Mademoiselle de Maupin

VI

At this point, if the gentle reader will permit us, we shall for a time leave to his dreams the worthy personage who, up to the present, has monopolized the stage and spoken for himself alone, and go back to the ordinary form of romance, without, however, prohibiting ourselves from taking up the dramatic form, if necessary, later on, and reserving to ourselves the right of drawing further on the species of epistolary confession addressed by the said young man to his friend, being persuaded that, however penetrating and full of sagacity we may be, we must know far less in this matter than he does himself.

… The little page was so worn out that he slept in his master's arms, his little head all dishevelled, swaying to and fro as though he were dead. It was some distance from the flight of steps to the room which had been assigned to the new arrival, and the servant who showed him the way offered to carry the child in his turn; but the young cavalier, to whom, moreover, the burden seemed but a feather, thanked him and would not relinquish it. He laid him down very gently on the couch, taking a thousand precautions not to awake him; a mother could not have done better. When the servant had retired and the door was shut, he knelt down in front of him and tried to draw off his boots; but the little feet, which were swelled and painful, rendered this operation somewhat difficult, and the pretty sleeper from time to time heaved vague and inarticulate sighs like one about to wake; then the young. cavalier would stop and wait until sleep had again overpowered him. The boots yielded at last, this was the most important; the stockings offered only a slight resistance.

This operation accomplished, the master took both the child's feet and laid them beside each other on the velvet of the sofa; they were quite the most adorable pair of feet in the world, as small as could be, as white as new ivory and a little rosy from the pressure of the boots in which they had been imprisoned for seventeen hours-feet too small for a woman, and which looked as though they had never walked; what was seen of the leg was round, plump, smooth, transparent, veiny, and most exquisitely delicate; a leg worthy of the foot.

The young man, who was still on his knees, regarded these two little feet with loving and admiring attention; he bent down, took the left one and kissed it, then the right and kissed it also; and then with kisses after kisses he went back along the leg as far as the place where the cloth began. The page raised his long eyelash a little, and cast upon his master a kind and drowsy look in which no surprise was apparent. “My belt is uncomfortable,” he said, passing his finger beneath the ribbon, and fell asleep again. The master unfastened the belt, raised the page's head with a cushion, and touching his feet which, burning as they were before, had become rather cold, wrapped them up carefully in his cloak, took an easy-chair and sat down as close as possible to the sofa. Two hours passed in this way, the young man looking at the sleeping child and following the shadows of his dreams upon his brow. The only noise that was heard in the room was his regular breathing and the tick-tack of the clock.

It was certainly a very graceful picture. There was a means for effect in the contrast of these two kinds of beauty that a skilful painter would have turned to good account. The master was as beautiful as a woman, the page as beautiful as a young girl. The round and rosy head, set thus in its hair, looked like a peach beneath its leaves; it was as fresh and as velvety, though the fatigue of the journey had robbed it of a little of its usual brilliance; the half-opened mouth showed little teeth of milky whiteness, and beneath his full and glossy temples a network of azure veins crossed one another; his eyelashes, which were like the golden threads that are spread round the heads of virgins in the missals, reached nearly to the middle of his cheeks; his long and silky hair resembled both gold and silver-gold in the shade and silver in the light; his neck was at once fat and frail, and had nothing of the sex that was indicated by his dress: two or three buttons, unfastened to facilitate respiration, allowed a lozenge of plump and rounded flesh of wonderful whiteness to be seen through the hiatus in a shirt of fine Holland linen, as well as the beginning of a certain curving line difficult of explanation on the bosom of a young boy; looking carefully at him it might also have been found that his hips were a little too much developed.

The reader may draw his own conclusions; we are offering him mere conjectures. We know as little of the matter as he does, but we hope to know more after a time, and we promise to faithfully keep him aware of our discoveries. If the reader's sight is better than ours, let his glance penetrate beneath the lace on that shirt and decide conscientiously whether the outline is too prominent or not prominent enough; but we warn him that the curtains are drawn, and that a twilight scarcely favorable for investigations of the kind reigns in the room.

