Chapter 2

Well, my friend, I have come home again, I have not been to Cathay
or Cashmere or Samarcand;--but it is fair to say that I am no nearer
having a mistress than ever.--And yet I took myself by the hand, I
swore a mighty oath that I would go to the end of the world. I have
not even been to the end of the town. I don't know what the matter is
with me, but I have never been able to keep my word to anybody, even
to myself: it must be that the devil takes a hand in it. If I say: "I
will go there to-morrow," it is certain that I shall stay at home; if
I propose to go to the wine-shop, I go to church; if I start to go to
church, the roads get tangled under my feet like skeins of thread,
and I find myself in an entirely different place. I fast when I have
determined to have a debauch, and so it goes. Therefore I am inclined
to believe that what prevents me from having a mistress is that I have
determined to have one.

I must tell you about my expedition, step by step: it is well worth
the honors of narration. I had passed at least two full hours at my
toilet that day. I had had my hair combed and curled and my moustaches,
such as they are, twisted and waxed a little; and as the excitement
of longing imparted some slight animation to my ordinarily pale face,
really I was not so bad. At last, after scrutinizing myself attentively
in the mirror in different lights, to see if I was fine enough and if
my bearing was sufficiently gallant, I went resolutely forth with head
erect, chin well raised, eyes front, one hand on the hip, making the
heels of my boots ring like an _anspessade_, elbowing the bourgeois,
and with a flawlessly triumphant and all-conquering air.

I was like another Jason setting out to conquer the Golden
Fleece.--But, alas! Jason was more fortunate than I: besides the
conquest of the fleece, he made, at the same time, the conquest of a
beautiful princess, and I--I have neither fleece nor princess.

I walked through the streets, eying all the women, and hurrying toward
them and gazing at them at closer quarters when they seemed to me to be
worth the trouble of examining.--Some assumed their high and mighty
virtuous air and passed without raising their eyes.--Others were
surprised at first, then smiled if they had white teeth.--Some turned
after a little time, to look at me when they thought I was not looking
at them, and blushed like cherries when they found themselves face to
face with me.--It was a lovely day; there were quantities of people
out walking.--And yet I must confess, notwithstanding all the respect
I feel for that interesting half of the human race, which is called by
common consent the fair sex, it is, as a whole, devilishly ugly: out of
a hundred women there is hardly one who is passably good-looking. This
one had a moustache; that one had a blue nose; others had red spots
in place of eyebrows; one was not badly built, but she had a pimply
face. The head of another was charming, but she could scratch her ear
with her shoulder; a third would have put Praxiteles to shame with the
graceful roundness of certain outlines, but she stumbled along on feet
like Turkish stirrups. Another exhibited the most magnificent shoulders
imaginable; in revenge, her hands resembled in shape and size those
immense scarlet gloves that haberdashers use for signs.--Generally
speaking, what tired-looking faces! how worn and streaked they were,
withered by degrading petty passions and petty vices! What expressions
of envy, of malevolent curiosity, of avarice, of brazen coquetry! and
how much uglier is a woman who is not beautiful, than a man who is not
handsome!

I saw nobody worth looking at--except a few grisettes;--but they have
more cotton than silk to rumple, and they don't interest me.--In very
truth, I believe that man, and when I say man I include woman, is the
vilest animal on the face of the earth. That quadruped who walks on his
hind feet seems to me extraordinarily presumptuous to claim the first
place in creation as his undoubted right. A lion, a tiger, are finer
animals than men, and in their species many individuals attain all the
beauty that belongs to it. But such a thing rarely happens among human
beings.--How many abortions for one Antinous! how many Goths for one
Phyllis!

I am very much afraid, my dear friend, that I shall never be able to
embrace my ideal, and yet there is nothing extraordinary or unnatural
about it.--It is not the ideal of a third-form school-boy. I do not ask
for ivory globes or alabaster pillars, or azure veins; I have not used
in its composition either lilies, or snow, or roses, or jet, or ebony,
or coral, or ambrosia, or pearls or diamonds; I have left the stars
of heaven at rest, and I have not unhung the sun unseasonably. It is
almost a bourgeois ideal, it is so simple, and it seems to me that with
a bag or two of piastres I could find it all ready-made and realized in
the first bazaar I might happen upon at Constantinople or Smyrna; it
would probably cost me less than a blooded horse or dog; and to think
that I shall not get what I want, for I have a feeling that I shall
not! It is enough to drive a man mad, and I fly into the hottest sort
of a rage against fate.

