XV
It was five o'clock in the morning when I rode into the town.—The houses were beginning to put their noses out of the window; the worthy natives showed their benignant faces behind the glass, surmounted by pyramidal nightcaps.—At the clatter of my horse's shoes ringing on the uneven, stony pavement, the curiously red faces and the matutinally uncovered breasts of the Venuses of the town issued from their respective casements, while their owners exhausted themselves in conjectures concerning the unusual apparition of a traveller in C—— at such an hour and in such a rig, for I was very scantily dressed, and in a costume that was suspicious, to say the least. I inquired the way to an inn, of a little rascal with hair over his eyes, who cocked up his little spaniel's nose to look at me at his ease; I gave him a few sous for his trouble, and a conscientious rap with my crop which sent him away squeaking like a jay plucked alive. I threw myself on a bed and fell into a sound sleep. When I awoke, it was three o'clock in the afternoon, and even that was hardly enough to rest me completely. Indeed, it was none too much for a sleepless night, an intrigue, a duel, and a very rapid, although triumphant, flight.
I was very anxious about Alcibiades's wound; but a few days later my mind was set at rest, for I learned that it had had no serious consequences and that he was convalescent. That knowledge relieved me of a heavy weight, for the idea that I had killed a man troubled me strangely, although it was strictly in self-defence and against my own wish. I had not yet attained that sublime indifference to the life of my fellow-men at which I have since arrived.
Chapter XV — It was five o'clock in the morning when I rode into the town.—The houses were beginning to put their noses out of the window—*** I inquired the way to an inn, of a little rascal with hair over his eyes, who cocked up his little spaniel's nose to look at me at his ease; I gave him a few sous for his trouble.
I found at C—— several of the young men with whom we had previously journeyed, and I was very glad; I became very intimate with them, and they introduced me into several pleasant houses.—I was perfectly accustomed to my clothes, and the rough, active life I had led, the violent exercises to which I had devoted much time, had made me twice as robust as I was before. I went everywhere with those young scatterbrains: I rode and hunted and drank with them, for I had gradually accustomed myself to the bottle; without attaining the genuine Teutonic capacity of some of them, I could empty two or three bottles for my share without getting too tipsy—very satisfactory progress. I made verse in great abundance like a god and kissed all the maid-servants in due form.—In short, I became an accomplished young gentleman, conforming in every respect to the latest fashionable pattern.—I cast off certain provincial ideas that I had concerning virtue and other nonsense of that kind; on the other hand, I became so prodigiously punctilious on points of honor, that I fought a duel almost every day: indeed, it became a necessity to me, a sort of indispensable exercise, without which I should have felt ill all day. And so, when no one had stared at me or trodden on my foot, when I had no excuse for fighting, rather than remain idle and fold my hands, I acted as second for my comrades, or even for people whom I did not know by name.
I soon had a tremendous reputation for courage, and nothing less than that would have sufficed to check the jocose remarks which my beardless face and effeminate manner would infallibly have called forth. But by dint of opening three or four extra buttonholes in doublets, and very delicately puncturing some recalcitrant skins, I came to be generally considered as having a more virile air than Mars himself or Priapus, and you might have found men who would have sworn that they had been godfathers to my bastards.
Throughout all this apparent dissipation, in this reckless, disorderly life, I did not cease to follow out my original idea,—that is to say, the conscientious study of man and the solution of the great problem of a perfect lover, a problem rather more difficult of solution than that of the philosopher's stone.
It is the same with certain ideas as with the horizon, which certainly exists because you see it in front of you in whatever direction you turn, but which obstinately eludes you and is always just so far away, whether you walk or gallop toward it; for a certain fixed distance is an indispensable condition of its manifestation; it vanishes as you go toward it to take shape again farther away with its fleeting, intangible azure, and you try in vain to stop it by grasping at the hem of its waving cloak.
The farther I advanced in knowledge of the animal, the more plainly I saw how impossible was the realization of my desire and how certain it was that what I sought in order to love happily was outside the conditions of its nature.—I became convinced that the man who was most sincerely in love with me would find a way, although with the best will in the world, to make me the most miserable of women, and yet I had already laid aside many of the requirements that as a girl I had thought essential.—I had descended from the sublime clouds, not exactly into the street and the gutter, but to the top of a hill of moderate height, accessible, although a little steep.
The ascent was decidedly rough, it is true; but I was conceited enough to believe that I was worth the trouble of making the effort, and that I should be a sufficient reward for the labor of reaching me.—I could never have made up my mind to take a step forward; I waited patiently, perched upon my hilltop.
This was my plan:—in my masculine attire I would make the acquaintance of some young man whose exterior attracted me; I would live on familiar terms with him; by shrewd questions and false confidences which would call forth true ones, I would soon obtain full knowledge of his thoughts and his sentiments; and if I found him to be the kind of man I wanted, I would pretend that I had to make a journey, and would remain away from him three or four months to give him a little time to forget my features; then I would return dressed as a woman, I would furnish luxuriously a little house in some retired suburb, buried among trees and flowers; I would arrange matters so that he would meet me and pay court to me; and if he showed that he loved me truly and faithfully, I would give myself to him without reserve and without precaution—the title of his mistress would seem to me an honorable one and I would ask for no other.
