Mademoiselle de Maupin

XV

It was five o'clock in the morning when I entered the town. The houses were beginning to look out of window; the worthy natives were showing their benign countenances surmounted by colossal night-caps behind the panes. At the sound of my horses' iron-shod hoofs ringing upon the uneven flinty pavement there would emerge from every dormer window the big curiously red countenances and the matutinally uncovered breasts of the local Venuses who lost themselves in conjectures about the unwonted appearance of a traveller at C-, at such an hour and in such an equipment, for my attire was on a very small scale, and my appearance was, at the least, suspicious.

“I got a little rascal, who had his hair over his eyes, and lifted up his spaniel's muzzle in the air that he might consider me more comfortably, to point me out an inn; I gave him a few coppers for his trouble, and a conscientious cut with my riding-whip, which made him flee away screaming like a jay that had been plucked alive. I threw myself upon a bed and fell fast asleep. When I awoke it was three o'clock in the afternoon, — a length of time scarcely sufficient to rest me completely. In fact, it was not too much for a sleepless night, an intrigue, a duel, and a very rapid though quite victorious flight.

“I was very anxious about the wound that I had given Alcibiades; but some days afterwards I was completely reassured, for I learnt that it had not been attended by dangerous consequences, and that he was quite convalescent. This relieved me of a singular weight, for the idea of having killed a man tormented me strangely although it had been in lawful self-defence, and against my own wish. I had not yet arrived at that sublime indifference towards men's lives to which I afterwards attained.

“At C–I again came across several of the young fellows with whom we had travelled. This pleased me; I formed a closer connection with them, and they introduced me into several agreeable houses. I had become completely used to my dress, and the ruder and more active life that I had led, and the violent exercises to which I had devoted myself had made me twice as robust as I had been before. I followed these mad-caps everywhere; I rode, hunted, had orgies with them, for little by little I had come to drink; without attaining to the perfectly German capacity of some among them, I could empty two or three bottles for my share without getting very tipsy, which was very satisfactory progress. I made verses like a god with extreme copiousness, and kissed inn-servants with sufficient boldness.

“In short, I was an accomplished young cavalier in complete conformity with the last fashionable pattern. I got rid of certain countrified notions that I had had about virtue and other similar tarradiddles; on the other hand, I became so prodigiously delicate in point of honor that I fought a duel nearly every day: it even became a necessity with me to do so, a sort of indispensable exercise without which I should have felt out of sorts the whole day. Accordingly, when no one had looked at me or trodden on my foot and I had no motive for fighting, rather than remain idle and not exercise myself in fencing, I would act as second to my comrades or even to men whom I knew only by name.

“I had soon a colossal renown for bravery, and nothing short of it was necessary to check the pleasantries which would infallibly have been suggested by my beardless face and effeminate appearance. But two or three superfluous button-holes that I had opened in some doublets, and a few slices that I very delicately cut from some recalcitrant skins, caused my appearance to be generally considered more manly than that of Mars in person or of Priapus himself, and you might have met with people who would have sworn that they had held bastards of mine over the baptismal font.

“Through all this apparent dissipation, amid this riotous, extravagant life, I ceased not to pursue my original idea, that is to say, the conscientious study of man and the solution of the great problem of a perfect lover, a problem somewhat more difficult to solve than that of the philosopher's stone.

“Certain ideas are like the horizon which most certainly exists, since you see it in front of you in whatever direction you turn, but which flees obstinately before you, and, whether you go at a foot pace or at a gallop, keeps always at the same distance from you; for it cannot manifest itself except with a determined condition of remoteness; it is destroyed in proportion as you advance, to be formed further away with its fleeting, imperceptible azure, and it is in vain that you try to detain it by the hem of its flowing mantle.

“The further I progress in my knowledge of the animal, the more I saw how utterly impossible was the realization of my desire, and how completely external to the conditions of its nature was that which I found indispensable to an auspicious love. I convinced myself that the man who would be the most sincerely in love with me would with the greatest readiness in the world find means to make me the most wretched of women, and yet I had already abandoned many of my girlish requirements. I had come down from the sublime clouds, not altogether into the street and the kennel, but upon a hill of medium height, accessible though somewhat steep.

“The ascent, it is true, was rude enough; but I was so proud as to believe that I was quite worth the trouble of the effort, and that I should be a sufficient compensation for the pains that had been taken. I could never have prevailed upon myself to take a step forward; I waited, perched patiently upon my summit

“My plan was as follows: In my male attire I should have made the acquaintance of some young man whose exterior pleased me; I should have lived on familiar terms with him; by means of skilful questions and false confidences which would have challenged true ones, I should Boon have acquired a complete knowledge of his feelings and thoughts; and, if I found him such a one as I wished him to be, I should have alleged some journey, and kept away from him for three or four months to give him time to forget my features; then I should have returned in my woman's costume, and arranged a voluptuous little house, buried amid trees and flowers, in a retired suburb; then I should have so ordered matters that he would have met me and wooed me; and, if he showed a true and faithful love, I should have given myself to him without restriction or precaution:-the title of his mistress would have appeared honorable to me, and I should not have asked him for any other.

