Part 8

I talked all the evening with them, especially with the last, and I took pains to cast my ideas in the most respectful mould;--although she hardly looked at me, I fancied sometimes that I could see her eyes gleaming behind the curtain of their lashes, and at some compliments that I ventured to address to her, decidedly broad but shrouded in the most modest gauze, I noticed just below the skin a tiny blush, held back and stifled, not unlike the effect produced by pouring a red liqueur into a glass that is half opaque.--Her replies were, in general, sedate and well-weighed, but keen and bright, and they implied much more than they expressed. The whole conversation was interspersed with pauses, unfinished phrases; veiled allusions, every syllable had its meaning, every pause its bearing; nothing could be more diplomatic or more charming.--And yet, however great my pleasure in it for the moment, I could not endure such a conversation very long. One must be forever on the alert and on his guard, and what I like best in conversation is ease, familiarity.--We talked first of music, which led us naturally to speak of the Opera, then of women, and then of love, a subject in which it is easier than in any other to find excuses for transition from general principles to special instances.--We vied with each other in amatory talk; you would have laughed to hear me. Verily, Amadis on poor La Roche was no better than a dull pedant beside me. It was generosity, abnegation, self-sacrifice enough to put the late Curtius of Rome to the blush.--Really I didn't believe myself capable of such transcendent humbug and bathos. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous, a more perfect scene for a comedy, than myself indulging in the quintessence of platonism? And then my sugary manner, my demure, hypocritical little ways! _tubleu_! I looked as if I could never touch anything, and any mother who had heard me argue wouldn't have hesitated to let me lie with her daughter, any husband would have trusted his wife with me. It was the one evening in all my life when I seemed to be most virtuous and was least so. I thought it was more difficult than that to be a hypocrite and say things one doesn't believe. It must be very easy or else I must be strongly predisposed that way, to have succeeded so satisfactorily at the first trial.--Really I have some inspired moments.

As for the lady, she made many remarks, very shrewdly worded, which, notwithstanding the innocent air with which she made them, denoted a very extensive experience; you can't conceive the subtlety of her distinctions. The woman would split a hair in three pieces lengthwise, and make fools of all the angelic and seraphic pundits that ever were. Indeed, from her way of talking, it was impossible to believe that she has the shadow of a body.--It is all immaterial, vaporous, ideal enough to break your arms; and if De C---- had not warned me beforehand of the creature's manœuvring, I should certainly have despaired of the success of my undertaking, and stood shamefacedly aside. How in the devil, when a woman tells you for two hours, with the most indifferent air you can imagine, that love lives only on privation and sacrifice and other fine things of that sort, can you decently hope to persuade her to get between two sheets with you some day to stir your blood and see if you are made alike?

In short, we parted the best of friends, mutually congratulating each other on the elevation and purity of our sentiments.

My conversation with the other was, as you will imagine, of a very different tenor. We laughed as much as we talked. We made fun, and very wittily too, of all the women there. When I say: "We made fun, and very wittily too," I am wrong; I ought to say: "She made fun;" a man never makes fun of a woman. I listened and approved, for it is impossible to draw with more telling strokes or to apply colors more brilliantly; it was the most interesting gallery of caricatures that I have ever seen. In spite of the exaggeration, you felt the truth underneath; De C---- was quite right; that woman's mission is to destroy the illusions of poets. There is an atmosphere of prose about her in which a poetic idea cannot live. She is charming, sparkling with wit, and yet when you are with her you think only of base, vulgar things; as I talked to her I felt a crowd of desires, incongruous and impracticable in that place; I felt like ordering wine and getting tipsy, taking her on my knee and kissing her neck--like lifting up her skirt to see if her garter was above or below the knee, like singing an obscene song at the top of my voice, smoking a pipe or smashing the windows: the devil knows what.--All the animal, all the brute rose in me; I would willingly have spat on Homer's Iliad and thrown myself on my knees before a ham.--I understand perfectly to-day the allegory of Circe changing the companions of Ulysses to swine. Circe was probably a wanton like my little woman in pink.

It is a shameful thing to say, but I felt a keen delight in the consciousness that the brute nature was gaining the upper hand; I did not resist it, I assisted it with all my strength, corruption is so natural to man and there is so much mud in the clay of which he is made.

And yet I was afraid for a minute of the gangrene that was gaining upon me, and I tried to leave my corrupter; but the floor seemed to have risen to my knees, and I was as if riveted to my place.

