Have you never noticed how the shade of the woods, the plashing of fountains, the singing of birds, a bright and laughing landscape, the odor of the leaves and flowers, all the paraphernalia of eclogues and descriptive poems which we have agreed to despise, none the less retain a secret influence over us, however depraved we may be, which it is impossible for us to resist? I will tell you in confidence, under seal of the most profound secrecy, that I surprised myself very recently in a most provincial state of emotion in connection with a nightingale's song. It was in D——'s garden; the sky, although it was night, was almost as bright as at noonday; it was so measureless and so transparent that one's glance easily penetrated to God. It seemed to me as if I could see the folds of the angels' robes on the white windings of the Milky Way. The moon had risen, but a great tree hid it completely; it riddled the dark foliage with a million little luminous holes and showered more spangles about than ever glittered upon a marchioness's fan. A silence laden with faint sounds and sighs filled the garden—perhaps this resembles pathos, but it is not my fault;—although I saw nothing save the bluish gleam of the moon, it seemed to me as if I were surrounded by a whole population of phantoms, unknown yet adored, and I had no feeling of loneliness, although there was no one but myself on the terrace.—I was not thinking, I was not dreaming, I was blended with my surroundings and I felt myself shiver with the foliage, glisten with the water, gleam with the moonbeams, bloom with the flowers; I was no more myself than the tree, the streamlet, or the four-o'clock. I was all of them at once, and I do not think it possible to be more thoroughly removed from one's self than I was at that moment. Suddenly, as if something extraordinary had happened, the leaf ceased to flutter at the end of the branch, the drop of water from the fountain remained suspended in the air and did not fall. The silvery thread, starting from the edge of the moon, stopped on the way; my heart alone beat with such resonance that it seemed to fill the whole vast space with clamor.—My heart ceased to beat and there was such a profound silence that you could have heard the grass grow, and a word spoken in an undertone two hundred leagues away. And then the nightingale, who probably was awaiting that moment to begin his song, emitted from his little throat a note so shrill and piercing that I heard it with my breast no less than with my ears. The sound spread quickly through the crystalline expanse, until that moment as still as death, and created a harmonious atmosphere, wherein the other notes that followed it flew to and fro, flapping their wings.—I understood what he said as perfectly as if I had known the secret of the bird language. The story of the loves I have not found was what the nightingale sang. Never was a truer story told or told with greater fulness. He did not omit the smallest detail, the most imperceptible shade. He told me what I had not been able to tell myself, he explained what I had not been able to understand; he gave voice to my reverie and compelled the phantom, hitherto dumb, to reply. I knew that I was beloved, and a thrill most languorously drawn out informed me that I should soon be happy. It seemed to me that I could see the white arms of my beloved extended toward me through the trills and quavers of his song and beneath the shower of notes, in a moonbeam.
She rose slowly before me with the perfume of the heart of a hundred-petalled rose.—I will not try to describe her beauty. It is one of those things that words decline to attempt. How describe the indescribable? how paint that which has neither form nor color? how note down a voice without quality and speechless?—I have never had so much love in my heart; I would have pressed nature to my bosom, I embraced the empty void as if my arms were clasped about a virgin form; I kissed the air that blew upon my lips, I swam in the magnetic fluids that exhaled from my glowing body. Ah! if Rosette had been there, what adorable rhapsodies I would have indulged in! But women never know enough to arrive at the opportune moment.—The nightingale ceased to sing; the moon, who could keep awake no longer, pulled her cap of clouds over her eyes, and I left the garden; for the cool night air was beginning to make itself felt.
As I was cold, I naturally thought that I should be warmer in Rosette's bed than my own, and I went to lie with her.—I let myself in with my pass-key, for everybody in the house was asleep.—Rosette herself had fallen asleep, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that it was over a volume uncut, of my latest poems. She had both arms under her head, her mouth half open and smiling, one leg stretched out and the other partly curled up, in an attitude instinct with ease and grace; she was so lovely that I mortally regretted that I was no longer in love with her.
