Mademoiselle de Maupin

VIII

No, my dear Silvio, no, I have not forgotten you; I am not one of those who pass through life without ever throwing a look behind; my past follows me and invades my present, and almost my future; your friendship is one of the sun-lit spots which stand out most clearly on the horizon quite blue as it already is of my later years; often do I turn to contemplate it, from the summit I have reached, with a feeling of unspeakable melancholy.

“Oh! what a glorious time was that, when we were pure as angels! Our feet scarcely touched the ground; we had as it were wings upon our shoulders, our desires swept us away, and in the breeze of springtime there trembled about our brows the golden glory of adolescence.

“Do you remember the little island planted with poplars at that part where the river branches off? To reach it, it was necessary to cross a somewhat long and very narrow plank which used to bend strangely in the middle; a real bridge for goats, and one, indeed, which was scarcely used but by them: it was delicious. Short, thick grass wherein the forget-me-not blinkingly opened its pretty little blue eyes, a path as yellow as nankeen which formed a girdle for the island's green robe and clasped its waist, while an ever moving shade of aspens and poplars were not the least of the delights of this paradise. There were great pieces of linen which the women would come to spread out to bleach in the dew; you would have thought them squares of snow; — and that little girl so brown and sunburnt whose large wild eyes shone with such brilliant splendor beneath the long locks of her hair, and who used to run after the goats threatening them and shaking her osier rod when they made as though they would walk over the linens that were under her care-do you remember her?

“And the sulphur-colored butterflies with unequal and quivering flight, and the king-fisher which we so often tried to catch and which had its nest in that alder thicket? and those paths down to the river, with their rudely hewn steps and their posts and stakes all green below, which were nearly always shut in by screens of plants and boughs? How limpid and mirror-like was the water! how clearly could we see the bed of golden gravel! and what a pleasure it was, seated on the bank, to let the tips of our feet dangle in it! The golden-flowered water-lilies spreading gracefully upon it looked like green hair flowing over the agate back of some bathing nymph. The sky looked at itself in this mirror with azure smiles and most exquisite transparencies of pearl-gray, and at all hours of the day there were turquoises, spangles, wools and moires in exhaustless variety. How I loved those squadrons of little ducks with the emerald necks which used to sail incessantly from one bank to the other making wrinkles across the pure glass!

“How well were we suited to be the figures in that landscape! how well adapted were we to that sweet calm nature, and how readily did we harmonize with it! Spring without, youth within, sun on the grass, smiles on our lips, flakes of blossoms on all the bushes, fair illusions fullblown in our souls, modest blushes on our cheeks and on the eglantine, poetry singing in our heart, unseen birds warbling in the trees, light, cooings, perfumes, a thousand confused murmurs, the heart beating, the water stirring a pebble, a grass-blade or a thought upspringing, a drop of water flowing along a flower-cup, a tear overflowing along an eyelash, a sigh of love, a rustling of leaves… what evenings we spent there walking slowly, and so close to the edge that we had often one foot in the water and the other on the ground!

“Alas! this lasted but a short time, with me, at least, for you have been able, while acquiring the knowledge of the man, to preserve the purity of the child. The germ of corruption that was in me has developed very quickly, and the gangrene has pitilessly devoured all of me that was pure and holy. Nothing good is left to me but my friendship for you.

“I am accustomed to conceal nothing from you, neither actions nor thoughts. The most secret fibres of my heart I have laid bare before you; however whimsical, ridiculous, and eccentric the impulses of my soul may be, I must describe them to you; but, in truth, what I have experienced for some time is so strange, that I scarcely dare to acknowledge it to myself. I told you somewhere that I feared lest, from seeking the beautiful and disquieting myself to attain it, I should at last fall into the impossible or monstrous. I have almost come to this; oh, when shall I emerge from all these currents which conflict together and draw me to left and right; when will the deck of my vessel cease to tremble beneath my feet and be swept by the waves of all these storms? where shall I find a harbor where I may cast anchor, and a rock immovable and beyond the reach of the billows where I may dry myself and wring the foam from my hair?

