think that I need so little to be handsome and that I never shall be! What! half a hair's breadth, the hundredth or the thousandth part of a hair's breadth more or less in one place or another, a little less flesh on this bone, a little more on that—a painter or sculptor would have it all arranged in half an hour. What was it that made the atoms of which I am composed crystallize in this way or that? Why need that outline bulge out here and sink in there, and why was it necessary that I should be thus and not otherwise?—Upon my word if I had chance by the throat, I believe I would strangle him.—Because it pleased a vile mass of I don't know what to fall from I don't know where and coagulate stupidly into the awkward creature that I visibly am, I shall be miserable forever! Isn't it the most absurd and pitiful thing in the world? How is it that my soul, although eagerly longing to do so, cannot let the poor carcass that it now holds erect, fall prostrate, and enter into and animate one of those statues whose exquisite beauty saddens and ravishes it? There are two or three people whom it would give me the greatest pleasure to assassinate, taking care, however, not to bruise or mar them, if I knew the word by which souls are made to pass from one to another.—It has always seemed to me that, in order to do what I wish—and I don't know what I do wish—I needed very great and perfect beauty, and I fancy that if I had had it, my life, which is so entangled and harassed, would have been just the same.

We see so many lovely faces in pictures!—why is not one of them mine?—so many charming faces disappearing under the dust and decay of time in the recesses of old galleries! Would it not be better for them to leave their frames and bloom anew on my shoulders? Would Raphaël's reputation suffer greatly if one of the angels whom he drew in swarms flying about in the deep blue of his pictures, should turn his mask over to me for thirty years? There are so many parts of his frescoes, and among them some of the most beautiful, that have scaled off and fallen because of their age! No one would notice. What have the silent beauties to do that hang around those walls, and at whom men scarcely cast an absent-minded glance? and why has not God or chance the wit to do what a man does with a few hairs stuck in the end of a stick and pigments of different colors mixed together on a board?

My first sensation before one of those marvellous faces whose painted glance seems to look through you and into infinite space beyond, is profound amazement and admiration not unmixed with terror: tears fill my eyes, my heart beats fast; then, when I have become a little accustomed to it and have penetrated farther into the secret of its beauty, I mentally draw a comparison between it and myself; deep down in my soul jealousy writhes in knots more intricate than a viper's, and it is with the utmost difficulty that I refrain from throwing myself upon the canvas and tearing it in pieces.

To be beautiful, that is to say, to have in yourself such a charm that every one smiles upon you and welcomes you; that every one is prepossessed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion, even before you have spoken; that you have only to pass through a street or show yourself on a balcony to raise up friends or mistresses for yourself in the crowd. To have no need to be lovable in order to be loved, to be exempt from all the expenditure of wit and complaisance which ugliness makes incumbent upon you, and to be excused from having the thousand and one moral qualities that one must have to supplement physical beauty—what a superb, magnificent gift!

And he who should combine supreme strength with supreme beauty, who, beneath Antinous's skin, should have the muscles of Hercules,—what more could he desire? I am sure that with those two things and the mind that I now have I should be emperor of the world within three years!—Another thing that I have longed for almost as much as beauty and strength is the gift of transporting myself from one place to another with the swiftness of thought. Angelic beauty, the strength of the tiger and the wings of the eagle, and I should begin to conclude that the world is not so badly organized as I used to think.—A beautiful mask to charm and fascinate the prey, wings to pounce down upon it and carry it off, nails to tear it to pieces;—so long as I have not those I shall be unhappy.

All the passions and all the tastes I have had have been simply disguised forms of those three desires. I have loved weapons, horses, women: weapons to replace the muscles I had not; horses to serve as wings; women, so that I might possess in some one the beauty that I lacked myself. I sought in preference the most ingeniously deadly weapons, and those whose wounds were incurable. I have never had occasion to use any of the krises or yataghans, yet I like to have them around me; I take them from their scabbards with an indescribable sense of security and power, I lay about me in every direction with the greatest energy, and if by chance I see the reflection of my face in a mirror, I am astonished at its ferocious expression.—As for my horses, I override them so that they must either founder or say why.—If I hadn't given up riding Ferragus he would have died long ago, and it would be a pity, for he's a fine beast. What Arabian steed ever had limbs so fleet as my desire? In women I have not looked below the exterior, and as those whom I have seen thus far are a long way from fulfilling my ideal of beauty, I have fallen back upon pictures and statues; which, after all, is a pitiful expedient when one's senses are so inflammable as mine. However, there is something grand and noble about loving a statue, for it is a perfectly disinterested love, you have to dread neither satiety nor distaste with your triumph, and you cannot reasonably hope for a second miracle like the story of Pygmalion.—The impossible always had a charm for me.