“But assuredly this plan will never be put into execution, for it is characteristic of plans never to be executed, wherein principally appear the frailty of the will and the mere nothingness of man. The proverb 'God wills what woman wills' has no more truth in it than any other proverb, that is to say, it has hardly any at all.

“So long as I had seen men only at a distance and through the medium of my desire, they had appeared comely to me, and my sight had deceived me. Now I consider them frightful in the highest degree, and do not understand how a woman can admit such a creature into her bed; for my part, it would turn my stomach, and I could never bring myself to it.

“How coarse and ignoble are their lineaments, and how devoid of delicacy and elegance! what unfinished and un-pleasing lines! what hard, dark, and furrowed skin! Some are as swarthy as men that had been hanged for six months, emaciated, bony, hairy, with violin-strings on their hands, large drawbridge feet, dirty moustaches always full of food and twirled back to the ears, hair as rough as a broom's bristles, chins ending like boars' heads, lips cracked and dried by strong liquors, eyes surrounded by three or four dark orbs, necks full of twisted veins, big muscles and prominent cartilages. Others are stuffed with red meat, and push on before them a belly that their waist-belt can scarcely span; they blink as they open their little sea-green eyes inflamed with luxury, and resemble hippopotamuses in breeches rather than human creatures. They always smell either of wine, or brandy, or tobacco, or else of their own natural odor, which is the very worst of all. As to those whose forms are somewhat less disgusting, they are like misshapen women. And that is all.

“I had not remarked all this. I had been in life as in a cloud, and my feet scarcely touched the earth. The odor of the roses and lilacs of spring went to my head like too strong a perfume. I dreamt only of accomplished heroes, faithful and respectful lovers, flames worthy of the altar, marvellous devotions and sacrifices, and I should have thought that I had found them all in the first blackguard that bade me good-day. Yet this first, coarse intoxication had no long duration; strange suspicions seized me, and I could have no rest until I had cleared them up.

“At first my horror of men was pushed to the last degree of exaggeration, and I looked upon them as dreadful monstrosities. Their modes of thought, their manners and their carelessly cynical language, their brutality and their scorn of women shocked and revolted me extremely, so little did the idea that I had formed of them correspond with the reality. They are not monsters, if you will, but something, on my word, that is much worse! They are capital fellows of very jovial disposition, who eat and drink well, will do you all kinds of services, are good painters and musicians, and are suitable for a thousand things, with, however, the single exception of that one for which they were created, namely, to be the male of the animal called woman, with which they have not the slightest affinity, physical or moral.

“Originally, I could scarcely disguise the contempt with which they inspired me, but by degrees I became accustomed to their manner of life. I was as little annoyed by the jests that they launched against women as if I had myself belonged to their own sex. On the contrary, I made some very good ones, the success of which singularly flattered my pride; certainly none of my comrades went so far as I did in the matter of sarcasm and pleasantries on this subject. My perfect knowledge of the ground gave me a great advantage, and, besides any piquant turn that they might have, my epigrams shone in virtue of an accuracy that was often wanting in theirs. For although all the evil that is said of women has always some foundation, it is nevertheless difficult for men to preserve the composure requisite in order to jest about them well, and there is often a good deal of love in their invectives.

“I remarked that it was those that were most tender and had most feeling about women who treated them worse than the rest, and who returned to the subject with quite a peculiar bitterness as though they owed them a mortal grudge for not being what they wished them to be, and for falsifying the good opinion they had first formed about them.

“What I desired above all things was not physical beauty, it was beauty of the soul, love; but love, as I am sensible of it, is perhaps beyond human possibilities. And yet it seems to me that I should love in this way, and that I should give more than I require.

“What magnificent madness! what sublime extravagance!

“To surrender yourself entirely without any self-reservation, to renounce the possession of yourself and the freedom of your will, to place the latter in the hands of another, to see only with his eyes and hear only with his ears, to be but one in two bodies, to blend and mingle your souls so that you cannot tell whether you are yourself or the other, to absorb and radiate continually, to be now the moon and now the sun, to see the whole of the world and of creation in a single being, to displace the centre of life, to be ready, at any time, for the greatest sacrifices and the most absolute abnegation, to suffer in the bosom of the person loved as though it were your own; O wonder! to double yourself while giving yourself-such is love as I conceive it.

“Fidelity like that of the ivy, entwinings as of the young vine, and cooings as of the turtle-dove, these are matters of course, and are the first and simplest conditions.

