Mademoiselle de Maupin

IX

It is so. I love a man, Silvio. I long sought to delude myself; I gave a different name to the feeling that I experienced; I clothed it in the garment of pure and disinterested friendship; I believed that it was merely the admiration which I entertain for all beautiful persons and things; for several days I walked in the treacherous, pleasant paths that wander about every waking passion; but I now recognize the profound and terrible road to which I am pledged. There is no means of concealment; I have examined myself thoroughly, and coldly weighed all the circumstances; I have accounted to myself for the smallest detail; I have explored my soul in every direction with the certainty which results from the habit of self-investigation; I blush to think and write about it; but the fact, alas! is only too certain, I love this young man not from friendship but from love;-yes, from love.

“You whom I have loved so much, Silvio, my good, my only comrade, you have never inspired me with a similar feeling, and yet, if ever there was under heaven a close and lively friendship, if ever two souls, though different, understood each other perfectly, it was our friendship and our two souls. What winged hours have we spent together! what talks without end and always too soon terminated! how many things have we said to each other which people have never said to themselves! We had towards each other in our hearts the window which Momus would have liked to open in man's bosom. How proud I was of being your friend, I who was younger than you, I so insane and you so full of reason!

“What I feel towards this young man is truly incredible; no woman has ever troubled me so singularly. The sound of his clear, silvery voice affects my nerves and agitates me in a strange manner; my soul hangs on his lips, like a bee on a flower, to drink in the honey of his words. I cannot brush him as I pass without quivering from head to foot, and when, in the evening, as we are separating, he gives me his soft, satin-like adorable hand, all my life rushes to the spot that he has touched, and an hour afterwards I still feel the pressure of his fingers.

“This morning I gazed at him for a long time without his seeing me. I was concealed behind my curtain. He was at his window which is exactly opposite to mine. This part of the mansion was built at the end of Henri IV.'s reign; it is half brick, half ashlar, according to the custom of the time; the window is long and narrow, with a lintel and balcony of stone. Theodore-for you have no doubt already guessed that it is he who is in question-was resting his elbow on the parapet with a melancholy air, and appeared to be in a profound reverie. A drapery of red, large-flowered damask, which was half caught up, fell in broad folds behind him and served him as a background. How handsome he was, and how marvellously his dark and pale head was set off by the purple tint! Two great clusters of black, lustrous hair, like the grape-bunches of the ancient Erigone, hung gracefully down his cheeks, and framed in a most charming manner the correct delicate oval of his beautiful face. His round, plump neck was entirely bare, and he had on a dressing-gown with broad sleeves which was tolerably like a woman's dress. In his hand he held a yellow tulip, picking it pitilessly to pieces in his reverie and throwing the fragments to the wind.

“One of the luminous angles traced by the sun on the wall chanced to be projected against the window, and the picture was gilded with a warm, transparent tone which would have made Giorgione's most brilliant canvas envious.

“With his long hair stirred softly by the breeze, his marble neck thus uncovered, his ample robe clasped around his waist, and his beautiful hands issuing from their ruffles like the pistils of a flower from the midst of their petals, he looked not the handsomest of men but the most beautiful of women, and I said in my heart-'It is a woman, oh! it is a woman!' Then I suddenly remembered the nonsense which, as you know, I wrote to you a long time ago, respecting my ideal and the manner in which I should assuredly meet with it: the beautiful lady in the Louis XIII. park, the red and white mansion, the large terrace, the avenues of old chestnut trees, and the interview at the window; I once gave you all these details. It was just so, — what I saw was the exact realization of my dream. It was just the style of architecture, the effect of light, the description of beauty, the color and the character that I had desired;-nothing was wanting, only the lady was a man;-but I confess to you that for the moment I had completely forgotten this.

“Theodore must be a woman disguised; the thing is impossible otherwise. Such beauty, even for a woman, is not the beauty of a man, were he Antinous, the friend of Adrian; were he Alexis, the friend of Virgil. It is a woman, by heaven, and I was very foolish to torment myself in such a manner. In this way everything is explained in the most natural fashion in the world, and I am not such a monster as I believed.

“Would God put those long, dark, silken fringes on the coarse eyelids of man? Would he dye our ugly blobber-lipped and hair-bristling mouths with carmine so delicate and bright? Our bones, hewn into shape as with blows of a hedge-bill and coarsely fitted together, are not worthy of being swaddled in such white and tender flesh; our indented skulls are not made to be bathed in floods of such wonderful hair.

