Part 16

As D'Albert's solicitations became more passionate and more earnest, Théodore's lovely face, instead of expanding and beaming, assumed an expression of dignified melancholy which caused her lover some anxiety.

"Why, my dear sovereign, have you the chaste and solemn air of an antique Diana, when you should display the smiling lips of Venus rising from the sea?"

"You see, D'Albert, I resemble the huntress, Diana, more than anything else on earth.--When I was very young, I assumed this masculine costume for reasons which it would be tedious and useless to tell you.--You alone have divined my sex--and if I have made conquests, they have been of women only, superfluous conquests by which I have more than once been embarrassed.--In a word, although it may seem absurd and incredible, I am a virgin--as spotless as the snow of the Himalayas, as the Moon before she had lain with Endymion, as Mary before she made the acquaintance of the heavenly dove, and I am serious like everybody who is about to do something that can never be undone.--I am about to undergo a metamorphosis, a transformation.--To change the name of maiden for the name of woman, to have not that to give to-morrow which I had yesterday; something that I do not know and am going to learn; an important leaf turned in the book of life.--That is why I am sad, my friend, and not because of anything for which you are to blame."

As she spoke, she put aside the young man's long hair with her two lovely hands, and pressed her softly clinging lips to his pale forehead.

D'Albert, deeply moved by the gentle, solemn tone in which she delivered her speech, took her hands and kissed all the fingers, one after another,--then gently broke the fastenings of her dress so that the corsage opened and the two white treasures appeared in all their splendor: upon that gleaming bosom, as pure as silver, bloomed the two loveliest roses in paradise. He softly pressed his mouth to the blushing points and so ran over the whole surface. Rosalind, with inexhaustible good nature, allowed him to do as he pleased, and tried to return his caresses as exactly as possible.

"You must find me very awkward and very cold, my poor D'Albert; but I hardly know what I am to do;--you will have much trouble to teach me, and really I am putting a very hard task upon you."

D'Albert made the simplest of all replies, he did not reply at all,--and embracing her with increased passion, he covered her bare shoulders and breast with kisses. The half-fainting girl's hair became unfastened, and her dress fell to her feet as if by enchantment. She stood like a white phantom with a simple chemise of the most transparent linen. The happy lover knelt and had soon tossed the two pretty little red-heeled shoes into opposite corners of the room;--the stockings with embroidered clocks followed them close.

The chemise, endowed with a happy spirit of emulation, did not lag behind the dress: first it slipped from the shoulders before she thought of preventing it; then, taking advantage of a moment when the arms were perpendicular, it escaped from them with much address and fell as far as the hips, whose waving contour half stopped it.--Thereupon Rosalind noticed the perfidy of her last garment and raised her knee a little to prevent it from falling altogether.--In that pose she was a perfect copy of the marble statues of goddesses, whose intelligent drapery, grieved to conceal so many charms, regretfully envelops the shapely thighs, and by well-planned treachery stops just below the place it is intended to hide.--But as the chemise was not of marble, and its folds did not sustain it, it continued its triumphal descent, fell upon the dress and lay in a circle at its mistress's feet like a great white greyhound.

Of course, there was a very simple means of avoiding all this confusion; namely, by holding the fleeing garment with the hand; but that idea, natural as it was, did not occur to our modest heroine.

She was left, therefore, without any veil, her fallen clothing forming a sort of pedestal, in all the transparent splendor of her lovely nudity, in the soft light of an alabaster lamp that D'Albert had lighted.

D'Albert, fairly dazzled, gazed at her in ecstasy.

"I am cold," she said, folding her arms across her breast.

"Oh! one moment more! I pray you!"

Rosalind unfolded her arms, rested the tip of her finger on the back of a chair, and stood perfectly still; she leaned slightly to one side in order to bring out all the grace of the undulating line;--she seemed in no wise embarrassed, and the imperceptible flush on her cheek did not deepen a single shade: but the somewhat hurried beating of her heart made the contour of her left bosom tremble.

The young enthusiast in beauty could not feast his eyes enough on such a spectacle: we must say, to the unbounded praise of Rosalind, that this time the reality surpassed his dream, and that he was not conscious of the slightest disillusionment.