“Had I remained at home, in the costume of my sex, turning my wheel with melancholy or making tapestry behind a pane in the embrasure of a window, what I have sought for through the world would perhaps have come and found me of itself. Love is like fortune, and dislikes to be pursued. It visits by preference those that are sleeping on the edge of wells, and the kisses of queens and gods often descend upon closed eyes. It is a lure and a deception to think that all adventures and all happiness exist only in those places where you are not, and it is a miscalculation to have your horse saddled and to post off in quest of your ideal. Many people make, and many others will again make this mistake. The horizon is always of the most charming azure, although when you reach it the hills composing it are usually but poor, cracked clay, or ochre washed by the rain.

“I had imagined that the world was full of adorable youths, and that populations of Esplandians, Amadises, and Lancelots of the Lake were to be met with on the roads in pursuit of their Dulcineas; and I was greatly astonished that the world took very little heed of this sublime search and was content to share the couch of the first prostitute that came in the way. I am well punished for my curiosity and distrust. I. am surfeited in the most horrible manner possible without having enjoyed. With me knowledge has gone before use; nothing can be worse than such premature experiences which are not the fruit of action.

“The completest ignorance would be a thousand times better; it would at least make you do many foolish things which would serve to instruct you and to rectify your ideas; for, beneath the disgust of which I have been speaking, there is always a lively and rebellious element which produces the strangest disorders; the mind is vanquished, but the body is not, and will not subscribe to this superb disdain. The young and robust body strives and kicks beneath the mind like a vigorous stallion ridden by a feeble old man, whom, however, he is unable to throw, for the cavesson holds his head and the bit tears his mouth.

Since I have lived with men, I have seen so many women basely betrayed, so many secret connections imprudently divulged, the purest loves dragged carelessly through the mire, young fellows hastening to frightful courtesans on leaving the arms of the most charming mistresses, the most firmly established amours suddenly broken off without any plausible motive, that I now find it impossible to decide on taking a lover. It would be to throw oneself in broad daylight and with open eyes into a bottomless abyss. Nevertheless, the secret desire of my heart is still to have one. The voice of nature stifles the voice of reason. I am quite sensible that I shall never be happy if I cannot love and be loved:-but the misfortune is that only a man can be had as a lover, and if men are not altogether devils, they are very far from being angels. It would be vain for them to stick feathers on their shoulder-blades, and put a glory of gilt paper on their heads: I know them too well to be deceived. All the fine things that they could whisper to me would be of no avail. I know beforehand what they are going to say, and could say it for them.

“I have seen them studying their parts and rehearsing them before going on in front; I know the chief of the tirades that they intend to be effective and the passages on which they rely. Neither paleness of face nor alteration of feature would convince me. I know that these prove nothing. A night of orgy, a few bottles of wine, and two or three girls, are sufficient to wrinkle your face most becomingly. I have seen this trick practiced by a young marquis, by nature very rosy and fresh-colored, who found himself all the better for it, and owed the crowning of his passion only to this touching and well-gained paleness. I know also how the most languorous Celadons console themselves for the harshness of their Astiwas and find means for being patient while waiting for the happy hour. I have seen sluts serving as substitutes for chaste Ariadnes.

“Truly, after this, man tempts me but little; for he does not possess beauty like woman, beauty, that splendid garment which so well disguises the imperfections of the soul, that divine drapery cast by God over the nakedness of the world, and which makes it in some measure excusable to love the vilest courtesan of the kennel if she owns this magnificent and royal gift.

“In default of the virtues of the soul, I should at least wish for exquisite perfection of form, satinity of flesh, roundness of contour, sweetness of line, delicacy of skin, all that makes the charm of women. Since I cannot have love, I would have voluptuousness, and, well or ill, replace the brother by the sister. But all the men that I have seen seem to me frightfully ugly. My horse is a hundred times more handsome, and I should have less repugnance to kissing him than to kissing sundry wonderful fellows who believe themselves very charming. Certainly a fop like those of my acquaintance would not be a brilliant theme for me to embellish with variations of pleasure.

“A soldier would suit me nearly as little; military men have something mechanical in their walk and something bestial in their face which makes me look upon them as scarcely human creatures; gentlemen of the long robe are not more delightful to me, they are dirty, oily, shaggy, threadbare, with glaucous eyes and lipless mouths; they smell immoderately rancid and mouldy, and I should feel no inclination to lay my face against their lynx or badgerlike muzzles. As to poets, they think of nothing in the world but the endings of words and go no further back than to the penultimate, and, in truth, are difficult to make use of suitably; they are more wearisome than the others, but they are as ugly and have not the least distinction or elegance in their figure and dress, which is truly singular: — men who are occupied the whole day with form and beauty do not perceive that their boots are badly made and their hats ridiculous! They look like country apothecaries or teachers of learned dogs out of work, and would give you a distaste for poetry and verse for several eternities.