The cavalier was pale, but of a golden paleness full of vigor and life; his pupils swam in a blue, crystalline humor; his straight and delicate nose imparted wonderful pride and energy to his profile, and its flesh was so fine that at the edge of the outline it suffered the light to pierce through; his mouth had, at certain moments, the sweetest of smiles, but usually it was arched at the corners, inwards rather than outwards, like some of the heads that we see in the pictures of the old Italian masters; and this gave him a little look of adorable disdain, a most piquant smorfia, an air of childish pouting and ill-humor, which was very singular and very charming.

What were the ties uniting master to page and page to master? There was assuredly something more between them than the affection which may exist between master and servant. Were they two friends or two brothers? If so, why this disguise? It would at all events have been difficult for any one who had witnessed the scene that we have just described to believe that these two personages were in reality only what they appeared to be.

“The dear angel, how he sleeps!” said the young man in a low voice; “I don't think that he has ever travelled so far in his life. Twenty leagues on horseback, he who is so delicate! I am afraid that he will be ill from fatigue. But no, it will be nothing; there will be no sign of it to-morrow; he will have recovered his beautiful color, and be fresher than a rose after rain. How beautiful he is, so! If I were not afraid of awaking him, I would eat him up with caresses. What an adorable dimple he has on his chin! what delicacy and whiteness of skin! Sleep well, dear treasure. Ah! I am truly jealous of your mother and I wish that I had made you. He is not ill? No; his breathing is regular, and he does not stir. But I think some one knocked-”

And indeed two little taps had been given as softly as possible on the panel of the door.

The young man rose, and, fearing that he was mistaken, delayed opening until there should be another knock. Two other taps, a little more accentuated, were heard again, and a woman's soft voice said in a very low tone: “It is I, Theodore.”

Theodore opened the door, but with less eagerness than is usual with a young man opening to a young woman with a gentle voice who comes scratching mysteriously at his door towards nightfall. The folding door, being half-opened, gave passage to whom, think you? — to the mistress of the perplexed D'Albert, the Princess Rosette in person, rosier than her name, and her bosom as moved as was ever that of a woman entering at evening the room of a handsome cavalier.

“Theodore!” said Rosette.

Theodore raised his finger and laid it on his lips, so that he looked like a statue of silence, and, showing her the sleeping child, conducted her into the next room.

“Theodore,” resumed Rosette, who seemed to find singular pleasure in repeating the name, and to be seeking at the same time to collect her ideas. “Theodore,” she continued, without releasing the hand which the young man had offered to her to lead her to an easy-chair, “so you have at last come back to us? What have you been doing all this time? where have you been? Do you know that I have not seen you for six months? Ah, Theodore, that is not well; some consideration and some pity is due to those who love us, even though we do not love them.”

Theodore-“What have I been doing? I do not know. I have come and gone, slept and waked, wept and sung, I have been hungry and thirsty, too hot and too cold, I have been weary, I have less money, and am six months older, I have been living and that is all. And you, what have you been doing?”

Rosette-“I have been loving you.”

Theodore-“You have done nothing else?”

Rosette-“Absolutely nothing else. I have been employing my time badly, have I not?”

Theodore-“You might have employed it better, my poor Rosette; for instance, in loving some one who could return your love.”

Rosette-“I am disinterested in love, as I am in everything. I do not lend love on usury; I give it as a pure gift.”

Theodore-“That is a very rare virtue, and one which can only spring up in a chosen soul. I have often wished to be able to love you, at least in the way that you would like; but there is an insurmountable obstacle between us which I cannot explain to you. Have you had another lover since I left you?”

Rosette-“I have had one whom I have still.”

Theodore-“What sort of man is he?”

Rosette-“A poet.”

Theodore-“The devil! what kind of a poet, and what has he written?”

Rosette-“I do not quite know; a sort of volume that nobody is acquainted with, and that I tried to read one evening.”