You are not such a mad fool as I, you are fortunate;--you have simply
taken your life as it came, without tormenting yourself trying to shape
it, and you have dealt with things as they turned up. You haven't
sought for happiness, it has come in search of you; you love and are
loved.--I don't envy you;--for Heaven's sake, don't think that! but I
am not so happy as I ought to be when I think of your felicity, and I
say to myself, with a sigh, that I would like to enjoy felicity of the
same sort.

Perhaps my happiness passed by my side and I did not see it, blind that
I was; perhaps a voice spoke, and the uproar of my internal tempests
prevented me from hearing it.

Perhaps I have been loved in secret by some humble heart that I have
neglected or broken; perhaps I have myself been the ideal of another,
the pole-star of a suffering heart,--the dream of a night and the
thought of a day.--If I had looked at my feet, perhaps I should
have seen there some fair Magdalene with her box of ointment and
her dishevelled hair. I walked along with my arms raised to heaven,
longing to pluck the stars that fled from me, and scorning to pick
the little daisy that opened its golden heart in the dewy grass. I
have made a great mistake: I have asked love for something other than
love, something that it could not give. I forgot that love was naked,
I failed to grasp the meaning of that magnificent symbol.--I asked him
for brocade dresses, feathers, diamonds, sublime intellect, learning,
poesy, beauty, youth, supreme power--everything that is not love;--love
can offer naught but love, and he who seeks to extort anything else
from him is unworthy to be loved.

I have been in too much of a hurry, of course: my hour has not yet
come; God who lent me my life will not take it back without letting me
live. What's the use of giving a poet a lyre without strings, or man
a life without love? God cannot be guilty of such inconsistency; and
I have no doubt that when the allotted moment comes, He will place in
my path the woman I am to love and by whom I am to be loved.--But why
has love come to me before a mistress? Why am I thirsty when I have no
fountain at which to quench my thirst? or why can I not fly, like the
birds of the desert, to the spot where water is to be found? The world
to me is a Sahara without wells or date-trees. I have not in my whole
life a single shady nook to give me shelter from the sun: I suffer all
the ardors of passion without its ineffable ecstasy and delight; I know
its torments and have not its pleasures. I am jealous of something that
does not exist; I am ill at ease for the shadow of a shade; I heave
sighs that mean nothing; I have sleepless nights embellished by no
adored vision; I shed tears that flow to the ground without being wiped
away; I give the wind kisses that are not returned to me; I wear out my
eyes trying to distinguish a vague, deceitful shape in the distance; I
await what cannot come, and I count the hours with feverish anxiety as
if I had an appointment.

Whoever you be, angel or demon, virgin or courtesan, shepherdess or
princess, whether you come from north or south, you whom I do not know
but whom I love! oh! do not force me to wait longer, or the flame
will consume the altar, and you will find only a heap of cold ashes in
place of my heart. Descend from the sphere where you now are; leave the
crystal sky, O comforting spirit, and cast upon my heart the shadow of
your great wings. Come, woman that I love, come, and let me clasp about
you the arms that have been open so long. Ye golden doors of the palace
where she dwells, turn on your hinges; raise yourself, latch of her
humble cottage; untwine yourselves, ye branches of trees and thorns by
the road-side; be broken, ye enchantments of the turret, ye spells of
magicians; open, ranks of the common herd, and let her pass.

If you come too late, O my ideal! I shall not have the strength to love
you:--my heart is like a dovecote full of doves. Every hour of the day
some desire takes flight. The doves return to the dovecote, but my
desires do not return to my heart.--The azure sky is whitened by their
countless swarms; they wing their way through space, from world to
world, from sky to sky, seeking some love to light upon and pass the
night: haste, O my dream! or you will find naught in the empty nest
save the shells of the birds that have flown.