“You know, the eagerness with which I have sought for physical beauty, the importance that I attach to external form, and the love of the visible world that possesses me. I cannot be otherwise; I am too corrupted and surfeited to believe in moral beauty, and to pursue it with any consistency. I have completely lost the knowledge of good and evil, and from sheer depravity have almost returned to the ignorance of the savage or the child. In truth, nothing appears to me worthy of praise or blame, and the strangest actions astonish me but little. My conscience is deaf and dumb. Adultery appears to me the most innocent thing in the world; I deem it quite a simple matter that a young girl should prostitute herself; it seems to me that I would betray my friends without the least remorse, and that I should not have the slightest scruple about kicking people who annoyed me down a precipice if I were walking with them along the edge. I would look with coolness on the most atrocious sights, and there is something in the sufferings and misfortunes of humanity which is not displeasing to me. I experience at the sight of some calamity falling upon the world the same feeling of acrid and bitter voluptuousness that is experienced by a man who at last avenges an old affront.

“O worlds what hast thou done to me that I should hate thee thus? Who has filled me so with gall against thee? what was I expecting from thee that I should preserve such rancor against thee for having deceived me? to what lofty hope hast thou been false? what eaglet wings hast thou shorn? What doors wast thou to open which have remained closed, and which of us has failed in respect of the other?

“Nothing touches me, nothing moves me; I no longer feel, on hearing the recital of heroic deeds, those sublime quiverings which at one time would run through me from head to foot. All this even appears to me to be somewhat silly. No accent is deep enough to bite the slackened fibres of my heart and cause them to vibrate: I see the tears of my fellow-creatures flow with as indifferent an eye as the rain, unless indeed they be of a fine water, and the light be reflected in them in picturesque fashion and they flow over a beautiful cheek. For animals, and for them almost alone, I have a feeble residue of pity. I would suffer a peasant or a servant to be beaten without mercy, and could not patiently endure to have the same treatment given in my presence to a horse or a dog; yet I am not wicked-I have never done, and probably shall never do, any harm to anybody in the world; but this is rather a result of my indifference and the sovereign contempt which I have for all persons who do not please me, and which does not allow me to be occupied with them even to do them an injury.

“I abhor the whole world in a body, and in the whole collection I scarcely deem one or two worthy of a special hatred. To hate anyone is to disquiet yourself as much about him as though you loved him; to distinguish him, isolate him from the crowd; to be in a violent condition on account of him; to think of him by day and dream of him by night; to bite your pillow and grind your teeth at the thought that he exists; what more could you do for one you loved? Would you bestow the same trouble and activity on pleasing a mistress as on ruining an enemy? I doubt it-in order to really hate anybody, we must love another. Every great hatred serves as a counter-weight to a great love: and whom could I hate, I who love nobody?

“My hate, like my love, is a confused and general feeling, which, seeks to fasten upon something and cannot; I have a treasure of hate and love within me which I cannot turn to account, and which weighs horribly upon me. If I can find no means of pouring forth one or other of them, or both, I shall burst, and break asunder like bags crammed too full of money which rupture themselves and rip their seams. Oh! if I could abhor somebody, if one of the stupid people with whom I live could insult me in such a way as to make my old viper blood boil in my icy veins and rouse me from the dull somnolence wherein I stagnate; if thou wouldst bite me on the cheek with thy rat-like teeth and communicate thy venom and thy rage to me, old sorceress with palsied head; if someone's death could be my life; if the last heart's throb of an enemy writhing beneath my foot could impart delicious quiverings to my hair, and the odor of his blood become sweeter to my parched nostrils than the aroma of flowers, oh! how readily would I abandon love, and how happy would I esteem myself!

“Mortal embraces, tiger-like bitings, boa entwinings, elephant feet pressed on a cracking and flattening breast, steeled tail of the scorpion, milky juice of the euphorbia, curling kris of Java, blades that glitter in the night and are extinguished in blood, you it is that, with me, shall take the place of leafless roses, humid kisses and the entwinings of love!

