Mademoiselle de Maupin

X

“My fair friend, you were quite right in dissuading me from the plan that I had formed of seeing men and studying them thoroughly before giving my heart to any among them. I have for ever extinguished love within me, and even the possibility of love.

“Poor young girls that we are, brought up with so much care, surrounded in such maidenly fashion with a triple wall of reticence and precaution, who are allowed to understand nothing, to suspect nothing, and whose principal knowledge is to know nothing, in what strange errors do we live, and what treacherous chimeras cradle us in their arms!

“Ah! Graciosa, thrice cursed be the minute when the idea of this disguise occurred to me; what horrors, infamies, brutalities have I been forced to witness or to hear! what a treasure of chaste and precious ignorance have I dissipated in but a short time!

“It was in a fair moonlight, do you remember? we were walking together, at the very bottom of the garden, in that dull, little-frequented alley, terminated at one end by a statue of a flute-playing Faun which has lost its nose, and whose whole body is covered with a thick leprosy of blackish moss, and at the other by a counterfeit view painted on the wall, and half-effaced by the rain.

“Through the yet spare foliage of the yoke-elm we could here and there see the twinkling of the stars and the curved crescent of the moon. A fragrance of young shoots and fresh plants reached us from the parterre with the languid breath of a gentle breeze; a hidden bird was piping a languorous and whimsical tune; we, like true young girls, were talking of love, wooers, marriage, and the handsome cavalier that we had seen at mass; we were exchanging our few ideas of the world and things; we were turning over an expression that we had chanced to hear and whose meaning seemed obscure and singular to us, in a hundred different ways; we were asking a thousand of those absurd questions which only the most perfect innocence can imagine. What primitive poetry and what adorable foolishness were there in those furtive conversations between two little simpletons who had but just left a boarding-school I

“You wished to have for your lover a bold, proud young fellow, with black moustache and hair, large spurs, large feathers and a large sword-a sort of bully in love, and you indulged to the full in the heroic and triumphant; you dreamed of nothing but duels and escalades, and miraculous devotion, and you would have been ready to throw your glove into the lions' den that your Esplandian might follow to fetch it. It was very comical to see you, a little girl as you were then, blonde, blushing, and yielding to the faintest blast, delivering yourself of such generous tirades all in a breath, and with the most martial air in the world.

“For myself, although I was only six months older than you, I was six years less romantic: one thing chiefly disquieted me, and this was to know what men said among themselves and what they did after leaving drawing-rooms and theatres; I felt that there were many faulty and obscure sides to their lives, which were carefully veiled from our gaze, and which it was very important that we should know. Sometimes hidden behind a curtain, I would watch from a distance the gentlemen who came to the house, and it seemed to me then as if I could distinguish something base and cynical in their manner, a coarse carelessness or a wild preoccupied look, which I could no longer discern in them as soon as they had come in, and which they seemed to lay aside, as by enchantment, on the threshold of the room. All, young as well as old, appeared to me to have uniformly adopted conventional masks, conventional opinions and conventional modes of speech when in the presence of women.

“From the corner of the drawing-room where I used to sit as straight as a doll, without leaning back in my easy-chair, I would listen and look as I rolled my bouquet between my fingers; although my eyes were cast down I could see to right and to left, before me and behind me: like the fabulous eyes of the lynx my eyes could pierce through walls, and I could have told what was going on in the adjoining room.

“I had also perceived a noteworthy difference in the way in which they spoke to married women; they no longer used discreet, polished and childishly embellished phrases such as were addressed to myself or my companions, but displayed bolder sprightliness, less sober and more disembarrassed manners, open reticence, and the ambiguity that quickly comes from a corruption which knows that it has similar corruption before it: I was quite sensible that there existed an element in common between them which did not exist between us, and I would have given anything to know what this element was.

“With what anxiety and furious curiosity I would follow with eye and ear the laughing, buzzing groups of young men, who, after making a halt at some points in the circle, would resume their walk, talking and casting ambiguous glances as they passed. On their scornfully puffed-up lips hovered incredulous sneers; they looked as though they were scoffing at what they had just said, and were retracting the compliments and adoration with which they had overwhelmed us. I could not hear their words; but I knew from the movements of their lips that they were uttering expressions in a language with which I was unacquainted, and of which no one had ever made use in my presence.

“Even those who had the most humble and submissive air would raise their heads with a very perceptible shade of revolt and weariness; a sigh of breathlessness, like that of an actor who has reached the end of a long couplet, would escape from their bosoms in spite of themselves, and when leaving us they would make a half-turn on their heels in an eager, hurried manner which denoted a sort of internal satisfaction at their release from the hard task of being polite and gallant.

“I would have given a year of my life to listen, without being seen, to an hour of their conversation. I could often understand, by certain attitudes, indirect gestures and side-glances, that I was the subject of their conversation, and that they were speaking of my age or my face. Then I would be on burning coals; the few subdued words and partial scraps of sentences reaching me at intervals would excite my curiosity to the highest degree, without being capable of satisfying it, and I would indulge in strange perplexities and doubts.