But that plan is certain never to be carried out, for it is a peculiarity of the plans we make that they are not carried out, and therein the weakness of man's will and his pure nullity are principally apparent.—The proverb—what woman wills, God wills—is no truer than any other proverb, which is equivalent to saying that it is not true at all.
So long as I saw them only at a distance and through the veil of my desire, men seemed noble creatures to me, and my eyes created an illusion.—Now I find that they are horrible to the last degree, and I do not understand how a woman can take one of them into her bed.
As for myself, my gorge would rise and I could not make up my mind to it.
How coarse and mean and unrefined their features are! what broken, ungraceful curves! what rough, black, furrowed skin!—Some are as dark as if they had been hanged six months ago, sallow, bony, hairy, with violin-strings on their hands, great sprawling feet, a filthy moustache always full of food and turned up toward the ears like hooks, hair as coarse as a horse's tail, a chin ending in a wild-boar's jowl, lips chapped and hardened by strong liquors, eyes surrounded by four or five black circles, a neck all twisted veins, huge muscles and protruding cartilage.—Others are enveloped in red flesh, and carry in front of them paunches that their belts will hardly go around; they wink their little sea-green eyes inflamed with lust and look more like hippopotami in breeches than human beings. They always smell of wine or brandy or tobacco or their own natural odor, which is far worse than all the others.—As for those whose exterior is a little less disgusting, they resemble ill-made women.—That's the whole story.
I had not noticed all this. I was living in a cloud, as it were, and my feet hardly touched the ground.—The smell of the roses and lilacs in the spring went to my head like a too powerful perfume. I dreamed only of accomplished heroes, faithful and respectful lovers, passions worthy of the altar, marvellous devotion and self-sacrifice, and I should have expected to find them all in the first blackguard who bade me good-morning.—However, that first, vulgar intoxication lasted only a short time; strange suspicions entered my mind, and I had no rest until I had investigated them.
In the beginning, my horror of men was carried to the last degree of exaggeration and I looked upon them as horrible monstrosities. Their ways of thinking, their bearing, and their carelessly cynical language, their brutal manners and their contempt for women, offended and revolted me beyond endurance, the idea that I had conceived of them corresponded so little with the reality.—They are not monsters, if you choose, but far worse than that, on my word! they are excellent fellows of most jovial disposition, who drink and eat heartily, who will do you all sorts of favors, clever and brave, good painters and good musicians, adapted for a thousand things, but not for the one for which they were created, which is to serve as male to the animal called woman, with whom they have not the slightest connection, moral or physical.
I had difficulty at first in concealing the contempt they inspired in me, but gradually I became accustomed to their manner of life. I felt no more annoyed at the mocking remarks they made concerning women than if I had myself been of their sex.—On the contrary, I made some very amusing ones myself, and their success greatly flattered my pride; indeed, none of my comrades went so far as I in the matter of sarcasm and jests upon that subject. My perfect familiarity with the ground gave me a great advantage, and aside from such piquant meaning as they might have, my epigrams excelled in the matter of accuracy, which theirs often lacked.—For, although all the evil things they say of women have some foundation in fact, it is difficult, nevertheless, for men to preserve the necessary self-possession to make sport of them successfully, for there is often much love in their invectives.
I noticed that the most tenderly-inclined men and those who thought most of women were the ones who abused them worse than all the others and who returned to the subject with particular persistency, as if they were mortally aggrieved with them for not being such as they would like them to be, and thus falsifying the good opinion they had formed of them at first.
What I wanted before everything was not physical beauty, but beauty of the heart, love; but love as I understand it may not be within the bounds of human possibilities.—And yet it seems to me that I could love so and that I would give more than I demand.
What magnificent folly! what sublime prodigality!
To deliver yourself absolutely, keeping nothing at all of yourself, to renounce control of yourself and your free-will, to place your will in another's hands, to see only with his eyes, to hear only with his ears, to be but one in two bodies, to mingle and blend your hearts in such a way that you do not know whether you are yourself or the other, to absorb and radiate continually, to be now the moon and now the sun, to see the whole world and all creation in a single being, to displace the centre of life, to be ready, at any moment, for the greatest sacrifices and the most absolute self-abnegation; to suffer the pangs of your beloved as if they were your own; O prodigy! to make yourself double by giving yourself away;—that is love as I understand it.
The fidelity of ivy, the twining of a young vine, the cooing of the turtle-dove, all those go without saying, they are the first and simplest conditions.