“O beauty! we were created only to love thee and worship thee on our knees, if we have found thee, and to seek thee eternally through the world, if this happiness has not been given to us; but to possess thee, to be thyself, is possible only to angels and to women. Lovers, poets, painters and sculptors, we all seek to raise an altar to thee, the lover in his mistress, the poet in his song, the painter in his canvas, the sculptor in his marble; but it is everlasting despair to be unable to give palpability to the beauty that you feel, and to be enshrouded in a body which in no way realizes the body which you know to be yours.

“I once saw a young man who had robbed me of the form that I ought to have had. The rascal was just such as I should have wished to be. He had the beauty of my ugliness, and beside him I looked like a rough sketch of him. He was of my height, but more slender and vigorous; his figure resembled mine, but had an elegance and nobility that I do not possess. His eyes were not of a different color than my own, but they had a look and a brilliancy that mine will never have. His nose had been cast in the same mould as mine, but it seemed to have been retouched by the chisel of a skilful statuary; the nostrils were more open and more impassioned, the flat parts more cleanly cut, and there was something heroic in it which is altogether wanting to that respectable portion of my individuality: you would have said that nature had first tried in my person to make this perfected self of mine.

“I looked like the erased and shapeless draught of the thought whereof he was the copy in fair, moulded writing. When I saw him walk, stop, salute the ladies, sit and lie down with the perfect grace which results from beauty of proportion, I was seized with sadness and frightful jealousy, such as must be felt by the clay model drying and splitting obscurely in a corner of the studio, while the haughty marble statue, which would not have existed without it, stands proudly on its sculptured socle, and attracts the attention and praises of the visitors. For the rogue is, after all, only my own self which has succeeded a little better, and been cast with less rebellious bronze, that has made its way more exactly into the hollows of the mould. I think that he has great hardihood to strut in this way with my form and to display as much insolence as though he were an original type: he is, when all is said, only a plagiarism from me, for I was born before him, and without me nature would not have conceived the idea of making him as he is.

“When women praised his good manners and personal charms, I had every inclination in the world to rise and say to them-' Pools that you are, just praise me directly, for this gentleman is myself and it is uselessly circuitous to transmit to him what is destined to come back to me.' At other times I itched horribly to strangle him and to turn his soul out of the body which belonged to me, and I would prowl about him with compressed lips and clenched fists like a lord prowling around his palace in which a family of ragamuffins has established itself in his absence, and not knowing how to cast them out. For the rest, this young man is stupid, and succeeds all the better for it. And sometimes I envy him his stupidity more than his beauty.

“The Gospel saying about the poor in spirit is not complete: 'They shall have the kingdom of Heaven.' I know nothing about that, and it is a matter of indifference to me; but they most certainly have the kingdom of the earthy — they have the money and the beautiful women, in other words the only two desirable things in the world. Do you know a sensible man who is rich, or a fellow with heart and some merit who has a passable mistress? Although Theodore is very handsome, I nevertheless have not wished for his beauty, and I would rather he had it than I.

“Those strange loves of which the elegies of the ancient poets are full, which surprised us so much and which we could not understand, are probable, therefore, and possible. In the translations that we used to make of them we substituted the names of women for those which were actually there. Juventius was made to terminate as Juventia, Alexis was changed into Ianthe. The beautiful boys became beautiful girls, we thus reconstructed the monstrous seraglio of Catullus, Tibullus, Martial, and the gentle Virgil. It was a very gallant occupation which only proved how little we had comprehended the ancient genius.

“lama man of the Homeric times; the world in which I live is not mine, and I have no comprehension of the society which surrounds me. Christ has not come for me; I am as much a pagan as were Alcibiades and Phidias. I have never gone to pluck passion flowers upon Golgotha, and the deep river which flows from the side of the Crucified One and forms a red girdle around the world has not bathed me in its flood. My rebellious body will not recognize the supremacy of the soul, and my flesh does not admit that it should be mortified. I deem the earth as fair as heaven, and I think that correctness of form is virtue. Spirituality does not suit me, I prefer a statue to a phantom, and noon to twilight. Three things please me: gold, marble and purple, splendor, solidity and color. My dreams are composed of them, and all my chimerical palaces are constructed of these materials.

