Mademoiselle de Maupin

I

“You complain, my dear friend, of the scarcity of my letters. What would you have me write, except that I am well, and that I have ever the same affection for you? These are things of which you are quite aware, and which are so natural, considering my age, and the excellent qualities to be discerned in you, that it is almost ridiculous to send a wretched sheet of paper on a journey of a hundred miles with no more information than that. All my seeking is in vain, I have no news worth relating; my life is the most uniform in the world, and nothing comes to disturb its monotony. To-day is followed by to-morrow, just as yesterday was followed by to-day; and, without being so conceited as to play the prophet, I can in the morning boldly predict what will befall me in the evening.

“Here is the plan of my day: I get up-that is of course, and is the beginning of every day; I breakfast, fence, go out, come in again, dine, pay visits or read something, and then I go to bed, just as I did the day before; I fall asleep, and my imagination, not having been excited by new objects, affords me but trite and hackneyed dreams as monotonous as my real life. This is not very diverting, as you see. Nevertheless, I am better pleased with such an existence than I should have been six months ago. I am dull, it is true, but it is in a peaceful and resigned fashion, not devoid of a certain sweetness, which I should be ready enough to compare to those wan and tepid autumn days in which we find a secret charm after the excessive heat of summer.

“Although I have apparently accepted this kind of existence, it is nevertheless scarcely suitable for me, or at least it has very little resemblance to that of which I dream, and to which I consider myself adapted. It may be that I am mistaken, and that I really am suited only to this mode of life; but I can scarcely believe it, for if this were my true destiny, I should have fitted myself into it with greater ease, and should not have been bruised by the sharp corners of it at so many places and so painfully.

“You know what an overpowering attraction strange adventures have for me, how I worship everything that is singular, extravagant, and perilous, and how greedily I devour novels and books of travels. There is not, perhaps, on earth a fancy more foolish or more vagrant than mine. Well, through some fatality or other, it so happens that I have never had an adventure and have never made a journey. So far as I am concerned, the circuit of the world is the circuit of the town in which I live; I touch my horizon on all sides; I rub shoulders with the real; my life is that of the shell on the sandbank, of the ivy round the tree, of the cricket on the hearth; in truth, I am surprised that my feet have not yet taken root.

“Love is painted with bandaged eyes; but it is destiny that should be depicted thus.

“I have as valet a species of clown, heavy and stupid enough, who has roved as much as the north wind, who has been to the devil, and I know not where besides, who has seen with his own eyes all those things about which I have formed such fine ideas, and who cares as much for them as he does for a glass of water; he has been placed in the strangest situations, and he has had the most astonishing adventures that one could have. I make him talk sometimes, and am maddened to think that all these glorious things have befallen a booby, who is capable of neither feeling nor reflection, and who is good for nothing but his usual work-brushing clothes and cleaning boots.

“It is clear that this rascal's life ought to have been mine. As for him, he thinks me very fortunate, and is lost in wonder to see me melancholy, as I am.

“All this is not very interesting, my poor friend, and is scarcely worth the trouble of writing, is it? But since you insist on my writing to you, I must relate my thoughts and feelings, and give you the history of my ideas, in default of events and actions. There will, perhaps, be little order and little novelty in what I shall have to tell you, but you must lay the blame on yourself alone. I shall be obeying your own wish.

“You have been my friend from childhood, and I was brought up with you; our lives were passed together for a long time, and we are wont to tell each other our most secret thoughts. I can therefore, without blushing, give you an account of all the nonsense that passes through my idle brain. I shall neither add, nor deduct a single word, for I have no false pride with you. And so I shall be scrupulously exact, even in trifling and shameful matters; I shall certainly not veil myself before you.