If I had remained at home, in the costume of my own sex, listlessly turning my spinning-wheel or making tapestry in a window recess behind the glass, this thing that I have sought the world over would perhaps have found me out unaided. Love is like fortune, it does not like to be run after. It visits by preference those who sleep on well-curbs, and the kisses of queens and goddesses often descend upon closed eyes.—It blinds and deceives you to think that all adventures and all good fortune exist only in the places where you are not, and it is a bad plan to order your horse saddled or to post off in search of your ideal. Many people have made that mistake, many more will make it.—The horizon is always of the loveliest azure, although, when you arrive there, the hills that compose it are usually only bare, seamed, rain-swept fields of yellow clay.
I fancied that the world was full of adorable young men, and that I should meet on the roads whole tribes of Esplandians, Amadises and Launcelots of the Lake in search of their Dulcineas, and I was greatly amazed to find that the world paid but little heed to that sublime search and was content to lie with the first strumpet that came to hand; I am severely punished for my curiosity and my suspicion. I am the most horribly blasé creature in the world without ever having enjoyed anything. In my case, knowledge has gone before experience; there is nothing worse than such premature knowledge which is not the fruit of action.—The most absolute ignorance would be a hundred thousand times better, it would at least make you do many foolish things which would serve to instruct you and rectify your ideas; for, under this disgust of which I spoke just now, there is always an active, rebellious element which produces the most extraordinary confusion; the mind is convinced, the body is not, and will not subscribe to this superb disdain. The young and robust body plunges and rears under the mind like a lusty stallion ridden by a feeble old man whom he cannot unseat, for the nose-band holds his head and the bit tears his mouth.
Since I have lived with men, I have seen so many women shamefully betrayed, so many secret liaisons imprudently divulged, the purest passions recklessly dragged in the wind, young men hurrying off to vile harlots from the arms of the most charming mistresses, the most firmly-established intrigues broken off suddenly and for no plausible reason, that it is no longer possible for me to make up my mind to take a lover.—It would be like throwing myself into a bottomless abyss in broad daylight with my eyes open.—However, it is still the secret longing of my heart to have one. The voice of nature stifles the voice of reason.—I feel sure that I shall never be happy if I do not love and am not loved; but the unfortunate part of it is that I can have none but a man for a lover, and if men are not devils altogether, they are certainly very far from being angels. It would not avail them to glue wings to their shoulder-blades and put crowns of gold paper on their heads; I know them too well to allow myself to be deceived.—All the fine speeches they might make me would do no good. I know in advance what they will say and I could finish them by myself. I have seen them study their rôles and read them over before going on the stage; I know all their principal harangues for effect and the passages they rely upon.—Neither the pallor of the face nor the distortion of the features would convince me. I know that those things prove nothing.—A night's debauch, a few bottles of wine and two or three girls are enough to make up the face very nicely. I have seen that cunning trick played by a young marquis, naturally very fresh and rosy, with whom it worked exceedingly well, and who owed to that touching pallor, so worthily earned, the crowning of his flame.—I also know how the most lackadaisical Celadons console themselves for the cruelty of their Astreas and find a way to possess their souls in patience, awaiting their hour of bliss.—I have seen the drabs who acted as understudies for modest Ariadnes.
In truth, after that, man does not tempt me much; for he hasn't beauty like woman—beauty, that magnificent garment which so well conceals the imperfections of the soul, that divine drapery which God has cast over the nudity of the world, and which in some sort makes one excusable for loving the vilest courtesan in the gutter, if she possesses that royal, magnificent gift.
In default of mental virtues, I would like to have at least the exquisite perfection of form, the satiny flesh, the roundness of outline, the graceful curves, the fine texture of the skin, everything that tends to make women charming.—Since I cannot have love, I would at least have sensual pleasure, and fill the brother's place with the sister as far as possible.—But all the men I have seen seem to me horribly ugly. My horse is a hundred times handsomer, and I could kiss him with less repugnance than some dandies who deem themselves extremely fascinating. Certain it is that the genus fop, as I know it, would be by no means a brilliant theme for me to embroider with variations of pleasure.—A man of the sword would suit me no better; soldiers have something mechanical in their gait, and bestial in their faces, which causes me to consider them as something less than human beings; nor do men of the robe attract me much more, for they are dirty, greasy, unkempt, threadbare creatures, with a green eye and a mouth without lips; they smell terribly of must and mould, and I should not enjoy putting my face against their wolf's or badger's muzzle. As for poets, they have no thought for anything on earth except the ends of words, they go back no farther than the penultimate, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is hard to put them to any suitable use; they are greater bores than the others, and they are quite as ugly too, and have not the least distinction or refinement in their manners or their clothes, which is really strange enough:—people who think all day of nothing but form and beauty do not notice that their boots are ill-made and their hats absurd! They look like country apothecaries or exhibitors of trained dogs out of work, and would disgust you with poesy and poetry for several eternities.
As for painters, they are tremendously stupid; they see nothing outside of the seven colors.—One of them, with whom I passed several days at R—, when he was asked what he thought of me, made this ingenious reply: "He's of a decidedly warm tone, and in the shaded parts, I should have to use, instead of white, pure Naples yellow with a little Cassel earth and some red-brown."—That was his opinion, and, furthermore, his nose was crooked and his eyes were like his nose, which did not improve his case.—Whom shall I take? a soldier with swelling chest, a round-shouldered limb of the law, a poet or painter who looks frightened to death, or a little thin-flanked, hollow-chested popinjay? Which cage shall I choose in that menagerie? I have no idea at all, and I feel no more inclined in one direction than another, for they are as equal as possible in stupidity and ugliness.