“As for painters, their stupidity also is enormous; they see nothing except the seven colors. One with whom I had spent a few days at E-, and who was asked what he thought of me, made this ingenious reply: 'He is rather warm in tone, and in the shadows pure Naples yellow should be employed instead of white, with a little Gassel ochre and reddish brown.' Such was his opinion, and, moreover, his nose was crooked and his eyes like his nose; which did not improve his chances. Whom shall I take? — a soldier with bulging crop, a limb of the law with convex shoulders, a poet or painter with a wild look, a lean little coxcomb without consistence? Which cage shall I choose in this menagerie? I am quite unable to say; I feel as little inclination in one direction as in another, for they are as perfectly equal in point of foolishness and ugliness as they can possibly be.

“Another alternative would still be open to me, which would be to take any one that I loved though he were a porter or a jockey; but I do not love even a porter. O unhappy heroine that I am! unmated turtle-dove condemned eternally to utter elegiac cooings!

“Oh! how many times have I wished to be really a man as I appear to be! How many women are there with whom I should have had a fellow-feeling, and whose hearts would have understood mine! how perfectly happy should I have been rendered by those delicacies of love, those note flights of pure passion to which I could have replied! What sweetness, what delight! how would all the sensitive plants of my soul have bloomed freely without being obliged every minute to contract and close beneath some coarse touch! What charming efflorescence of invisible flowers which will never open, and whose mysterious perfume would have tenderly embalmed the fraternal soul! It seems to me that it would have been an enchanting life, an infinite ecstasy with ever outstretched wings; walks, with hands entwined, never releasing their hold, beneath avenues of golden sand, through groves of eternally-smiling roses, in parks full of fish-ponds with gliding swans, and alabaster vases standing out against the foliage.

“Had I been a youth, how I should have loved Rosette! what worship it would have been! Our souls were truly made for each other, two pearls destined to blend together and make but one! How perfectly should I have realized the ideas that she had formed of love! Her character suits me completely, and her style of beauty pleases me. It is a pity that our love should be totally condemned to indispensable platonism!

“An adventure befell me lately.

“I used to visit a house in which there was a charming little girl, fifteen years old at the very most; I have never seen a more adorable miniature. She was fair, but so delicately and transparently fair that ordinary blondes would have appeared excessively brown and as dark as moles beside her; you would have thought that she had golden hair powdered with silver; her eyebrows were of so mild and soft a tint that they were scarcely apparent to the sight; her pale blue eyes had the most velvety look and the most silky lashes imaginable; her mouth, too small to put the tip of your finger into it, added still further to the childish and exquisite character of her beauty, and the gentle curves and dimples of her cheeks had an ingenuousness that was unspeakably charming. The whole of her dear little person delighted me beyond all expression; I loved her frail, white, little hands through which you could see the light, her bird-like foot which scarcely touched the ground, her figure which a breath would have broken, and her pearly shoulders, little developed as. yet, which her scarf, placed awry, happily disclosed.

“Her prattle, in which artlessness imparted fresh piquancy to her natural wit, would engage me for whole hours, and I took singular pleasure in making her talk; she would utter a thousand delicious comicalities, now with extraordinary nicety of intention, and now without having apparently the slightest comprehension of their scope, — which made them a thousand times more attractive. I used to give her bon-bons and lozenges, kept expressly for her in a light tortoise-shell box, which pleased her greatly, for she is dainty like the true little puss that she is. As soon as I arrived she would run up to me and try my pockets to see whether the blissful bon-bon box was there; I would make her run from one hand to the other, and this would occasion a little battle in which she in the end infallibly got the upper hand and completely plundered me.

“One day, however, she contented herself with greeting me in a very grave manner, and did not come as usual to see whether the sweetmeat fountain was still flowing in my pocket; she remained haughtily on her chair, quite upright and with her elbows drawn back.

“'Well! Ninon,' I said to her, 'have you become fond of salt now, or are you afraid that sweets will make your teeth drop out?' And as I spoke I tapped the box, which gave forth the most honeyed and sugary sound in the world from beneath my jacket

“She put her little tongue half way out on the edge of her lips as though to taste the ideal sweetness of the absent bon-bon, but she did not stir.

“Then I drew the box from my pocket, opened it, and began religiously to swallow the burnt almonds of which she was especially fond: the greedy instinct was for a moment stronger than her resolution; she put out her hand to take some and drew it back again immediately, saying, 'I am too big to eat sweets!' And she heaved a sigh.

“'It did not strike me that you had grown very much since last week; you must be like the mushrooms which spring up in a night. Come and let me measure you.'

“'Laugh as much as you like!' she rejoined with a charming pout; 'I am no longer a little girl, and I want to grow very big.'

“'Your resolutions are excellent, and should be adhered to; but might it be known, my dear young lady, what has caused these lofty ideas to come into your head? For, a week ago, you appeared quite content to be email, and craunched your burnt almonds without caring very much about compromising your dignity.'

“The little creature looked at me in a singular manner, glanced around her, and, when she had quite satisfied herself that no one could hear us, leaned over towards me in a mysterious fashion and said:

“'I have a lover!'