“I have said that I love nothing; alas! I am now afraid of loving something. It were ten thousand times better to hate than so to love! I have found the type of beauty that I dreamed of so long. I have discovered the body of my phantom; I have seen it, it has spoken to me, I have touched its hand, it exists; it is not a chimera. I well knew that I could not be mistaken, and that my presentiments never lied. Yes, Silvio, I am by the side of my life's dream; its room is there and mine is here. I can see the trembling of the curtain at its window and the light of its lamp. Its shadow has just passed across the curtain. In an hour we shall sup together.

“The beautiful Turkish eyelashes, the deep and limpid gaze, the warm color of pale amber, the long and lustrous black hair, the nose finely cut and proud, the joints and slender delicate extremities after the manner of Parmeginiano, the dainty curves, the purity of oval, which give so much elegance and aristocracy to a face, all that I wished for, and that I should have been happy to find disseminated in five or six persons, I have found united in one!

“What I most adore of all things in the world is a pretty hand. If you saw this one! what perfection! what vivacious whiteness! what softness of skin! what penetrating moisture! how admirably tapering the extremity of the fingers! how clear the oval markings on the nails! what polish and what splendor! you would compare them to the inner leaves of a rose, — the hands of Anne of Austria, so vaunted and celebrated, are in comparison but those of a turkey-herd or of a scullery-maid. And then what grace is there and what art in the slightest movements of this hand! how gracefully does this little finger curve and keep itself a little apart from its tall brothers! The thought of this hand maddens me, and causes my lips to quiver and burn. I close my eyes that I may see it no longer; but with the tips of its delicate fingers it takes my eyelashes and opens the lids, and causes a thousand visions of ivory and snow to pass before me.

“Ah! it is Satan's claw, no doubt, that is gloved beneath this satin skin;-it is some jesting demon who is befooling me;-there is some sorcery here. It is too monstrously impossible.

“This hand-I shall set out for Italy to see the pictures of the great masters, to study, compare, draw, and in short become a painter that I may represent it as it is, as I see it, as I feel it; it will perhaps be a means of ridding myself of this species of possession.

“I wished for beauty; I knew not what I asked. It is to be desirous of looking without eyelids at the sun, to be desirous of touching fire. I suffer horribly. To be unable to assimilate this perfection, to be unable to pass into it and have it pass into me, to have no means of representing it and making it felt! When I see something beautiful I wish to touch it with the whole of myself, everywhere and at the same time. I wish to sing it, and paint it, to sculpture it and write it, to be loved by it as I love it; I wish what is, and ever will be, impossible.

“Your letter has done me harm, much harm-forgive me for saying so. All the calm, pure happiness that you enjoy, the walks in the reddening woods, the long talks so tender and intimate which end with a chaste kiss upon the brow; the separate and serene life; the days so quickly spent that the night seems to advance, make me find the internal perturbations in which I live more tempestuous still. So you are to be married in two months; all the obstacles are removed, and you are now sure of belonging to each other for ever. Your present felicity is increased by all your future felicity. You are happy and you have the certainly of being still happier soon. What a lot is yours! Your loved one is beautiful, but what you love in her is not lifeless and palpable beauty, material beauty, but the beauty that is invisible and eternal, the beauty that never grows old, the beauty of the soul. She is full of grace and purity; she loves you as such souls know how to love. You did not seek to know whether the gold of her hair approached in tone the tresses of Rubens and Giorgione; but it pleased you because it was hers. And I will wager, happy lover that you are, that you do not even know whether your mistress's type is Greek or Asiatic, English or Italian. O Silvio! how rare are the hearts that are satisfied with love pure and simple and desire neither a hermitage in the forests, nor a garden on an island in Lake Maggiore.