“Sometimes I have other dreams, — of long cavalcades of perfectly white horses, without harness or bridle, ridden by beautiful naked youths who defile across a band of dark blue color as on the friezes of the Parthenon, or of theories of young girls crowned with bandelets, with straight-folded tunics and ivory sistra, who seem to wind around an immense vase. Never mist or vapor, never anything uncertain or wavering. My sky has no clouds, or, if there be any, they are solid chiseled-carved clouds, formed with the marble fragments fallen from the statue of Jupiter. Mountains with sharp-cut ridges indent it abruptly on the borders, and the sun, leaning on one of the loftiest summits, opens wide his lion-yellow eye with its golden lashes. The grasshopper cries and sings, the corn-ear cracks; the shadow, vanquished and exhausted by the heat, rolls itself up and collects itself at the foot of the trees: everything is radiant, shining and resplendent. The smallest detail becomes firm and is boldly accentuated; every object assumes a robust form and color. There is no room for the softness and dreaming of Christian art.

“Such a world is mine. The streams in my landscapes fall in a sculptured tide from a sculptured urn; through the tall green reeds, sonorous as those of the Eurotas, may be seen glistening the round, silvery hip of some nymph with glaucous hair. Here is Diana passing through this dark oak forest with her quiver at her back, her flying scarf, and her buskins with intertwining bands. She is followed by her pack and her nymphs with harmonious names. My pictures are painted with four tints, like the pictures of the primitive painters, and often they are only colored basso-relievos; for I love to touch what I have seen with my finger and to pursue the roundness of the outlines into its most fugitive windings; I view each thing from every side and go around it with a light in my hand.

“I have looked upon love in the light of antiquity and as a more or less perfect piece of sculpture. How is this arm? Pretty well. The hands are not wanting in delicacy. What do you think of this foot? I think that the ankle is without nobility, and that the heel is commonplace. But the breast is well placed and of good shape, the serpentine line is sufficiently undulating, the shoulders are plump and of a handsome character. This woman would be a passable model, and it would be possible to cast several portions of her. Let us love her.

“I have always been thus. I look upon women with the eyes of a sculptor and not of a lover. I have all my life been troubled about the shape of the flagon, never about the quality of its contents. I might have had Pandora's box in my hand, and I believe that I should not have opened it. Just now I said that Christ had not come for me; Mary, star of the modern Heaven, sweet mother of the glorious babe, has not come either.

“For a long time and very often I have stopped beneath the stone foliage in cathedrals, in the trembling brightness from the windows, at an hour when the organ was moaning of itself, when an invisible finger touched the keys and the wind breathed in the pipes, and I have plunged my eyes deep into the pale azure of the long eyes of the Madonna. I have followed piously the wasted oval of her face, and the scarcely indicated arch of her eyebrows; I have admired her smooth and luminous brow, her chastely transparent temples, her cheek-bones shaded with a sober virginal color, tenderer than the blossom of the peach; I have counted one by one the beautiful golden lashes casting their palpitating shadow; through the half-tint which bathes her I have distinguished the fleeting lines of her frail and modestly bended neck; I have even, with rash hand, raised the folds of her tunic and contemplated unveiled the virgin, milk-distended bosom which was never pressed but by lips divine; I have pursued its delicate blue veins into their most imperceptible ramifications, I have laid my finger upon it that I might cause the celestial drink to spring forth in white streams; I have touched with my mouth the bud of the mystic rose.

“Well! I confess that all this immaterial beauty, so winged and vaporous that one feels that it is about to take its flight, has affected me very moderately. I prefer the Venus Anadyomene a thousand times. The antique eyes turned up at the corners, the lips so pure and so firmly cut, so amorous and so inviting for a kiss, the low full brow, the hair undulating like the sea and knotted carelessly behind the head, the firm and lustrous shoulders, the back with its thousand charming curves, the small and gently swelling bosom, all the well-rounded shapes, the breadth of hips, the delicate strength, the expression of superhuman vigor in a body so adorably feminine, ravish and enchant me to a degree of which you can form no idea, you who are a Christian and discreet.