At last I made a determined effort and left her, and, it being then very late, I returned home in dire perplexity, very much disturbed in mind and with none too clear an idea what I ought to do.--I wavered between the prude and the wanton.--I found piquancy in the one, sensuousness in the other; and after a very close and very thorough examination of my conscience I discovered, not that I loved them both, but that I desired them both, one as much as the other, with sufficient eagerness to indulge in reverie and preoccupation.

According to all appearances, O my friend! I shall have one of those two women, perhaps I shall have them both, and yet I confess that I am only half satisfied by possessing them; it isn't that they're not very pretty, but at sight of them nothing cried out within me, nothing throbbed, nothing said: "It is they;"--I did not recognize them.--And yet I don't imagine that I shall find any one much better off in the way of birth and beauty, and De C---- advises me to try my hand with them. Most certainly I shall do it, and one or the other shall be my mistress before long or may the devil fly away with me; but way down in my heart a still small voice reproaches me for lying to my love and for pausing thus at the first smile of a woman I do not love, instead of seeking untiringly through the world, in cloisters and all sorts of bad places, in palaces and taverns, the woman who was made for me and whom God destines for me, be she princess or serving-maid, nun or courtesan.

Then I say to myself that I am indulging in chimeras, and that it's very much the same after all, whether I lie with that woman or another, that the earth will not swerve a hair's breadth from its course, and that the seasons will not change their order on that account; that nothing in the world is more indifferent to me, and that I am very simple to torment myself about such trifles: that is what I say to myself.--But it's of no use for me to talk, I am not a whit more easy in my mind or more decided.

It may be because I live much alone and the smallest details take on too much importance in a life so monotonous as mine. I give too much heed to my living and thinking: I hear the throbbing of my arteries, the beating of my heart; by dint of close attention I disengage my most intangible ideas from the confused haze in which they float, and give them a body.--If I had more to do I should not notice all these trivial things and should not have time to look at my heart under a microscope, as I do all day long. The din of action would drive away this swarm of indolent thoughts that are flying about in my head and deafening me with the buzzing of their wings: instead of pursuing phantoms I should come to blows with realities; I should ask women for nothing beyond what they can give--pleasure--and I should not try to embrace some fanciful ideal decked out in hazy perfections.--This desperate tension of the eye of my heart toward an invisible object has impaired my sight. I am unable to see what is, from having stared at what is not, and my eye, so keen for the ideal, is terribly short-sighted for the real; so that I have known women whom everybody declared to be most ravishing creatures, but who seemed to me very far from that. I have greatly admired pictures generally considered to be daubs, and fantastic or unintelligible verses have given me more pleasure than the most courtly productions.--I should not be at all astonished if, after addressing so many sighs to the moon and looking at the stars with strained gaze, after perpetrating so many elegies and sentimental apostrophes, I should fall in love with some vile girl from the street, or some ugly old woman; that would be a great come-down!--Reality will perhaps take its revenge thus for the little care I have taken to pay court to it:--wouldn't it be a fine thing if I should conceive a romantic passion for a scullery wench or a low, dirty trollop? Can you imagine me playing a guitar under a kitchen window and supplanted by a lackey carrying an old toothless dowager's pet cur?--Or perhaps, finding nothing in this world worthy of my love, I shall end by adoring myself, like the late Narcissus of selfish memory. To protect myself from such a great disaster, I look at myself in every mirror and in all the streams I pass. To tell the truth, as a result of musing and mental wandering I am terribly afraid of being led into something monstrous and unnatural. That is a serious matter and I must be on my guard.--Adieu, my friend;--I am going at once to call on the pink lady, for fear of relapsing into my usual state of meditation. I do not think that we shall trouble ourselves very much about actualities, and if we do anything it surely won't be in a spiritual direction, although she is very spirituelle. I carefully roll up and put away in a drawer the pattern of my ideal mistress in order not to try it upon this one. I propose to enjoy tranquilly such good qualities and merits as she has. I propose to leave her in a dress adapted to her figure, and not to try to fit clothes to her that I have cut out, in case of emergency, for the lady of my thoughts.--Those are very prudent resolutions, but I don't know whether I shall keep to them.--Once more, adieu.