After that, if there still remained anything for me to do, it would be to take some one I loved, whether it were a porter or a horse-jockey; but I do not love even a porter. O wretched heroine that I am! an unmated turtle-dove, condemned to coo forever in elegiacs!
Oh! how many times I have longed to be really a man as I seemed to be! How many women there are with whom I could have come to an understanding, whose hearts would have understood my heart!—how perfectly happy the refined pleasures of love, the noble outbursts of pure passion to which I could have responded, would have made me! What bliss, what ecstasy! how freely all the sensitive chords of my heart could have relaxed without being constantly obliged to contract and close under coarse handling! What a charming harvest of invisible flowers that will never open, whose mysterious fragrance would have filled the fraternal union of our hearts with sweet perfume! It seems to me that that would have been a life of enchantment, of infinite ecstasy on wings always open; walking with hands inseparably clasped, through avenues of golden gravel, through thickets of ever-smiling rose-bushes, through parks with many ponds over which swans glide gently, with alabaster urns standing out in sharp relief against the foliage.
If I had been a young man, how I would have loved Rosette! what adoration I would have poured out upon her! Our hearts were really made for each other, two pearls destined to be melted together and to make but a single one! How perfectly I would have realized the ideas she had formed of love! Her disposition suited me exactly, and her type of beauty pleased me. It is a pity that our love was absolutely condemned to inevitable platonism!
I had an adventure recently.
I frequented a house where there was a fascinating little girl, fifteen years old at most: I had never seen a more adorable miniature.—She was fair, but her complexion was so delicate and transparent that ordinary blondes would have seemed like brunettes, black as moles, beside her; one would have said that she had golden hair powdered with silver; her eyebrows were of such a delicate shade, and so blended with the flesh, that they could hardly be distinguished; her light-blue eyes had the softest expression and the silkiest lashes it is possible to imagine; her tiny mouth, so small that you could hardly put the end of your finger in it, added to the childish, dainty character of her beauty, and the soft curves and dimples in her cheeks had an indescribable charm of artless innocence.—Her whole dear little person delighted me beyond expression; I loved her little slender white hands through which the light shone, her bird's foot which hardly touched the ground, her waist which a breath would have snapped, and her pearly shoulders, hardly formed as yet, which her scarf, placed awry, happily disclosed.—Her childish prattle, whose naïveté added a new charm to her naturally gay manner, kept me absorbed for hours at a time, and I took a singular pleasure in making her talk; she said a thousand deliciously amusing things, sometimes with an extraordinary shrewdness of purpose, sometimes as if she had not the slightest idea of their meaning, which made her infinitely more attractive. I gave her bonbons and pastilles, which I kept expressly for her in a box of light tortoise-shell, which pleased her extremely, for she is a dainty creature like the genuine kitten she is. As soon as I arrived, she would run to meet me and feel my pockets to see if the blessed bonbonnière was there; I would pass it from one hand to the other, and that would lead to a little battle in which she necessarily ended by gaining the upper hand and stripping me completely.
One day, however, she contented herself by saluting me very gravely, and did not come as usual to see if the fountain of sweetmeats was still playing in my pocket; she sat haughtily upright in her chair, her elbows back.
"Well, Ninon," I said, "are you fond of salt now or are you afraid that bonbons will make your teeth fall out?"—And, as I spoke, I tapped my box, which gave forth, under my waistcoat, the sweetest and most sugary sound in the world.
She put her little tongue to her lips, as if to enjoy the sweet ideal of the absent bonbon, but she did not budge.
Thereupon I took the box from my pocket, opened it and began religiously to devour the almonds, which she loved above everything: the instinct of gluttony was, for an instant, stronger than her resolution; she put out her hand to take some, but instantly drew it back, saying: "I am too big to eat bonbons!" And she sighed.
"I hadn't noticed that you have grown much since last week; are you like the mushrooms that grow in one night? Come and let me measure you."
"Laugh as much as you please," she continued with a charming pout; "I am not a little girl any longer; and I am going to be very big."
"Those are excellent resolutions, in which you must persevere;—and might I know, my dear young lady, what has put these noble ideas into your head? For, a week ago, you seemed to be very well pleased to be a little girl, and you crunched almonds without a thought of compromising your dignity."
The little lady looked at me with a curious expression, cast her eyes around the room, and, when she had made certain that no one could overhear us, leaned toward me with a mysterious air and said:
"I have a lover."
"The devil! I no longer wonder that you don't want pastilles; but you were unwise not to take some; you could have played at having dinner with him, or you could have exchanged them for a shuttlecock."