“'The deuce! I am no longer surprised that you have ceased to care for lozenges; you were wrong, however, not to take some, for you might have had a doll's dinner-party with him, or exchanged them for a shuttlecock.

“The child made a scornful movement with her shoulders and appeared to look upon me with perfect contempt. As she continued to maintain her attitude of an offended queen, I continued:

“'What is the name of this glorious personage? Arthur, I suppose, or else Henri.' These were two little boys with whom she used to play, and whom she called her husbands.

“No, neither Arthur nor Henri,” she said, fixing her clear, transparent eye upon me, 'a gentleman.' She raised her hand above her head to give me an idea of height.

“'As tall as that? Why, this is getting serious. And who is this tall lover?'

“'Monsieur Theodore, I will tell you, but you must not speak about it to any one, neither to mamma, or Polly (her governess), or your friends who think me a child and would make fun of me.'

“I promised the most inviolable secrecy, for I was very curious to know who the gallant personage was, and the child, seeing that I was making fun of the matter, hesitated to take me entirely into her confidence.

“He assured by the word of honor that I gave her to be carefully silent about it, she left her easy-chair, came and leaned over the back of mine, and whispered the name of the beloved prince very softly in my ear.

“I was confounded: it was the Chevalier de O-, a dirty, intractable animal, with the morals of a schoolmaster and the physique of a drum-major, the most intemperate debauchee of a man that could possibly be seen, a genuine satyr, minus the goat's feet and the pointed ears. This inspired me with grave apprehensions for dear Ninon, and I made up my mind to put the matter to rights.

“Some people came in, and the conversation dropped.

“I withdrew into a corner and searched my brain for the means of preventing things from going further, for it would have been quite a sin for so delicious a creature to fall to such an arrant scoundrel.

“The little one's mother was a kind of courtesan who kept gaming tables and had a literary solan. Bad verses were read at her house and good money lost, which was a compensation. She had not much love for her daughter, who was, to her, a sort of living baptismal certificate which prevented her falsifying her chronology. Besides, the child was growing up, and her budding charms gave rise to comparisons which were not to the advantage of the prototype, already somewhat worn by the action of years and men. The child was accordingly rather neglected, and was left defenceless to the enterprises of the blackguards who frequented the house. If her mother had taken any notice of her, it would probably have been only to profit by her youth and trade on her beauty and innocence. In one way or another the fate that awaited her was not in doubt. This pained me, for she was a. charming little creature who was assuredly deserving of better things, a pearl of the finest water lost in that infectious slough; the thought of it affected me so far that I resolved to get her at all costs out of that frightful house.

“The first thing to be done was to prevent the chevalier from pursuing his design. I thought that the best and simplest way was to pick a quarrel with him and make him fight a duel, and I had all the trouble in the world to do so, for he is as cowardly as he can be and dreads blows more than any one. At last I said so many stinging things to him, that he was obliged to make up his mind to come on the ground, although it was greatly against the grain, I even threatened to have him cudgelled by my footman if he did not put a better face on it. Nevertheless he could handle his sword well enough, but he was so confused by fear that we had hardly crossed our weapons when I was able to administer a nice little thrust which sent him to bed for a fortnight. This satisfied me; I had no wish to kill him, and would as soon have let him live to be hanged later on-a touching attention for which he ought to have been more grateful to me. My rogue being stretched between a pair of sheets and duly trussed with bandelets, it only remained to induce the little one to leave the house, which was not extremely difficult.

“I told her a story about her lover's disappearance, which was giving her extraordinary anxiety. I informed her that he had gone off with an actress belonging to the company then at C-, which, as you may believe, made her very indignant. But I consoled her by speaking ill in every way of the chevalier, who was ugly, drunken, and already old, and I ended by asking her whether she would not rather have me for a wooer. She replied that she would, because I was handsomer, and my clothes were new. This artlessness, spoken with enormous seriousness, made me laugh till I cried. I turned the little one's head and succeeded in inducing her to leave the house. A few bouquets, about as many kissed, and a pearl necklace that I gave her, charmed her to an extent difficult to describe, and she assumed an important air in the presence of her little friends which was extremely laughable.

“I had a very rich and elegant page's costume of about her size made, for I could not take her away in her girl's dress, unless I myself resumed female attire, which I was unwilling to do. I bought a pony, which was gentle and easy to ride, and yet a sufficiently good courser to follow. my barb when it was my pleasure to go quickly. Then I told the fair one to try to come down at dusk to the door, where I would call for her; and this she very punctually did. I found her mounting guard behind the half-opened door. I passed very close to the house; she came out, I stretched out my hand to her, she rested her foot on the tip of mine, and jumped very nimbly up behind me, for she possessed marvelous agility. I spurred my horse, and succeeded in returning home through seven or eight circuitous and deserted lanes without any one seeing us.

“I made her exchange her clothes for her disguise, and myself acted as her maid; at first she made a little fuss, and wished to dress all alone; hut I made her understand that this would waste a great deal of time; that, moreover, being my mistress, it was not in the least improper, and that such was the custom between lovers. This was quite enough to convince her, and she yielded to circumstances with the best grace in the world.