Everything was combined in the lovely body posing before him;--delicacy and strength, form and coloring, the outlines of a Grecian statue of the most glorious days of the art, and the tones of a Titian.--He saw there, palpable and crystallized, the misty chimera he had tried so many times to check in its flight--he was not compelled, as he had complained so bitterly to his friend Silvio, to confine his glances to some special well-formed portion of the body, and not to look beyond it, under penalty of seeing something horrible, and his amorous eyes descended from the head to the feet and ascended from the feet to the head, always softly caressed by a harmonious, correctly proportioned line.

The knees were wonderfully pure, the ankles slender and shapely, the legs and thighs built upon a noble, superb model, the belly as lustrous as agate, the hips supple and strong, a bosom that might well tempt the gods to come down from heaven to kiss it, arms and shoulders of the most magnificent shape;--a torrent of beautiful brown hair, curling slightly, as in the heads drawn by the old masters, fell in tiny waves along a back of polished ivory, marvellously heightening the effect of its whiteness.

The painter satisfied, the lover gained the upper hand; for, however great one's love of art, there are things which one cannot long remain contented in looking at.

He took the fair one in his arms and carried her to the bed; in a twinkling he had undressed himself and jumped in beside her.

Our fair reader of the gentler sex would surely look askance at her lover if we should disclose the formidable figure attained by D'Albert's love, assisted by Rosalind's curiosity. Let her remember the most completely filled and the most delightful of her own nights, the night when--the night she would remember a hundred thousand days if she did not die long before; let her put the book beside her and count upon her pretty white fingers how many times he who loved her best loved her that night, and thus fill the gap which we leave in this glorious history.

Rosalind was extremely well disposed, and made astonishing progress in that one night.--The artlessness of body which wondered at everything, and the finesse of mind which wondered at nothing, formed a most alluring and fascinating contrast.--D'Albert was enchanted, bewildered, transported, and would have liked the night to last forty-eight hours, like that in which Hercules was conceived.--Toward morning, however, despite an infinity of the most amorous kisses, and caresses, and endearments, well adapted to keep a man awake, he was obliged, after a superhuman effort, to take a little rest. Sweet, luxurious slumber touched his eyelids with the end of its wing, his head sank and he fell asleep between his fair mistress's bosoms.--She gazed at him for some time with an air of profound and melancholy meditation; then, as the dawn cast its first rays through the curtains, she raised him gently, laid him beside her, rose and passed lightly over his body.

She seized her clothes and dressed in haste, then, returning to the bed, leaned over D'Albert, who was still sleeping, and kissed both his eyes on their long silky lashes.--That done, she left the room, walking backward and still looking at him.

Instead of returning to her room, she went to Rosette's.--What she said there, what she did there, I have never been able to learn, although I have striven most conscientiously to do so.--I have not found among Graciosa's papers or D'Albert's or Silvio's anything relating to that visit. But one of Rosette's maids told me of this singular circumstance: although her mistress did not lay with her lover that night, her bed was rumpled and tossed about and bore the impressions of two bodies.--Furthermore, she showed me two pearls exactly like those Théodore wore in his hair when he played Rosalind. She had found them in the bed when she made it. I state the fact and leave the reader to draw whatever deductions he may choose therefrom; for my own part I have made a thousand conjectures each more unreasonable than the last, and so ridiculous that I really do not dare to write them even in the most virtuously periphrastic style.

It was quite noon when Théodore left Rosette's chamber.--He did not appear at dinner or supper.--D'Albert and Rosette did not seem surprised.--He went to bed early, and the next morning, at daybreak, without a word to any one, he saddled his horse and his page's and left the chateau, telling a servant not to expect him at dinner, and that he might not return for some days.

D'Albert and Rosette were greatly astonished, and did not know how to account for this sudden disappearance--especially D'Albert, who, by the prowess he displayed the first night, thought he had well earned a second. Toward the end of the week, the unhappy, disappointed lover received a letter from Théodore which we propose to transcribe. I am afraid it will not satisfy my readers of either sex; but the letter was written so and not otherwise, and this glorious romance shall have no other conclusion.