The child shrugged her shoulders disdainfully and seemed to be profoundly sorry for me.—As she retained the attitude of an offended queen, I continued:
"What is this victorious person's name? Arthur, I suppose, or Henri."—They were two little boys with whom she was in the habit of playing, and whom she called her husbands.
"No, not Arthur or Henri," she said, fixing her bright, clear eye on me—"a gentleman."—She put her hand above her head to give me an idea of his height.
"As tall as that? Why, this is becoming serious.—Pray, who is this tall lover?"
"Monsieur Théodore, I would like to tell you, but you mustn't mention it to anybody, not to mamma or to Polly"—her governess—"or to your friends who think I'm a child and would make fun of me."
I promised inviolable secrecy, for I was very curious to know who this gallant gentleman might be, and the little one, seeing that I was inclined to treat the affair as a joke, hesitated to give me her full confidence.
Reassured by my solemn undertaking to hold my peace scrupulously, she left her chair, leaned over the back of mine, and whispered very softly in my ear the name of the cherished prince.
I was confounded: it was the Chevalier de G—, a filthy, uncivilized animal, with the morals of a school-master and the physique of a drum-major, the most sottish, debauched creature imaginable—a veritable satyr, minus the cloven foot and pointed ears. That aroused serious apprehensions for my dear Ninon in my mind, and I promised myself that I would straighten matters out.
Somebody came in and the conversation dropped.
I withdrew into a corner and cudgelled my brains for the means of preventing the affair from going any farther, for it would have been downright murder for such a sweet creature to fall to such an arrant knave.
The little one's mother was a rather dissolute woman, who gave card-parties and kept a sort of bureau of wit. People read wretched verses at her house and lost good crowns, which was a compensation.—She cared little for her daughter, who was a living certificate of baptism, so to speak, and embarrassed her in the matter of falsifying her chronology.—Besides, she was growing apace and her nascent charms occasioned comparisons which were not to the advantage of her prototype, who was already a little defaced by the action of years and men. The child was rather neglected, therefore, and left defenceless against the blackguardly habitués of the house.—If her mother had bestowed any attention upon her, it would have been for no other purpose probably than to sell her youth at a good bargain and farm out her beauty and her innocence.—In one way or another the fate in store for her was not doubtful.—That grieved me, for she was a fascinating little thing, deserving surely of something better, a pearl of the fairest water lost in that noxious pest-hole; the idea affected me so strongly that I determined to rescue her from the horrible place at any price.
The first thing to do was to prevent the chevalier from pursuing his design.—What seemed to me the best and simplest way was to pick a quarrel with him and make him fight me, and I had the utmost difficulty in arranging it, for he is the most arrant poltroon and fears blows more than any other man on earth.—At last I said so many and such cutting things to him, that he had to make up his mind to go out with me, although decidedly against his inclination.—I even threatened to have him horse-whipped by my servants, if he did not show himself more of a man.—He knew how to handle a sword very well, by the way, but fright disturbed him so that our blades had no sooner crossed than I found a way to administer a pretty little thrust that put him to bed for a fortnight.—That was enough for me; I had no wish to kill him, and I much preferred to let him live so that he might be hanged later; a touching attention for which he ought to be most grateful to me!—My rascal stretched out between two sheets and duly trussed and bandaged, it only remained to persuade the little one to leave the house, which was not a very difficult matter.
I told her a tale about her lover's disappearance, as she was tremendously concerned about him. I told her that he had gone with an actress of the troupe then playing at C——; which angered her, as you can imagine.—But I consoled her, telling her all sorts of evil of the chevalier, who was ugly, besotted, and old, and I ended by asking her if she would not prefer to have me for her sweetheart.—She answered that she would indeed, because I was handsomer and my clothes were new.—This naïve remark, uttered with perfect seriousness, made me laugh until the tears came.—I excited the little one's imagination and worked to such good purpose that I persuaded her to leave the house.—A bouquet or two, as many kisses, and a pearl necklace which I gave her, delighted her to a point difficult to describe, and she assumed an air of importance before her little friends that was as laughable as you can imagine.
I ordered a very rich and elegant page's costume made to fit her, for I could not take her away in her girl's clothes, unless I dressed as a woman myself, which I did not choose to do.—I purchased a small horse of a gentle disposition and easy gait, and yet with speed enough to follow my horse when I chose to ride fast. Then I told the little beauty to try and come down to the door just at dusk and that I would be there to meet her; which she did most punctually.—I found her doing sentry duty in front of the half-open door.—I rode very close to the house; she came out, I gave her my hand, she placed her foot on my toe and leaped quickly to a seat behind me, for she was wonderfully agile in her movements. I spurred my horse and succeeded in returning unnoticed to my own quarters through seven or eight deserted, winding lanes.
I made her take off her clothes and put on her disguise and I myself acted as her maid; she made some objections at first and wanted to dress alone; but I made her understand that that would waste much time, and that, being my mistress, there was not the slightest impropriety, and that it was the way lovers always did.—Less than that would have convinced her, and she bowed to circumstances with the best grace in the world.
