Читать книгу Mademoiselle de Maupin - Theophile Gautier - Страница 6

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You complain, my dear friend, of the infrequency of my letters.—What would you have me write you except that I am well and that my affection for you never changes?—Those are facts that you know perfectly well, and that are so natural to my age and to the noble qualities that every one recognizes in you, that it is almost absurd to send a paltry sheet of paper a hundred leagues to say nothing more.—In vain do I cudgel my brains, I know of nothing that is worth the trouble of repeating; mine is the most monotonous life imaginable and nothing happens to break the monotony. To-day leads up to to-morrow as yesterday led up to to-day; and without claiming to be a prophet, I can boldly prophesy in the morning what will happen to me in the afternoon.

This is how I arrange my day:—I rise, that goes without saying, and that is the beginning of every day; I breakfast, I fence, I go out to walk, I come home, I dine, make a few calls or amuse myself reading: then I go to bed precisely as I did the day before; I go to sleep, and as my imagination is not excited by unfamiliar objects, it supplies me with none but threadbare, often repeated dreams, as monotonous as my actual life: all this is not very entertaining, as you see. However, I reconcile myself to this existence better than I should have done six months ago.—I am bored, to be sure, but in a tranquil, resigned fashion, which does not lack a certain agreeableness, which might well be compared to those gray, mild autumn days in which one finds a secret charm after the excessive heat of summer.

This sort of existence, although I have apparently accepted it, is hardly suited to me, however, or, at all events, it bears but little resemblance to the existence I dream of and consider myself well adapted for.—Perhaps I am mistaken and am in reality adapted for no other kind of life than this; but I can hardly believe it, for, if it were my real destiny, I should more readily have adapted myself to it and should not be so painfully bruised by its sharp corners in so many places.

You know what a powerful attraction strange adventures have for me, how I adore everything out of the common course, extravagant and dangerous, and with what avidity I devour novels and tales of travel; I doubt if there is on this earth a madder, more vagabond fancy than mine; and yet, by some curious fatality or other, I have never had an adventure, I have never made a journey. So far as I am concerned, the tour of the world means the tour of the town in which I live; I touch my horizon on every side; I am elbow to elbow with reality. My life is that of the shell on the sand-bank, of the ivy clinging to the tree, of the cricket on the hearth.—Verily, I am surprised that my feet have never taken root.

Cupid is represented with a bandage over his eyes; Destiny should be represented in the same condition.

I have for a valet a sort of rustic boor, loutish and stupid enough, who has travelled as much as the north wind, who has been to the devil, to every conceivable place, who has seen with his eyes all the things of which I conceive charming ideas, and cares as little about them as about a glass of water; he has been in the most extraordinary situations; he has had the most amazing adventures that a man can have. I make him talk sometimes, and I rage inwardly when I think that all those fine things have happened to a clown who is capable neither of sentiment nor reflection, and who is good for nothing but to do what he does, that is to say, brush clothes and clean boots.

It is clear that that knave's life should have been mine.—For his part, he considers me very fortunate, and his surprise is unbounded when he sees how melancholy I am.

All this is not very interesting, my poor friend, and hardly worth the trouble of writing, is it? But as you insist upon it that I must write to you, I must tell you what I think and what I feel, and must give you the history of my ideas, in default of events and acts.—It may be that there will be little order and little novelty in what I shall have to say to you; but you must blame nobody but yourself for it. You would have it.

You are the friend of my childhood, I was brought up with you; we lived our lives in common for a long, long while, and we are accustomed to exchange our most secret thoughts. I can tell you, therefore, without blushing, all the absurd things that pass through my unoccupied brain; I will not add a word, I will not cut out a word, I have no self-love with you. So I will be absolutely frank—even in petty, shameful things; not before you, certainly, will I cover my nakedness.