“Generally, what was said seemed to be favorable to me, and it was not this that disquieted me: I did not care very much about being thought beautiful; it was the slight observations dropped into the hollow of the ear, and nearly always followed by long sneers and singular winkings of the eye, that is what I should have liked to hear; and I would have cheerfully abandoned the most flowery and perfumed conversation in the world to hear one of such expressions as are whispered behind a curtain or in the corner of a doorway.

“If I had had a lover I should have greatly liked to know the way in which he spoke of me to another man, and the terms in which, with a little wine in his head and both elbows on the table-cloth, he would boast of his good fortune to the companions of his orgy.

“I know this now, and in truth I am sorry that I know it. It is always so.

“My idea was a mad one, but what is done is done, and what is learned cannot be unlearned. I did not listen to you, my dear Graciosa, and I am sorry for it; but we do not always listen to reason, especially when It comes from such pretty lips as yours, for, from some reason or other, we can never imagine advice to be wise unless it is given by some old head that is hoary and grey, as though sixty years of stupidity could make one intelligent.

“But all this was too much torment, and I could not stand it; I was broiling in my little skin like a chestnut on the pan. The fatal apple swelled in the foliage above my head, and I was obliged to end by giving it a bite, being free to throw it away afterwards, if the flavor seemed bitter to me.

“I acted like fair Eve, my very dear great-grandmother, and bit it.

“The death of my uncle, the only relation left to me, giving me freedom of action, I put into practice what I had dreamed of for so long. My precautions were taken with the greatest care to prevent any one from suspecting my sex. I had learned how to handle a sword and fire a pistol; I rode perfectly, and with a hardihood of which few horsemen would have been capable; I carefully studied the way to wear my cloak and make my riding-whip crack, and in a few months I succeeded in transforming a girl who was thought rather pretty into a far more pretty cavalier, who lacked scarcely anything but a moustache. I realized my property, and left the town, determined not to return without the most complete experience.

“It was the only means of clearing up my doubts: to have had lovers would have taught me nothing, or would at least have afforded me but incomplete glimpses, and I wished to study man thoroughly, to anatomize him with inexorable scalpel, fibre by fibre, and to have him alive and palpitating on my dissecting table; to do this it would be necessary to see him at home, alone and undressed, and to follow him when he went out walking, and visited the tavern or other places. With my disguise I could go everywhere without being remarked; there would be no concealment before me, all reserve and constraint would be thrown aside, I would receive confidences, and would give false ones to provoke others that were true. Alas! women have read only man's romance and never his history.

“It is a frightful thing to think of, and one which is not thought of, how profoundly ignorant we are of the life and conduct of those who appear to love us, and whom we are going to marry. Their real existence is as completely unknown to us as if they were inhabitants of Saturn or of some other planet a hundred million leagues from our sublunary ball: one would think that they were of a different species, and that there is not the slightest intellectual link between the two sexes; the virtues of the one are the vices of the other, and what excites admiration for a man brings disgrace upon a woman.

“As for us, our life is clear and may be pierced at a glance. It is easy to follow us from our home to the boarding-school, and from the boarding school to our home; what we do is no mystery to anybody; every one may see our bad stump-drawings, our water-color bouquets composed of a pansy and a rose as large as a cabbage, and with the stalk tastefully tied with a bright-colored ribbon: the slippers which we embroider for our father's or grandfather's birthday have nothing very occult and disquieting in them. Our sonatas and ballads are gone through with the most desirable coldness. We are well and duly tied to our mother's apron strings, and at nine or ten o'clock at the latest we retire into our little white beds at the end of our discreet and tidy cells, wherein we are virtuously bolted and padlocked until next morning. The most watchful and jealous susceptibility could find nothing to complain of.

“The most limpid crystal does not possess the transparency of such a life.

“The man who takes us knows what we have done from the minute we were weaned, and even before it if he likes to pursue his researches so far. Our life is not a life, it is a species of vegetation like that of mosses and flowers; the icy shadow of the maternal stem hovers over us, poor, stifled rosebuds who dare not bloom. Our chief business is to keep ourselves very straight, well laced and well brushed, with our eyes becomingly cast down, and for immobility and stiffness to surpass manikins and puppets on springs.

“We are forbidden to speak, or to mingle in the conversation, except to answer yes or no if we are asked a question. As soon as anybody is going to say something interesting we are sent away to practice the harp or harpsichord, and our music-masters are all at least sixty years old, and take snuff horribly. The models hung up in our rooms have a very vague and evasive anatomy. Before the gods of Greece can present themselves in a young ladies' boarding-school they must first purchase very ample box-coats at an old-clothes shop and get themselves engraved in stippling, after which they look like porters or cabmen, and are little calculated to inflame the imagination.