Is it not strange that I, who am still in the fairest months of youth, who have not even used the simplest things, much less abused anything, have reached such a degree of satiety that I am tempted only by what is unusual or difficult of accomplishment?—That satiety follows enjoyment is a natural law and easily understood. Nothing is more easily explained than that a man who has eaten heartily of every dish at a banquet should no longer be hungry and should try to stimulate his benumbed palate by the thousand stings of condiments or dry wines; but that a man who has just taken his seat at the table and has hardly tasted the first course, should already be assailed with that superb disgust, should be unable to touch without vomiting any except highly-seasoned dishes, and should like only gamey meats, cheese with blue streaks running through it, truffles and wine that smells of the flint, is a phenomenon that can result only from a peculiar constitution; it is as if a child of six months should deem his nurse's milk insipid and refuse to suck anything but brandy. I am as exhausted as if I had performed all the prodigious feats of Sardanapalus and yet my life has been apparently very chaste and peaceful; it is a mistake to think that possession is the only road leading to satiety. We arrive there also through desire, and abstinence is more exhausting than excess.—Such a desire as mine is more fatiguing than possession. Its glance envelops and penetrates the object which it longs to have and which gleams above it, more swiftly and more deeply than if it were in contact with it. What more could use teach it? what experience can equal that constant, passionate contemplation?

I have gone through so much, although I have travelled very little, that only the steepest peaks tempt me now. I am attacked by the disease that fastens upon nations and powerful men in their old age—the impossible. Anything that I can do has not the slightest attraction for me. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, ye great Romans of the Empire, whom posterity has so ill understood, and whom the pack of ranters pursues with its yelping, I suffer with your disease and I pity you with all the pity I have left in my heart! I, too, would like to bridge the sea and pave its waves; I have dreamed of burning cities to illuminate my fêtes; I have longed to be a woman to learn new forms of pleasure. Thy golden palace, O Nero, is only a filthy stable beside the palace I have built; my wardrobe is better furnished than thine, Heliogabalus, and much more magnificent.—My circuses are noisier and bloodier than yours, my perfumes more acrid and more penetrating, my slaves more numerous and of better figure; I also have nude courtesans harnessed to my chariot, I have walked over men's bodies with as disdainful heel as you. Colossi of the ancient world, there beats behind my feeble ribs a heart as great as yours, and if I had been in your places I would have done all that you have done and perhaps more. How many Babels have I piled one upon another to reach the sky, to cudgel the stars and spit upon all creation! Why am I not God—as I cannot be man?

Oh! I believe that I shall need a hundred thousand centuries of nothingness to rest from the fatigue of these twenty years of life.—God in heaven, what stone will You roll down upon me? into what darkness will You plunge me? from what Lethe will You make me drink? beneath what mountain will You entomb the Titan? Am I destined to breathe a volcano through my mouth and to cause earthquakes when I turn from side to side?

When I think of this, that I was born of a gentle, resigned mother, simple in her tastes and manners, I am surprised that I did not burst her womb when she was carrying me. How does it happen that none of her calm, pure thoughts passed into my body with the blood she transmitted to me? and why must it be that I am the son of her flesh only, not of her mind? The dove begat a tiger who would like to have all creation fall a prey to his claws.

I grew up amid the most chaste and tranquil surroundings. It is difficult to imagine an existence in a setting so pure as mine. My years were passed in the shadow of my mother's easy-chair, with my little sisters and the house-dog. I saw about me only the kindly, placid faces of old servants who had grown gray in our service and were in a certain sense hereditary, of grave, sententious relations or friends, dressed in black, who placed their gloves one after another in their hat brims; a few aunts of uncertain age, plump and neat and sedate, with dazzling linen, gray skirts, thread mitts, and hands upon their waist-bands like people of a religious turn of mind; furniture severely simple to the point of melancholy, bare oak wainscoting, leather hangings—a gloomy, sober-hued interior such as some Flemish masters have painted. The garden was damp and dark; the box that marked the divisions, the ivy that covered the walls, and a few firs with bare branches were entrusted with the duty of representing verdure there and had but ill success; the brick house, with its very high roof, although roomy and in good condition, had something dull and drowsy about it. Certainly nothing could be better adapted to prepare one for a secluded, austere, melancholy life than such a place of abode. It seemed as if all the children brought up in such a house must inevitably end by becoming priests or nuns: ah well! in that atmosphere of purity and repose, amid that gloom and meditation, I rotted away little by little, without any outward sign, like a medlar on the straw. In the bosom of that upright, pious, saintly family I reached a horrible depth of depravity.—It was not contact with the world, for I had never seen it; nor the fire of passion, for I was benumbed in the icy sweat that oozed from those stout walls.—The worm did not crawl from the heart of another fruit to my heart. It came to life of itself where my pulp was thickest and gnawed and furrowed it in every direction: but nothing appeared outside and warned me that I was tainted at the core. I had neither spot nor worm-hole; but I was all hollow inside and nothing remained but a thin bright-colored pellicle, which the slightest blow would have broken.—Is it not an inexplicable thing that a child born of virtuous parents, brought up with care and judgment, kept at a distance from everything bad, should become perverted all by himself to such an extent, and reach the point I have reached? I am sure that, even if you should go back to the sixth generation, you would not find among my ancestors a single atom like those of which I am made. I do not belong to my own family; I am not an offshoot of that noble trunk, but a poisonous toadstool planted among its mossy roots on some dark, stormy night; and yet no one ever had more aspirations, more impulses towards the beautiful than I, no one ever tried more obstinately to spread his wings; but every attempt has made my fall the greater and the things that should have saved me have been my ruin.