My friend, my childhood's companion, you are the only one to whom I
can say such things. Write me that you pity me and that you don't look
upon me as a hypochondriac; comfort me, I never was in greater need
of it; how greatly to be envied are they who have a passion they can
satisfy! The drunkard finds no cruelty in any sort of a bottle; he
falls from the wine-shop to the gutter and is happier on his dung-heap
than a king on his throne. The sensual man resorts to courtesans in
search of ready loves or shameless refinements of indecency: a painted
cheek, a short skirt, an exposed bosom, an obscene jest, he is happy;
his eye turns white, his lip is moist; he attains the height of his
happiness, he enjoys the ecstasy of his vulgar lust. The gambler needs
only a green cloth and a worn and greasy pack of cards to procure the
poignant excitement, the nervous spasms and the diabolical joy of
his ghastly passion. Such people can satisfy their cravings or find
distraction;--to me it is impossible.

This idea has taken such thorough possession of me that I no longer
care for the arts, and poetry has now no charm for me; the things that
used to be my delight do not make the least impression on me. I begin
to believe that I am wrong, I demand more of nature and society than
they can give. What I seek does not exist and I ought not to complain
because I cannot find it. However, if the woman we dream of does not
come within the conditions of human nature, how is it that we love only
her and not others, since we are men and our instinct should draw us
irresistibly toward them? What puts this imaginary woman into our head?
with what clay do we mould this invisible statue? where do we get the
feathers we fasten to the back of this chimera? what mystic bird laid
in a dark corner of our soul the unseen egg from which our dream was
hatched? what is this abstract beauty that we feel but cannot define?
why, before a woman who may be charming, do we sometimes say that she
is beautiful,--whereas we find her very ugly? Where is the model, the
type, the interior pattern that serves us as a point of comparison?
for beauty is always comparative and can be appreciated only by
contrast.--Was it in the sky that we saw her--in a star--at a ball
in the shadow of a mother, fresh bud of a leafless rose?--was it in
Italy or in Spain? was it here or there, yesterday or long ago? was it
the admired courtesan, the popular cantatrice, the prince's daughter?
a proud and noble head bending under a heavy diadem of pearls and
rubies? a young and childish face stooping over the nasturtiums and
volubilis in the window?--Of what school was the picture from which
that beauty looked forth, fair and beaming amid dark shadows? Was it
Raphael who caressed the contour that has caught your fancy? Was it
Cleomenes who polished the marble that you adore?--are you in love with
a Madonna or a Diana?--is your ideal an angel, a sylph, or a woman?

Alas! it is a little of all of these and it is none of them.