“In the anxiety to prevent us from being romantic we are made idiots. The period of our education is spent not in teaching us something, but in preventing us from learning something.

“We are really prisoners in body and mind; but how could a young man, who has freedom of action, who goes out in the morning not to return until the next morning, who has money, and who can make it and spend it as he pleases, how could he justify the employment of his time? what man would tell his sweetheart all that he did day and night? Not one, even of those who are reputed the most pure.

“I had sent my horse and my garments to a little grange of mine at some distance from the town. I dressed, mounted, and rode off, not without a singular heaviness of heart I regretted nothing, for I was leaving nothing behind, neither relations nor friends, nor dog nor cat, and yet I was sad, and almost had tears in my eyes; the farm which I had visited only five or six times had no particular interest for me, and it was not the liking that we take for certain places and that affects us when leaving them which prompted me to turn round two or three times to see again from a distance its spiral of bluish smoke ascending amid the trees.

“There it was that I had left my title of woman with my dresses and petticoats; twenty years of my life were locked up in the room where I had made my toilet, years which were to be counted no longer, and which had ceased to concern me. 'Here lies Madelaine de Maupin' might have been written on the door, for I was, in fact, no longer Madelaine de Maupin but Theodore de Serannes, and no one would call me any more by the sweet name of Madelaine.

“The drawer which held my henceforth useless dresses appeared to me like the coffin of my fair illusions; I was a man, or, at least, had the appearance of one; the young girl was dead.

“When I had completely lost sight of the chestnut trees which surround the grange, it seemed to me as if I were no longer myself but another, and I looked back to my former actions as to the actions of a stranger which I had witnessed, or the beginning of a romance which I had not read through to the end.

“I recalled complacently a thousand little details, the childish simplicity of which brought an indulgent, and sometimes a rather scornful smile to my lips, like that of a young libertine listening to the arcadian and pastoral confidences of a third-form schoolboy: and, just as I was separating myself from them for ever, all the puerilities of my childhood and girlhood ran along the side of the road making a thousand signs of friendship to me and blowing me kisses from the tips of their white tapering fingers.

“I spurred my horse to rid myself of these enervating emotions; the trees sped rapidly past me on either side; but the wanton swarm, buzzing more than a hive of bees, began to run on the sidewalks and call to me, 'Madelaine! Madelaine!'

“I struck my animal's neck smartly with my whip, which made him redouble his speed. So rapidly was I riding, that my hair was nearly straight behind my head, and my cloak was horizontal, as though its folds were sculptured in stone; once I looked behind, and I saw the dust raised by my horse's hoofs like a little white cloud far away on the horizon.

“I stopped for a while.

“I perceived something white moving in a bush of eglantine at the side of the road, and a little clear voice as sweet as silver fell upon my ear: 'Madelaine, Madelaine, where are you going so far away, Madelaine? I am your virginity, dear child; that is why I have a white dress, a white crown, and a white skin. But why are you wearing boots, Madelaine? Methought you had a very pretty foot. Boots and hose, and a large plumed hat, like a cavalier going to the wars! Wherefore, pray, this long sword beating and bruising your thigh? You have a strange equipment, Madelaine, and I am not sure whether I should go with you.'

“'If you are afraid, my dear, return home, go water my flowers and care for my doves. But, in truth, you are wrong; you would be safer in these garments of good cloth than in your gauze and flax. My boots prevent it being seen whether I have a pretty foot; this sword is for my defence, and the feather waving in my hat is to frighten away all the nightingales who would come and sing false love-songs in my ear.

“I continued my journey: in the sighs of the wind I thought I could recognize the last phrase of the sonata which I had learned for my uncle's birthday, and in a large rose lifting its full-blown head above a little wall, the model of the big rose from which I had made so many water-color drawings; passing before a house I saw the phantom of my curtains moving at a window. All my past seemed to be clinging to me to prevent me from advancing and attaining to a new future.

“I hesitated two or three times and turned my horse's head in the opposite direction.

“But the little blue snake of curiosity hissed softly to me insidious words, and said: 'Go on, go on; Theodore; the opportunity for instruction is a good one; if you do not learn to-day, you will never know. Will you give your noble heart to chance, to the first appearance of honesty and passion? Men hide many extraordinary secrets from us, Theodore!'

“I resumed my gallop.

“The hose was on my body, but not in my disposition; I felt a sort of uneasiness, and, as it were, a shudder of fear, to give it its proper name, at a dark part of the forest; the report of a poacher's gun nearly made me faint. If it had been a robber, the pistols in my holsters and my formidable sword would certainly have been of little assistance to me. But by degrees I became hardened, and paid no more attention to it

“The sun was sinking slowly beneath the horizon, like the lustre in a theatre which is turned down when the performance is over. Rabbits and pheasants crossed the road from time to time; the shadows became longer, and the distance was tinted with red. Some portions of the sky were of a very sweet and softened lilac color, others resembled the citron and orange; the night-birds began to sing, and a crowd of strange sounds issued from the wood: the little light that remained died away, and the darkness became complete, increased, as it was, by the shade cast by the trees.

