Part 15

Only a woman could love her with proper delicacy and tender affection.--One side of my character, which might not have been developed in a _liaison_ of another sort, but which suddenly manifested itself in this, is the imperative longing to have some one under my protection, which is usually characteristic of men. If I had taken a lover, it would have annoyed me intensely to have him assume to defend me, for the reason that that is something I love to do myself for people whom I am fond of, and my pride is much better suited with the first rôle than the second, although the second may be more agreeable.--So I was very well content to bestow upon my dear little girl all the attentions I ought to have wanted to receive, such as assisting her over difficult places in the road, holding her rein and her stirrup, waiting on her at table, undressing her and putting her to bed, defending her if any one insulted her, in short, doing everything for her that the most passionate and attentive lover does for an adored mistress.

I gradually lost all idea of my sex, and I barely remembered, now and then, that I was a woman. In the beginning I often let slip, unthinkingly, "I am tired," or some remark that did not accord with the coat I wore. Now that never happens, and even when I am writing to you, who are in my confidence, I sometimes retain an unnecessary amount of virility in my adjectives. If I ever take a fancy to go and look for my skirts in the drawer where I left them, which I very much doubt unless I fall in love with some fine young man, I shall have difficulty in accustoming myself to them, and I shall look like a man disguised as a woman, instead of a woman disguised as a man. The truth is, that I belong to neither sex; I have not the idiotic resignation, the timidity nor the pettiness of the woman; I have not men's vices, their disgusting sottishness and their brutal inclinations:--I am of a third distinct sex which has no name as yet: above or below the others, more imperfect or superior; I have the body and soul of a woman, the mind and strength of a man, and I have too much or not enough of either to enable me to mate with one or the other.

O Graciosa, I shall never love any one, either man or woman, with all my heart; there is always something unsatisfied grumbling within me, and the lover or the friend fills the need of only one side of my character. If I had a lover, such feminine qualities as I have would dominate the virile part of me, I doubt not, but that would last but a short time, and I feel that I should be only half content; if I have a friend of my own sex, the thought of sensual pleasure prevents me from enjoying to the full the pure pleasure of the mind; so that I do not know where to stop, and am forever hesitating between the two.

My ideal of happiness would be to have the two sexes turn and turn about to satisfy this twofold nature:--a man to-day, a woman to-morrow, I would reserve for my lovers my languishing tenderness, my submissive, devoted manners, my softest caresses, my little melancholy, long-drawn sighs, whatever there is of the cat and the woman in my character; then, with my mistresses, I would be froward, enterprising, impassioned, with victorious manners, my hat cocked over my ear and the bearing of a swash-buckling adventurer. Thus my whole nature would come to light, and I should be perfectly happy, for true happiness consists in the ability to develop one's nature freely in every direction, and to be everything that one can be.

But these are impossibilities and I mustn't think about them.

I had kidnapped the little one with the idea of fooling my inclinations, and diverting upon some one all the vague affection that was floating about in my heart, and inundating it; I had taken her as a sort of safety-valve for my faculty of loving; but I soon realized, notwithstanding all my affection for her, what an immense void, what a bottomless abyss, she left in my heart, how little her fondest caresses satisfied me!--I resolved to try a lover, but a long time passed, and still I met no one who was not disagreeable to me. I have forgotten to tell you that Rosette, having discovered where I had gone, had written me a most imploring letter, begging me to come and see her; I could not refuse, and I visited her at a country estate she has.--I have been there several times since, very recently in fact.--Rosette, in despair at her inability to have me for her lover, had plunged into the whirlpool of society and into dissipation, like all loving souls who are not religious and who have been disappointed in their first love;--she had had many adventures in a short time, and the list of her conquests was already very long, for not everybody had the same reasons for resisting her that I had.

She had with her a young man named D'Albert, who was for the moment her titular lover.--I seemed to make a deep impression on him, and he conceived a very warm friendship for me at once.

Although he treated her with much consideration and his manner toward her was affectionate enough, he did not love Rosette,--not because he was satiated or disgusted with women, but because she did not respond to certain conceptions, true or false, which he had formed of love and beauty. An ideal cloud floated between her and him, and prevented him from being happy as he would have been but for that.--Evidently his dream was not fulfilled and he was sighing for something else.--But he was not seeking it, and remained faithful to bonds that were irksome to him; for he has in his soul a little more delicacy and honor than most men have, and his heart is very far from being as corrupt as his mind.--Not being aware that Rosette had never been in love with any one but me, and was still, through all her love-affairs and follies, he feared to give her pain by letting her see that he did not love her; that consideration restrained him, and he sacrificed himself in the most generous way imaginable.