Theodore-“So you have an unknown poet for your lover. That must be curious. Has he holes at his elbows, dirty linen, and stockings like the screw of a press?”

Rosette-“No; he dresses pretty well, washes his hands, and has no inkspots on the tip of his nose. He is a friend of C-'s; I met him at Madame de Themines's house; you know a big woman who acts the child and puts on little innocent airs.”

Theodore-“And might one know the name of this glorious personage?”

Rosette-“Oh, dear, yes! He is called the Chevalier D'Albert.”

Theodore-“The Chevalier D'Albert! It seems to me that he is the young man who was on the balcony when I, was dismounting.

Rosette-“Exactly.”

Theodore-“And who looked at me with such attention.”

Rosette-“Himself.”

Theodore-“He is well enough.-And he has not caused me to be forgotten?”

Rosette-“No. You are unfortunately not one of those who can be forgotten.”

Theodore-“He is very fond of you, no doubt?”

Rosette-“I am not quite sure. There are times when you would think that he loved me very much; but in reality he does not love me, and he is not far from hating me, for he bears me ill-will because of his inability to love me. He has acted like many others more experienced than he; he mistook a keen liking for passion, and was quite surprised and disappointed when his desire was satisfied. It is a mistake to think that people must continue worshipping each other after they have become thoroughly satiated.”

Theodore-“And what do you intend to do with this said lover, who is not in love?”

Rosette-“What is done with the old quarters of the moon, or with last year's fashions. He is not strong enough to leave me the first, and, although he does not love me in the true sense of the word, he is attached to me by a habit of pleasure, and such habits are the most difficult to break. If I do not assist him he is capable of wearying himself conscientiously with me until the day of the last judgment, and even beyond it; for he has the germ of every noble quality in him; and the flowers of his soul seek only to blossom in the sunshine of everlasting love. Really, I am sorry that I was not the ray for him. Of all my lovers that I did not love, I love him the most; and if I were not so good as I am I should not give him back his liberty, and should keep him still. I shall not do so; I am at this moment finishing with him.”

Theodore-“How long will that last?'

Rosette-“A fortnight or three weeks, but certainly a shorter time than it would have lasted had you not come. I know that I shall never be your mistress. For this, you say, there is a secret reason to which I would submit if you were permitted to reveal it to me. All hope must therefore be forbidden me in this respect, and yet I cannot make up my mind to be the mistress of another when you are present; it seems to me that it is a profanation, and that I have no longer any right to love you!”

Theodore-“Keep him for the love of me.”

Rosette-“If it gives you pleasure I will do so. Ah! if you could have been mine, how different would my life have been from what it has been! The world has a very false idea of me, and I shall pass away without any one suspecting what I was-except you, Theodore, who alone have understood me, and have been cruel to me. I have never desired anyone but you for my lover, and I have not had you. If you had loved me, Theodore! I should have been virtuous and chaste, I should have been worthy of you. Instead of that I shall leave behind me (if any one remembers me) the reputation of a gay woman, a sort of courtesan who differed from the one of the gutter only in rank and fortune. I was born with the loftiest inclinations; but nothing corrupts like not being loved. Many despise me without knowing what I must have suffered in order to come to be what I am. Being sure that I should never belong to him whom I preferred above all others, I abandoned myself to the stream, I did not take the trouble to protect a body that could not be yours. As to my heart nobody has had it, or ever will have it. It is yours, though you have broken it; and unlike most of the women who think themselves virtuous, provided that they have not passed from the arms of one man to those of another, I have always been faithful in soul and heart to the thought of you.