“Mary, in spite of the humble air which she affects, is far too proud for me; scarcely does even the tip of her foot, in its encircling white bandelets, touch the surface of the globe which is already growing blue and on which the old serpent is writhing. Her eyes are the most beautiful in the world, but they are always turned towards heaven or cast down; they never look you in the face and have never reflected a human form. And then, I do not like the nimbuses of smiling cherubs which circle her head in a golden vapor. I am jealous of the tall pubescent angels with floating robes and hair who are so amorously eager in her assumptions; the hands entwined to support her, the wings in motion to fan her, displease and annoy me. These heavenly coxcombs, so coquettish and triumphant, with their tunics of light, their perukes of golden thread, and their handsome blue and green feathers, seem too gallant for me, and if I were God I should take care not to give such pages to my mistress.

“Venus emerges from the sea to land upon the world- as is fitting in a divinity that loves men-quite naked and quite alone. She prefers the earth to Olympus, and has more men than gods for her lovers; she does not enwrap herself in the languorous veils of mysticism; she stands erect, her dolphin behind her, her foot on her couch of mother of pearl; the sun strikes upon her polished body, and with her white hand she holds up in the air the flood of her beautiful hair on which old Father Ocean has strewn his most perfect pearls. You may look at her, she conceals nothing, for modesty was made for the ugly alone, and is a modern invention, daughter of the Christian contempt for form and matter.

“Oh ancient world! so all that thou hast revered is scorned; so thy idols are overthrown in the dust; wasted anchorites, clad in rags that are full of holes, and blood-covered martyrs, with shoulders torn by the tigers in thy circuses, have perched themselves upon the pedestals of thy beautiful, charming gods: Christ has wrapped the world in his shroud. Beauty must blush at itself and assume a winding sheet. Beautiful youths with oil-rubbed limbs who wrestle in lyceum or gymnasium, beneath the brilliant sky, in the full light of the Attic sun, before the astonished crowd; young Spartan girls who dance the bibasis, and run naked to the summit of Taygetus, resume your tunics and your chlamydes: your reign is past. And you, shapers of marble, Prometheuses of bronze, break your chisels: there are to be no more sculptors. The palpable world is dead. A dark and lugubrious thought alone fills the immensity of the void. Cleomene goes to the weavers to see what folds are made by cloth or linen.

“Virginity, bitter plant, born on a soil steeped with blood, whose etiolated and sickly flower opens painfully in the dark shade of cloisters, beneath a cold lustral rain;- scentless rose all bristling with thorns, thou hast taken the place, with us, of the beautiful, joyous roses bathed in spikenard and Falemian of the dancing women of Sybaris!

“The ancient world did not know thee, fruitless flower; never didst thou enter into its wreaths of intoxicating fragrance; in that vigorous and healthy society thou wouldst have been trampled scornfully underfoot. Virginity, mysticism, melancholy, — three unknown words, — three new maladies brought in by Christ. Pale spectres who flood our world with your icy tears, and who, with your elbow on a cloud and your hand in your bosom, can only say-'O death! O death!' you could not have set foot in that world so well peopled with indulgent and wanton gods I

“I consider woman, after the manner of the ancients, as a beautiful slave designed for our pleasure. Christianity has not rehabilitated her in my eyes. To me she is still something dissimilar and inferior that we worship and play with, a toy which is more intelligent than if it were of ivory or gold, and which gets up of itself if we let it fall. I have been told, in consequence of this, that I think badly of women; I consider, on the contrary, that it is thinking very well of them.

“I do not know, in truth, why women are so anxious to be regarded as men: I can understand a person wishing to be a boa, a lion or an elephant; but that anyone should wish to be a man is something quite beyond my comprehension. If I had been at the Council of Trent when they discussed the important question of whether a woman is a man, I should certainly have given my opinion in the negative.

“I have written some love verses during my lifetime, or, at least, some which assumed to pass for such. I have just read a portion of them again. They are altogether wanting in the sentiment of modern love. If they were written in Latin distichs instead of in French rhymes, they might be taken for the work of a bad poet of the time of Augustus. And I am astonished that the women, for whom they were written, were not seriously angry, instead of being quite charmed with them. It is true that women know as little about poetry as cabbages and roses, which is quite natural and plain, being themselves poetry, or, at least the best instruments for poetry: the flute does not hear nor understand the air that is played upon it.