“Beneath this winding sheet of indifferent and depressing languor of which I have just told you, there sometimes stirs a thought, torpid rather than dead, and I do not always possess the sweet, sad calm that melancholy gives. I have relapses and I fall again into my old perturbations. Nothing in the world is so fatiguing as these purposeless whirlwinds and these aimless flights. On such days, although I have nothing to do any more than on others, I rise very early, before the sun, so persuaded am I that I am in a hurry, and that I shall not have the necessary time. I dress myself with all speed, as if the house were on fire, putting on my garments at random, and bewailing the loss of a minute. Any one seeing me would suppose that I was going to keep a love appointment or look for money. Not at all. I even do not know whither I am going; but go I must, and I should believe my safety compromised if I remained. It seems to me that I am called from without, that my destiny is at that moment passing in the street, and that the question of my life is about to be decided.

“I go down with an air of wild surprise, my dress in disorder, and my hair uncombed. People turn and laugh when they meet me, and think that I am a young debauchee who has spent the night at the tavern or elsewhere. Indeed I am intoxicated, though I have drunk nothing, and I have the manner of a drunkard, even to his uncertain gait, now fast and now slow. I go from street to street, like a dog that has lost his master, seeking quite at a venture, very troubled, very much on the alert, turning at the least noise, gliding into every group, heedless of the rebukes of the people I run up against, and looking about me everywhere, with a clearness of vision which at other times I do not possess. Then it suddenly becomes evident to me that I am mistaken, that it is assuredly not there, that I must go further, to the other end of the town, I know not where, and I set off as if the devil were carrying me away. My toes only touch the ground, and I do not weigh an ounce. Truly I must present a singular appearance with my preoccupied and frenzied countenance, the gesticulations of my arms, and the inarticulate cries I utter. When I think of it in cold blood, I laugh heartily in my own face; but this, I would have you know, does not prevent me from doing just the same on the next occasion.

“If I were asked why I rush along in this way, I certainly should be greatly at a loss for an answer. I am in no haste to arrive, since I am going nowhere. I am not afraid of being late, since I have no engagement. There is no one waiting for me, and I have no reason for being in a hurry here.

“Is it an opportunity for loving, an adventure, a woman, an idea or a fortune, something which is wanting to my life, and which I seek without accounting to myself for it, but impelled by a vague instinct? Is it my existence which desires to complete itself? Is it the wish to emerge from my home and from myself, the weariness of my present life and the longing for another? It is something of this, and perhaps all of this put together. It is always a very unpleasant condition, a feverish irritation, which is usually succeeded by the dullest atony.

“I often have an idea, that if I had set out an hour earlier, or had increased my pace, I should have arrived in time; that, while I was passing down one street, the object of my search was passing down the other, and that a block of vehicles was sufficient to make me miss what I have been pursuing quite at random for so long. You cannot imagine the sadness and the deep despair into which I fall when I see that all this ends in nothing, and that my youth is passing away with no prospect opening up before me; then all my idle passions growl dully in my heart, and prey upon themselves for lack of other food, like beasts in a menagerie that the keeper has forgotten to feed.

“In spite of the stifle and secret disappointments of every day, there is something within me which resists and will not die. I have no hope, for hope implies desire, a certain disposition for wishing that things should turn out in one way rather than in another. I desire nothing, for I desire everything. I do not hope, or rather I hope no longer;-that is too silly, — and it is quite the same to me whether a thing happens or not I am waiting, and for what? I do not know, but I am waiting.

“It is a tremulous waiting, full of impatience, broken by starts and nervous movements, as must be that of a lover who awaits his mistress. Nothing comes; I grow furious, or begin to weep. I wait for the heavens to open and an angel to descend with a revelation to me, for a revolution to break out and a throne to be given me, for one of Raphael's virgins to leave the canvas and come to embrace me, for relations, whom I do not possess, to die and leave me what will enable me to sail my fancy on a river of gold, for a hippogriff to take me and carry me into regions unknown. But, whatever I am waiting for, it is assuredly nothing usual and commonplace.