“I have at least made some persons happy, I have sent fair illusions dancing round some pillows, I have innocently deceived more than one noble heart; I was so wretched at being repulsed by you that I was always terrified at the idea of subjecting anyone to similar torture. That was the only motive for many adventures which have been attributed to a pure spirit of libertinism! I! libertinism! O world! If you knew, Theodore, how profoundly painful it is to feel that you have missed your life, and passed your happiness by, to see that everyone is mistaken concerning you and that it is impossible to change the opinion that people have of you, that your finest qualities are turned into faults, your purest essences into black poisons, and that what is bad in you has alone transpired; to find the doors always open to your vices and always closed to your virtues, and to be unable to bring a single lily or rose to good amid so much hemlock and aconite! — you do not know this, Theodore.”

Theodore-“Alas! alas! what you say, Rosette, is the history of everyone; the best part of us is that which remains within us, and which we cannot bring forth. It is so with poets. Their finest poem is one that they have not written; they carry away more poems in their coffins than they leave in their libraries.”

Rosette-“I shall carry my poem away with me.”

Theodore-“And I, mine. Who has not made one in his lifetime? who is so happy or so unhappy that he has not composed one of his own in his head or his heart? Executioners perhaps have made some that are moist with the tears of the tenderest sensibility; and poets perhaps have made some which would have been suitable for executioners, so red and monstrous are they?

Rosette-“Yes. They might put white roses on my tomb. I have had ten lovers-but I am a virgin, and shall die one. Many virgins, upon whose tombs there falls a perpetual snow of jessamine and orange blossom, were veritable Messalinas.”

Theodore-“I know your worth, Rosette.”

Rosette-“You are the only one in the world who has seen what I am; for you have seen me under the blow of a very true and deep love, since it is without hope; and one who has not seen a woman in love cannot tell what she is; it is this that comforts me in my bitterness.'

Theodore-“And what does this young man think of you who, in the eyes of the world, is at present your lover?”

Rosette-“A lover's thought is a deeper gulf than the Bay of Portugal, and it is very difficult to say what there is at bottom in a man; you might fasten the sounding-lead to a cord a hundred thousand fathoms long, and reel it off to the end, and it would still run without meeting anything to stop it. Yet in his case I have occasionally touched the bottom at places, and the lead has brought back sometimes mud and sometimes beautiful shells, but oftenest mud with fragments of coral mingled together. As to his opinion of me it has greatly varied; he began at first where others end, he despised me; young people who possess a lively imagination are liable to do this. There is always a tremendous downfall in the first step that they take, and the passage of their chimera into reality cannot be accomplished without a shock. He despised me and I amused him; now he esteems me, and I weary him.

“In the first days of our union he saw only my vulgar side, and I think that the certainty of meeting with no resistance counted for much in his determination. He appeared extremely eager to have an affair, and I thought at first that it was one of those plenitudes of heart which seek but to overflow, one of those vague loves which people have in the May-month of youth, and which lead them, in the absence of women, to encircle the trunks of trees with their arms, and kiss the flowers and grass in the meadows. But it was not that; he was only passing through me to arrive at something else. I was a road for him, and not an end. Beneath the fresh appearance of his twenty years, beneath the that dawn of adolescence, he concealed profound corruption. He was worm-eaten at the core; he was a fruit that contained nothing but ashes. In that young and vigorous body there struggled a soul as old as Saturn's — a soul as incurably unhappy as ever there existed.

“I confess to you, Theodore, that I was frightened and was almost seized with giddiness as I leaned over the dark depths of that life. Your griefs and mine are nothing in comparison with his. Had I loved him more I should have killed him. Something that is not of this world nor in this world attracts him, and calls him, and will take no denial; he cannot rest by night or by day; and, like a heliotrope in a cellar, he twists himself that he may turn-towards the sun that he does not see. He is one of those men whose soul was not dipped completely enough in the waters of Lethe before being united to his body; from the heaven whence it comes it preserves recollections of eternal beauty which harass and torment it, and it remembers that it once had wings, and now has only feet. If I were God, the angel guilty of such negligence should be deprived of poetry for two eternities. Instead of haying to build a castle of brilliantly colored cards to shelter a fair young fantasy for a single spring, a tower should have been built more lofty than the eight superimposed temples of Belus. I was not strong enough, I appeared not to have understood him, I let him creep on his pinions and seek for a summit whence he might spring into the immensity of space.