“In these verses nothing is spoken of but golden or ebony hair, marvelous delicacy of skin, roundness of arm, smallness of foot, and shapely daintiness of hand, and the whole terminates with a humble supplication to the divinity to grant the enjoyment of all these beautiful things as speedily as possible. In the triumphant passages there are nothing but garlands hung upon the threshold, torrents, of flowers, burning perfumes, Catullian addition of kisses, sleepless and charming nights, quarrels with Aurora, and injunctions to the same Aurora to return and hide herself behind the saffron curtains of old Tithonus;-brightness without heat, sonorousness without vibration. They are accurate, polished, written with consistent elaboration; but through all the refinements and veils of expression you may divine the short stern voice of the master trying to be mild while speaking to the slave. There is no soul, as in the erotic poetry written since the Christian era, asking another soul to love it because it loves; there is no azure-tinted, smiling lake inviting a brook to pour itself into its bosom that they may reflect the stars of heaven together; there is no pair of doves spreading their wings at the same time to fly to the same nest.

“Cynthia, you are beautiful; make haste. Who knows whether you will be alive to-morrow? Your hair is blacker than the lustrous skin of an Ethiopian virgin. Make haste; a few years hence, slender silver threads will creep into its thick clusters; these roses smell sweet to-day, but to-morrow they will have the odor of death, and be but the corpses of roses. Let us inhale thy roses while they resemble thy cheeks; let us kiss thy cheeks while they resemble thy roses. When you are old, Cynthia, no one will have anything more to do with you, — not even the lictor's servants when you would pay them, — and you will run after me whom now you repulse. Wait until Saturn with his nail has scratched this pure and shining brow, and you will see how your threshold, so besieged, so entreated, so warm with tears and so decked with flowers, will be shunned, and cursed, and covered with weeds and briars. Make haste, Cynthia; the smallest wrinkle may serve as a grave for the greatest love.

“Such is the brutal and imperious formula in which all ancient elegy is contained: it always comes back to it; it is its greatest, its strongest reason, the Achilles of its arguments. After this it has scarcely anything to say, and, when it has promised a robe of twice-dyed byssus and a union of equal-sized pearls, it has reached the end of its tether. And it is also nearly the whole of what I find most conclusive in a similar emergency.

“Nevertheless I do not always abide by so scanty a programme, but embroider my barren canvas with a few differently colored silken threads picked up here and there. But these pieces are short or are twenty times renewed, and do not keep their places well on the groundwork of the woof. I speak of love with tolerable elegance because I have read many fine things about it. It only needs the talent of an actor to do so. With many women this appearance is enough; my habitual writing and imagination prevent me from being short of such materials, and every mind that is at all practiced may easily arrive at the same result by application; but I do not feel a word of what I say, and I repeat in a whisper like the ancient poet: Cynthia, make haste.

“I have often been accused of deceit and dissimulation. Nobody in the world would be so pleased as myself to speak freely and pour forth his heart! but, as I have not an idea or a feeling similar to those of the people who surround me, — as, at the first true word that I let fall, there would be a hurrah and a general outcry, I have preferred to keep silence, or, if speaking, to discharge only such follies as are admitted and have Tights of citizenship. I should be welcome if I said to the ladies what I have just written to you! I do not think that they would have any great liking for my manner of seeing and ways of looking upon love.

“As for men, I am equally unable to tell them to their face that they are wrong not to go on all fours; and that is in truth the most favorable thought that I have with respect to them. I do not wish to have a quarrel at every word. What does it matter, after all, what I think or do not think; or if I am sad when I seem gay, and joyous when I have an air of melancholy? I cannot be blamed for not going naked: may I not clothe my countenance as I do my body? Why should a mask be more reprehensible than a pair of breeches, or a lie than a corset?

“Alas! the earth turns round the sun, roasted on one side and frozen on the other. A battle takes place in which six hundred thousand men cut each other to pieces'; the weather is as fine as possible; the flowers display unparalleled coquetry, and impudently open their luxuriant bosoms beneath the very feet of the horses. To-day a fabulous number of good deeds have been performed; it is pouring fast, there is snow and thunder, lightning and hail; you would think that the world was coming to an end. The benefactors of humanity are muddy to the waist and as dirty as dogs, unless they have carriages. Creation mocks pitilessly at the creature, and shouts keen sarcasms at it every minute. Everything is indifferent to everything, and each lives or vegetates in virtue of its own law. What difference does it make to the sun, to the beetroots, or even to men, whether I do this or that, live or die, suffer or rejoice, dissemble or be sincere?