“This has reached such a pitch, that, when I come in, I never fail to say: 'No one has come? There is no letter for me? No news?' I know perfectly well that there is nothing, and that there can be nothing. It is all the same; I am always greatly surprised and disappointed on receiving the customary reply: 'No, sir, nothing at all.'

“Sometimes-but this is seldom-the idea takes a more definite form. It will be some beautiful woman whom I do not know, and who does not know me, whom I have met at the theatre or at church, and who has not heeded me in the least. I go over the whole house, and until I have opened the door of the last room-I scarcely dare tell you, it is so foolish-I hope that she has come, and that she is there. This is not conceit on my part I have so little of the coxcomb about me, that several women, whom I believed very indifferent to me, and without any opinion in particular respecting me, have, so others tell me, been greatly prepossessed in my favor. It has a different origin.

“When I am not dulled by weariness and discouragement, my soul awakes and recovers all its former vigor. I hope, I love, I desire, and so violent are my desires, that I imagine that they will draw everything to them, as a powerful magnet attracts particles of iron, even when they are at a great distance from it. This is why I wait for the things I wish for, instead of going to them, and frequently neglect the most favorable opportunities that are opened up to my hopes. Another would write the most amorous note in the world to the divinity of his heart, or would seek for an opportunity to approach her. As for me, I ask the messenger for the reply to a letter which I have not written, and spend my time constructing the most wonderful situations in my head for bringing me in the most favorable and most unexpected light under the notice of her whom I love. A book might be made larger and more ingenious than the 'Stratagems of Polybius' of all the stratagems which I imagine for introducing myself to her and revealing my passion. Generally, it would only be necessary to say to one of my friends: 'Introduce me to Madame So-and-so,' and to pay a compliment drawn from mythology and suitably punctuated with sighs.

“To listen to all this, one would think me fit for a madhouse; nevertheless, I am a rational fellow enough, and I have not put many of my follies into practice. All this passes in the recesses of my soul, and all these absurd ideas are buried very carefully deep within me; on the outside nothing is to be seen, and I have the reputation of being a placid and cold young man, indifferent to women, and without interest in things belonging to his years, which is as remote from the truth as the judgments of the world usually are.

“Nevertheless, in spite of all my discouragements, some of my desires have been realized, and, so little joy has been given me by their fulfilment, that I dread the fulfilment of the rest. You remember the childish eagerness with which I longed to have a horse of my own; my mother has given me one quite recently; he is as black as ebony, with a little white star on his forehead, with flowing mane, glossy coat, and slender legs, just as I wished him to be. When they brought him to me, it gave me such a shock, that I remained quite a quarter of an hour very pale and unable to compose myself. Then I mounted, and, without speaking a single word, set off at full gallop, and for more than an hour went straight across country in an ecstasy difficult to conceive. I did the same every day for a week, and I really do not know how it was that I did not kill him or at least break his wind. By degrees all this great eagerness died away, I brought my horse to a trot, then to a walk, and now I have come to ride him with such indifference that he often stops and I do not notice it. Pleasure has become habit more quickly than I could have thought possible.

“As to Perragus-that is the name I have given him- he is really the most charming animal that one could see. He has tufts on his feet like eagles' down; he is as lively as a goat and as quiet as a lamb. You will have the greatest pleasure in galloping him when you come here; and although my mania for riding has passed away, I am still very fond of him, for he is a horse of an excellent disposition, and I sincerely prefer him to many human beings. If you only heard how joyfully he neighs when I go to see him in the stable, and with what intelligent eyes he looks at me! I confess that I am touched by these tokens of affection, and that I take him by the neck and embrace him with as much tenderness, on my word, as if he were a beautiful girl.