“I, who had never gone out alone at night, in a large forest at eight o'clock in the evening! Can you imagine such a thing, Graciosa, I who used to be dying of fear at the end of the garden? Terror seized me more than ever, and my heart beat terribly; I confess that it was with great satisfaction that I saw the lights of the town to which I was going, peeping and sparkling at the back of a hill. As soon as I saw those brilliant specks, like little terrestrial stars, my fright completely left me. It seemed to me as if these indifferent gleams were the open eyes of so many friends who were watching for me.

“My horse was no less pleased than I was myself, and inhaling a sweet stable odor more agreeable to him than the scents of the daisies and strawberries in the woods, he hastened straight to the Bed Lion Hotel.

“A golden gleam shone through the leaden casements of the inn, the tin signboard of which was swinging right and left, and moaning like an old woman, for the north wind was beginning to freshen. I intrusted my horse to a groom, and entered the kitchen.

“An enormous fire-place opened its red and black jaws in the background, swallowing up a faggot at each mouthful, while at either side of the andirons two dogs, seated on their haunches and nearly as high as a man, were toasting themselves with all the phlegm in the world, contenting themselves with lifting their paws a little and heaving a sort of sigh when the heat became too intense; but they would certainly have let themselves be reduced to cinders rather than have retired a step.

“My arrival did not appear to please them; and it was in vain that I tried to become acquainted with them, by stroking their heads now and then; they cast stealthy looks at me which imported nothing good. This surprised me, for animals come readily to me.

“The inn-keeper came up and asked me what I wished for supper.

“He was a paunch-bellied man, with a red nose, wall eyes and a smile that went round his head. At every word he uttered he displayed a double row of teeth, which were pointed and separated like an ogre's. The large kitchen-knife which hung by his side had a dubious appearance, and looked as if it might serve several purposes. When I had told him what I wanted he went up to one of the dogs and gave him a kick somewhere. The dog rose, and proceeded towards a sort of wheel which he entered with a cross and pitiful look, casting a glance of reproach at me. At last, seeing that no mercy was to be hoped for, he began to turn his wheel, and with it the spit on which the chicken for my supper was broached. I inwardly promised to throw him the remains of it for his trouble, and began to look round the kitchen until it should be ready.

“The ceiling was crossed by broad oaken joists, all blistered and blackened by the smoke from the hearth and candies. Pewter dishes brighter than silver, and white crockery-ware, with blue nosegays on it, shone in the shade on the dressers. Along the walls were numerous files of well-scoured pans, not unlike the ancient bucklers which were hung up in a row along the Grecian or Roman triremes (forgive me, Graciosa, for the epic magnificence of this comparison). One or two big servant-girls were busy about a large table moving plates and dishes and forks, the most agreeable of all music when you are hungry, for then the hearing of the stomach becomes keener than that of the ear.

“In short, notwithstanding the money-box mouth and saw-like teeth of the inn-keeper, the inn had quite an honest and jovial look; and if the inn-keeper's smile had been a fathom longer, and his teeth three times as long and as white, still the rain was beginning to patter on the panes, and the wind to howl in such a fashion as to take away all inclination to leave, for I know nothing more lugubrious than such wailings on a dark and rainy night.

“An idea occurred to me and made me smile, and it was this, — that nobody in the world would come to look for me where I was.

“Who, indeed, would have thought that little Madelaine, instead of being in her warm bed with her alabaster night-lamp beside her, a novel under her pillow, and her maid in the adjoining room ready to hasten to her at the slightest nocturnal alarm, would be balancing herself on a rush bottom chair at a country inn twenty leagues from her home, her booted feet resting on the andirons, and her hands swaggeringly thrust into her pockets?

“Yes, Madelinette did not remain like her companions, idly resting her elbow on the edge of the balcony among the bind-weed and jessamine at the window, and watching the violet fringes on the horizon at the end of the plain, or some little rose-colored cloud rounded by the May breeze. She did not strew lily leaves through mother-of-pearl palaces wherein to house her chimeras; she did not, like you, fair dreamers, clothe some hollow phantom with all imaginable perfections; she wished to be acquainted with men before giving herself to a man; she forsook everything, her beautiful brilliant robes of velvet and silk, her necklaces, bracelets, birds and flowers; she voluntarily gave up adoration, prostrate politeness, bouquets and madrigals, the pleasure of being considered more beautiful and better dressed than you, her sweet woman's name and all that she was, and departed, quite alone, like a brave girl, to learn the great science of life throughout the world.

“If this were known, people would say that Madelaine is mad. You have said it yourself, my dear Graciosa; but the truly mad are those who fling their souls to the wind, and sow their love at random cm stone and rock, not knowing whether a single ear will germinate.