Beneath the shroud of indifferent, depressed ennui to which I have referred just now, there stirs sometimes a thought that is benumbed rather than dead, and I have not always the sad and gentle tranquillity that melancholy gives.—I have relapses and fall back into my old attacks of agitation. Nothing in the world is so fatiguing as those motiveless paroxysms, those aimless impulses.—On those days, although I have no more to do than on any others, I rise very early in the morning, before sunrise, I have such a feeling of being in a hurry, of not having all the time I need; I dress in hot haste, as if the house were on fire, tossing on my clothes at random and bewailing a wasted minute.—Any one who happened to see me would think that I was going to keep an assignation or to hunt for money.—Not at all.—I have no idea where I shall go; but go I must, and I should think my salvation endangered if I remained at home.—It seems to me as if somebody were calling me outside, as if my destiny were passing through the street at the moment and the question of my life or death were on the point of being decided.

I go down with an air of surprise and alarm, clothes in disorder, hair uncombed: people turn to look and laugh when they meet me, and take me for a young rake who has passed the night at the ale-house or elsewhere. I am drunk to all intent, although I have drunk nothing, and I have the aspect of a drunken man even to the uncertain gait, now slow, now fast. I go from street to street like a dog that has lost his master, looking in every direction, ill at ease, on the alert, turning at the slightest sound, gliding into the centre of every group, heedless of the rebuffs of the people I jostle against, and scrutinizing everything with a clear-sightedness that I do not possess at other times.—Then all of a sudden it is made clear to me that I am mistaken, that that surely is not the place, that I must go on farther, to the other end of the town, Heaven knows where.—And I rush off as if the devil were after me.—I touch the ground only with the tips of my toes and I don't weigh an ounce.—Really I must be a strange sight with my terrified, frantic manner, my waving arms and the inarticulate cries I utter.—When I think it over in cold blood, I laugh at myself with all my heart, which doesn't prevent me, I beg you to believe, from doing it all over again on the first occasion.

If any one should ask me why I rush about so, I certainly should be much embarrassed to answer. I am in no hurry to arrive, as I am going nowhere. I am not afraid of being late, as I have no appointment.—No one is waiting for me—and I have no possible reason for hurrying so.

Is it because an opportunity to love, an adventure, a woman, an idea, a fortune, or anything else is missing in my life, and I am seeking it unconsciously, impelled by a vague instinct? is my existence struggling to complete itself? is it a longing to get away from myself and my surroundings, the tiresomeness of my life and the wish for something different? It is one of these, or perhaps all of them together.—At all events, it is a very unpleasant experience, a feverish irritation ordinarily succeeded by the most complete collapse.

I often have the idea that, if I had started an hour earlier, or if I had quickened my gait, I should have arrived in time; that, while I was passing through one street, the thing I was looking for passed through another, and that a block of carriages was enough to make me miss what I have been pursuing, regardless of everything else, for so long a time.—You cannot imagine the intense melancholy and profound despair into which I fall when I see that all this comes to nothing and that my youth is passing and no prospect opening before me; thereupon all my idle passions mutter in my heart and devour each other for lack of better food, like the wild beasts in a menagerie whom the keeper has forgotten to feed. Despite the stifled, unacknowledged disappointments of every day, there is something within me that resists and will not die. I have no hope, for, in order to hope, one must have a desire, a certain propensity to wish that things should turn out in one way rather than another. I desire nothing, for I desire everything. I do not hope, or rather I have ceased to hope;—this is too absurd—and it is absolutely one to me whether a thing is or is not.—I am waiting—for what? I don't know, but I am waiting.

It is a shuddering sort of expectation, overflowing with impatience, broken with somersaults and nervous movements, like the suspense of a lover waiting for his mistress.—Nothing comes;—I fly into a passion or begin to weep.—I am waiting for heaven to open and an angel to descend and make some revelation to me, for a revolution to break out and the people to give me a throne, for one of Raphaël's virgins to step out of its canvas and come and embrace me, for relations that I don't possess to die and leave me the wherewithal to set my fancy afloat upon a sea of gold, for a hippogriff to snatch me up and bear me away into unknown regions.—But whatever I am waiting for, it certainly is nothing commonplace and ordinary.

It has gone so far that, when I return home, I never fail to ask: "Has no one been here? is there no letter for me? nothing new?"—I know perfectly well that there is nothing, that there can be nothing. That makes no difference; I am always much surprised and much disappointed when I receive the regular reply:—"No, monsieur—nothing at all."