“Her body was a little marvel of delicacy. Her arms, which were somewhat thin like those of every young girl, had inexpressible sweetness of line, and her budding breasts gave such charming promise, that none better developed could have sustained a comparison with them. She had still all the graces of the child, and already all the charm of the woman; she was in that adorable transition period when the little girl is blended with the young girl: a blending fugitive and impalpable, a delicious epoch when beauty is full of hope, and when every day, instead of taking something from your love, adds new perfections to it.

“Her costume became her extremely well. It gave her a little unruly air, which was very curious and diverting, and made her burst out laughing when I offered her the glass to let her judge of the effect of her toilet. I afterwards made her eat some biscuits dipped in Spanish wine, in order to give her courage and enable her better to support the fatigue of the journey.

“The horses were waiting ready saddled in the courtyard; she mounted hers with some deliberation, I bestrode the other, and we set out. Night had completely fallen, and occasional lights, which were being extinguished every moment, showed that the honest town of C- was virtuously engaged as every country town ought to be on the stroke of nine.

“We could not go very quickly, for Ninon was no better horsewoman than she ought to have been, and when her beast began to trot she would cling with all her might to his mane. However, on the following morning we were too far away to be overtaken, at all events unless extraordinary diligence had been employed; but we were not pursued, or at least, if we were, it was in an opposite direction to that which we had taken.

“I was singularly interested in the little fair one. I no longer had you with me, my dear Graciosa, and I was immensely sensible of the need of loving somebody or something, of having a dog or a child with me to caress familiarly. Ninon was this to me; she shared my bed and put her little arms around my body to go to sleep; she most seriously thought herself my mistress, and had no doubt that I was a man; her great youth and extreme innocence preserved her in this error which I was careful not to dissipate. The kisses that I gave her quite completed her illusion, for her ideas went, as yet, no further, and her desires did not speak loudly enough to cause her to suspect anything else. After all, she was only partly mistaken.

“And, really, there was the same difference between her and me, as there is between myself and men. She was so diaphanous, so slender, so light, of so delicate and choice a nature, that she was a woman even to me who am myself a woman, and who look like a Hercules beside her. I am tall and dark, she is small and blonde; her features are so soft that they make mine appear almost hard and austere, and her voice is so melodious a warble that mine seems harsh in comparison. If a man had her he would break her in pieces, and I always feel afraid that the wind will carry her off some fine morning. I should like to enclose her in a box of cotton and wear her hanging about my neck. You can have no conception, my dear friend, of her grace and wit, her delicious coaxing, her childlike endearments, her little ways and pretty manners. She is the most adorable creature in existence, and it would have been truly a pity had she remained with her unworthy mother.

“I took a malicious joy in thus depriving men's rapacity of such a treasure. I was the griffin preventing all approach, and, if I did not enjoy her myself, at least no one else enjoyed her-an idea which is always consoling, let all the foolish detractors of egotism say what they will.

“I intended to preserve her in her ignorance as long as possible, and to keep her with me until she was unwilling to stay any longer, or I had succeeded in securing a settlement for her.

“In her boy's dress I took her on all my journeys, right and left; this mode of life gave her singular pleasure, and the charm that she found in it assisted her to endure its fatigues. Everywhere I was complimented on the exquisite beauty of my page, and I have no doubt that it gave many people a precisely contrary idea of what was actually the case. Several even tried to unravel the mystery; but I did not allow the little one to speak to anybody, and the curious were completely disappointed.

“Every day I discovered some new quality in this amiable child which made me cherish her more and congratulate myself on the resolution I had taken. Assuredly men were not worthy to possess her, and it would have been a deplorable thing if so many bodily and spiritual charms had been surrendered to their brutal appetites and cynical depravity.

“Only a woman could love her with sufficient delicacy and tenderness. One side of my character, which could not have been developed in a different connection and which was completely brought out in the present one, is the need and desire of affording protection, a duty which usually belongs to me. If I had taken a lover it would have displeased me extremely to find him assuming to defend me, for the reason that this is an attention I love to show to those whom I like, and that my pride is much better suited with the first role than with the second, although the second may be more agreeable. Thus I felt pleased in paying my little darling all the attentions which I ought to have liked to receive, such as assisting her on difficult roads, holding her bridle or stirrup, serving her at table, undressing her and putting her to bed, defending her if any one insulted her; in short, doing everything for her that the most impassioned and attentive lover does for a mistress he adores.