“O Graciosa! there is a thought that I have never had without terror; the thought of loving some one unworthy of being loved! of laying your soul bare before impure eyes, and letting profanity penetrate into the sanctuary of your heart! of rolling your limpid tide for a time with a miry wave! However perfect the separation may be, something of the slime always remains, and the stream cannot recover its former transparency.

“To think that a man has kissed you and touched you; that he has seen your person; that he can say: She is like this or that; she has such a mark in such a place; she has such a shade in her soul; she laughs at this and weeps at that; her dream is of this description; here is a feather from her chimera's wing in my portfolio; this ring is plaited with her hair; a piece of her heart is folded tip in this letter; she used to caress me after such a fashion, and this was her usual expression of fondness!

“Ah! Cleopatra, I can now understand why in the morning you had killed the lover with whom you had spent the night. Sublime cruelty, for which formerly I could not find sufficient imprecations! Great voluptuary, how well you knew human nature, and what penetration was shown in this barbarity! You would not suffer any living being to divulge the mysteries of your bed; the words of love which had escaped your lips should not be repeated. Thus you preserved your pure delusion. Experience came not to strip piecemeal the charming phantom that you had cradled in your arms. You preferred to be separated from him by sudden blow of axe rather than by slow distaste.

“What torture, in fact, it is to see the man whom you have chosen false every minute to the idea you had formed of him; to discover a thousand littlenesses in his character which you had not suspected; to perceive that what had appeared so beautiful to you through the prism of love is really very ugly, and that he whom you took for a true hero of romance is, after all, only a prosaic citizen who wears dressing-gown and slippers!

“I have not Cleopatra's power, and if I had, I should assuredly not possess the energy to make use of it. Hence, being unable or unwilling to cut off the heads of my lovers, as they leave my couch, and being, further, indisposed to endure what other women endure, I must look twice before taking one; I shall do so three times rather than twice if I feel any inclination in that direction, which is doubtful enough after what I have seen and heard; unless, in some happy unknown land, I meet with a heart like my own, as the romances say-a virgin heart and pure, which has never loved, and which is capable of doing so in the true sense of the word, — by no means an easy matter.

“Several gentlemen entered the inn; the storm and darkness had prevented them from continuing their journey. They were all young, and the eldest was certainly not more than thirty. Their dress showed that they belonged to the upper classes, and without their dress the insolent ease of their manners would have readily made this understood. One or two of them had interesting faces; the others all displayed, to a greater or less degree, that species of brutal joviality and careless good-nature which men have among themselves, and which they lay aside completely when in our presence.

“If they could have suspected that the frail young man, half asleep in his chair at the corner of the fireplace, was anything but what he appeared to be, and was really a young girl, and fit for a king, as they say, they would certainly have quickly changed their tone, and you would immediately have seen them bridling up and making a display. They would have approached with many bows, their legs bent, their elbows turned out, and a smile in their eyes, on their lips, in their nose, in their hair, and in their whole bodily appearance; they would have boned the words they made use of, and spoken to me only in velvet and satin phrases; at the least movement, on my part, they would have looked like stretching themselves over the floor, after the manner of a carpet, lest the delicacy of my feet should be offended by its unevenness; all their hands would have been advanced to support me; the softest seat would have been prepared in the best place-but I looked like a pretty boy, and not like a pretty girl.

“I confess that I was almost ready to regret my petticoats when I saw what little attention they paid to me. For a minute I was quite mortified; for, from time to time, I forgot that I was wearing man's clothes, and had to think of the fact in order to prevent myself from growing cross.

“There I was, not speaking a word, my arms folded, looking apparently with great attention at the chicken, which was assuming a more and more rosy-tinted complexion, and the unfortunate dog which I had so unluckily disturbed, and which was striving in its wheel like several devils in the same holy-water basin.

“The youngest of the set came up, and, giving me a clap on the shoulder, which, upon my word, hurt me a good deal, and drew a little involuntary cry from me, asked me whether I would not rather sup with them than quite by myself, seeing that the drinking would go on all the better for plenty of company. I replied that this was a pleasure I should not have dared to hope for, and that I should be very happy to do so. Our covers were then laid together, and we sat down to table.

“The panting dog, after snapping up an enormous porringerful of water with three laps of his tongue, went back to his post opposite the of her dog, which had not stirred any more than if he had been made of porcelain, the new-comers, by heaven's special grace, not having asked for a chicken.

“From some words which they let drop, I learned that they were repairing to the court, which was then at — where they were to join other friends of theirs. I told them that I was a gentleman's son who was leaving the university and going to some relations in the country by the regular pupil's road, namely, the longest he could find. This made them laugh, and after some remark about my innocent and candid looks they asked me whether I had a mistress. I replied that I did not know, and they laughed still more. The bottles followed one another with rapidity; although I was careful to leave my glass nearly always full, my head was somewhat heated, and not losing sight of my purpose, I brought the conversation round to women. This was not difficult; for, next to theology and Aesthetics, they are the subject on which men are the readiest to talk when drunk.

