Precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope!
The indistinct summons of nature is inexorable. The whole of woman—what an abyss!
Luckily, there was no woman for Gwynplaine but Dea—the only one he desired, the only one who could desire him.
Gwynplaine felt that vague and mighty shudder which is the vital claim of infinity. Besides there was the aggravation of the spring. He was breathing the nameless odours of the starry darkness. He walked forward in a wild feeling of delight. The wandering perfumes of the rising sap, the heady irradiations which float in shadow, the distant opening of nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it is saying.
Any one observing Gwynplaine walk would have said, "See!—a drunken man!"
He almost staggered under the weight of his own heart, of spring, and of the night.
The solitude in the bowling-green was so peaceful that at times he spoke aloud. The consciousness that there is no listener induces speech.
He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands behind him, the left hand in the right, the fingers open.
Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers.
He turned round quickly.