“I had also another desire, more keen, more eager, more continually awake, more dearly cherished, and for which I had built in my soul an enchanting castle of cards, a palace of chimeras, that was often destroyed but raised again with desperate constancy; it was to have a mistress-a mistress quite my own-like the horse. I do not know whether the fulfilment of this dream would have found me so soon cold as the fulfilment of the other; I doubt it. But perhaps I am wrong, and shall be tired of it as soon. Owing to my peculiar disposition, I desire a thing so frantically, without, however, making any effort to procure it, that if by chance, or otherwise, I attain the object of my wish, I have such a moral lumbago and am so worn out, that I am seized with swoonings, and have not energy enough left to enjoy it; hence things which come to me without my wishing for them generally give me more pleasure than those which I have coveted most strongly.

“I am twenty-two years old, and I am not virgin. Alas! no one is so now at that age, either in body, or, what is much worse, in heart. Besides, consorting with the class of females who afford us pleasure for payment, and are not to be counted any more than a lascivious dream, I have gained over several virtuous or nearly virtuous women, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither young or old, such as are to be met with by young fellows who have nothing regular on hand and whose hearts are unoccupied. With a little good-will, and a pretty strong dose of romantic illusions, you can call this having a mistress, if you like. For myself, I find it impossible; I might have a thousand of the kind, and I should still believe my desire as unfulfilled as ever.

“I have not, therefore, as yet had a mistress, and my whole desire is to have one. It is an idea that torments me strangely; it is not an effervescence of temperament, a boiling of the blood, the first burst of puberty. It is not woman that I want, but a woman, a mistress; I desire one, and shall have one shortly; if I did not succeed, I confess to you that I should never get over it, and that I should have an inward timidity, a dull discouragement, which would exercise a serious influence upon the rest of my life. I should consider myself defective in certain respects, inharmonious or incomplete, deformed in mind or body; for after all, my requirement is a just one, and nature owes it to every man. So long as I have not attained my end, I shall look upon myself merely as a child, and I shall not have the confidence in myself which I ought to have. A mistress is to me what the toga virilis was to the young Roman.

“I see so many beautiful women in the possession of men who are ignoble in every respect, and scarcely fit to be their lackeys, that I blush for them, and for myself. It gives me a pitiful opinion of women to see them wasting their affection on blackguards who despise and deceive them, instead of giving themselves to some loyal and sincere young fellow who would esteem himself very fortunate, and would worship them on his knees; to myself, for instance. It is true that men of the former species obstruct the drawing-rooms, show themselves off before every one, and are always lounging on the back of some easy chair, while I remain at home, my forehead pressed against the window pane, watching the river steam and the mist rise, while silently erecting in my heart the perfumed sanctuary, the marvellous temple in which I am to lodge the future idol of my soul. A chaste and poetical occupation, and one for which women are as little grateful to you as may be.

“Women have little liking for dreamers, and peculiarly esteem those who put their ideas into practice. After all, they are right. Obliged by their education and their social position to keep silence and to wait, they naturally prefer those who come to them and speak, and thus relieve them from a false and tiresome position., I am quite sensible of this; yet never in my life shall I be able to take it upon me, as I see many others do, to rise from my seat, cross a drawing-room, and say unexpectedly to a woman: 'Your dress becomes you like an angel,' or: 'Your eyes are particularly bright this evening.'

“All this does not prevent me from positively wanting a mistress. I do not know who it will be, but I see none among the women of my acquaintance who could suitably fill this dignified position. I find that they possess very few of the qualities I require. Those who would be young enough are wanting in beauty or intellectual charm; those who are beautiful and young are basely and forbiddingly virtuous, or lack the necessary freedom; and then there is always some husband, some brother, a mother or an aunt, somebody or other, with big eyes and large ears, who must be wheedled or thrown out of the window. Every rose has its worm, and every woman has a swarm of relations who must be carefully cleared away, if we wish to pluck some day the fruit of her beauty. There is not one of them, even to country cousins of the third degree whom we have never seen, that does not wish to preserve the spotless purity of their dear cousin in all its whiteness. This is nauseous, and I shall never have the patience to pull up all the weeds, and lop away all the briars which fatally obstruct the approaches to a pretty woman.