As I looked at her I reflected that I was as stupid as an ostrich. I had what I had so long desired, a mistress as entirely my own as my horse and my sword, young, pretty, amorous and clever; with no stern-principled mother, no father with a decoration, no cross-grained aunt, no swaggering brother, and with the priceless advantage of a husband duly sealed and nailed up in a fine oaken casket lined with lead, the whole covered over with a large block of hewn granite, which is not to be despised; for, after all, it is a very doubtful pleasure to be caught in the act in the middle of a blissful paroxysm, and to complete one's sensations on the pavement, after describing an arc of 40 to 45 degrees, according to the floor on which you happen to be;—a mistress as free as the mountain air and rich enough to indulge in the most exquisite refinements and luxuries, and, moreover, free from anything like moral ideas, never talking about her virtue as she tries a new posture, nor of her reputation, any more than if she had never had one; with no intimate female friends, and despising all women almost as much as if she were a man, entertaining a very low opinion of platonic affection and making no secret of it, and always playing with her heart in the game; a woman who, if her lines had fallen in another sphere, would indubitably have become the most admirable courtesan on earth and dimmed the glory of the Aspasias and Imperias!
Now, that woman, so made, was mine. I did what I chose with her; I had the key to her room and her drawer; I broke the seals of her letters; I had taken away her name and given her another. She was my chattel, my property. Her youth, her beauty, her love, all belonged to me; I used them, I abused them. I made her go to bed in the daytime and sit up at night, if the whim seized me, and she obeyed simply, without any affectation of making a sacrifice, and without assuming the air of a resigned victim.—She was attentive, caressing, and—a most extraordinary thing!—absolutely faithful; that is to say, if in the days when I was lamenting that I had no mistress, six months ago, any one had given me a glimpse of such happiness, even in the distant future, I should have gone mad with joy and tossed my hat up to knock at the gates of heaven, in token of my delight. And now that I have that happiness, I am cold; I am hardly conscious that I have it, I am not conscious of it, and my present position makes so little impression upon me that I often doubt if I have changed my position at all. If I should leave Rosette, I am convinced in my inmost soul that, at the end of a month, perhaps less, I should have so thoroughly and carefully forgotten her, that I shouldn't know whether I had ever known her or not! Would she do the same? I think not.
I reflected, as I say, upon all these things, and impelled by a sort of repentant feeling, I deposited on the fair sleeper's brow that most chaste and melancholy kiss that ever young man bestowed upon young woman—just on the stroke of midnight. She moved slightly, the smile about her mouth became a little more pronounced, but she did not wake. I undressed slowly, and, creeping under the clothes, stretched myself out by her side like a snake. The coolness of my body startled her; she opened her eyes, and, without speaking, put her mouth to mine and twined herself about me so completely that I was warmed in less than no time at all. All the poetry of the evening changed to prose, but to poetic prose at all events. That night was one of the sweetest sleepless nights I ever passed. I can hope for no more such.
We still have pleasurable moments, but they must be led up to and prepared for by some outside incident like this, and in the beginning I did not need to have my imagination excited by gazing at the moon and listening to the nightingale, in order to have all the pleasure one can have when one is not really in love. There are as yet no broken threads in our woof, but there are knots here and there, and the chain is not nearly so smooth as it was.
Rosette, who is still in love, does what she can to avert all these inconveniences. Unfortunately there are two things in the world that cannot be guided: love and ennui.—For my own part I make superhuman efforts to conquer the drowsiness that steals over me in spite of myself, and like the provincials who fall asleep at ten o'clock in Parisian salons, I keep my eyes as wide open as possible and hold up my eyelids with my fingers!—nothing serves the purpose and I take conjugal liberties that are most unpalatable.
The dear child, who found the rural expedition so successful the other day, took me off to her country estate yesterday.
It would not be out of place, perhaps, to give you a little description of the aforesaid estate, which is very attractive; it will lighten up all this metaphysics a little, and then, too, we must have a background for the characters, and figures will not stand out in relief against an empty void, or against the vague shade of brown with which painters fill up the field of their canvas.