Sometimes—very rarely, however—the idea takes a more definite form.—It will be some lovely woman whom I don't know and who doesn't know me, whom I have met at church or at the theatre and who has not taken the slightest notice of me.—I rush all over the house, and until I have opened the door of the last room—I hardly dare confess it, it is so utterly absurd—I hope that she has come and is there.—It is not conceit on my part.—I am so far from being conceited that several women have taken a most affectionate interest in me—at least so others have told me—when I had supposed them to be entirely indifferent to me and never to have thought much about me.—That comes from another source.

When I am not stupefied by ennui and discouragement my mind awakes and recovers all its former vigor. I hope, I love, I desire, and my desires are so violent that I imagine they will force everything to come to them, as a powerful magnet attracts bits of iron although they are at a great distance.—That is why I wait for the things I desire, instead of going to them, and I often neglect opportunities that open most favorably before my hopes.—Another than I would write the most amorous note you can imagine to his heart's divinity, or would seek an opportunity to approach her.—But I ask the messenger for the reply to a letter I have not written, and pass my time constructing in my brain situations most marvellously adapted to exhibit me to the woman I love in the most unlooked-for and most favorable light.—I could make a book thicker and more ingenious than the Stratagems of Polybius of all the stratagems I invent to make my way to her presence and reveal my passion to her. Generally it would be enough to say to one of my friends: "Present me to Madame So-and-So," and to indulge in a mythological compliment suitably punctuated with sighs.

After listening to all this, one would naturally think me a fit subject for the Petites-Maisons; I am a sensible fellow enough, however, and I haven't carried many mad ideas into execution. All this takes place in the cellar of my brain, and all these ridiculous ideas are very carefully buried in my lowest depths; no one notices anything on the outside, and I am reputed to be a calm, cold young man, by no means susceptible to female charms and indifferent to things affected by most young men of my age; all of which is as far from the truth as society's judgments usually are.

However, in spite of all the things that have happened to dishearten me, some of my longings have been gratified, and from the small amount of pleasure their gratification has afforded me, I have come to dread the realization of the others. You remember the childish ardor of my longing to have a horse of my own? my mother gave me one very recently; he is as black as ebony, with a little white star on his face, flowing mane and tail, glossy coat, slender legs, just exactly the horse I wanted. When they brought him to me, it gave me such a shock, that I was as pale as death, and unable to recover myself, for a good quarter of an hour; then I mounted him, and started off at a gallop without saying a word; I rode straight ahead through the fields for more than an hour, in a state of ecstasy hard to conceive; I did the same every day for more than a week, and, upon my word, I don't know why I didn't founder him, or at least break his wind.—Gradually my intense zeal slackened. I rode my horse at a trot, then at a walk, then I began to ride so indifferently that he would frequently stop without my noticing it: the pleasure was transformed to a habit much more quickly than I supposed.—As for Ferragus—that is the name I gave him—he is really the most beautiful creature you can imagine. The hair on his feet is like the down on a young eagle; he is as active as a goat and as gentle as a lamb. You will enjoy above all things taking a gallop on him when you come here; and, although my passion for equestrianism has grown decidedly cool, I am still very fond of him, for he has a very estimable equine character and I very much prefer him to many human beings. If you could hear his neigh of delight when I go to see him in his stable, and how intelligent his eyes are when he looks at me! I confess that I am touched by those marks of affection, and I put my arm around his neck and kiss him as affectionately, on my word, as if he were a lovely girl.

I had another longing also, more intense, more ardent, more constantly awake, more dearly cherished, upon which I had built a fascinating house of cards in my mind, a palace of chimeras, very often demolished, and reared again with desperate constancy;—it was to have a mistress—a mistress all my own—like the horse.—I cannot say whether the realization of that dream would have cooled my ardor as speedily as the realization of the other; I doubt it. But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I should have grown weary as quickly.—It is a peculiarity of my disposition that I crave so frantically what I desire, although I never do anything to procure it, that if by chance, or by any other means, I attain the object of my desire, I am so afflicted with moral weakness and confused to such an extent, that I feel faint and ill, and have no strength left to enjoy it: so it is that the things that come to me without my having wished for them ordinarily afford me more pleasure than those I have most eagerly coveted.