If I had the courage to tear myself from here, I would go and spend a month with you; it might be that I should be purified in the air that you breathe, and that the shadows of your avenues would shed a little freshness on my burning brow; but no, it is a paradise wherein I must not set my foot. Scarcely should I be permitted to gaze from a distance over the wall at the two beautiful angels walking in it, hand in hand and eye to eye. The demon cannot enter into Eden save in the form of a serpent, and, dear Adam, for all the happiness in heaven, I would not be the serpent to your Eve.

“What fearful work has been wrought in my soul of late? who has turned my blood and changed it into venom? Monstrous thought, spreading thy pale green branches and thy hemlock umbels in the icy shadow of my heart, what poisoned wind has lodged there the germ whence thou art sprung? It was this then that was reserved for me, it was to this that all the paths, so desperately essayed, were to lead me! O fate, how thou dost mock us! All the eagle-flights towards the sun, the pure flames aspiring to heaven, the divine melancholy, the love deep and restrained, the religion of beauty, the fancy so curious and graceful, the exhaustless and ever-mounting flood from the internal spring, the ecstasy ever open-winged, the dreaming that bore more blossoms than the hawthorn in May, all the poetry of my youth, all these gifts so beautiful and rare, were only to succeed in placing me beneath the lowest of mankind!

“I wished to love. I went like a madman calling and invoking love; I writhed with rage beneath the feeling of my impotence; I fired my blood, and dragged my body to the sloughs of pleasure; I clasped to suffocation against my arid heart a fair young woman who loved me; I pursued the passion that fled from me. I degraded myself, and acted like a virgin going to an evil place in hope of finding a lover among those brought thither by impure motives, instead of waiting patiently in discreet and silent shadow until the angel reserved for me by God should appear to me with radiant penumbra, a flower from heaven ready to my hand. All the years that I have wasted in childish disquietude, hastening hither and thither, and trying to force nature and time, I ought to have spent in solitude and meditation, in striving to render myself worthy of being loved; that would have been wisely done; but I had scales before my eyes and I walked straight to the precipice. Already I have one foot suspended over the void, and I believe that I shall soon raise the other. My resistance is in vain, I feel it, I must roll to the bottom of the new abyss which has just opened up within me.

“Yes, it was indeed thus that I had imagined love. I now feel that of which I had dreamed. Yes, here is the charming and terrible sleeplessness in which the roses are thistles and the thistles roses; here is the sweet grief and the wretched happiness, the unspeakable trouble which surrounds you with a golden cloud and, like drunkenness, causes the shape of objects to waver before you, the buzzings in the ear wherein there ever rings the last syllable of the well-beloved's name, the paleness, the flushings, the sudden quiverings, the burning and icy sweat; it is indeed thus; the poets do not lie.

“When I am about to enter the drawing-room in which we usually meet, my heart beats with such violence that it might be seen through my dress, and I am obliged to restrain it with both my hands lest it should escape. If I perceive this form at the end of an avenue or in the park, distance is straightway effaced, and the road passes away I know not where; the devil must carry it off or I must have wings. Nothing can divert my attention from it; I read, and the same image comes between the book and my eyes; I ride, I gallop, and I still believe that I can feel in the whirlwind its long hair mingling with mine, and hear its hurried respiration and its warm breath passing lightly over my cheek. This image possesses and pursues me everywhere, and I never see it more than when I see it not.

“You pitied me for not loving, pity me now for loving, and above all for loving whom I love. What a misfortune, what a hatchet-stroke upon my life that was already so mutilated! what senseless, guilty, odious passion has laid hold upon me! It is a shame whose blush will never fade from my brow. It is the most lamentable of all my aberrations, I cannot understand it, I cannot comprehend it at all, everything is confused and upset within me; I can no longer tell who I am or what others are, I doubt whether I am a man or a woman, I have a horror of myself, I experience strange and inexplicable emotions, and there are moments when it seems to me as if my reason were departing, and when the feeling of my existence forsakes me altogether. For a long time I could not believe what was; I listened to myself and watched myself attentively. I strove to unravel the confused skein that was entangled in my soul. At last, through all the veils which enveloped it, I discovered the frightful truth. Silvio, I love-Oh I no, I can never tell you-I love a man.”