It was about ten in the evening when, after a riotous day, we repaired to
Desgenais, who had left us some hours before to make his preparations.
The orchestra was ready and the room filled when we arrived.
Most of the dancers were girls from the theaters. As soon as we entered I plunged into the giddy whirl of the waltz. That delightful exercise has always been dear to me; I know of nothing more beautiful, more worthy of a beautiful woman and a young man; all dances compared with the waltz are but insipid conventions or pretexts for insignificant converse. It is truly to possess a woman, in a certain sense, to hold her for a half hour in your arms, and to draw her on in the dance, palpitating in spite of herself, in such a way that it can not be positively asserted whether she is being protected or seduced. Some deliver themselves up to the pleasure with such modest voluptuousness, with such sweet and pure abandon that one does not know whether he experiences desire or fear, and whether, if pressed to the heart they would faint or break in pieces like the rose. Germany, where that dance was invented, is surely the land of love.
I held in my arms a superb danseuse from an Italian theater who had come to Paris for the carnival; she wore the costume of a bacchante, with a dress of panther's skin. Never have I seen anything so languishing as that creature. She was tall and slender, and while dancing with extreme rapidity, had the appearance of allowing herself to be led; to see her one would think that she would tire her partner, but such was not the case, for she moved as though by enchantment.
On her bosom rested an enormous bouquet, the perfume of which intoxicated me. She yielded to my encircling arms as does the Indian liana, with a gentleness so sweet and so sympathetic that I seemed surrounded with a perfumed veil of silk. At each turn there could be heard a light tinkling from her metal girdle; she moved so gracefully that I thought I beheld a beautiful star, and her smile was that of a fairy about to vanish from human sight. The tender and voluptuous music of the dance seemed to come from her lips, while her head, covered with a wilderness of black tresses, bent backward as though her neck was too slender to support its weight.
When the waltz was over I threw myself on a chair; my heart beat wildly. "O, Heaven!" I murmured, "how can it be possible! O, superb monster! O, beautiful reptile! How you writhe, how you coil in and out, sweet adder, with supple and spotted skin! Thy cousin the serpent has taught thee to coil about the tree of life, holding between thy lips the apple of temptation. O, Melusina! Melusina! The hearts of men are thine. You know it well, enchantress, with your soft languor that seems to suspect nothing! You know very well that you ruin, that you destroy, you know that he who touches you will suffer; you know that he dies who basks in your smile, who breathes the perfume of your flowers and comes under the magic influence of your charms; that is why you abandon yourself so freely, that is why your smile is so sweet, your flowers so fresh; that is why you so gently place your arms on our shoulders. O, Heaven! what is your will with us?"
Professor Halle has said a terrible thing: "Woman is the nervous part of humanity, man the muscular." Humboldt himself, that serious thinker, has said that an invisible atmosphere surrounds the human nerves. I do not quote the dreamers who watch the flight of Spallanzani's bat, and who think they have found a sixth sense in nature. Such as nature is, her mysteries are terrible enough, her powers mighty enough, that nature which creates us, mocks at us, and kills us, without deepening the shadows that surround us. But where is the man who has lived who will deny woman's power over us, if he has ever taken leave of a beautiful dancer with trembling hands. If he has ever felt that indefinable enervating magnetism which, in the midst of the dance, under the influence of the sound of music, and the warmth that makes all else seem cold, that comes from a young woman, that electrifies her and leaps from her to him as the perfume of aloes from the swinging censer? I was struck with stupor. I was familiar with a certain sensation similar to drunkenness, which characterizes love; I knew that it was the aureole which crowned the well-beloved. But that she should excite such heart-throbs, that she should evoke such fantoms with nothing but her beauty, her flowers, her motley costume, and a certain trick of turning she had learned from some merry-andrew; and that without a word, without a thought, without even appearing to know it! What was chaos if it required seven days to transform it?
It was not love, however, that I felt, and I do not know how to describe it unless I call it thirst. For the first time I felt vibrating in my body a cord that was not attuned to my heart. The sight of that beautiful animal had aroused a responsive roar from another animal in my bowels. I felt sure I would never tell that woman that I loved her or that she pleased me or even that she was beautiful; there was nothing on my lips but a desire to kiss her, and say to her: "Make a girdle of those listless arms and lean that head on my breast; place that sweet smile on my lips." My body loved hers, I was under the influence of beauty as of wine.
Desgenais passed and asked what I was doing there.
"Who is that woman?" I asked.
"What woman? Of whom do you speak?" I took his arm and led him into the hall. The Italian saw us coming and smiled. I stopped and stepped back.