I am twenty-two years old; I am not virgin.—Alas! nowadays nobody is so at that age—either in body—or in heart—which is much worse.—Aside from those who afford pleasure to men for money, and who ought not to count any more than a bad dream, I have had, here and there, in some dark corner, divers virtuous, or almost virtuous women, neither lovely nor ugly, neither young nor old, such as fall in the way of a young man who has no settled attachment and whose heart is disengaged.—With a little good will and a considerable dose of romantic illusion, you can call that having a mistress, if you choose.—So far as I am concerned, it is impossible, and if I should have a thousand of that sort I should still consider my longing as far from accomplishment as ever.

I have had no mistress, therefore, and my sole desire is to have one.—It is a matter that disturbs me strangely; it isn't an effervescent temperament, a boiling of the blood, the first glow of virility. It is not woman that I want, it is a woman, a mistress; I want her, I will have her, and before long; if I don't succeed, I admit that I shall never get over it and that I shall retain an inward timidity, a secret discouragement that will have a serious influence on the rest of my life.—I shall consider myself lacking in certain respects, inharmonious, incomplete—deformed in mind or heart; for, after all, what I ask is no more than fair, and nature owes it to every man. So long as I fail to gain my end, I shall look upon myself as nothing more than a child, and I shall not have the confidence in myself that I ought to have.—A mistress for myself, that is the toga virilis for a young Roman.

I see so many men, despicable in every respect, with lovely women whose lackeys they are hardly worthy to be, that a blush rises to my cheeks for the women—and for myself.—It gives me a pitiable opinion of women to see them sully themselves with such blackguards who despise and deceive them, rather than bestow themselves upon some loyal, sincere young man who would deem himself very fortunate and would adore them on bended knees; myself, for example. To be sure, that sort of creature frequents salons, struts about in all weathers, and is always sprawling over the back of some easy-chair, while I stay at home, with my face against the window-pane, watching the river steam and the mist rise, while rearing silently in my heart the perfumed sanctuary, the marvellous temple in which I am to set up the future idol of my soul.—A chaste and poetical occupation which makes women feel as little kindly toward you as possible.

Women have very little liking for contemplative men and take strangely to those who put their ideas into action. After all, they are not wrong. Compelled by their education and social position to hold their tongues and to wait, they naturally prefer those men who come to them and talk, for they relieve them from an unnatural and wearisome silence: I realize all that; but never as long as I live shall I be able to make up my mind, as I see many men do, to leave my seat, walk across a salon and say unexpectedly to a woman: "Your dress makes you look like an angel," or: "Your eyes are particularly bright to-night."

All this does not make it any less essential for me to have a mistress. I don't know who it will be, but I see no one among the women I know who can fill that dignified and important position properly. I find in them but very few of the qualities I must have. Those who are young enough haven't sufficient beauty or charm of mind; those who are young and beautiful are disgracefully and repulsively virtuous or lack the necessary freedom of action; and then there is always some husband or brother about, or a mother or an aunt, or I don't know what, who has big eyes and long ears, and whom one must cajole or throw out of the window.—Every rose has its grub, every woman has heaps of relations whom you must get rid of like the caterpillars on a tree, if you want to pluck the fruit of her beauty some day. There is not one of them, even to the third cousins in the provinces, whom no one has ever seen, who is not determined to maintain his or her dear cousin's immaculate purity in all its snowy whiteness. That is nauseating, and I shall never have the necessary patience to tear up all the rank weeds and lop off the thorns that fatally obstruct the approaches to a pretty woman.

I don't care much for mammas and I care still less for little girls. I must confess, too, that married women have very moderate attractions for me.—There is a confusion and mixture in the latter case that disgust me; I cannot endure the idea of going shares. The woman who has a husband and a lover is a prostitute to one of them, often to both, and then I could never consent to give place to another. My natural pride would be incapable of stooping to such degradation. Never will I go away because another man is coming. Though the woman should be compromised and ruined, though we should fight with knives, each with one foot on her body—I would remain.—Secret staircases, closets, wardrobes, and all the machinery of adultery would be poor expedients with me.