“My companions were not precisely drunk, — they carried their wine too well for that, — but they began to enter into moral discussions at random, and to put their elbows unceremoniously on the table. One of them had even passed his arm around the thick waist of one of the serving women, and was nodding his head in very amorous fashion. Another swore that he would instantly burst, like a toad that had been given snuff, if Jeanette would not let him take a kiss on each of the big red apples which served her for cheeks; and Jeannette, not wishing him to burst like a toad, presented them to him with a very good grace, and did not even arrest a hand that audaciously found its way through the folds of her neckerchief into the moist valley of her bosom, which was very imperfectly guarded by a little golden cross, and it was only after a short whispered parley that he let her go and take away the dish.

“Yet they belonged to the court, and had elegant manners, and unless I had seen it, I should certainly never have thought of accusing them of such familiarities with the servants of an inn. Probably they had just left charming mistresses to whom they had sworn the finest oaths in the world. In truth, I should never have dreamed of charging my lover not to sully the lips on which I had laid my own along the cheeks of a trollop.

“The rogue appeared to take great pleasure in this kiss, neither more nor less than if he had embraced Phyllis or Ariadne. It was a big kiss, solidly and frankly applied, which left two little white marls on the wench's flaming cheek, and the trace of which she wiped away with the back of the hand that had just washed the plates and dishes. I do not believe that he ever gave so naturally tender a one to his heart's pure deity. This was apparently his own thought, for he said in an undertone, with quite a scornful movement of his elbow-

“'To the devil with lean women and lofty sentiments P

“This moral appeared to suit the company, and they all wagged their heads in token of assent.

“'Upon my word,' said the other, following out his idea, 'I am unfortunate in everything. Gentlemen, I must confide to you under the seal of the greatest secrecy, that I, I who am speaking to you, have at this moment a flame.'

“'Oh! oh!' said the others, 'a flame! That is lugubrious to the last degree. And what do you do with a flame?'

“'She is a virtuous woman, gentlemen, you must not laugh, gentlemen; for, after all, why should I not have a virtuous woman? Have I said anything ridiculous. Here! you over there! I will throw the house at your head if you are not quiet.'

“'Well! what next?'

“'She is mad about me. She has the most beautiful soul in the world; in point of souls, I understand them, — I understand them at least as well as I do horses, and I assure you that it is a soul of the first quality. There are elevations, ecstasies, devotions, sacrifices, refinements of tenderness, everything you can think of that is most transcendent; but she has scarcely any bosom, she has none at all, even, like a little girl of fifteen at most. She is otherwise pretty enough; her hand is delicate, and her foot small; she has too much mind and not enough flesh, and I often think of leaving her in the lurch. The devil! One can't be content with minds. I am very unfortunate; pity me, my dear friends.' And, affected by the wine that he had drunk, he began to weep bitterly.

“'Jeannette will console you for the misfortune of going to bed with sylphids,' said his neighbor, pouring him out a bumper; 'her soul is so thick that you might make bodies of it for other people, and she has flesh enough to clothe the carcasses of three elephants.'

“O pure and noble woman! didst thou but know what is said at random of thee, in a tavern, and in the presence of strangers, by the man whom thou lovest best in the world, and to whom thou hast sacrificed everything! how he strips thee without shame, and impudently surrenders thee in thy nakedness to the drunken gaze of his comrades, whilst thou art mournful yonder, thy chin in thy hand, and thine eyes turned towards the road by which he is to return!

“Had some one come and told thee that thy lover, twenty-four hours perhaps after leaving thee, was courting a base servant-girl, and had arranged to pass the night with her, thou wouldst have maintained that it was impossible, and wouldst have refused to believe it; scarcely wouldst thou have trusted thine eyes and ears. Yet it was so.

“The conversation lasted some time longer, and was the maddest and most shameless in the world; but through all the facetious exaggeration and the often filthy jests, there was apparent a deep and genuine feeling of perfect contempt for women, and I learned more during that evening than by reading twenty cart-loads of moralists.

“The monstrous and unheard of things that I was listening to imparted a tinge of sadness and severity to my face, which the rest of the guests perceived, and about which they teased me good-naturedly; but my gaiety could not return. I had, indeed, suspected that men were not such as they appear to us, but yet I did not think that they were so different from their masks, and my disgust was not greater than my surprise.

“I should require only half an hour of such conversation to cure a romantic young girl forever; it would do her more good than any maternal remonstrances.

“Some boasted of gaining as many women as they pleased, and that to do so cost them only a word; others communicated recipes for procuring mistresses, or enlarged upon the tactics to be pursued when laying siege to virtue; others again ridiculed the women whose lovers they were, and proclaimed themselves the most arrant fools on earth to be attached, in this way, to such trulls. They all made light of love.