III

I am the titular lover of the pink lady; that is almost a profession, an office, and it gives a man a firm footing in society. I no longer look like a scholar seeking a mistress among a parcel of grandmothers and afraid to sing a love-song to a woman unless she's a hundred years old; I notice, since my installation, that I receive much more consideration, that all the women talk to me with jealous coquetry and go out of their way to smile on me.--The men, on the other hand, are colder, and in the few words we exchange there is a touch of hostility and constraint; they feel that they have in me an enemy already formidable, who may become much more so.--I have heard that many of them had bitterly criticised my way of carrying myself and said that my style of dress was too effeminate; that my hair was curled and anointed with more care than beseemed me; that that fact, taken in connection with my beardless face, gave me a most absurd girlish appearance; that I affected rich materials that smelt of the stage, and that I looked more like an actor than a man: a parcel of trite, sneering remarks, intended to justify themselves in being dirty and wearing wretched, ill-fitting clothes. But all this serves only to make me the whiter, and all the ladies consider that my hair is the finest in the world, and that the niceties of my toilet are in the best taste, and they seem strongly disposed to make up to me for all that I spend for their benefit, for they are not fools enough to believe that all that elegance has no other aim than my own private embellishment.

The lady of the house seemed at first a little offended at my choice, which she thought must inevitably fall upon herself, and for some days she was decidedly sour--to her rival only, for there was no change in her manner to me--her spleen manifesting itself in divers little "My dears," uttered in that dry, abrupt tone that women alone can master, and in certain uncomplimentary remarks concerning her costume, made in as loud a voice as possible, such as: "Your hair is done too high and not at all to correspond with your face," or: "Your waist bags under the arms; who in the world made that dress?" or: "You have black rings under your eyes; it seems to me you are much changed;" and a thousand other trivial observations to which the other did not fail to retort with all desirable malignity when opportunity offered; and if the opportunity was too slow in offering she made one for her own use and returned, with interest, what she had received. But soon, another object having distracted the attention of the slighted princess, the little war of words ceased and everything resumed its usual order.

I said baldly that I was the pink lady's titular lover; that is not enough for so accurate a man as you are. You will undoubtedly ask me what her name is: as for that, I shall not tell you; but, if you choose, to shorten the story and in memory of the color of the dress in which I first saw her, we will call her Rosette; it's a pretty name; my little dog has the same name.

You would like to know from point to point, for you love exactness in all things, the story of our love-affairs with this fair Bradamante, and by what successive steps I passed from the general to the particular and from the condition of simple spectator to that of actor; how, after being one of the audience, I became the lover. I will gratify your desire with the very greatest pleasure. There is nothing unpleasant in our romance; it is all rose-colored, and no tears are shed except tears of pleasure; you will find no long descriptions or repetitions, and everything moves on toward the end with the haste and speed so urgently recommended by Horace;--it is a genuine French romance.--Do not imagine, however, that I carried the citadel at the first assault. The princess, although very humane to her subjects, is not as lavish of her favors at first, as you might think; she knows their value too well not to make you purchase them; she also knows too well how a judicious delay sharpens the appetite and what relish a semi-resistance adds to the pleasure, to abandon herself to you at first, however keen the inclination you have aroused in her.

To tell the whole story at length, I must go back a little. I gave you a very circumstantial account of our first interview. I had one or two, perhaps three others in the same house, and then she invited me to call on her; I did not make her repeat the invitation, as you can believe; I went there at discreet intervals at first, then a little more frequently, then still more so, and finally whenever the fancy seized me, and I must confess that it seized me at least three or four times a day.--The lady, after we had been parted a few hours, always received me as if I had just returned from the East Indies; which fact touched me as much as anything could and impelled me to show my gratitude in a marked manner by the most gallant and tenderest words you can imagine, to which she replied as best she could.

Rosette--as we have agreed to call her that--is a very bright woman and has a most admirable appreciation of man; although she postponed the end of the chapter for some time, I did not once lose my temper with her: which is really marvellous, for you know how I fly into a passion when I don't get what I want on the instant, and when a woman goes beyond the time I have mentally allowed her in which to surrender.--I have no idea how she did it at the first interview; she gave me to understand that I should have her, and I was surer of her than if I had had her written promise signed by her hand. You will say perhaps that her bold and free-and-easy manners left the field free to rash hopes. I do not think that that is the real motive: I have seen some women whose prodigious freedom of manner excluded the last vestige of doubt, who did not produce that effect upon me, and in whose presence I was conscious of a timidity and uneasiness that were, to say the least, misplaced.

The result is, generally speaking, that I am less amiable with the woman I long to possess than with those who are indifferent to me; it is because of the excitement of waiting for an opportunity and my uncertainty as to the success of my project; that makes me gloomy and casts me into a fit of musing which takes away much of my power of pleasing and my presence of mind. When I see the hours I had set aside for another purpose passing one by one, I am filled with anger in spite of myself, and I cannot keep from saying very sharp, harsh things, which sometimes go as far as brutality and put my affair back a hundred leagues.

