After long years of silence, indifference, contempt, the wind carries to us the sound of a voice; and we feel ourselves disturbed, surprised, reconquered, as in the first day of our love. Hearing will cast its fishing-line into the deepest waters of our affection; and more than one love has been resuscitated miraculously from the coldest ashes by a dear voice which we had, perhaps, long since forgotten.
Love has many mysterious relations to the olfactory sense. In the animal world perfumes are often the more direct and powerful instigators in amorous struggles; and even before the female has seen the companion by whom she desires to be conquered, the wings of the wind have carried to her nostrils a perfume that inebriates and fills her with voluptuousness.
This sense may be a powerful excitant in inferior races, or in the lower type of men of high races, but it exercises, in love, a powerful influence even in the most refined natures, by means of perfumes which we have conquered from nature and which, by the omnipotence of chemistry, we know how to reproduce without having recourse to the power of life. We have brought into our power the essence of every petal, the perfume of every calyx, of every leaf, of every bark, the repugnant smell of many enamored animals, and, with impudent art, mixing the odors of flowers with exciting aromas, we have concentrated in a few drops of essence so much olfactory voluptuousness as warm spring could hardly concentrate in a flowering meadow or in a tropical forest. Now the deep and intense voluptuousness of perfumes is the daughter of a remote atavism which makes us susceptible of the sexual exhalations of many living beings and, solely for this reason, no sense has more intimate ties with animal voluptuousness than smell.
If you study the expression on the face of a woman who is scenting a very odorous flower and feels as though inebriated, you will see that such a picture resembles, more than anything else, a sublime scene of love. Ask many over-sensual men and they will tell you that they cannot visit with impunity the laboratories where essences and perfumes are made. Ask the art of the perfume-maker, and it will answer that, after having mixed a hundred essences of flowers and leaves, it gives relief to and improves all those perfumes by adding an infinitesimal quantity of a matter, fetid in itself, but taken from the organs of love of some animal. Ask why women love perfumes so much, and perhaps a few will be able to tell you, or will answer with a blush. And if by a long experience they have already learned the most subtle mysteries of the senses, all the finest arts of coquetry, they will tell you that perfumes are a powerful weapon in the arsenal of love and that some of them possess an irresistible charm over the senses of man.
It is difficult to remain a long time in the warm atmosphere of voluptuousness without sacrificing a great part of those noble forces which are destined for higher attainments; and this explains why no impassioned mania for perfumes can have a moral influence over us. He who plunges into the tepid, titillating and morbid wave of odors no longer measures his strength in relation to a chaste and robust virility, but squeezes from the fruit the last drop of juice, and in the rapid convulsion of weariness imagines new delights. But between this human debasement and the contempt for perfumes there is an abyss, and by abandoning them to the courtesan, or to the savage woman who anoints herself from head to foot, we throw away, without any reason, much of a dear and sweet voluptuousness which could be enjoyed and cultivated by us without any offense to morals.
Do you believe that a kiss given to that one whom you love and who is yours, through the petals of a rose, is a sin of lust? Do you ever believe that love gathered in a shower of violets, hyacinths and narcissus, between the crepuscules of two sighs, could be called lasciviousness? Nature is eternally rich, and the garlands we weave with her flowers around our joys do not deplete her inexhaustible gardens.
CHAPTER XI BOUNDARIES OF LOVE—THEIR RELATIONS TO OTHER SENTIMENTS—JEALOUSY
In the Apollo room in the Vatican you will see an ancient bas-relief representing two bacchantes with the Dionysian thyrsus; one is standing, while the heat of voluptuousness is flaming within her; she bears the thyrsus, lust transpires on her face, and a bull is beating his horns against her legs; the other falls exhausted from intoxication. These are two moments of the voluptuousness of love, but they are also the two most elementary forms of the sentiment that bind man to woman. Now an ardent energy, then calm possession; now struggle that conquers, then affectionate blandishment that restrains. The most sublime, most constant, most perfect love that a man of superior race can desire or dream of, is a hot, bright flame, lasting as long as life, and at which, from time to time, are kindled the sparks of a desire that flares up, wavers and disappears.