Her body was a little marvel of delicacy.—Her arms, which were rather thin, like those of every young girl, had an indescribable smoothness of outline, and her immature bosom gave such charming promise for the future, that no fully-developed bosom could have sustained a comparison with it.—She had all the graces of the child and all the charm of the woman; she was in the adorable period of transition from girl to young woman; a fleeting, intangible, delicious period when beauty is full of hope, and each succeeding day, instead of taking anything away from your love, adds new elements of perfection.
Her costume could not have been more becoming. It gave her a saucy air, very curious and very amusing, which made her roar with laughter when I handed her the mirror so that she could judge of the effect of her toilet. Then I made her eat some biscuit dipped in Spanish wine, in order to give her courage and enable her better to endure the fatigue of the journey.
The horses were waiting, all saddled, in the court-yard;—she coolly mounted hers, I leaped upon the other, and we set off.—It was quite dark, and a few lights, which went out one after another, showed that the good town of C—— was virtuously occupied in sleeping, as every provincial town should be on the stroke of nine.
We could not go very fast, for Ninon was not the best horsewoman that ever was, and when her horse trotted she clung with all her strength to the mane.—However, when morning came we were so far away that no one could overtake us except by using great diligence; but we were not pursued, or, if we were, our pursuers took the opposite direction from that which we had taken.
I became singularly attached to the little beauty.—I no longer had you with me, my dear Graciosa, and I felt a pressing need of loving some one or something, of having with me a dog or a child to caress familiarly.—Ninon was just that to me;—she lay in my bed and slept with her little arms around my body;—she believed herself my mistress in all seriousness, and did not suspect that I was not a man; her extreme youth and her absolute innocence confirmed her in that error, which I was very careful not to correct.—The kisses I gave her rounded out her illusion perfectly, for her ideas did not yet go beyond kisses, and her desires did not speak loud enough to make her suspect anything else. However, she was only half deceived.
Really there was the same difference between her and myself as between myself and men.—She was so transparent, so slender, so light and airy, and her nature was so refined and exceptional, that she seemed like a woman even to me, who am myself a woman, but who look like a Hercules beside her. I am tall and dark, she is small and fair; her features are so soft that they make mine seem almost hard and stern, and her voice is such a melodious hum that my voice seems harsh beside it. Any man who had her would break her in pieces, and I am always afraid that the wind will blow her away some fine morning.—I would like to shut her up in a box of cotton wool and wear it around my neck.—You can't imagine, my dear friend, how graceful and bright she is, what fascinating, cajoling, dainty little childish ways she has. She is the most adorable creature that ever was, and it really would have been a pity for her to stay with her unworthy mother.
I took malicious delight in thus rescuing that treasure from the rapacity of men. I was the griffin who prevented them from approaching it, and if I did not enjoy it myself, at all events no one else enjoyed it: an idea that never fails to console one, whatever all the absurd decriers of selfishness may say.
I proposed to keep her as long as possible in the same ignorance, and to keep her with me until she was unwilling to stay any longer or until I had found some way of assuring her future.
I took her with me in her boy's costume on all my journeys, east and west; that kind of life pleased her immensely, and the delight she took in it helped her to endure the fatigue.—I was complimented on all sides on the exquisite beauty of my page, and I doubt not that it caused a great many people to form an idea exactly contrary to the truth. Indeed, several persons tried to solve the problem; I did not allow the little one to speak to any one, and the inquisitive ones were altogether disappointed.
Every day I discovered in the dear child some new quality which made her dearer to me than ever, and caused me to congratulate myself on the resolution I had taken.—Most assuredly no man was worthy to possess her, and it would have been a deplorable thing that such charms of body and mind should have been abandoned to their brutal appetites and their cynical depravity.
Only a woman could love her with proper delicacy and tender affection.—One side of my character, which might not have been developed in a liaison of another sort, but which suddenly manifested itself in this, is the imperative longing to have some one under my protection, which is usually characteristic of men. If I had taken a lover, it would have annoyed me intensely to have him assume to defend me, for the reason that that is something I love to do myself for people whom I am fond of, and my pride is much better suited with the first rôle than the second, although the second may be more agreeable.—So I was very well content to bestow upon my dear little girl all the attentions I ought to have wanted to receive, such as assisting her over difficult places in the road, holding her rein and her stirrup, waiting on her at table, undressing her and putting her to bed, defending her if any one insulted her, in short, doing everything for her that the most passionate and attentive lover does for an adored mistress.
I gradually lost all idea of my sex, and I barely remembered, now and then, that I was a woman. In the beginning I often let slip, unthinkingly, "I am tired," or some remark that did not accord with the coat I wore. Now that never happens, and even when I am writing to you, who are in my confidence, I sometimes retain an unnecessary amount of virility in my adjectives. If I ever take a fancy to go and look for my skirts in the drawer where I left them, which I very much doubt unless I fall in love with some fine young man, I shall have difficulty in accustoming myself to them, and I shall look like a man disguised as a woman, instead of a woman disguised as a man. The truth is, that I belong to neither sex; I have not the idiotic resignation, the timidity nor the pettiness of the woman; I have not men's vices, their disgusting sottishness and their brutal inclinations:—I am of a third distinct sex which has no name as yet: above or below the others, more imperfect or superior; I have the body and soul of a woman, the mind and strength of a man, and I have too much or not enough of either to enable me to mate with one or the other.