That transparent tint, that charming, blooming freshness, that flesh
wherein the blood and the life flow in abundance, that lovely fair
hair falling over the shoulders like a cloak of gold, that sparkling
laughter, those amorous dimples, that figure undulating like a
flame, that strength, that suppleness, that glistening satin, those
rounded outlines, those plump arms, that full, smooth back, that
whole appearance of blooming health belongs to Rubens.--Raphael alone
could have given that pale tinge of amber to such pure features. What
other than he drew the curves of those long, fine black eyebrows,
and spread out the lashes of those modestly lowered lids?--Do you
think that Allegri had no part in your ideal? From him the lady of
your thoughts stole the warm, ivory whiteness of complexion that
fascinates you. She stood long before his canvas to catch the secret
of the angelic smile that is always on her lips; she modelled her oval
features upon those of a nymph or a saint. That line of the hip that
undulates so voluptuously is taken from the sleeping Antiope.--Those
plump, well-shaped hands might be claimed by Danaë or Magdalen. Dusty
antiquity itself supplied much material for the composition of your
young chimera; those strong and supple loins, about which you twine
your arms so passionately, were carved by Praxiteles. The divinity left
everything for the express purpose of putting the toes of her charming
foot outside the ruins of Herculaneum, so that your idol should not be
lame. Nature also has contributed its share. You have seen here and
there, in the prismatic rays of desire, a beautiful eye behind a blind,
an ivory forehead pressed against a window, a mouth smiling behind a
fan.--You have divined the quality of the arm from the hand, of the
knee from the ankle. What you saw was perfect; you assumed that the
rest was like what you saw and you finished it out with bits of other
beauties gathered elsewhere.--Not even ideal beauty, as realized by
painters, is sufficient for you, and you must go and ask the poets
for outlines even more gracefully rounded, shapes more ethereal,
charms more divine, refinement more exquisite; you begged them to give
breath and speech to your phantom, all their love, all their musings,
all their joy and their sadness, their melancholy and their morbid
fancies, all their memories and all their hopes, their knowledge and
their passion, their mind and their heart; you took all these from them
and you added, to cap the climax of the impossible, your own passion,
your own mind, your dreams and your thoughts. The star lent its beams,
the flower its perfume, the palette its colors, the poet his harmony,
the marble its shape, and you, your longing.--How could a real woman,
who eats and drinks, who goes to bed at night and gets up in the
morning--however adorable and instinct with charm she may be--sustain
comparison with such a creature! We cannot reasonably hope for such
a thing, and yet we do hope for it and seek it.--What extraordinary
blindness! it is sublime or absurd. How I pity and admire those who
pursue the reality of their dream through everything and die content,
if only they have once kissed their chimera on the lips! But what a
frightful fate is that of the Columbuses who have not discovered their
world, and of lovers who have not found their mistress.

Ah! if I were a poet, I would consecrate my verses to those whose
existence is a failure, whose arrows have not reached the target,
who have died with the word they had to say still unsaid and without
pressing the hand that was destined for them; to all who have been
unsuccessful or have passed by unnoticed, to genius without issue,
stifled fire, the undiscovered pearl at the bottom of the sea, to all
who have loved without being loved, to all who have suffered and not
been pitied;--it would be a noble task.

How wise it was of Plato to wish to banish you from his republic,
and what harm you have done us, O poets! Your ambrosia has made our
absinthe more bitter than ever; and we have found our lives more arid
and more devastated after plunging our eyes into the vistas leading to
eternity that you open to us! What a terrible struggle your dreams have
brought upon our realities! and how our hearts have been stamped upon
and trampled under foot by those rude athletes!

We have seated ourselves like Adam at the foot of the walls of the
terrestrial paradise, on the steps of the staircase that leads to the
world you have created, seeing a light brighter than the sunlight
gleam through the chinks of the door, hearing vaguely some few
scattered notes of a seraphic harmony. Whenever one of the elect enters
or comes out amid a flood of glory, we stretch our necks trying to see
something through the open door. It is fairy-like architecture equalled
nowhere save in Arabian tales. Great numbers of pillars, superimposed
arches, fluted spiral columns, leaf-work marvellously carved, trefoils
hollowed out of the stone, porphyry, jasper, lapis-lazuli and Heaven
knows what! transparencies and dazzling reflections, a profusion of
strange stones, sardonyx, chrysoberyl, aquamarines, rainbow-hued
opals, azerodrach, jets of crystal, torches to make the stars turn
pale, a gorgeous vapor filled with noise and vertigo--genuine Assyrian
magnificence!

The door closes: you see no more--and you cast down your eyes, filled
with burning tears, to the poor, bare, lifeless earth, to the ruined
hovels, to the people in rags, to your own soul, an arid rock upon
which nothing grows, to all the woes and misfortunes of reality. Ah! if
we could only fly as far as that, if the steps of that fiery staircase
did not burn our feet; but alas! none but angels can climb Jacob's
ladder!