Solitude has a worse effect upon me than society, although I desire the first more than the second. Whatever takes me out of myself is salutary; society bores me, but it tears me by force from the vain reverie whose winding staircase I ascend and descend, with bent head and folded arms. And so, since one tête-à-tête came to an end and there have been people here with whom I am compelled to put some constraint upon myself, I am less subject to my black moods and am less tormented by those immeasurable longings that pounce upon my heart like a swarm of vultures, as soon as I am left for a moment without occupation. There are some very pretty women and one or two young men who are very pleasant and jovial; but of all this swarm of provincials, the one who has the most charm for me is a young cavalier who arrived two or three days ago. He took my fancy at the very first, and I became fond of him simply from seeing him alight from his horse. It is impossible to be more graceful; he is not very tall, but slender and well set-up; there is something supple and undulating in his gait and his movements, which is pleasing beyond expression; many women would envy him his hand and foot. His only defect is that he is too beautiful and has too delicate features for a man. He is blessed with a pair of the loveliest and blackest eyes in the world, which have an expression impossible to define and a glance that it is not easy to sustain; but, as he is very young and has no sign of a beard, the softness and perfection of the lower part of his face temper somewhat the vivacity of those eagle eyes; his glossy, brown hair falls over his neck in great curls and gives his head a character of its own.—Here then at last is one of the types of beauty I have dreamed of, made flesh, and actually before my eyes! What a pity that it's a man, or what a pity that I am not a woman! This Adonis, who, in addition to his lovely face, has a very keen intellect of very wide range, still enjoys the privilege of having at the service of his bright remarks and his jests, a voice of a silvery and penetrating quality which it is difficult to hear without emotion.—He is really perfect.—It seems that he shares my taste for beautiful things, for his clothes are very rich and well chosen, his horse very spirited and a thoroughbred; and, in order that everything might be complete and well assorted, he had behind him, riding a pony, a page of some fourteen or fifteen years, fair-haired, pink-cheeked, pretty as a seraph, who was half asleep, and so exhausted by his long ride that his master was obliged to lift him from his saddle and carry him to his room in his arms.

Rosette welcomed him very warmly and I think she has formed a plan to use him to arouse my jealousy and thus kindle the tiny flame that is sleeping under the ashes of my passion. However redoubtable such a rival may be, I am little inclined to be jealous of him, and I am so attracted to him that I would gladly abandon my love to secure his friendship.

VI

At this point, with the permission of the indulgent reader, we propose to abandon for some little time to his meditations, the worthy personage who has thus far occupied the stage all by himself and has spoken in his own behalf, and to adopt the ordinary form of the novel, reserving the right, however, to resume the dramatic form hereafter, if occasion should arise, and to draw still farther upon the species of epistolary confession that the aforesaid young man addressed to his friend, being fully persuaded that, however penetrating and sagacious we may be, we certainly cannot know so much about him as he knows about himself.

The little page was so overdone that he slept in his master's arms, and his little head, with its hair all in disorder, rolled from side to side as if he were dead. It was some distance from the stoop to the apartment set aside for the new arrival, and the servant who escorted him offered to take his turn at carrying the child; but the young gentleman, to whom the burden seemed no more than a feather-weight, thanked him and declined to relinquish it; he laid him gently on the couch, taking the utmost care to avoid waking him; a mother could have done no better. When the servant had retired and the door was closed, he knelt beside him and tried to remove his boots; but his little feet were so swollen and painful that the operation was a difficult one, and the pretty sleeper uttered from time to time vague, inarticulate exclamations, like a person who is on the point of waking; thereupon the young gentleman would stop and wait until he was sound asleep again. The boots yielded at last and the most important point was gained; the stockings made little resistance.—This operation at an end, the master took the child's feet and placed them side by side on the velvet covering of the sofa; surely they were the two loveliest feet in the world, no larger than that, white as new ivory, and reddened a little by the pressure of the boots in which they had been imprisoned seventeen hours—feet that were too small for a woman and looked as if they had never walked; the part of the leg that could be seen was round, plump, smooth, transparent, delicately veined, and of the most exquisitely graceful shape—a leg worthy of the foot.