“A straw falls upon an ant and breaks its third leg at the second articulation; a rock falls upon a village and crushes it: I do not believe that one of these misfortunes draws more tears than the other from the golden eyes of the stars. You are my best friend, if the expression is not as hollow as a bell; but were I to die it is very evident that, mourn as you might, you would not abstain from dining for even two days, and would, in spite of such a terrible catastrophe, continue to play trick-track very pleasantly. Which of my friends or mistresses will know my name and Christian names twenty years hence, or would recognize me in the street if I were to appear with a coat out at elbows? Forgetfulness and nothingness are the whole of man.

“I feel myself as perfectly alone as is possible, and all the threads passing from me to things and from things to me have been broken one by one. There are few examples of a man who, preserving a knowledge of the movements that take place within him, has arrived at such a degree of brutishness. I am like a flagon of liquor which has been left uncorked and whose spirit has completely evaporated. The beverage has the same appearance and color; but taste it, and you will find in it nothing but the insipidity of water.

“When I think of it, I am frightened at the rapidity of this decomposition; if it continues I shall be obliged to salt myself, or I shall inevitably grow rotten, and the worms will come after me, seeing that I have no longer a soul, and that the latter alone constitutes the difference between a body and a corpse. One year ago, not more, I had still something human in me; I was disquieted, I was seeking. I had a thought cherished above all others, a sort of aim, an ideal; I wanted to be loved and I had the dreams that come at that age, — less vaporous, less chaste, it is true, than those of ordinary youths, but yet contained within just limits.

“Little by little the incorporeal part was withdrawn and dissipated, and there was left at bottom of me only a thick bed of coarse slime. The dream became a nightmare, and the chimera a succubus; the world of the soul closed its ivory gates against me: I now understand only what I touch with my hands; my dreams are of stone; everything condenses and hardens about me, nothing floats, nothing wavers, there is neither air nor breath; matter presses upon me, encroaches upon me and crushes me; I am like a pilgrim who, having fallen asleep with his feet in the water on a summer's day, has awaked in winter with his feet locked fast in the ice. I no longer wish for anybody's love or friendship: glory itself, that brilliant aureola which I had so desired for my brow, no longer inspires me with the slightest longing. Only one thing, alas! now palpitates within me, and that is the horrible desire which draws me toward Theodore. You see to what all my moral notions are reduced. What is physically beautiful is good, all that is ugly is evil. I might see a beautiful woman who, to my own knowledge, had the most villainous soul in the world, and was an adulteress and a poisoner, and I confess that this would be a matter of indifference to me and would in no way prevent me from taking delight in her, if the shape of her nose suited me.

“This is the way in which I picture to myself supreme happiness: there is a large square building, without any windows looking outward; a large court surrounded by a white marble colonnade, a crystal fountain in the centre with a jet of quicksilver after the Arabian fashion, and boxes of orange and pomegranate trees placed alternately; overhead, a very blue sky and a very yellow sun; large greyhounds with pike-like noses should be sleeping here and there; from time to time barefooted negroes with rings of gold on their legs, and beautiful white, slender serving women, clothed in rich and capricious garments, should pass through the hollow arcades, a basket on their arm or an amphora on their head. For myself, I should be there, motionless and silent, beneath a magnificent canopy, surrounded with piles of cushions, having a huge tame lion supporting my elbow and the naked breast of a young slave like a stool beneath my foot, and smoking opium in a large jade pipe.

“I cannot imagine paradise differently; and, if God really wishes me to go there after my death, he will build me a little kiosk on this plan in the corner of some star. Paradise, as it is commonly described, appears to me much too musical, and I confess, with all humility, that I am perfectly incapable of enduring a sonata which would last for merely ten thousand years.

“You see the nature of my Eldorado, of my promised land: it is a dream like any other; but it has this special feature, that I never introduce any known countenance into it; that none of my friends has crossed the threshold of this imaginary palace; and that none of the women that I have possessed has sat down beside me on the velvet of the cushions: I am there alone in the midst of phantoms.

I have never conceived the idea of loving all the women's faces, and graceful shadows of young girls with whom I people it; I have never supposed one of them in love with me. In this fantastic seraglio I have created no favorite sultana. There are negresses, mulattoes, Jewesses with blue skin and red hair, Greeks and Circassians, Spaniards and Englishwomen; but they are to me only symbols of color and feature, and I have them just as a man has all kinds of wines in his cellar, and every species of hummingbird in his collection. They are objects to be admired, pictures which have no need of a frame, statues which come to you when you call them and wish to look at them closely. A woman possesses this unquestionable advantage over a statue, that she turns of herself in the direction that you wish, whereas you are obliged to walk round the statue and place yourself at the point of sight;-which is fatiguing.