“He believes that I have seen nothing of all this because I have lent myself to all his caprices without seeming to suspect their aim. Being unable to cure him, I wished, and I hope that this will be taken into account some day before God, to give him at least the happiness of believing that he had been passionately loved. He inspired me with sufficient pity and interest to enable me to assume with him tones and manners tender enough to delude him. I played my part like a consummate actress; I was sportive and melancholy, sensitive and voluptuous; I feigned disquiet and jealousy; I shed false tears, and called to my lips swarms of affected smiles. I attired this puppet of love in the richest stuffs; I made it walk in the avenues of my parks; I invited all my birds to sing as it passed, and all my dahlias and daturas to salute it by bending their heads; I had it cross my lake on the silvery back of my darling swan; I concealed myself within, and lent it my voice, my wit, my beauty, my youth, and gave it so seductive an appearance that the reality was not so good as my falsehood.

“When the time comes to shiver this hollow statue I shall do it in such a way that he will believe all the wrong to be on my side, and will be spared remorse. I shall myself give the prick of the pin through which the air that fills this balloon will escape. Is this not meritorious and honorable deception? I have a crystal urn containing a few tears which I collected at the moment when they were about to fall. They are my jewel-box and diamonds, and I shall present them to the angel who comes to take me away to God.”

Theodore-“They are the most beautiful that could shine on a woman's neck. The ornaments of a queen have less value. For my part I think that the liquid poured by Magdalene upon the feet of Christ was made up of the former tears of those whom she had comforted, and I think, too, that it is with such tears as these that the Milky Way is strewn, and not, as was pretended, with Juno's milk. Who will do for you what you have done for him?”

Rosette-“No one, alas! since you cannot.”

Theodore-“Ah! dear soul, to think that I cannot! But do not lose hope. You are still beautiful, and very young. You have many avenues of flowering limes and acacias to traverse before you reach the damp road bordered with box and leafless trees, which leads from the porphyry tomb where your beautiful dead years will be buried, to the tomb of rough and moss-covered stone into which they will hastily thrust the remains of what was once you, and the wrinkled, tottering spectres of the days of your old age. Much of the mountain of life is still left for you to climb, and it will be long ere you come to the zone of snow. You have only arrived at the region of aromatic plants, of limpid cascades wherein the iris hangs her tri-colored arch, of beautiful green oaks and scented larches. Mount a little higher, and from there, on the wider horizon which will be displayed at your feet, you shall perhaps see the bluish. smoke rising from the roof Where sleeps the man who is to love you. Life must not be despaired of at the very beginning; vistas of what we had ceased to look for are opened up thus in our destiny.

“Man in his life has often reminded me of a pilgrim following the snail-like staircase in a Gothic tower. The long granite serpent winds its coils in the darkness, each scale being a step. After a few circumvolutions the little light that came from the door is extinguished. The shadow of the houses that are not passed as yet prevents the airholes from letting in the sun. The walls are black and oozy; it is more like going down into a dungeon never to come forth again than ascending to the turret which from below appeared to you so slender and fine, and covered with laces and embroideries as though it were setting out for a ball.

“You hesitate as to whether you ought to go higher, this damp darkness weighs so heavily on your brow. The staircase makes some further turns and more frequent lucarnes cut out their golden trefoils on the opposite wall. You begin to see the indented gables of the houses, the sculptures in the entablatures, and the whimsical shapes of the chimneys; a few steps more and the eye looks down upon the entire town; it is a forest of spires, steeples and towers which bristle up in every direction, indented, slashed, hollowed, punched and allowing the light to appear through their thousand cuttings. The domes and cupolas are rounded like the breasts of some giantess or the skulls of Titans. The islets of houses and palaces stand out in shaded or luminous slices. A few steps more and you will be on the platform; and then, beyond the town walls, you will see the verdant cultivation, the blue hills and the white sails on the clouded ribbon of the river.

