Nevertheless I think that I paid Rosette the full value of her dress and more, in coin which is none the less esteemed and valued because it does not pass current with tradesmen. Such unexampled heroism surely deserved such a recompense. However, like the generous creature she is, she repaid what I gave her. I had a wild, almost convulsive sort of pleasure, such as I did not believe myself capable of enjoying. The resounding kisses mingled with bursts of laughter, the shuddering, impatient caresses, all the piquant, tantalizing sensations, the pleasure imperfectly enjoyed because of the costume and the situation, but a hundred times keener than if there had been no obstacles, produced such an effect on my nerves that I was seized with paroxysms which I had some difficulty in overcoming.—You cannot conceive the proud, affectionate way in which Rosette gazed at me as she tried to soothe me, and the joyful yet anxious manner with which she lavished attentions upon me: her face glowed with the pleasure that she felt in producing such an effect upon me, while her eyes, swimming in sweet tears, bore witness to her alarm at my apparent illness and the interest she took in my health.—She had never seemed so beautiful to me as at that moment. There was something so maternal and so chaste in her glance that I entirely forgot the more than anacreontic scene that had just taken place, and threw myself on my knees at her feet, asking permission to kiss her hand; which permission she granted with extraordinary dignity and gravity.
That woman certainly isn't as depraved as De C—— claims and as she has often seemed to me to be; her corruption is in her mind and not in her heart.
I have cited this scene from among twenty others: it seems to me that after such an experience one can, without overweening conceit, believe himself a woman's lover.—And yet I have not that feeling.—I had no sooner returned home than that thought took possession of me and began to work upon me as usual.—I remembered perfectly all that I had said and heard, all that I had done and seen. The slightest gestures, the most insignificant attitudes, all the most trivial details stood out clearly in my memory: I remembered everything, even to the slightest inflections of the voice, the most indescribable shades of enjoyment; but it did not seem to me that all those things had happened to me rather than to some one else. I was not sure that it was not all an illusion, a phantasmagoria, a dream, or that I had not read it somewhere or other, or even that it was not a story invented by myself as I had invented many others. I dreaded being the dupe of my own credulity or the plaything of some deception; and notwithstanding the evidence of my weariness and the material proofs that I had not slept at home, I could easily have believed that I had gone to bed at my usual hour and slept till morning.
I am very unfortunate in my inability to acquire the moral certainty of something of which I am physically certain. In ordinary cases the contrary is the case and the fact proves the idea. I would like well to prove the fact by the idea; I cannot do it; although it is a strange thing, it is so. It rests with myself, to a certain extent, to have a mistress; but I cannot force myself to believe that I have one, even though that is the fact. If I have not the necessary faith in me, even for a thing so palpable as that, it is just as impossible for me to believe in so simple a fact as for another to believe in the Trinity. Faith is not to be acquired, it is a pure gift, a special grace from Heaven.
No one ever longed as I do to live the life of others and to assimilate another nature to my own; no one ever had less success. Whatever I may do, other men are little more than phantoms to me and I do not feel their existence; but it is not the desire to understand their lives and share in them that I lack. It is the power or the want of real sympathy with anything on earth. The existence or non-existence of a person or thing does not interest me enough to affect me in a perceptible and convincing way. The sight of a man or a woman who appears before me in flesh and blood leaves on my mind no more definite trace than the fanciful vision of a dream: a pale world of shadows and of apparitions, false or true, hovers about me, murmuring low, and in the midst of them I feel as utterly alone as possible, for not one of them has any effect upon me for good or evil, and they seem to me to be of a nature altogether different from mine. If I speak to them and they make what seems a sensible reply, I am as surprised as if my dog or my cat should suddenly open his mouth and take part in the conversation: the sound of their voices always astonishes me and I could easily believe that they are only fleeting apparitions and I the mirror in which they are reflected. Inferior or superior, I certainly am not of their kind. There are moments when I recognize none but God above me, and others when I deem myself hardly the equal of the earthworm under its stone or the mollusk on its sand-bank; but whatever my frame of mind, exalted or humble, I have never been able to persuade myself that men were really my fellows. When any one calls me monsieur, or, in speaking of me, refers to me as that man, it always seems strange to me. My very name seems to me but an empty one and not my real name; and yet, no matter how low it may be uttered, amid the loudest noise, I turn suddenly with a convulsive and peevish eagerness which I have never been able to explain.—Is it the dread of finding in the man who knows my name, and to whom I am no longer simply one of the common herd, an antagonist or an enemy?
It is when I have been living with a woman that I feel most strongly how utterly my nature repels every sort of alliance and mixture. I am like a drop of oil in a glass of water. No matter how much you turn it and shake it, the oil will never mix with the water; it will separate into a hundred thousand little globules which will unite again and rise to the surface the instant it becomes calm: the drop of oil and the glass of water epitomize my history. Even lust—that diamond chain that binds all human beings together, that consuming fire that melts the stone and metal of the heart and causes them to fall in tears as material fire melts iron and granite—all powerful as it is, has never been able to subdue or move me. And yet my senses are very sharp; but my heart is a hostile sister to my body, and the ill-mated couple, like every possible couple, lawfully or unlawfully united, lives in a state of constant warfare.—A woman's arms, the strongest of all earthly bonds, so it is said, are to me very weak fetters, and I have never been farther from my mistress than when she was straining me to her heart.—I was stifled, that's the whole story.
How many times have I been angry with myself! What superhuman efforts have I made to be different! How I have exhorted myself to be affectionate, lover-like, passionate! how often I have taken my heart by the hair and dragged it to my lips in the middle of a kiss! Whatever I do, it always recoils, wiping the kiss away, as soon as I release my hold. What torture for that poor heart to look on at the orgies of my body and to be constantly compelled to sit through banquets at which it has nothing to eat!
It was when I was with Rosette that I determined, once for all, to ascertain if I am not hopelessly unsociable, and if I can take enough interest in another person's existence to believe in it. I exhausted the whole category of experiments, and I have not succeeded in solving my doubts to any great extent. With her my pleasure is so keen that my heart often finds itself diverted at least, if not touched, a state of things that impairs the accuracy of observations. After all, I have discovered that it didn't go below the skin and that my enjoyment was confined to the epidermis, the heart participating only through curiosity. I have pleasure because I am young and ardent; but the pleasures came from myself and not from another. Its source was in myself rather than in Rosette.
It is of no use for me to struggle, I cannot go out of myself for a single moment. I am still what I was, that is to say, a very tired, very tiresome creature, who disgusts me exceedingly. I have failed utterly to introduce into my brain the idea of another human being, into my heart, another's emotion, into my body, another's pain or pleasure. I am a prisoner in myself and all escape is impossible: the prisoner longs to escape, the walls ask nothing better than to crumble, and the doors to open before him; but some inexplicable fatality keeps every stone immovable in its place, every bolt in its groove; it is as impossible for me to admit any one to my quarters as to go myself to others; I cannot make or receive calls, and I live in the most absolute solitude amid the multitude: my bed may not be widowed, but my heart always is.