“lam not fond of mammas, and I like young girls still less. Further, I must confess that married women have but a very slight attraction for me. They involve a confusion and a mingling which are revolting to me; I cannot tolerate the idea of division. The woman who has a husband and a lover is a prostitute for one of them, and often for both; and, besides, I could never consent to yield the first place to another. My natural pride cannot stoop to such a degradation. I shall never go because another man is coming. Though the woman were to be compromised and lost, and we were to fight with knives each with a foot upon her body, I should remain. Private staircases, cupboards, closets, and all the machinery for deception would be of little service with me.

“I am not much smitten with what is called maidenly ingenuousness, youthful innocence, purity of heart, and other charming things which in verse are most effective; that I call simply nonsense, ignorance, imbecility, or hypocrisy. The maidenly ingenuousness which consists in sitting on the very edge of an easy chair, with arms pressed close to the body, and eyes fixed on the point of the corset, and in not speaking without permission from its grandparents, the innocence which has a monopoly of uncurled hair and white frocks, the purity of heart which wears its dress high up at the neck because it has as yet neither shoulders nor breast to show, do not, in truth, appear wonderfully agreeable to me.

“I do not care much for teaching little simpletons to spell out the alphabet of love. I am neither old enough nor depraved enough for that; besides, I should succeed badly at it, for I never could show anybody anything, even what I knew best myself. I prefer women who read fluently, we arrive sooner at the end of the chapter; and in everything, but especially in love, the end is what we have to consider. In this respect, I am rather like those people who begin a novel at the wrong end, read the catastrophe first of all, and then go backwards to the first page. This mode of reading and loving has its charm. Details are relished more when we are at peace concerning the end, and the inversion introduces the unforeseen.

“Young girls, then, and married women are excluded from the category. It must, therefore, be among the widows that we are to choose our divinity. Alas! though nothing else is left to us, I greatly fear that neither will they afford us what we wish.

“If I happened to love a pale narcissus bathed in a tepid dew of tears, and bending with melancholy grace over the new marble tomb of some happily and recently departed husband, I should certainly, and in a very short while, be as miserable as was the defunct during his lifetime. Widows, however young and charming they may be, have a terrible drawback which other women are without; if you are not on the very best terms with them, and a cloud passes across the heaven of your love, they tell you at once with a little superlative and contemptuous air-

“'Ah! how strange you are to-day! It is just like what he was. When we quarrelled, he used to speak to me in the very same way; it is curious, but you have the same tone of voice and the same look; when you are out of temper, you cannot imagine how like my husband you are; it is frightful!”

“It is pleasant to have things of this sort said to your very face! There are some even who are impudent enough to praise the departed one like an epitaph, and to extol his heart and his leg at the expense of your leg and your heart. With women who have only one or more lovers, you have at least the unspeakable advantage of never hearing about your predecessor, and this is a consideration of no ordinary interest. Women have too great a regard for what is appropriate and legitimate not to observe a diligent silence in such an event, and all matters of the kind are consigned to oblivion as soon as possible. It is an understood thing that a man is always a woman's first lover.

“I do not think that an aversion so well founded admits of any serious reply. It is not that I consider widows altogether devoid of charm, when they are young and pretty and have not yet laid aside their mourning. They have little languishing airs, little ways of letting the arms droop, of arching the neck and of bridling up like unmated turtledoves; a lot of charming affectations sweetly veiled beneath the transparency of crape, a well-ordered affectation of despair, skilfully managed sighs, and tears which fall so opportunely and lend such lustre to the eyes!

“Truly, next to wine-perhaps even before it-the liquid I love best to drink is a beautiful tear, clear and limpid, trembling at the tip of a dark or a blonde eye-lash. What means are there of resisting that? We do not resist it; and then black is so becoming to women! A white skin, poetry apart, turns to ivory, snow, milk, alabaster, to everything spotless that there is in the world for the use of composers of madrigals; while a dark skin has but a dash of brown that is full of vivacity and fire.