“I was insensibly losing the idea of my sex, and it was with difficulty that I remembered, at considerable intervals, that I was a woman; at first I often forgot myself, and unthinkingly said something that did not harmonize with the coat I wore. Now this never happens, and even when writing to you, to you who are in my secret, I sometimes preserve a useless virility in my adjectives. If ever I take a fancy to go and look for my skirts in the drawer where I left them-which I think very doubtful, unless I fall in love with some young spark-I shall find it difficult to lose these habits, and, instead of being a woman disguised as a man, I shall look like a man disguised as a woman. In truth, neither of the two sexes is mine; I have not the imbecile submission, the timidity or the littleness of women; I have not the vices, the disgusting intemperance, or the brutal propensities of men: I belong to a third, distinct sex, which as yet has no name: higher or lower, more defective or superior; I have the body and soul of a woman, the mind and power of a man, and I have too much or too little of both to be able to pair with either.

“O Graciosa! I shall never be able to completely love any one, man or woman; an unsated something ever chides within me, and the lover or friend answers only to a single aspect of my character. If I had a lover, the feminine element in me would doubtless for a time dominate over the manly, but this would not last for long, and I feel that I should be only half satisfied; if I have a friend, the idea of corporeal voluptuousness prevents me from tasting entirely the pure voluptuousness of the soul; so that I know not where to rest, and perpetually waver from one to the other.

“My chimera would be to have both sexes in turn in order to satisfy this double nature: a man to-day, a woman to-morrow, for my lovers I should keep my languorous tenderness, my submissive and devoted ways, my softest caresses, my little sadly-drawn sighs, all the cat-like and woman-like elements in my character; then with my mistresses I should be enterprising, bold, impassioned, with triumphant manners, my hat on my ear, and the style of a boaster and adventurer. My nature would thus be entirely brought out, and I should be perfectly happy, for true happiness consists in the ability to develop freely in every direction and to be all that it is possible to be.

“But these are impossibilities, and are not to be thought of.

“I had carried off the child with the idea of deluding my propensities and turning upon some one all the vague tenderness which floats in my soul and floods it; I had taken her as a sort of escape for my loving faculties; but I soon recognized, in spite of all the affection that I bore her, what an immense void, what a bottomless abyss was left in my heart, and how little her tenderest caresses contented me! I resolved to try a lover, but a long time passed and I met no one who did not displease me. I forgot to tell you that Rosette, having discovered whither I was gone, had written me the most beseeching letter to go and see her; I could not refuse her, and I met her again at a country house where she was. I returned there several times, and even quite lately. Rosette, in despair at not having had me for her lover, had thrown herself into the whirl of society and dissipation, like all tender souls that are not religious and that have been wounded in their first love; she had had many adventures in a short time, and the list of her conquests was already very numerous, for every one had not the same reasons for resisting her that I had.

“She had with her a young man named D'Albert, who was at the time her established lover. I appeared to make quite a peculiar impression upon him, and at the very first he took a strong liking to me.

“Although he treated Rosette with great deference, and his manners towards her were in the main tender enough, he did not love her, — not owing to satiety or distaste, but rather because she did not correspond to certain ideas, true or false, which he had formed concerning love and beauty. An ideal cloud interposed between him and her, and prevented him from being as happy as otherwise he must have been. Evidently his dream was not fufilled, and he sighed for something else. But he did not seek for it, and remained faithful to the bonds which weighed on him; for he has more delicacy and honor in his soul than most men, and his heart is very far from being as corrupted as his mind. Not knowing that Rosette had never been in love except with me, and that she was so still, in spite of all her intrigues and follies, he had a dread of distressing her by letting her see that he did not love her. It was this consideration that restrained him, and he was sacrificing himself in the most generous way.

“The character of my features gave him extraordinary pleasure, for he attaches extreme importance to external form; so much so that he fell in lore with me in spite of my male attire and the formidable rapier which I wear at my side. I confess that I was grateful to him for the acuteness of his instinct, and that I held him in some esteem for having distinguished me beneath these delusive appearances. At the beginning he believed himself endowed with a fancy far more depraved than it really was, and I laughed inwardly to see him torment himself in this way. Sometimes, when accosting me, he had a frightened look which amused me immensely, and the very natural inclination which drew him towards me appeared to him as a diabolical impulse which could not be too strongly resisted. On such occasions he would fall back furiously upon Rosette, and endeavor to recover more orthodox habits of love; then he would come back to me, of course more inflamed than before.

“Then the luminous idea that I might perhaps be a woman crept into his mind. To convince himself of this he set himself to observe and study me with the minutest attention; he must be acquainted with every particular hair, and know accurately how many eyelashes I have on my lids; feet, hands, neck, cheeks, the slightest down at the corner of my lips, he examined, compared, and analyzed them all, and from this investigation, in which the artist aided the lover, it came out as clear as day (when it is clear), that I was well and duly a woman, and, moreover, his ideal, the type of his beauty, the reality of his dream;-a wonderful discovery!

“It only remained to soften me, and obtain the gift of amorous mercy, to completely establish my sex. A comedy which we acted, and in which I appeared as a woman, quite decided him. I gave him some equivocal glances, and made use of some passages in my part, analogous to our own situation, to embolden him and impel him to declare himself. For, if I did not passionately love him, he pleased me well enough not to let him pine away with love; and, as he was the first since my transformation to suspect that I was a woman, it was quite fair that I should enlighten him on this important point, and I was resolved not to leave him a shadow of doubt.