What a fate is that of the poor man at the rich man's door! what
ghastly irony in a palace opposite a hovel, the ideal opposite the
real, poetry opposite prose! what deep-rooted hatred must tighten the
knots at the bottom of the poor wretches' hearts! what a gnashing of
teeth there must be at night on their poor beds, when the wind brings
to their ears the sighing notes of the lutes and viols of love! Poets,
painters, sculptors, musicians, why have you lied to us? Poets, why did
you tell us your dreams? Painters, why did you place upon your canvas
the intangible phantom that ascended and descended between your heart
and your brain with the throbbing of your blood, and say to us: "This
is a woman." Sculptors, why did you procure marble from the bowels of
Carrara to make it express for all time, in the eyes of all men, your
most secret and most fleeting desire? Musicians, why did you listen to
the song of the stars and the flowers during the night, and note it
down? Why do you write such lovely ballads that the softest voice that
says to us: "I love you!" seems to us as hoarse as the rasping of a
saw or the cawing of a crow?--My curse on you, impostors!--and may the
fire from heaven burn and destroy all pictures, poems, statues, and
concerted pieces.--Ouf! there's a tirade of interminable length and a
little out of the ordinary epistolary style.--What a harangue!

I just gave full swing to the lyric impulse, my dear friend, and I have
been talking on stilts for a long, long time. All this is very far
from our subject, which is, if I remember rightly, the glorious and
triumphant history of the Chevalier d'Albert in pursuit of Daraïde,
the loveliest princess in the world, as the old romances say. But in
truth the story is so poor that I am compelled to have recourse to
digressions and reflections. I hope that it will not always be so, and
that, before long, the romance of my life will be more involved and
complicated than a Spanish imbroglio.

After wandering about from street to street, I decided to call on one
of my friends who was to present me at a house where, according to
what he told me, I should see a world of pretty women--a collection
of flesh and blood idealities--the wherewithal to satisfy a score
of poets.--There are some there to suit all tastes:--aristocratic
beauties with eagle glances, sea-green eyes, straight noses, chins
haughtily elevated, queenly hands, and the gait of a goddess; silver
lilies mounted upon golden stalks;--modest violets, pale of hue, sweet
of perfume, with melting, downcast eyes, slender neck, transparent
flesh;--animated, piquant beauties; devout beauties, beauties of all
sorts;--for the house is a genuine seraglio, minus the eunuchs and the
Kislar aga.--My friend tells me that he has already had five or six
affairs there--quite as many as that;--that seemed to me a prodigious
record and I am very much afraid that I shall not have the like
success; De C---- says yes, and that I shall succeed much better than
I shall care to. According to him I have only one fault, which I am
certain to correct as I grow older and go more into society--he says I
think too much of woman and not enough of women.--It may well be that
there's some truth in that.--He says that I will be perfectly lovable
when I rid myself of that little failing. God grant it! It must be that
women feel that I despise them; for a compliment, which they would
consider adorable and delightful to the last degree in the mouth of
another, in mine displeases them and makes them angry, as if it were
the most savage epigram. That probably has something to do with the
fault De C---- refers to.

My heart beat a little faster as I went up the stairs, and I had
barely recovered from my emotion when De C----, taking me by the
elbow, brought me face to face with a woman of about thirty--not
ill-looking--dressed with dissembled magnificence and extreme
affectation of childlike simplicity--which did not prevent her being
daubed with rouge like a carriage-wheel:--it was the lady of the house.

De C----, assuming the shrill, mocking voice which is so different from
his ordinary voice, and which he uses in society when he wants to be
fascinating, said to her, half aloud, with abundant demonstrations of
ironical respect, in which the most profound contempt could plainly be
detected:

"This is the young man of whom I spoke to you the other day--a man of
very distinguished merit; he is of unexceptionable birth and I think
that it cannot be otherwise than agreeable to you to receive him; that
is why I have taken the liberty to present him to you."

"Assuredly, monsieur, you have done well," rejoined the lady, with
a most outrageously affected manner. Then she turned to me, and
after looking me over out of the corner of her eye, like a clever
connoisseur, and in a way that made me blush to my ears, she said: "You
may consider yourself invited once for all, and come as often as you
have an evening to waste."

I bowed awkwardly enough, and stammered a few disconnected words which
could not have given her a very exalted opinion of my talents; other
persons came in and I was delivered from the ennui inseparable from an
introduction. De C---- led me to a window recess and began to lecture
me vigorously.