“You must see that with such ideas I cannot remain in these times nor in this world of ours; for it is impossible to exist thus by the side of time and space. I must find something else.

“Such thoughts lead simply and logically to this conclusion. As only satisfaction of the eye, polish of form, and purity of feature are sought for, they are accepted wherever they are found. This is the explanation of the singular aberrations in the love of the ancients.

“Since the time of Christ there has not been a single human statue in which adolescent beauty has been idealized and represented with the care that characterizes the ancient sculptors. Woman has become the symbol of moral and physical beauty: man has really fallen from the day that the infant was born at Bethlehem. Woman is the queen of creation; the stars unite in a crown upon her head, the crescent of the moon glories in waxing beneath her foot, the sun yields his purest gold to make her jewels, painters who wish to flatter the angels give them women's faces, and, certes, I shall not be the one to blame them.

“Previous to the gentle and worthy narrator of parables, it was quite the opposite; gods or heroes were not made feminine when it was wished to make them charming; they had their own type, at once vigorous and delicate, but always able, however amorous their outlines might be, and however smooth and destitute of muscles and veins the workman might have made their divine legs and arms. He was more ready to bring the special beauty of women into accordance with this type. He enlarged the shoulders, attenuated the hips, gave more prominence to the throat, and accentuated the joints of the arms and thighs more strongly. There is scarcely any difference between Paris and Helen. And so the hermaphrodite was one of the most eagerly cherished chimeras of idolatrous antiquity.

“This son of Hermes and Aphrodite is, in fact, one of the sweetest creations of Pagan genius. Nothing in the world can be imagined more ravishing than these two bodies, harmoniously blended together and both perfect, these two beauties so equal and so different, forming but one superior to both, because they are reciprocally tempered and improved. To an exclusive worshipper of form, can there be a more delightful uncertainty than that into which you are thrown by the sight of the back, the ambiguous loins, and the strong, delicate legs, which you are doubtful whether to attribute to Mercury ready to take his flight or to Diana coming forth from the bath? The torso is a compound of the most charming monstrosities: on the bosom, which is plump and quite pubescent, swells with strange grace the breast of a young maiden; beneath the sides, which are well covered and quite feminine in their softness, you may divine the muscles and the ribs, as in the sides of a young lad; the belly is rather flat for a woman and rather round for a man, and in the whole habit of the body there is something cloudy and undecided which it is impossible to describe, and which possesses quite a peculiar attraction. Theodore would certainly be an excellent model for this kind of beauty; nevertheless, I think, that the feminine portion prevails with him, and that he has preserved more of Salmacis than did the Hermaphrodite of the Metamorphoses.

“It is a singular thing that I have nearly ceased to think about his sex, and that I love him in perfect indifference to it. Sometimes I seek to persuade myself that such love is ridiculous, and I tell myself so as severely as possible; but it only comes from my lips-it is a piece of reasoning which I go through but do not feel: it really seems to me as if it were the simplest thing in the world and as if any one else would do the same in my place.

“I see him, I listen to him speaking or singing-for he sings admirably-and take an unspeakable pleasure in doing so. He produces the impression of a woman upon me to such an extent that one day, in the heat of conversation, I inadvertently called him Madame, which made him laugh in what appeared to me to be a somewhat constrained manner.

“Yet, if it were a woman, what motives could there be for this disguise? I cannot account for them in any way. It is comprehensible for a very young, very handsome and perfectly beardless cavalier to disguise himself as a woman; he can thus open a thousand doors which would have remained obstinately shut against him, and the quid pro quo may involve him in quite a labyrinthine and jovial complication of adventures. You may, in this manner, reach a woman who is strictly guarded, or realize a piece of good fortune under favor of the surprise.

“But I am not very clear as to the advantages to be derived by a young and beautiful woman from rambling about in man's clothes. A woman ought not to give up in this way the pleasure of being courted, madrigalized and worshipped; she should rather give up her life, and she would be right, for what is a woman's life without all this? nothing, or something worse than death. And I am always astonished that women who are thirty years old, or have the small-pox, do not throw themselves down from the top of a, steeple.

