Paris appears to me once more populated; the crowd is no longer a desert in my eyes; this great dead city has recovered its spirit of life; the sun once more smiles upon me; the earth bounds under my feet; the soft summer air fans my burning brow, and whispers into my ear that one adored name—Irene!
Chance has a treasure-house of atrocious combinations. Chance! The cunning demon! He calls himself Chance so as to better deceive us. With an infernal skilfulness he feigns not to watch us in the decisive moments of our lives, and at the same time leads us like blind fools into the very path he has marked out for us.
You know the two brothers Ernest and George de S. were planted by their family in the field of diplomacy: they study Eastern languages and affect Eastern manners. Well, yesterday we met in the Bois de Boulogne, they in a calash, and I on horseback—I am trying riding as a moral hygiene—as the carriage dashed by they called out to me an invitation to dinner; I replied, "Yes," without stopping my horse. Idleness and indolence made me say "Yes," when I should have said, "No;" but Yes is so much easier to pronounce than No, especially on horseback. No necessitates a discussion; Yes ends the matter, and economizes words and time.
I was rather glad I had met these young sprigs of diplomacy. They are good antidotes for low spirits, for they are always in a hilarious state and enjoy their youth in idle pleasure, knowing they are destined to grow old in the soporific dulness of an Eastern court.
I thought we three would be alone at dinner; alas! there were five of us.
Two female artistes who revelled in their precocious emancipation; two divinities worshipped in the temple of the grand sculptors of modern Athens; the Scylla and Charybdis of Paris.
I am in the habit of bowing with the same apparent respect to every woman in the universe. I have bowed to the ebony women of Senegal; to the moon-colored women of the Southern Archipelago; to the snow-white women of Behring's Strait, and to the bronze women of Lahore and Ceylon. Now it was impossible for me to withdraw from the presence of two fair women whose portraits are the admiration of all connoisseurs who visit the Louvre. Besides, I have a theory: the less respectable a woman is, the more respect we should show her, and thus endeavor to bring her back to virtue.
I remained and tried to add my fifth share of antique gayety to the feast. We were Praxiteles, Phidias and Scopas; we had inaugurated the modest Venus and her sister in their temples, and we drank to our model goddesses in wines from the Ionian Archipelago.
That evening, you may remember, Antigone was played at the Odeon in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
I have another theory: in any action, foolish or wise, either carry it through bravely when once undertaken, or refrain from undertaking it. I had not the wisdom to refrain, therefore I was compelled to imitate the folly of my friends; at dessert I even abused the invitation, and too often sought to drown sorrow in the ruby cup.