The character of my features pleased him extraordinarily,--for he attaches undue importance to exterior form--to such a point, in fact, that he fell in love with me, notwithstanding my male attire and the formidable rapier I wear at my side.--I confess that I am obliged to him for the shrewdness of his instinct, and that I esteem him somewhat for having detected me under those deceptive appearances.--In the beginning he fancied that he was blessed with a much more depraved taste than he really was, and I laughed in my sleeve to see him torment himself so.--Sometimes when he approached me he had a frightened look that diverted me beyond measure, and the very natural inclination that drew him toward me seemed to him a diabolical impulsion which one could not resist too sturdily.--At such times he fell back on Rosette in a frenzy, and strove to resume more orthodox methods of love; then he would come back to me, naturally more inflamed than before. At last the illuminating idea that I might be a woman stole into his mind. To convince himself of it, he set about watching and studying me with the most minute attention; he must have an intimate acquaintance with each hair on my head and know just how many lashes I have on my eyelids; my feet, my hands, my neck, my cheeks, the suspicion of down at the corner of my mouth,--he examined them all, compared and analyzed them, and the result of that investigation, in which the artist aided the lover, was the conviction, clear as the day--when it is clear--that I was in very truth a woman, and, what was more, his ideal, his type of beauty, the realization of his dream;--a marvellous discovery!

Nothing remained except to make an impression on me and to induce me to grant him the lover's gift of gratitude, to establish my sex beyond doubt.--A comedy that we acted, and in which I appeared as a woman, convinced him completely. I bestowed some equivocal glances upon him, and used certain passages in my part that bore some analogy to our situation to embolden him and induce him to declare himself.--For, even if I did not love him passionately, I was sufficiently attracted by him not to let him pine away with love where he stood; and as he was the first one since my transformation to suspect that I was a woman, it was no more than fair that I should enlighten him on that important point, and I determined not to leave a shadow of doubt in his mind.

He came to my room several times with his declaration on his lips, but he dared not put it in words; for after all it is hard to talk of love to some one who wears the same kind of clothes that you do, and affects top-boots. At last, being unable to bring himself to the point, he wrote me a long letter, a most Pindaric production, in which he explained at great length what I knew better than he.

I don't quite know what I had better do.--Grant his request, or reject it,--that would be immoderately virtuous;--moreover, it would grieve him too much to be refused; if we make those who love us unhappy, what shall we do to those who hate us?--Perhaps it would be more in accordance with strict propriety to play the cruel for some time, and to wait at least a month before unclasping the tigress's skin to don the civilized chemise.--But, as I am determined to yield to him, it is quite as well to do it at once as later;--I don't think very much of the noble resistance, mathematically graduated, which abandons one hand to-day, the other to-morrow, then the foot, then the leg and the knee as far as the garter only,--or the intractable virtue that is always ready to clutch the bell-rope if you go a hair's breadth beyond the limit of the territory they have decided to surrender on that day.--It makes me laugh to see these methodical Lucreces walking backward with signs of the most maidenly terror, and casting a furtive glance over their shoulder from time to time to see if the sofa on which they are to fall is directly behind them.--I could not take so much trouble.

I do not love D'Albert, at least in the sense in which I understand the word, but I certainly have a liking and inclination for him;--his wit pleases me and his person does not repel me; there are not many people of whom I can say as much. He hasn't everything, but he has something;--what pleases me, in him is that he does not try to slake his thirst brutally, like other men; he has a constant aspiration and a sustained impulse toward the beautiful--toward material beauty only, it is true, but that is a noble tendency, and sufficient to keep him within the limits of the pure.--His behavior to Rosette proves honesty of heart,--honesty, that is more rare than the other kind, if that be possible.

And then, if I must tell you, I am possessed by the most violent desires,--I am languishing and dying with lust;--for the coat I wear, while it leads me into all sorts of adventures with women, protects me too perfectly against the enterprises of men; an idea of pleasure that is never realized floats vaguely in my brain, and the dull, colorless dream fatigues and bores me.--So many women lead the life of prostitutes amid the most chaste surroundings! and I, in most ridiculous contrast to them, remain as chaste and unspotted as the cold Diana herself, in the midst of the most reckless dissipation and surrounded by the greatest rakes of the age.--This ignorance of the body, unaccompanied by ignorance of the mind, is the most wretched thing imaginable. In order that my flesh may not put on airs before my mind, I propose to inflict an equal stain upon it--if indeed it is any more of a stain than eating and drinking, which I doubt.--In a word, I propose to know what a man is, and what sort of pleasure he affords. As D'Albert recognized me through my disguise, it is no more than fair that he should be rewarded for his penetration; he was the first person to guess that I was a woman, and I will do my best to prove to him that his suspicions were well founded.--It would be most uncharitable to let him believe that he has developed an unnatural taste.