“These, then, are the thoughts which they conceal from us beneath all their fair appearances! Who would ever think it, to see them so humble, so cringing, so ready to do anything? Ah! how hardily they raise their heads after a conquest, and insolently set the heel of their boot on the brow which they used to worship at a distance on their knees! what vengeance they take for their passing abasement! how dearly must their politeness be paid for! and through what many insults they repose after the madrigals they made. What mad brutality of language and thought! what inelegance of manners and deportment! It is a complete change, and one which certainly is not to their advantage. However far my previsions might reach, they fell far short of the reality.

“Ideal, blue flower with heart of gold, blooming all pearly with dew beneath the sky of spring, in the scented breath of soft dreamings, whose fibrous roots, a thousand times more slender than fairies' silken tresses, sink into the depths of our souls with their thousand hair-covered heads to drink in thence the purest substance; flower so sweet and so bitter, we cannot pluck thee forth without causing the heart to bleed in all its recesses; from the broken stem ooze red drops, which, falling one by one into the lake of our tears serve to measure for us the limping hours of our death-watch by the bedside of expiring Love.

“Ah! cursed flower, how thou hadst sprung up in my soul! thy branches had multiplied more than nettles in a ruin. The young nightingales came to drink from thy cup and sing beneath thy shade; diamond butterflies, with emerald wings and ruby eyes, hovered and danced about thy frail gold-powdered pistils; swarms of flaxen bees sucked thy poisonous honey without mistrust; chimeras folded their swan-like wings and crossed their lion claws beneath their beauteous throats to rest beside thee. The tree of the Hesperides was not better guarded; sylphids gathered the tears of the stars in the urns of the lilies, and watered thee each night with their magic watering-vessels.

“Plant of the ideal, more venomous than the manchineel or the upas tree, what it costs me, despite thy treacherous blossoms and the poison inhaled with their perfume, to uproot thee from my soul! Neither the cedar of Lebanon, nor the gigantic baobab, nor the palm a hundred cubits high, could together fill the place which thou didst occupy quite alone, little blue flower with the heart of gold!

“Supper came to an end at last, and we contemplated going to bed; but as the number of sleepers was double that of the beds, it naturally followed that we must go to bed in turn or else two together. It was a very simple matter for the rest of the company, but not so by any means for me, taking into account certain protuberances which were disguised conveniently enough beneath vest and doublet, but which a simple shirt would have betrayed in all their damnable roundness; and I was certainly little disposed to disclose my incognito in favor of any of these gentlemen who at that moment appeared to me veritable and ingenuous monsters, though I afterwards found them very decent fellows, and, worth at least as much as any of their species.

“He with whom I was to share a bed was fairly drunk. He threw himself on the mattress, with one leg and arm hanging to the ground, and at once went to sleep, not the sleep of the just, but a sleep so profound that if the angel of the last judgment had come and blown his clarion in his ear he would have failed to wake him. Such a sleep greatly simplified the difficulty; I took off nothing but my doublet and boots, strode over the sleeper's body, and stretched myself on the sheets at the edge of the bed.

“I was careful to keep my distance. It was not a bad beginning! I confess that, in spite of my assurance, I was singularly troubled. The situation was so strange, so novel, that I could scarcely admit that it was not a dream. The other slept his best, but I could not close an eye the whole night.

“He was a young man, about twenty-four years of age, with rather a handsome face, dark eyelashes, and a nearly blonde moustache; his long hair rolled around his head like the waves from the inverted urn of a river-god, a light blush passed beneath his pale cheeks like a cloud beneath the water, his lips were half open and smiling with a vague and languid smile.

“I raised myself upon my elbow, and remained a long time watching him by the flickering light of a candle, of which the tallow had nearly run down in broad sheets, and the wick was laden with black wasters.

“We were separated by a considerable interval. He occupied one extreme edge of the bed, while 1, as an additional precaution, had thrown myself quite on the other.

“What I had heard was assuredly not of a nature to predispose me to tenderness and voluptuousness: I held men in abomination. Nevertheless I was more disquieted and agitated than I ought to have been: my body did not share in the repugnance of my mind so completely as it should have done. My heart was beating violently, I was hot, and on whatever side I turned I could not find repose.

“The most profound silence reigned in the inn; you could only hear at wide intervals the dull noise caused by the hoof of some horse striking the stone-floor in the stable or the sound of a drop of water falling upon the ashes through the shaft of the chimney. The candle, reaching the end of the wick, went out in smoke.

“The densest darkness fell like a curtain between us. You cannot conceive the effect which the sudden disappearance of the light had upon me. It seemed to me as if all were ended, and I were never more to see clearly in my life. For a moment I wished to get up; but what could I have done? It was only two o'clock in the morning, all the lights were out, and I could not wander about like a phantom in a strange house. I was obliged to remain where I was and wait for daylight.

