In fact, madam, I hardly know why I have taken the trouble to excuse myself with so much deliberation. I perceive that by such apologies I run the risk of aggravating my mistake. What did I write, after all, but a very commonplace specimen of those Arabian stories which girls such as you have read continually in the winter evenings, under the eyes of their delighted mothers? When I consider it, I begin to understand that your laughter, if you did laugh, must have been at the feebleness of my imagination—you compared it with the Palace of gold and the thousand wives of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid.—But please remember, once more, that I am a poor Provençal and not a Sultan.
"My tastes are those of a simple bachelor."
Observe moreover that, out of regard for probability, no less than from respect for local colouring, I was obliged to decide upon a somewhat simple harem, and to confine it within the strictly necessary limits. Like a school-boy, falling in love with the heroine he has put into his story, I found myself so charmed with my fancy, that in order to further enjoy my pleasures of illusion, I determined not to overstep the limits of a perfectly realisable adventure.
But since I abandoned myself to this folly, does it not seem to you, reconsidering the matter, that a great deal would have been lost if such a romance had never occurred to me? And above all if it had stopped short at the first page? Is it not astonishing that no author had thought of writing such a thing before? Would not this have been just the work for a moralist and a philosopher, worthy at once of a poet and of a scholar? This poor world of ours, madam, moves in a narrow circle of passions and sensations, so limited that it seems to me as if every soul rather more lofty than the average must continually feel itself imprisoned. What felicity it must be, by a single flight of the imagination, to escape from this prison locked by prejudice! To fly away into the regions of dreamland! Slave of our civilized conventions, what bliss to run away unfettered into the shady paths of the pagan world, peopled with its merry, enchanting nymphs! Or again to wander, like a happy child of Asiatic climes in gardens of sycamores, where young sultanas bathe and disport themselves in basins of porphyry. The Bois de Boulogne is a charming place, no doubt, madam; but you will admit that it is inferior to the Valley of Roses, and that the painted and bedizened young women you see there will bear no comparison with my houris.
What, then? Does my thirst after the ideal merit any censure? Do not you consider, you who read novels, that it would, on the contrary, be an instructive as well as a curious study to follow up the strange incidents which would necessarily result from such a very natural conjunction of oriental love transferred to the midst of our own world? What contrasts they would provoke, and what strange occurrences! Does not the absence of such a study leave a void in our illustrious literature?
But I divine upon your lips a word which frightens me—"Immoral! Immoral!" you say.
Madam, this word shows me that you are strangely mistaken about my pure intentions. You are a woman of considerable intelligence; let us understand each other like philosophers or moralists. Suppose my name to be Hassan. You would read without the least ruffle on your brow the very simple narrative of my pretended amours, and if they were hindered by any untoward obstacles, you would perhaps accord them a small tribute of tears, such as you have doubtless shed over the misfortunes of poor Namouna. The question of morality therefore, is in this case simply a question of latitude, and the impropriety of my situation would disappear at once if I inhabited the banks of the Bosphorus, or some palace at Bagdad.
Perhaps you take your stand upon the more elevated ground of "sentiment?" Well, this is precisely the pyschological point of view that I am about to discuss, madam. Yes, if it were only in order to inquire whether the human soul freed from all constraint, is capable of infinite expansion, like a liberated gas. To mix positive and materialist science with etherialised sensualism, such is my object. A simple passion, we all know what that is; but to adore four women at a time—while so many honest folk are well content to love one only—this seems to me a praiseworthy aspiration, fit to inspire the soul of a poet who prides himself upon his gallantry, no less than the brain of a philosopher in search of the vital elixir and the sources of sensation. Such a study would, assuredly, be arduous and severe, and would at any rate not be without glory, as you will admit, if it should happen to terminate logically in the triumph of the sublime Christian love over pagan or Mahometan polygamy.
Again, madam, in reprimanding me for my poor little harem, do you mean to preach against King David, or the seven hundred wives of Solomon? Without going back to the biblical legends of these venerable sovereigns, have you not read the classics? In what respect, may I ask, is the poem of Don Juan more moral than my subject? And did good old Lafontaine drop any of his artless probity, when he dipped his pen into the Boccaccian inkpot? The morality of a given book, madam, depends entirely upon the morality of its author, who respects himself first by respecting his public, and who will not lead the latter into bad company, not wishing to corrupt it with bad sentiments.
It gives me pleasure to draw the picture of those ideal amours which every warm-blooded youth of twenty has at one time or other cherished in his thoughts; to substitute virginal charms and graces for vice and harlotry—and after the manner of those charming heathen poets who have so often filled our dreams with their fancies, to mingle the anacreontic with the idyllic. Open any of your moral stories, madam, and I'll wager my harem you will find that the interest in them is always kept up by adultery, in thought or in deed, which has been erected into a social institution! The same Minotaur has served for us since the time of Menelaus. Adultery, adultery, always adultery! it is as inevitable as it is monotonous!