With Rosette I had no such feeling; never, even at the moment when she resisted me most stubbornly, did I have the idea that she wanted to escape from my love. I calmly allowed her to display all her little coquetries, and I endured in patience the overlong delays to which it pleased her to subject my ardor; there was something smiling in her harshness that consoled you for it as much as possible, and in her most Hyrcanian cruelties you could distinguish a background of humanity that made it impossible for you to have any very serious fear.--Virtuous women, even when they are not really virtuous at all, have a crabbed, disdainful way which is perfectly unendurable to me. They have the air of being always ready to ring and order their footmen to put you out; and it seems to me, really, that a man who takes the trouble to pay court to a woman--and it isn't always as agreeable as you may think--doesn't deserve to be looked at in that way.

Dear Rosette has no such glances as that, not she; and I assure you that she doesn't lose anything by it; she is the only woman with whom I have ever been myself, and I am conceited enough to say that I have never been so agreeable. My wit has displayed itself freely; and, by the skill and fire of her retorts, she has led me to discover more than I had any idea that I possessed, and more perhaps than I really do possess.--To be sure, I haven't done much in the way of lyrics--that is hardly possible with her; it is not that she has no poetic side, notwithstanding what De C---- said of her; but she is so full of life and strength and movement, she seems to be so well placed in her present surroundings, that one has no desire to leave them for a flight among the clouds. She fills one's real life so pleasantly and makes of it something so entertaining to herself and others, that reverie has nothing better to offer you.

A miraculous thing! I have known her nearly two months, and in those two months the only times I have been bored have been when I was not with her. You will agree that she can be no inferior woman to produce such a result, for women usually produce exactly the opposite effect on me and are much more agreeable to me at a distance than near at hand.

Rosette has the best disposition in the world, with men I mean, for with women she's as wicked as a devil; she is bright, lively, alert, ready for anything, very original in her way of speaking, and has always some charming nonsense to tell you that you don't expect; she is a delightful companion, a jolly comrade with whom you sleep, rather than a mistress; and if I were a few years older and had fewer romantic ideas, I should be perfectly satisfied, indeed I should deem myself the most fortunate mortal on earth. But--but--that conjunction implies nothing good, and unfortunately that little devil of a restrictive word is the one most frequently employed in all human tongues;--but I am an imbecile, an idiot, a downright booby, never content with anything and always hunting mares' nests; and, instead of being altogether happy, I am only half so;--half, that is a good deal for this world, and yet I find it not enough.

In the eyes of the world I have a mistress whom several desire and envy me, and whom no one would disdain. My desire is gratified, therefore, in appearance, and I no longer have the right to pick a quarrel with fate. However, it seems to me that I have no mistress; I can convince myself that I have by arguing it out, but I do not feel it, and if anybody should ask me unexpectedly if I had one, I think I should answer no.--However, the possession of a woman who has beauty, youth, and wit, constitutes what, in all times and in all countries, has been and still is called having a mistress, and I think there is no other way. That doesn't prevent my having the strangest doubts in that connection, and it has gone so far that if several people should unite to convince me that I am not Rosette's favored lover, I should end by believing them in the face of the palpable evidence to the contrary.

Do not think from what I say that I do not love her or that she is displeasing to me in any way; on the contrary, I am very fond of her and I see in her what everybody else would see in her: a pretty, alluring creature. I simply do not feel that I possess her, that is all. And yet no woman ever gave me so much pleasure, and if I have ever known bliss, it has been in her arms.--A single one of her kisses, the most chaste of her caresses makes me shiver to the soles of my feet and sends all my blood back to my heart. Explain it all if you can. The facts, however, are as I tell them to you. But the human heart is full of such absurdities; and if we were obliged to reconcile all the contradictions it exhibits, we should have a heavy task on our hands.

How does it happen? Verily, I have no idea.

I see her all day, and all night too, if I choose. I bestow as many caresses on her as I please; I have her naked or dressed, in town or in the country. Her good humor is inexhaustible, and she enters heart and soul into my whims however eccentric they may be; one evening the fancy seized me to possess her in the middle of the salon, with all the candles lighted, the fire blazing on the hearth, the chairs arranged in a circle as if for a grand evening reception, she, in a _toilette de bal_ with her bouquet and her fan, all her diamonds on her fingers and her neck, feathers in her hair--the most magnificent costume imaginable--and I dressed like a bear; she consented.--When everything was ready, the servants were greatly surprised to receive orders to close the doors and admit no one; they acted as if they had not the slightest comprehension of what it all meant, and went away with a dazed look that made us laugh heartily. They certainly thought that their mistress was stark mad; but what they thought or did not think mattered little to us.