"What the devil! you will get me into a scrape; I announced you as a
perfect phœnix of wit, a man of unbridled imagination, a lyric poet,
everything that is most transcendent and impassioned, and you stand
there like a ninny without lisping a word. What a wretched imagination!
I thought your vein was more fruitful; come, come, give your tongue
the rein, chatter away through thick and thin; you don't need to say
sensible, judicious things, on the contrary, they might injure your
chances; talk, that's the main thing; talk fast, talk all the time;
attract attention to yourself; throw aside all fear and all modesty;
fix it firmly in your head that all who are here are fools, or almost
that, and don't forget that an orator who wants to succeed cannot
despise his audience enough.--What do you think of the mistress of the
house?"

"I dislike her very much already; and although I talked with her hardly
three minutes, I was as bored as if I were her husband."

"Aha! that's what you think of her, eh?"

"Why, yes."

"Is your repugnance for her altogether insurmountable?--So much the
worse; it would have been decent for you to have her, if only for a
month; it's good form, and a young man with a little money can't get
into society except through her."

"Very good! I'll have her," I said piteously, "since it must be; but is
it as necessary as you seem to think?"

"Alas! yes, it is absolutely indispensable, and I will tell you why.
Madame de Thémines is the fashion now; she has all the absurd foibles
of the day in a superior way,--sometimes those of to-morrow, but never
yesterday's: she is thoroughly posted. People will wear what she
wears, and she never wears what any one else has worn. She is rich,
too, and her carriages are in the best taste.--She has no wit, but
much small-talk; she has very keen fancies and little passion. People
amuse her but do not move her; she has a cold heart and a dissolute
head. As for her soul--if she has one, which is doubtful--it is of
the blackest, and there is no malice and baseness of which she is
not capable; but she is extremely adroit and keeps up appearances,
just what is necessary to prevent anything being proved against her.
For instance, she will lie with a man, but she will never write him
the simplest kind of a note. Thus her most intimate enemies can find
nothing to say against her except that she applies too much rouge and
that certain parts of her person are not, in fact, so well rounded as
they seem to be--which is false."

"How do you know?"

"What a question!--how does one know that sort of thing except by
finding out for himself?"

"Then you have had Madame de Thémines?"

"Certainly I have! Why shouldn't I have had her? It would have been
most unseemly of me not to have her.--She has done me some very great
favors, and I am very grateful to her for them."

"I don't understand what kind of favors she can have done you."

"Are you really a fool?" said De C----, gazing at me with the most
comical expression imaginable.--"Faith, I am much afraid of it;
must I tell you everything? Madame de Thémines is considered, and
justly, to have special information in certain directions, and a young
man whom she has taken and kept for some time can present himself
boldly anywhere, and be sure that he won't be long without having
an affair--more likely two than one.--Aside from that ineffable
advantage, there is another hardly less great; and that is that, as
soon as the female members of this circle see that you are Madame de
Thémines' official lover, even though they have not the slightest
taste for you, they will consider it a pleasure and a duty to take you
away from a fashionable woman like her; and, instead of the advances
and manœuvres you would otherwise have to make, you will have an
embarrassment of riches, and you will necessarily become the focus of
all imaginable cajoleries and blandishments.

"However, if she arouses too strong a repugnance in you, don't take
her. You are not exactly obliged to do it, although that would be
courteous and proper. But make your choice quickly and attack the one
who pleases you best or seems to offer the most facilities, for by
delaying you will lose the benefit of novelty, and the advantage it
gives you over all the men here for a few days. All these ladies have
no conception of the passions that are born in private intercourse and
develop gradually in respect and silence; they are all for lightning
strokes and occult sympathies; a wonderfully well-conceived scheme
to avoid the ennui of resistance and all the long and wearisome
repetitions that sentiment mingles with the romance of love, and
which serve only to defer the conclusion to no purpose.--These ladies
are very saving of their time, and it seems so valuable to them
that they would be in despair at the thought of leaving a single
moment unemployed.--They have a craving to oblige the human race
which one cannot praise too highly, and they love their neighbor as
themselves--which is most meritorious and perfectly angelic; they are
very charitable creatures who would not, for anything in the world,
drive a man to die of despair.