XVII

Doubtless, my dear D'Albert, you are greatly surprised by what I now do after what I have done.--I permit you to be, there is good reason for it.--I will wager that you have already applied to me at least twenty of the epithets we agreed to strike out of our vocabulary: perfidious, inconstant, vile creature--is it not so?--At all events, you will not call me cruel or virtuous, which is so much gained.--You curse me and you are wrong.--You desired me, you loved me, I was your ideal:--very good. I granted you on the spot what you wanted; it was nobody's fault but your own that you hadn't it sooner. I served as body to your dream in the most accommodating way.--I gave you what I certainly shall never again give any one--a surprise upon which you hardly reckoned and for which you certainly ought to be most grateful to me.--Now that I have satisfied you, it pleases me to go away.--What is there so monstrous in that?

You had me absolutely and without reserve a whole night; what more do you want? Another night and then still another; you would even put up with a few days at need.--And so you would go on until you were disgusted with me.--I can hear you from here crying most politely that I am not one of those with whom men become disgusted. _Mon Dieu_! yes, with me as with others.

It would last six months, two years, even ten years, if you choose, but it must end at some time or other.--You would keep me through a sort of feeling of duty, or because you had not the courage to give me my dismissal. What is the use of waiting until it comes to that?

And then perhaps I should be the one to cease to love you. I have found you charming; perhaps, by virtue of seeing you often, I should have found you detestable.--Forgive that supposition.--By living with you on terms of close intimacy, I should have occasion, I doubt not, to see you in a cotton night-cap or in some absurd or grotesque domestic situation.--You would necessarily have lost the romantic and mysterious side that charms me above all things, and your character, being better understood, would no longer have seemed so unique to me. I should be less engrossed with you, having you near me, just as it happens with books that one never opens because one has them in his library.--Your nose or your mind would no longer seem to me nearly as well turned; I should notice that your coat didn't fit you, or that your stockings weren't drawn tight; I should have a thousand disillusionments of that sort which would have made me very unhappy, and I should have come at last to this conclusion!--that you certainly had neither heart nor soul, and that I was destined not to be understood in the matter of love.

You adore me and I reciprocate the feeling. You have not the slightest reason to reproach me, and I have not the slightest complaint to make of you. I have been perfectly faithful to you throughout our whole _liaison._ I have deceived you in nothing.--I had neither a false bosom nor false virtue; you had the extreme kindness to tell me that I was even more beautiful than you imagined.--In return for the beauty I gave you, you gave me much pleasure; we are quits;--I go my way and you yours, and perhaps we shall meet again at the Antipodes.--Live in that hope.

You think perhaps that I do not love because I leave you. Later you will realize how far that is true.--If I had cared less for you, I would have remained and poured out the insipid draught for you to the dregs. Your love would soon have been dead of ennui; after some time you would have entirely forgotten me, and as you read my name on the list of your conquests, you would have asked yourself: "Who the devil was she?"--I have at least the satisfaction of thinking that you will remember me more than some others.--Your unsatisfied desire will still spread its wings to fly to me; I shall always be to you something desirable to which your fancy will love to return, and I hope that in the bed of the mistresses you may have hereafter, you will think sometimes of the single night you passed with me.

You will never be more lovable than you were on that blessed evening, and even if you should be as much so, that would show a falling-off; for in love, as in poetry, to remain at the same point is to retrograde. Cling to that impression--you will do well.

You have made the task of such lovers as I may have--if I have other lovers--a difficult one, and no one will ever be able to efface my memory of you;--they will be the heirs of Alexander.

If it grieves you too deeply to lose me, burn this letter, which is the only proof that you have had me, and you will think you have had a pleasant dream. What is there to prevent that? The vision vanished before dawn, just at the hour when dreams return home through the doors of horn or ivory.--How many men have died, less fortunate than you, without giving so much as a single kiss to their chimera!

I am neither whimsical nor mad nor prudish.--What I do is the result of profound conviction.--It was not to inflame your passion or from any deep design of coquetry that I left C----; do not try to follow me or to find me: you will not succeed. My precautions to conceal my tracks from you are too well taken; you will always be, in my mind, the man who opened to me a world of novel sensations. Those are things a woman doesn't readily forget. Although absent, I shall think of you often, more often than if you were with me.

Do your best to console poor Rosette, who is likely to be at least as grieved as you at my departure. Love each other well in memory of me, whom you have both loved, and mention my name sometimes in a kiss.