“You are flooded with dazzling light, and the swallows pass and repass near you, uttering little joyous cries. The distant sound of the city reaches you like a friendly murmur, or the buzzing of a hive of bees; all the bells strip their necklaces of sonorous pearls in the air; the winds waft to you the scents from the neighboring forest and from the mountain flowers; there is nothing but light, harmony and perfume. If your feet had become weary, or if you had been seized with discouragement and had remained seated on a lower step, or if you had gone down again altogether, this sight would have been lost to you.

“Sometimes, however, the tower has only a single opening in the middle or above. The tower of your life is constructed in this way; then there is need of more obstinate courage, of perseverance armed with nails that are more hooked, so as to cling in the shadow to the projections of the stones and reach the resplendent trefoil through which the sight may escape over the country; or perhaps the loop-holes have been filled up, or the making of them has been forgotten, and then it is necessary to ascend to the summit; but the higher you mount without seeing, the more immense seems the horizon, and the greater is the pleasure and the surprise.”

Rosette.-“O Theodore, God grant that I may soon come to the place where the window is! I have been following the spiral for a long time through the profoundest night; but I am afraid that the opening has been built up and that I must climb to the summit; and what if this staircase with its countless steps were only to lead to a walled-up door or a vault of freestone?”

Theodore.-” Do not say that, Rosette; do not think it. What architect would construct a staircase that should lead to nothing? Why suppose the gentle architect of the world more stupid and improvident than an ordinary architect? God does not mistake, and He forgets nothing. It is incredible that He should amuse Himself by shutting you up in a long stone tube without outlet or opening, in order to play you a trick. Why do you think that He should grudge poor ants such as we are their wretched happiness of a minute, and the imperceptible grain of millet that falls to them in this broad creation? To do that He should have the ferocity of a tiger or a judge; and, if we were so displeasing to Him, He would only have to tell a comet to turn a little from its path and strangle us with a hair of its tail. Why the deuce do you think that God would divert Himself by threading us one by one on a golden pin, as the Emperor Domitian used to treat flies? God is not a portress, nor a churchwarden, and although He is old, He has not yet fallen into childishness. All such petty viciousness is beneath Him, and He is not silly enough to try to be witty with us and play pranks with us. Courage, Rosette, courage! If you are out of breath, stop a little to recover it, and then continue your ascent: you have, perhaps, only twenty steps to climb in order to reach the embrasure whence you will see your happiness.

Rosette-“Never! oh, never! and if I come to the summit of the tower, it will be only to cast myself from it.”

Theodore-“Drive away, poor afflicted one, these gloomy thoughts which hover like bats about you, and shed the opaque shadow of their wings upon your brow. If you wish me to love you, be happy, and do not weep.” (He draws her gently to him and kisses her on the eyes).

Rosette-“What a misfortune it is to me to have known you! and yet, were it to be done over again, I should still wish to have known you. Your severity has been sweeter to me than the passion of others; and, although you have caused me much suffering, all the pleasure that I have had has come to me from you; through you I have had a glimpse of what I might have been. You have been a lightning-flash in my night, and you have lit up many of the dark places of my soul; you have opened up vistas in my life that are quite new. To you I owe the knowledge of love, unhappy love, it is true; but there is a deep and melancholy charm in loving without being loved, and it is good to remember those who forget us. It is a happiness to be able to love even when you are the only one who loves, and many die without having experienced it, and often the most to be pitied are not those who love.”

Theodore-“They suffer and feel their wounds, but at least they live. They hold to something; they have a star around which they gravitate, a pole to which they eagerly tend. They have something to wish for; they can say to themselves: 'If I arrive there, if I have that, I shall be happy.' They have frightful agonies, but when dying they can at least say to themselves: 'I die for him.' To die thus is to be born again. The really, the only irreparably unhappy ones are those whose foolish embrace takes in the entire universe, those who wish for everything and wish for nothing, and who, if angel or fairy were to descend and say suddenly to them: 'Wish for something and you shall have it,' would be embarrassed and mute.