“In spite of all this, something stranger than any reasoning cries to me that it is a woman, and that it is she of whom I have dreamed, she whom alone I am to love, and by whom I alone am to be loved. Yes, it was she, the goddess with eagle glance and beautiful royal hands, who used to smile with condescension upon me from the height of her throne of clouds. She has presented herself to me in this disguise to prove me, to see whether I should recognize her, whether my amorous gaze would penetrate the veils which enwrap her, as in those wondrous tales where the fairies appear at first in the forms of beggars, and then suddenly stand out resplendent with gold and precious stones.

“I have recognized thee, O my love! At the sight of thee my heart leaped within my bosom as did St. John in the womb of St. Anne, when she was visited by the Virgin; a blazing light was shed through the air; I perceived, as it were, an odor of divine ambrosia; I saw the trail of fire at thy feet, and I straightway understood that thou wert not a mere mortal.

“The melodious sounds of St. Cecilia's viol, to which the angels listen with rapture, are harsh and discordant in comparison with the pearly cadences which escape from thy ruby lips; the Graces, young and smiling, dance a ceaseless roundel about thee; the birds, warbling, bend their little variegated heads to see thee better as thou passest through the woods, and pipe to thee their prettiest refrains; the amorous moon rises earlier to kiss thee with her pale silver lips, for she has forsaken her shepherd for thee; the wind is careful not to efface the delicate print of thy charming foot upon the sand; the fountain becomes smoother than crystal when thou bendest over it, fearing to wrinkle and distort the reflection of thy celestial countenance; the modest violets themselves open up their little hearts to thee and display a thousand coquetries before thee; the jealous strawberry is piqued to emulation and strives to. equal the divine carnation of thy mouth; the imperceptible gnat hums joyously and applauds thee with the beating of its wings: all nature loves and admires thee, who art her fairest work!

“Ah I now I live;-until this moment I was but a dead man; now I am freed from the shroud, and stretch both my wasted hands out of the grave towards the sun; my blue, ghastly color has left me; my blood circulates swiftly through my veins. Tie frightful silence which reigned around me is broken at last. The black, opaque vault which weighed heavy on my brow is illumined. A thousand mysterious voices whisper in my ear; charming stars sparkle above me, and sand the windings of my path with their spangles of gold; the daisies laugh sweetly to me, 'and the bell-flowers murmur my name with their little restless tongues. I understand a multitude of things which I used not to understand, I discover affinities and marvellous sympathies, I know the language of the roses and nightingales and I read with fluency the book which once I could not even spell.

“I have recognized that I had a friend in the respectable old oak all covered with mistletoe and parasitic plants, and that the frail and languid periwinkle, whose large blue eye is ever running over with tears, had long cherished a discreet and restrained passion for me. It is love, it is love that has opened my eyes and given me the answer to the enigma. Love has come down to the bottom of the vault where my soul cowered numb and somnolent; he has taken it by the finger-tips and has brought it up the steep and narrow staircase leading without. All the locks of the prison were picked, and for the first time this poor Psyche came forth from me in whom she had been shut up.

“Another life has become mine. I breathe with the breast of another, and a blow wounding him would kill me. Before this happy day I was like those gloomy Japanese idols which look down perpetually at their own bellies. I was a spectator of myself, the audience of the comedy that I was playing; I looked at myself living, and I listened to the oscillations of my heart as to the throbbing of a pendulum. That was all. Images were portrayed on my heedless eyes, sounds struck my inattentive ear, but nothing from the external world reached my soul. The existence of any one else was not necessary to me; I even doubted any existence other than my own, concerning which again I was scarcely sure. It seemed to me that I was alone in the midst of the universe, and that all the rest was but vapors, images, vain illusions, fleeting appearances destined to people this nothingness. What a difference!

“And yet what if my presentiment is deceiving me, and Theodore is really a man, as every one believes him to be? Such marvellous beauties have sometimes been seen, and great youth assists such an illusion. It is something that I will not think of and that would drive me mad; the seed fallen yesterday into the sterile rock of my heart has already pierced it in every direction with its thousand filaments; it has clung vigorously to it, and to pluck it up would be impossible. It is already a blossoming and green-growing tree with twisting muscular roots. If I came to know with certainty that Theodore is not a woman, I do not know, alas! whether I should not still love him.”