“There I was on my back, with both hands crossed, striving to think of something, and always coming back to this: that a man was lying near me. At one moment I went so far as to wish that he would awake and perceive that I was a woman. No doubt the wine that I had drunk, though sparingly, had something to do with this extraordinary idea, but I could not help recurring to it. I was on the point of stretching out my hand towards him, to wake him up, but a fold in the bedclothes which checked my arm prevented me from going through with it. Time was thus given me for reflection, and while I was freeing my arm, my senses, which I had altogether lost, came back to me, not entirely, perhaps, but sufficiently to restrain me.

“How curious it would have been, if I, scornful beauty as I was, I who wished to be acquainted with ten years of a man's life before giving him my hand to kiss, had surrendered myself on a pallet in an inn to the first comer! and upon my word such a thing might have happened.

“Can a sudden effervescence, a boiling of the blood, so completely subdue the most superb resolves? Does the voice of the body speak in higher tones than the voice of the mind? Whenever my pride sends too many puffs heavenwards, I bring the recollection of that night before its eyes to recall it to earth. I am beginning to be of man's opinion: what a poor thing is woman's virtue! on what, good heavens, does it depend!

“Ah! it is vain to seek to spread one's wings, they are laden with too much clay; the body is an anchor which holds back the soul to earth: fruitlessly does she open her sails to the wind of the loftiest ideas, the vessel remains motionless, as though all the remoras of the ocean were clinging to the keel. Nature takes pleasure In such sarcasms at our expense. When she sees a thought standing on its pride as on a lofty column, and nearly touching heaven with its head, she whispers to the red fluid to quicken its pace and crowd at the gates of the arteries; she commands the temples to sing and the ears to tingle, and, behold, giddiness seizes the proud idea. All images are blended and confused, the earth seems to undulate like the deck of a bark in a storm, the heavens turn round, and the stars dance a saraband; the lips which used to utter only austere maxims are wrinkled and put forward as though for kisses; the arms so firm to repel grow soft, and become more supple and entwining than scarfs. Add to this contact with an epidermis and a breath across your hair, and all is lost.

“Often even less is sufficient. A fragrance of foliage coming to you from the fields through your half-opened window, the sight of two birds billing each other, an opening daisy, an old love-song which returns to you in your own despite and which you repeat without understanding its meaning, a warm wind which troubles and intoxicates you, the softness of your bed or divan- one of these circumstances is sufficient; even the solitude of your room makes you think that it would be comfortable for two, and that no more charming nest could be found for a brood of pleasures. The drawn curtains, the twilight, the silence, all bring back to you the fatal idea which brushes you with its dove-like wings and coos so sweetly about you. The tissues which touch you seem to caress you, and cling with amorous folds along your body. Then the young girl opens her arms to the first wooer with whom she finds herself alone: the philosopher leaves his page unfinished, and, with his head in his mantle, runs in all haste to assuage his passion.

“I certainly did not love the man who was causing me such strange perturbations. He had no other charm than that he was not a woman, and, in the condition in which I found myself, this was enough! A man! that mysterious thing which is concealed from us with so much care, that strange animal, of whose history we know so little, that demon or god who alone can realize all the dreams of vague voluptuousness wherewith the spring-time flatters our sleep, the sole thought that we have from fifteen years of age!

“A man! The confused notion of pleasure floated through my dulled head. The little that I knew of it kindled my desire still more. A burning curiosity urged me to clear up once for all the doubts which perplexed me, and were for ever recurrin g to my mind. Hie solution oft the problem was over the leaf: it was only necessary to turn it, the book was beside me. A handsome cavalier, a narrow bed, a dark night! — a young girl with a few glasses of champagne in her head! what a suspicious combination! Well! the result of it all was but a very virtuous nothingness.

“On the wall, upon which I kept my eyes fixed, I began, in the diminishing darkness, to distinguish the position of the window; the panes became less opaque, and the grey light of dawn, glancing behind them, restored their transparency; the sky brightened by degrees: it was day. You cannot imagine the pleasure given me by that pale ray of light on the green dye of the Aumale serge which surrounded the glorious battlefield whereon my virtue had triumphed over my desires! It seemed to me as though it were my crown of victory.

“As to my companion, he had fallen out on to the floor.

“I got up, adjusted my dress as quickly as possible, and ran to the window; I opened it, and the morning breeze did me good. I placed myself before the looking-glass in order to comb my hair, and was astonished at the paleness of my countenance, which I had believed to be purple.

“The others came in to see whether we were still asleep, and pushed their friend with their, feet, who did not appear much surprised at finding himself where he was.

“The horses were saddled, and we set out again.

“But this is enough for to-day. My pen will not write any more, and I do not want to mend it; another time I will tell you the rest of my adventures; meanwhile, love me as I love you, well-named Graciosa, and do not, from what I have just told you, form too bad an opinion of my virtue.”