“Mourning is a happy opportunity for a woman, and the reason I shall never marry, is the fear lest my wife should get rid of me in order to go into mourning for me. There are, however, some women who cannot turn their sorrow to account, and who weep in such a way that they make their noses red, and distort their features like the faces that we see on fountains; this is a serious danger. There is need of many charms and much art to weep agreeably; otherwise, there is a risk of not being comforted for a long time. Yet notwithstanding the pleasure of making some Artemisia faithless to the shade of her Mausolus, I cannot really choose from among this swarm of lamenting ones her whose heart I shall ask in exchange for my own.

“And now I hear you say: Whom will you take, then? You will not have young girls, nor married women, nor widows. You do not like mammas, and I do not suppose that you are any fonder of grandmothers. Whom the deuce do you like? It is the answer to the charade, and if I knew it, I should not torment myself so much. Up to the present I have never loved any woman, but I have loved and do love — love. Although I have had no mistresses, and the women that I have had have merely kindled desire, I have felt, and I am acquainted with love itself. I have not loved this woman or that, one more than another, but some one whom I have never seen, who must live somewhere, and whom I shall find, if it please God. I know well what she is like, and, when I meet her, I shall recognize her.

“I have often pictured to myself the place where she dwells, the dress that she wears, the eyes and hair that she has. I hear her voice; I should recognize her step among a thousand, and if, by chance, some one uttered her name, I should turn round; it is impossible that she should not have one of the five or six names that I have given her in my head.

“She is twenty-six years old, neither more nor less. She is not without experience, and she is not yet satiated. It is a charming age for making love as it ought to be, without childishness and without libertinism. She is of medium height. I like neither a giantess nor a dwarf. I wish to be able to carry my goddess by myself from the sofa to the bed; but it would be disagreeable to have to look for her in the latter. When raising herself slightly on tiptoe, her mouth should reach my kiss. That is the proper height. As to her figure, she is rather plump than thin. I am something of the Turk in this matter, and I should scarcely like to meet with a corner when I expected a circumference; a woman's skin should be well filled, her flesh compact and firm, like the pulp of a peach that is nearly ripe; and the mistress I shall have is made just so. She is a blonde with dark eyes, white like a blonde, with the color of a brunette, and a red and sparkling smile. The lower lip rather large, the eyeball swimming in a flood of natural moisture, her breast round, small, and firm, her hands long and plump, her walk undulating like a snake standing on its tail, her hips full and yielding, her shoulders broad, the nape of her neck covered with down; a style of beauty at once delicate and compact, graceful and healthy, poetic and real; a subject of Giorgione's wrought by Rubens.

“Here is her costume: she wears a robe of scarlet or black velvet, with slashings of white satin or silver cloth, an open bodice, a large ruff a la Medici, a felt hat capriciously drawn up like Helena Systerman's, and with long feathers curled and crisp, a golden chain or a stream of diamonds about her neck, and a quantity of large, variously enamelled rings on all her fingers.

“I will not excuse her a ring or a bracelet. Her robe must be literally of velvet or brocade; at the very most, I might permit her to stoop to satin. I would rather rumple a silk skirt than a linen one, and let pearls and feathers fall from the hair than natural flowers or a simple bow; I know that the lining of a linen skirt is often at least as tempting as that of a silk one, but I prefer the silk one.