D'Albert then will solve my doubts, and give me my first lesson in love; it only remains now to bring the thing about in poetic fashion. I am inclined not to answer his letter, and to be cold to him for a few days. When I see that he is very depressed and desperate, cursing the gods, shaking his fist at all creation, and looking into wells to see if they are too deep to throw himself into--then I will withdraw, like Peau d'Ane, to the end of the corridor, and will don my multi-colored dress--that is to say, my Rosalind costume, for my feminine wardrobe is decidedly limited. Then I will go to him, as radiant as a peacock spreading his feathers, showing ostentatiously what I generally conceal with the greatest care, and wearing only a little lace tucker, very low and very coquettish, and I will say to him in the most pathetic tone I can command:

"O most poetic and most perspicacious of young men, I am in very truth naught but a young and modest beauty, who, over and above all, adores you, and whose only wish is to give pleasure to you and to herself.--Tell me if that is agreeable to you, and if you still retain any scruple, touch this, go in peace, and sin all you can."

That eloquent harangue concluded, I will sink, half-fainting, into his arms, and while I heave a melancholy sigh or two, I will adroitly unfasten the clasp of my dress and appear in the conventional costume, that is to say, half naked.--D'Albert will do the rest, and I hope that, on the following morning, I shall know what to believe about all the fine things that have been troubling my brain so long.--While gratifying my curiosity, I shall have the additional pleasure of making a fellow-creature happy.

I propose also to pay Rosette a visit in the same costume, and to prove to her that my failure to respond to her love was due neither to coldness nor dislike.--I do not want her to retain that bad opinion of me, and she deserves, no less than D'Albert, that I should betray my _incognito_ in her favor.--How will she take that disclosure?--Her pride will be comforted, but her love will groan.

Adieu, my loveliest and best; pray God that pleasure may not seem to me so small a matter as they who dispense it. I have written flippantly throughout this letter, and yet this that I am going to do is a serious thing, and all the rest of my life may feel its effects.

XVI

More than a fortnight had passed since D'Albert placed his amorous epistle on Théodore's table, and yet there was no perceptible change in the latter's demeanor.--D'Albert did not know to what to attribute that silence;--it seemed as if Théodore had no knowledge of the letter; the pitiable D'Albert believed that it had been destroyed or lost; and yet it was difficult to see how that could be, for Théodore had returned to the room a moment after, and it would have been a most extraordinary thing if he had failed to notice a large paper lying by itself in the middle of the table, in such a way as to attract the most absent-minded glance.

Or was it that Théodore was really a man and not a woman, as D'Albert had imagined--or, in case she was a woman, had she such a pronounced aversion for him, such contempt, that she would not even deign to take the trouble to reply to him?--The poor fellow, who had not had, like ourselves, the privilege of looking through the portfolio of _la belle_ Maupin's confidante, Graciosa, was not in a condition to decide affirmatively or negatively any of these important questions, and he wavered sadly in the most wretched irresolution.

One evening he was in his room, with his forehead pressed against the window, gazing gloomily, without seeing them, at the chestnut-trees in the park, already partly bare of leaves and bright red in spots. The horizon was swimming in a thick haze, night was already descending, rather gray than black, and cautiously placing its velvet feet on the tree-tops;--a large swan amorously dipped her neck and shoulders again and again in the steaming water of the stream, and her white body resembled in the shadow a large star of snow.--She was the only living creature that gave life to that dull landscape.

D'Albert was musing as sadly as a disappointed man can muse at five o'clock on a cloudy autumn afternoon, with no music but the whistling of a shrill north wind and no other outlook than the skeleton of a leafless forest.

He was thinking of throwing himself into the river, but the water seemed very black and cold, and the swan's example only half persuaded him; of blowing out his brains, but he had neither pistol nor powder, and he would have been sorry if he had; of taking a new mistress, or even two--an ominous resolution! but he knew nobody who suited him, or, for that matter, who did not suit him.--He carried his despair so far as to think of renewing his relations with women who were perfectly unendurable to him and whom he had had his lackeys drive out of his house with horse-whips. He ended by deciding upon something even more ghastly--writing a second letter.

O sextuple idiot!

He was at that point in his meditations when he felt upon his shoulder--a hand--like a little dove alighting on a palm-tree.--The simile halts a little in that D'Albert's shoulder bore but slight resemblance to a palm; no matter, we retain it from a sentiment of pure Orientalism.

The hand was attached to the end of an arm which corresponded with a shoulder forming part of a body, which body was nothing more nor less than Théodore-Rosalind, Mademoiselle d'Aubigny, or Madelaine de Maupin, to give her her true name.