“Several times he came into my room with his declaration on his lips, but he dared not utter it; for, indeed, it is difficult to speak of love to one who is dressed like yourself, and is trying on riding boots. At last, unable to take it upon himself to do this, he wrote me a long, very Pindaric letter, in which he explained to me at great length what I knew better than he did.

“I do not quite know what I ought to do. Admit his request or reject it, — the latter would be immoderately virtuous; besides, his grief at finding himself refused would be too great: if we make people who love us unhappy, what are we to do to those who hate us? Perhaps it would be more strictly becoming to be cruel for a time, and wait at least a month before unhooking the tigress's skin to dress after the human fashion in a chemise. But, since I have resolved to yield to him, immediately is as good as later; I do not well understand those mathematically graduated resistances which surrender one hand to-day, the other to-morrow, then the waist and the neck, and next submit the lips to a lover's kisses; nor those intractable virtues which are always ready to hang themselves to the bell-rope if you pass by a hair's-breadth beyond the territory which they have resolved to grant on that day. It makes me laugh to see those methodical Lucretias walking backwards with the tokens of the most maidenly terror, and from time to time casting a furtive glance over their shoulder to make sure that the sofa on which they are to faint is quite directly behind them. I could never be as careful as that.

“I do not love D'Albert, at least in the sense which I give to the word, but I have certainly a liking and an inclination for him; his mind pleases me and his person does not repel me: there are not many people of whom I can say as much. He has not everything, but he has something; what pleases me in him is that he does not seek to satiate himself brutally like other men; he has a perpetual aspiration and an ever sustained breathing after beauty, — after material beauty alone, it is true, but still it is a noble inclination, and one which is sufficient to keep him in pure regions. His conduct towards Rosette proves honesty of heart, an honesty rarer than the other, if that be possible.

“And then, if I must tell you, I am possessed with the most violent desires, — I am languishing and dying of voluptuousness; for the dress I wear, while involving me in all sorts of adventures with women, protects me only too perfectly against the enterprises of men; an idea of pleasure which is never realized floats vaguely through my head, and this dull, colorless dream wearies and annoys me. So many women placed amid the chastest surroundings lead the most immoral lives, while I, by a somewhat facetious contrast, remain chaste and virgin like cold Diana herself, in the midst of the most disordered dissipation and surrounded by the greatest debauchees of the century.

“This bodily ignorance unaccompanied by ignorance of the mind is the most miserable thing in existence. That my flesh may have no cause to assume airs over my soul, I am anxious to know a man completely and all that his lore is capable of. Since D'Albert has recognized me beneath my disguise, it is quite fair that he should be rewarded for his penetration; he was the first to divine that I was a woman, and I shall prove to him to the best of my ability that his suspicions were well founded. I would be scarcely charitable to let him believe that his fancy was solely a monstrous one.

“D'Albert, it is, then, who will solve my doubts and give me my first lesson in love; the only question now is to bring the matter about in quite a poetical fashion. I am inclined not to reply to his letter and to look coldly on him for a few days. When I see him very sad and despairing, inveighing against the gods, shaking his fist at creation and, looking down the wells to see whether they are not too deep to throw himself into them, — I shall retire like Peau d'Ane to the end of the corridor, and put on my light-blue dress, that is to say my costume as Rosalind; for my feminine wardrobe is very limited. Then I shall go to him as radiant as a peacock displaying its feathers, with but a very low and loose lace tucker, partially unveiling those attractions which I usually conceal with the greatest care, and shall say to him in the most pathetic tone that I can assume:

“'O most elegiac and perspicacious young man! I am truly a young and modest beauty, one who adores you into the bargain, and humbly asks to share your pleasures with you. Tell me whether this suits you, or if you feel any scruples in according her what she wishes.

“This fine discourse ended, I shall let myself fall half-swooning into his arms, and, heaving melancholy sighs, shall skilfully cause the hook of my dress to come undone so that I shall still further disclose certain of my charms. The rest I shall leave to chance, and I hope that on the following morning I shall know what to think of all those fine things which have been troubling my brain for so long. While satisfying my curiosity, I shall have the farther pleasure of making some one happy.

“I also propose to go and pay a visit to Rosette in the same costume, and to show her that, if I have not responded to her love, it was not from coldness or distaste. I do not wish her to preserve such a bad opinion of me, and she deserves, equally with D'Albert, that I should betray my incognito in her favor. How will she look at this revelation? Her pride will be consoled by it, but her love will lament it.

“Good-bye, most fair and good one; pray to heaven that I may not think as little of the pleasure as I do of those who afford it. I have jested throughout this letter, and yet what I am going to essay is a serious matter and something which may affect the rest of my life.”