"Truly my life is transferred into this woman as under the attraction of a magnet, and truly the center of my forces is in that heart!
"Those blond lashes of her blue eyes are the chains of my days, and the blond shadow of her hair is the halo of bright moons whose splendor illumines my nights."
He would have proceeded at greater length, for his words were unleased, but the vision vanished.
"Presage: Ah! pretty beast! ah! pretty beast!"
Then he reflected again:
"All this has been badly managed. I should have designed, as Calixte suggested, this woman in the pure rôle of a Beatrice exempt from carnal affairs,—but being a woman, she would not have understood: Beatrice, who lent herself to this sublime play, was a dream creature, obeying the poet and the very symbol of his thought. This one had to fall into my arms, or other arms would have snatched her.
"Remain on your pedestal. It is on my knees that I wish to adore you, my hands outstretched to you, eternally.
"No, I grow weary, up there. Adorer, adore nearer, adore with kisses.
"Well! at least we shall have some moments of pleasant intimacy and since it is necessary to make an object of pleasure out of the object of worship, let the sacrilege be complete and the voluptuousness decisive.
"Ah! I shall abandon myself to your body of illusions. Excellent and noble substance, you will be kneaded according to the most transcendental phantasies!"