Who was surprised?--Neither you nor I, for you and I were fully prepared for this visit; but D'Albert, who had not the slightest expectation of it.--He gave a little cry of surprise half-way between oh! and ah! However, I have the best of reasons for thinking that it was nearer an ah! than an oh!

It was Rosalind herself, so fair and radiant that she lighted up the whole room,--with the strings of pearls in her hair, her prismatic dress, her ample lace sleeves, her red-heeled shoes, her lovely peacock's-feather fan,--in a word, just as she was on the day of the play. But there was this important and decisive difference, that she had neither neckerchief nor wimple nor ruff nor anything at all to conceal from his eyes those two charming hostile twin brothers,--who, alas! are only too often inclined to be reconciled.

A breast entirely bare, as white and transparent as antique marble, of the purest and most exquisite form, protruded boldly from a very scanty corsage and seemed to challenge kisses. It was a very reassuring sight; and D'Albert was quickly reassured, and gave way in all confidence to his wildest emotions.

"Well, Orlando, do you not recognize your Rosalind?" said the fair one, with the most charming smile; "or have you left your love hanging with your sonnets on the bushes in the forest of Arden? Are you really cured of the disease for which you asked me so persistently for a remedy? I am very much afraid so."

"Oh, no! Rosalind, I am sicker than ever. I am in the death-agony; I am dead, or nearly so."

"You look very well for a corpse, and many living men have not so good a color as you."

"What a week I have passed!--You can't imagine it, Rosalind. I hope that it will be worth at least a thousand years of purgatory to me in the other world.--But, if I may venture to ask you, why did you not answer sooner?"

"Why?--I am not quite sure, unless it was just because.--If that reason doesn't strike you as satisfactory, here are three others not so good; you can take your choice: first, because, in the excitement of your passion, you forgot to write legibly and it took me more than a week to guess what your letter was about;--secondly, because my modesty could not accustom itself in less time to the ridiculous idea of taking a dithyrambic poet for a lover; and thirdly, because I was not sorry to find out if you would blow out your brains, poison yourself with opium, or hang yourself with your garter.--There you are."

"You wicked jester!--You did well to come to-day, I assure you, for you might not have found me to-morrow."

"Really! poor boy!--Don't put on such a disconsolate expression, for I shall be touched too, and that would make me stupider in my single person than all the animals that were in the ark with the late Noah.--If I once open the flood-gates of my sentimentality, you will be submerged, I warn you.--Just now I gave you three bad reasons, I offer you now three good kisses; will you accept, on condition that you are to forget the reasons for the kisses?--I owe you that much, and more."

As she spoke, the lovely girl stepped up to the doleful lover and threw her beautiful bare arms around his neck.--D'Albert kissed her effusively on both cheeks and on the mouth.--The last kiss lasted longer than the others and might well have counted for four.--Rosalind saw that all that she had done hitherto was mere child's play. Her debt paid, she sat on D'Albert's knee, still deeply moved, and said, passing her hands through his hair:

"All my cruelty is exhausted, my sweet friend; I took this fortnight to satisfy my natural ferocity; I will confess that it seemed very long to me. Don't be conceited because I speak frankly, but that is the truth.--I put myself in your hands, take your revenge for my past rigor.--If you were a fool, I would not say this to you, nor indeed would I say anything else, for I don't care for fools.--It would have been very easy for me to make you believe that I was tremendously incensed by your boldness and that you would not have a sufficient store of platonic sighs and highly concentrated rhapsodies to obtain forgiveness for an offence with which I was well pleased; I might, like other women, have haggled with you for a long while and given you in instalments what I give you freely and all at once; but I do not think you would have loved me a single hair's breadth more.--I do not ask you for an oath of everlasting love nor for any extravagant protestations.--Love me as much as God pleases.--I will do the same for my part.--I will not call you a perfidious villain when you cease to love me.--You will have the kindness also to spare me the odious corresponding titles, if I should happen to leave you.--I shall simply be a woman who has ceased to love you--nothing more.--It isn't necessary for us to hate each other all our lives because we have lain together for a night or two.--Whatever happens, and wherever my destiny may guide me, I swear to you, and this is an oath one can keep, that I will always retain a delightful memory of you, and, even if I am no longer your mistress, that I will always be your friend as I have been your comrade.--For you I have laid aside my man's clothes for to-night; to-morrow morning I shall resume them again for all.--Remember that I am Rosalind only at night, and that through the day I am and can be only plain Théodore de Sérannes--"

The conclusion of the sentence was stifled by a kiss, succeeded by many others, which they ceased to count and of which we will not undertake to furnish an exact reckoning, because it would certainly be a little long and perhaps very immoral--in the eyes of some people--for, so far as we are concerned, we know of nothing more moral and more sacred under heaven than the caresses of a man and a woman, when both are young and beautiful.