"There must be three or four of them already who are _impressed_ in
your favor, and I advise you as a friend to press your advantage warmly
in that direction, instead of amusing yourself prattling with me in a
window-recess, which will not materially assist your prospects."

"But, my dear C----, I am altogether green in such matters, I haven't
the necessary experience of society to distinguish at first glance
a woman who is impressed from one who isn't; and I might make some
strange blunders unless you will assist me with your experience."

"Upon my word, you are a primitive creature without a name, and I
didn't suppose it was possible to be so pastoral and bucolic in the
blessed age we live in!--What the devil are you doing with that pair of
great black eyes of yours, which would produce a most stunning effect
if you knew how to use them?

"Just look over yonder, in the corner by the fire-place, at that little
woman in pink playing with her fan: she has been staring at you for
a quarter of an hour with most significant assiduity and fixity; no
one in the world but she can be indecent in so superior a fashion and
display such noble insolence. The women don't like her at all, for
they despair of ever reaching that height of impudence, but, on the
other hand, she is very popular with the men who find in her all the
piquant flavor of the courtesan.--To be sure, her depravity is of a
fascinating sort, she is full of wit and impulse and caprice.--She's an
excellent mistress for a young man who has prejudices.--Within a week
she will rid your conscience of all scruples and corrupt your heart to
such an extent that you will never make yourself ridiculous or indulge
in elegiacs. She has incredibly positive ideas on every subject;
she goes to the bottom of everything with astonishing rapidity and
accuracy of insight. The little woman is the incarnation of algebra;
she is precisely what a dreamer and an enthusiast needs. She will soon
cure you of your misty idealism: therein she will render you a great
service. She will do it with the greatest pleasure, however, for her
instinct leads her to disenchant poets."

My curiosity being aroused by De C----'s description, I emerged from
my retreat, and, gliding from group to group, approached the lady in
question and observed her closely,--she may have been twenty-five
or twenty-six years old. She was small, but well shaped, although a
little inclined to be stout; she had round, white arms, well-formed
hands and pretty feet, almost too small,--plump, polished shoulders,
breast but little exposed, but what there was, very satisfactory and
affording a favorable idea of the rest; her hair was extremely glossy
and of a blue-black shade like a jay's wing; the corner of the eye
was turned well up toward the temple, nose thin, nostrils very open,
mouth moist and sensuous, a little crease on the lower lip and an
almost imperceptible down at the corners. And with it all, vivacity,
animation, health, and an indefinable suggestion of wantonness adroitly
tempered by coquetry and tact, which made her a very desirable creature
and more than justified the very lively passions she had inspired and
continued to inspire every day.

I desired her; but yet I understood that that woman, agreeable as she
might be, was not my ideal, or could make me say: "At last I have a
mistress!"

I returned to De C---- and said: "I like her looks, and perhaps I may
come to an understanding with her. But, before saying anything definite
which will bind me, I would be very glad if you would have the kindness
to point out those indulgent beauties who are so condescending as to be
impressed with me, so that I may make my choice.--You will also oblige
me, as you are acting as showman on this occasion, by adding a little
descriptive notice and a list of their good and bad qualities; how I
must attack them and the tone I must adopt with them in order not to
seem too much like a provincial or a literary man."