O Graciosa, I shall never love any one, either man or woman, with all my heart; there is always something unsatisfied grumbling within me, and the lover or the friend fills the need of only one side of my character. If I had a lover, such feminine qualities as I have would dominate the virile part of me, I doubt not, but that would last but a short time, and I feel that I should be only half content; if I have a friend of my own sex, the thought of sensual pleasure prevents me from enjoying to the full the pure pleasure of the mind; so that I do not know where to stop, and am forever hesitating between the two.
My ideal of happiness would be to have the two sexes turn and turn about to satisfy this twofold nature:—a man to-day, a woman to-morrow, I would reserve for my lovers my languishing tenderness, my submissive, devoted manners, my softest caresses, my little melancholy, long-drawn sighs, whatever there is of the cat and the woman in my character; then, with my mistresses, I would be froward, enterprising, impassioned, with victorious manners, my hat cocked over my ear and the bearing of a swash-buckling adventurer. Thus my whole nature would come to light, and I should be perfectly happy, for true happiness consists in the ability to develop one's nature freely in every direction, and to be everything that one can be.
But these are impossibilities and I mustn't think about them.
I had kidnapped the little one with the idea of fooling my inclinations, and diverting upon some one all the vague affection that was floating about in my heart, and inundating it; I had taken her as a sort of safety-valve for my faculty of loving; but I soon realized, notwithstanding all my affection for her, what an immense void, what a bottomless abyss, she left in my heart, how little her fondest caresses satisfied me!—I resolved to try a lover, but a long time passed, and still I met no one who was not disagreeable to me. I have forgotten to tell you that Rosette, having discovered where I had gone, had written me a most imploring letter, begging me to come and see her; I could not refuse, and I visited her at a country estate she has.—I have been there several times since, very recently in fact.—Rosette, in despair at her inability to have me for her lover, had plunged into the whirlpool of society and into dissipation, like all loving souls who are not religious and who have been disappointed in their first love;—she had had many adventures in a short time, and the list of her conquests was already very long, for not everybody had the same reasons for resisting her that I had.
She had with her a young man named D'Albert, who was for the moment her titular lover.—I seemed to make a deep impression on him, and he conceived a very warm friendship for me at once.
Although he treated her with much consideration and his manner toward her was affectionate enough, he did not love Rosette,—not because he was satiated or disgusted with women, but because she did not respond to certain conceptions, true or false, which he had formed of love and beauty. An ideal cloud floated between her and him, and prevented him from being happy as he would have been but for that.—Evidently his dream was not fulfilled and he was sighing for something else.—But he was not seeking it, and remained faithful to bonds that were irksome to him; for he has in his soul a little more delicacy and honor than most men have, and his heart is very far from being as corrupt as his mind.—Not being aware that Rosette had never been in love with any one but me, and was still, through all her love-affairs and follies, he feared to give her pain by letting her see that he did not love her; that consideration restrained him, and he sacrificed himself in the most generous way imaginable.
The character of my features pleased him extraordinarily,—for he attaches undue importance to exterior form—to such a point, in fact, that he fell in love with me, notwithstanding my male attire and the formidable rapier I wear at my side.—I confess that I am obliged to him for the shrewdness of his instinct, and that I esteem him somewhat for having detected me under those deceptive appearances.—In the beginning he fancied that he was blessed with a much more depraved taste than he really was, and I laughed in my sleeve to see him torment himself so.—Sometimes when he approached me he had a frightened look that diverted me beyond measure, and the very natural inclination that drew him toward me seemed to him a diabolical impulsion which one could not resist too sturdily.—At such times he fell back on Rosette in a frenzy, and strove to resume more orthodox methods of love; then he would come back to me, naturally more inflamed than before. At last the illuminating idea that I might be a woman stole into his mind. To convince himself of it, he set about watching and studying me with the most minute attention; he must have an intimate acquaintance with each hair on my head and know just how many lashes I have on my eyelids; my feet, my hands, my neck, my cheeks, the suspicion of down at the corner of my mouth,—he examined them all, compared and analyzed them, and the result of that investigation, in which the artist aided the lover, was the conviction, clear as the day—when it is clear—that I was in very truth a woman, and, what was more, his ideal, his type of beauty, the realization of his dream;—a marvellous discovery!
Nothing remained except to make an impression on me and to induce me to grant him the lover's gift of gratitude, to establish my sex beyond doubt.—A comedy that we acted, and in which I appeared as a woman, convinced him completely. I bestowed some equivocal glances upon him, and used certain passages in my part that bore some analogy to our situation to embolden him and induce him to declare himself.—For, even if I did not love him passionately, I was sufficiently attracted by him not to let him pine away with love where he stood; and as he was the first one since my transformation to suspect that I was a woman, it was no more than fair that I should enlighten him on that important point, and I determined not to leave a shadow of doubt in his mind.