Rosette.-” If the fairy came, I know what I should ask her.”

Theodora-“You do, Rosette, and in that respect you are more fortunate than I, for I do not. Vague desires stir within me which blend together, and give birth to others which afterwards devour them. My desires are a cloud of birds whirling and hovering aimlessly; your desire is an eagle who has his eyes on the sun, and who is prevented by the lack of air from rising on his outstretched wings. Ah! if I could know what I want; if the idea which pursues me would extricate itself clear and precise from the fog that envelops it; if the fortunate or fatal star would appear in the depths of my sky; if the light which I am to follow, whether perfidious will-o'-the-wisp or hospitable beacon, would come and be radiant in the night; if my pillar of fire would go before me, even though it were across a desert without manna and without springs; if I knew whither I am going, though I were only to come to a precipice! — I would rather have the mad riding of accursed huntsmen through quagmires and thickets than this absurd and monotonous movement of the feet. To live in this way is to follow a calling like that of those horses which turn the wheel of some well with bandaged eyes, and travel thousands of leagues without seeing anything or changing their situation. I have been turning for a long time, and the bucket should have quite come up.'

Rosette-“You have many points of resemblance with D'Albert, and when you speak it seems to me sometimes as though he were the speaker. I have no doubt that when you are further acquainted with him you will become much attached to him; you cannot fail to suit each other. He is harassed as you are by these aimless flights; he loves immensely without knowing what, he would ascend to heaven, for the earth appears to him a stool scarcely good enough for one of his feet, and he has more pride than Lucifer had before his fall.”

Theodore-“I was at first afraid that he. was one of those numerous poets who have driven poetry from the earth, one of those stringers of sham pearls who can see nothing in the world but the last syllables of words, and who when they have rhymed glade with shade, flame with name, and God with trod, conscientiously cross their legs and arms and suffer the spheres to complete their revolution.”

Rosette-“He is not one of those. His verses are inferior to him and do not contain him. What he has written would give you a very false idea of his own person; his true poem is himself, and I do not know whether he will ever compose another. In the recesses of his soul he has a seraglio of beautiful ideas which he surrounds with a triple wall, and of which he is more jealous than was ever sultan of his odalisques. He only puts those into his verses which he does not care about or which have repulsed him; it is the door through which he drives them away, and the world has only those which he will keep no longer.”

Theodore-“I can understand this jealousy and shame. In the same way many people do not acknowledge the love they had until they have it no longer, nor their mistresses until they are dead.”

Rosette-“It is so difficult to alone possess a thing in this world! every touch attracts so many butterflies, and every treasure so many thieves! I like those silent ones who carry their idea into their grave, and will not surrender it to the foul kisses and shameless touches of the crowd. I am delighted with the lovers who do not write their mistress's name on any bark, nor confide it to any echo, and who, when sleeping, are pursued by the dread lest they should utter it in a dream. I am one of the number; I have never spoken my thought, and none shall know my love-but see, it is nearly eleven o'clock, my dear Theodore, and I am preventing you from taking the rest that you must need. When I am obliged to leave you, I always feel a heaviness of heart, and it seems to me the last time that I shall see you. I delay the parting as much as possible; but one must part at last. Well, good-bye, for I am afraid that D'Albert will be looking for me; dear friend, good-bye.”

Theodore put his arm about her waist, and led her thus to the door; there he stopped following her for a long time with his gaze; the corridor was pierced at wide intervals with little narrow-paned windows, which were lit up by the moon, and made a very fantastic alternation of light and shade. At each window Rosette's white, pure form shone like a silver phantom; then it would vanish to reappear with greater brilliance a little further off; at last it disappeared altogether.

Theodore, seemingly lost in deep thought, remained motionless for a few minutes with folded arms; then he passed his hand over his forehead and threw back his hair with a movement of his head, re-entered the room, and went to bed after kissing the brow of the page who was still asleep.