“Thus, in my dreams, I have given myself as mistresses many queens, many empresses, many princesses, many sultanas, many celebrated courtesans, but never a commoner or a shepherdess; and amid my most vagrant desires, I have never taken advantage of any one on a carpet of grass or in a bed of serge d'Aumale. I consider beauty a diamond which should be mounted and set in gold. I cannot imagine a beautiful woman without a carriage, horses, serving-men, and all that belongs to an income of twenty thousand a year; there is a harmony between beauty and wealth. One requires the other: a pretty foot calls for a pretty shoe, a pretty shoe calls for a carpet, and a carriage, and all the rest of it. A beautiful woman, poorly dressed and in a mean house, is, to my mind, the most painful sight that one could see, and I could not feel love towards such a one. It is only the handsome and the rich who can make love without being ridiculous or pitiable. At this rate few people would be entitled to make love: I myself should be the first to be excluded; but such is nevertheless my opinion.

“It will be in the evening, during a beautiful sunset, that we shall meet for the first time; the sky will have those clear yellow and pale-green orange-colored tints that we see in the pictures of the old masters; there will be a great avenue of flowering chestnut trees and venerable elms filled with wood-pigeons-fine trees of fresh dark green, giving a shade full of mystery and dampness; a few statues here and there, some marble vases with their snowy whiteness standing out in relief on the ground of green, a sheet of water with the familiar swan, and, quite in the background, a mansion of brick and stone, as in the time of Henry IV., with a peaked slate roof, lofty chimneys, weathercocks on all the gables, and long narrow windows.

“At one of these windows, the queen of my soul, in the dress I have just described, leaning with an air of melancholy on the balcony, and behind her a little negro holding her fan and her parrot. You see that nothing is wanting, and that the whole thing is perfectly absurd. The fair one drops her glove; I pick it up, kiss it, and bring it to her. We enter into conversation; I display all the wit that I do not possess; I say charming things; I am answered in the same way, I rejoin, it is a display of fireworks, a luminous rain of dazzling words. In short, I am adorable-and adored. Supper-time arrives; I am invited, and accept the invitation. What a supper, my dear friend, and what a cook is my imagination! The wine laughs in the crystal, the brown and white pheasant smokes in the blazoned dish; the banquet is prolonged far into the night, and you may be quite sure that I do not end the latter at my own home. Is not this well conceived? Nothing in the world can be more simple, and it is truly very astonishing that it has not come to pass ten times rather than once.

“Sometimes it is in a large forest. The hunt sweeps by; the horn sounds, and the pack giving tongue crosses the path with the swiftness of lightning; the fair one, in a riding habit is mounted on a Turkish steed as white as milk, and as frisky and mettlesome as possible. Although she is an excellent horsewoman, he paws the ground, caracoles, rears, and she has all the trouble in the world to hold him in; he gets the bit between his teeth and takes her straight towards a precipice. I fall there from the sky for the purpose, check the horse, take the fainting princess in my arms, restore her, and bring her back to the mansion. What well-born woman would refuse her heart to a man who has risked his life for her? Not one; and gratitude is a cross-road which very quickly leads to love.

“You will, at all events, admit that when I go in for romance, it is not by halves that I do so, and that I am as foolish as it is possible to be. It is always so, for there is nothing in the world more disagreeable than folly with reason in it. You will almost admit that when I write letters they are volumes rather than simple notes. In everything, I like what goes beyond ordinary limits. That is the reason why I am fond of you. Do not laugh too much at all the nonsense I have scribbled to you: I am laying my pen aside in order to put it into practice; for I ever come back to the same refrain; I want to have a mistress. I do not know whether it will be the lady of the park or the beauty of the balcony, but I bid you good-bye that I may commence my quest. My resolution is taken. Should she, whom I seek, be concealed in the remotest part of the kingdom of Cathay or Samarcand, I shall manage to find her out. I will let you know of the success or failure-I hope it will be the success-of my enterprise. Pray for me, my dear friend. For my own part, I am putting on my finest coat, and am leaving the house determined not to return without a mistress in accordance with my ideas. I have been dreaming long enough; to action now.

“P.S.-Send me some news of little D-; what has become of him? No one here knows anything about him; and give my compliments to your worthy brother and to the whole family.”