He came to my room several times with his declaration on his lips, but he dared not put it in words; for after all it is hard to talk of love to some one who wears the same kind of clothes that you do, and affects top-boots. At last, being unable to bring himself to the point, he wrote me a long letter, a most Pindaric production, in which he explained at great length what I knew better than he.
I don't quite know what I had better do.—Grant his request, or reject it,—that would be immoderately virtuous;—moreover, it would grieve him too much to be refused; if we make those who love us unhappy, what shall we do to those who hate us?—Perhaps it would be more in accordance with strict propriety to play the cruel for some time, and to wait at least a month before unclasping the tigress's skin to don the civilized chemise.—But, as I am determined to yield to him, it is quite as well to do it at once as later;—I don't think very much of the noble resistance, mathematically graduated, which abandons one hand to-day, the other to-morrow, then the foot, then the leg and the knee as far as the garter only,—or the intractable virtue that is always ready to clutch the bell-rope if you go a hair's breadth beyond the limit of the territory they have decided to surrender on that day.—It makes me laugh to see these methodical Lucreces walking backward with signs of the most maidenly terror, and casting a furtive glance over their shoulder from time to time to see if the sofa on which they are to fall is directly behind them.—I could not take so much trouble.
I do not love D'Albert, at least in the sense in which I understand the word, but I certainly have a liking and inclination for him;—his wit pleases me and his person does not repel me; there are not many people of whom I can say as much. He hasn't everything, but he has something;—what pleases me, in him is that he does not try to slake his thirst brutally, like other men; he has a constant aspiration and a sustained impulse toward the beautiful—toward material beauty only, it is true, but that is a noble tendency, and sufficient to keep him within the limits of the pure.—His behavior to Rosette proves honesty of heart,—honesty, that is more rare than the other kind, if that be possible.
And then, if I must tell you, I am possessed by the most violent desires,—I am languishing and dying with lust;—for the coat I wear, while it leads me into all sorts of adventures with women, protects me too perfectly against the enterprises of men; an idea of pleasure that is never realized floats vaguely in my brain, and the dull, colorless dream fatigues and bores me.—So many women lead the life of prostitutes amid the most chaste surroundings! and I, in most ridiculous contrast to them, remain as chaste and unspotted as the cold Diana herself, in the midst of the most reckless dissipation and surrounded by the greatest rakes of the age.—This ignorance of the body, unaccompanied by ignorance of the mind, is the most wretched thing imaginable. In order that my flesh may not put on airs before my mind, I propose to inflict an equal stain upon it—if indeed it is any more of a stain than eating and drinking, which I doubt.—In a word, I propose to know what a man is, and what sort of pleasure he affords. As D'Albert recognized me through my disguise, it is no more than fair that he should be rewarded for his penetration; he was the first person to guess that I was a woman, and I will do my best to prove to him that his suspicions were well founded.—It would be most uncharitable to let him believe that he has developed an unnatural taste.
D'Albert then will solve my doubts, and give me my first lesson in love; it only remains now to bring the thing about in poetic fashion. I am inclined not to answer his letter, and to be cold to him for a few days. When I see that he is very depressed and desperate, cursing the gods, shaking his fist at all creation, and looking into wells to see if they are too deep to throw himself into—then I will withdraw, like Peau d'Ane, to the end of the corridor, and will don my multi-colored dress—that is to say, my Rosalind costume, for my feminine wardrobe is decidedly limited. Then I will go to him, as radiant as a peacock spreading his feathers, showing ostentatiously what I generally conceal with the greatest care, and wearing only a little lace tucker, very low and very coquettish, and I will say to him in the most pathetic tone I can command:
"O most poetic and most perspicacious of young men, I am in very truth naught but a young and modest beauty, who, over and above all, adores you, and whose only wish is to give pleasure to you and to herself.—Tell me if that is agreeable to you, and if you still retain any scruple, touch this, go in peace, and sin all you can."
That eloquent harangue concluded, I will sink, half-fainting, into his arms, and while I heave a melancholy sigh or two, I will adroitly unfasten the clasp of my dress and appear in the conventional costume, that is to say, half naked.—D'Albert will do the rest, and I hope that, on the following morning, I shall know what to believe about all the fine things that have been troubling my brain so long.—While gratifying my curiosity, I shall have the additional pleasure of making a fellow-creature happy.
I propose also to pay Rosette a visit in the same costume, and to prove to her that my failure to respond to her love was due neither to coldness nor dislike.—I do not want her to retain that bad opinion of me, and she deserves, no less than D'Albert, that I should betray my incognito in her favor.—How will she take that disclosure?—Her pride will be comforted, but her love will groan.
Adieu, my loveliest and best; pray God that pleasure may not seem to me so small a matter as they who dispense it. I have written flippantly throughout this letter, and yet this that I am going to do is a serious thing, and all the rest of my life may feel its effects.