"I most certainly will," said De C----. "Do you see that lovely,
melancholy swan who manages her neck so gracefully and makes her
sleeves move like wings? she is modesty itself, the most chaste and
virginal creature in the world; she has a snow-white brow, a heart
of ice, the expression of a madonna, the smile of an Agnes; she has
a white dress and a soul of the same color; she wears nothing but
orange-blossoms or water-lily leaves in her hair, and is attached to
earth only by a thread. She has never had an evil thought and has no
idea wherein man differs from woman. The Blessed Virgin is a Bacchante
beside her, all of which does not prevent her having had more lovers
than any woman I know, and that is certainly saying a good deal.
Just cast your eye on that discreet person's throat; it is a little
masterpiece, and really it is very difficult to show so much without
showing more; tell me if, with all her reserve and all her prudery,
she isn't ten times more indecent than that good lady at her left, who
bravely displays two hemispheres which, if they were united, would form
a life-size globe,--or the other one at her right, _décolletée_ to the
navel, who parades her nothingness with fascinating intrepidity?--That
virginal creature, unless I am very much mistaken, has already figured
out in her head how much love and passion your pallor and your black
eyes may be taken to promise; and my reason for saying so is that she
hasn't once looked in your direction, visibly at least; for she can
manage her pupils with such art and roll them into the corner of her
eyes so cleverly that nothing escapes her; one would think that she
looked through the back of her head, for she knows perfectly well what
is going on behind her.--She's a female Janus.--If you want to succeed
with her, you must lay aside anything like a free-and-easy, victorious
manner. You must talk to her without looking at her, without moving,
in a contrite attitude and in a subdued, respectful voice; in that way
you can say whatever you choose to her, provided that it is suitably
glossed over, and she will allow you to take the greatest liberties,
at first in words; afterward in deeds. Simply take care to roll your
eyes tenderly when hers are cast down, and talk to her about the joys
of platonic love and the communion of souls, while you employ with her
the least platonic and least ideal pantomime imaginable! She is very
sensual and very sensitive; kiss her as often as you choose, but don't
forget, even in the most intimate intercourse, to call her _madame_ at
least three times per sentence: she fell out with me, because, when I
was in her bed, I said something or other to her and called her _thou_.
What the devil! a woman is not virtuous for nothing!"

"After what you tell me I have no great desire to try my luck. A
prudish Messalina! an entirely novel and monstrous combination."

"Old as the world, my dear boy! it is seen every day and nothing is
more common.--You are wrong not to try your hand with her.--She has one
great charm, which is that with her you always seem to be committing a
deadly sin, and the least kiss seems altogether damnable; while with
others you think of it as nothing more than a venial sin, and often you
don't think you're doing anything wrong at all.--That is why I kept her
longer than any other mistress.--I should have her still if she had not
left me herself; she's the only woman who ever got ahead of me, and I
look upon her with a certain amount of respect on that account.--She
has the most delicate little refinements of pleasure and the great art
of appearing to be forced to grant what she grants very freely; which
gives to each of her favors the fascination of rape. You will find in
society ten of her lovers who will swear to you that she is one of the
most virtuous creatures on earth.--She is precisely the contrary.--It
is an interesting study to analyze that virtue of hers on a pillow.
Being forewarned, you run no risk, and you won't make the blunder of
falling in love with her in earnest."

"How old is this adorable creature?" I asked De C----, for it was
impossible to decide, even after examining her with the most careful
attention.

"Ah! there you are! how old is she? that's a mystery and God only knows
the clue. For my own part, and I pride myself on telling a woman's age
almost to a minute, I have never succeeded in finding out hers. I can
only estimate approximately that she is somewhere between eighteen
and thirty-six.--I have seen her in full dress, in déshabille, in her
linen, and I can tell you nothing in that connection: my knowledge is
at fault; the age that you would generally take her to be is eighteen,
and yet that can't be her age.--She is a combination of a virgin body
and the soul of a harlot, and she must have had much time or much
genius to corrupt herself so thoroughly and so speciously; she must
have a heart of brass in a breast of steel; but she has neither; that
makes me think that she is thirty-six, but in reality I know nothing
about it."

"Hasn't she any intimate friend who could enlighten you on the subject?"

"No; she arrived here two years ago. She came from the provinces or
from abroad, I don't know which--that is an admirable position for a
woman who knows how to make the most of it. With such a face as she
has, she can make herself any age she chooses and date only from the
day she arrived here."

"That certainly is a most agreeable state of things, especially when
some impertinent wrinkle doesn't give you the lie, and Time, the great
destroyer, is kind enough to connive at that falsification of the
certificate of baptism."

He pointed out several others, who, he said, would receive favorably
whatever requests it might please me to prefer to them, and would
treat me with peculiar philanthropy. But the woman in pink in the
chimney-corner and the modest dove who was her antithesis were
incomparably superior to all the others; and, if they had not all the
qualities I require, they had some of them, at least in appearance.

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.