I am but little enamored of what is known as virgin purity, the innocence of the flower of life, purity of heart, and other charming things which sound most beautiful in verse; I call it all pure nonsense, ignorance, imbecility, or hypocrisy.—Virgin purity, which consists in sitting on the edge of a chair, with the arms pressed close against the body, the eye on the point of the corset, and in speaking only after permission from its grandparents, the innocence which has a monopoly of uncurled hair and white dresses, the purity of heart which wears the corsage high in the neck, because it has as yet no breast or shoulders, do not seem to me, in very truth, a marvellously tempting pleasure.

I am not at all anxious to teach little fools to say the alphabet of love.—I am not old enough or corrupt enough to take any great pleasure in that. I should have but ill-success, too, for I have never had the knack of teaching anybody, even the things that I knew best. I prefer women who can read freely, you get to the end of the chapter sooner; and in all things, but especially in love, what one must consider, is the end. In that respect I am much like those people who take a novel by the tail and read the conclusion first, being prepared then to go backward to the first page. That method of reading and loving has its charm. One relishes the details better when one's mind is at ease concerning the end, and reversing the natural order of things brings the unexpected to pass.

So young girls and married women are excluded from the category. Therefore we must select our divinity from among the widows.—Alas! I am very much afraid that although we have nothing left but them, we shall still fail to find what we want.

If I should fall in love with one of those pale narcissuses bathed in a warm dew of tears and stooping with melancholy grace over the brand-new marble gravestone of some husband happily and recently deceased, I should certainly be, and in a very short time, as unhappy as the defunct spouse in his lifetime. Widows, however young and charming they may be, have one terrible inconvenience that other women have not; the instant that everything does not go well with them and the slightest cloud floats across the sky of love, they say at once, with a high and mighty, contemptuous manner: "Oh! how you act to-day! You are exactly like monsieur: when we quarrelled he never said anything but that; it's very strange, you have the same tone and the same expression; when you are angry, you can't imagine how much you resemble my husband:—it's enough to make one shudder."—It's very pleasant to have such things thrown in your face point-blank! There are some who carry their impudence to the point of praising the departed like an epitaph and extolling his heart and his leg at the expense of your leg and your—heart.—With women who have only one or several lovers, one has, at all events, the inestimable advantage of never hearing of one's predecessor, which is no trifling consideration. Women have too great an affection for what is proper and legitimate not to be very careful to keep quiet under such circumstances, and all those matters are relegated as speedily as possible to the old records.—It is always understood that one is always a woman's first lover.

I do not consider that there is any serious answer to be made to such a well-founded aversion. It is not that I look upon widows as altogether unpleasing, when they are young and pretty and haven't put off their mourning. There are the little languishing airs, the little tricks of letting the arms fall, bending the neck and puffing up like a half-fledged turtle-dove; a multitude of charming mannerisms prettily veiled behind the transparent mask of crêpe, a coquetry of despair so skilfully managed, sighs so adroitly husbanded, tears that fall so in the nick of time and make the eyes so bright!—Certainly, after my wine, if not before, the liqueur I love best to drink is a lovely, clear, limpid tear trembling at the end of a dark or light eyelash.—How is a man to resist that!—We don't resist it;—and then black is so becoming to women!—The fair skin, poetry aside, turns to ivory, snow, milk, alabaster, to everything pure and white on earth that madrigal-makers can use: the dark skin has only a dash of brown, full of animation and fire.—Mourning is good fortune for a woman, and the reason why I shall never marry is that I am afraid my wife would get rid of me in order to wear mourning for me.—There are women, however, who do not know how to make the most of their affliction and who weep in such a way as to make their noses red and to distort their features so that they look like the grotesque figures we see on fountains: that's a great stumbling-block. A woman must have many charms and much art to weep agreeably; lacking those, she runs the risk of not being consoled for a long time.—Nevertheless, great as the pleasure may be of making some Artemisia unfaithful to the shade of her Mausolus, I do not intend to choose definitely, from among the lamenting swarm, the one whom I will ask to give me her heart in exchange for mine.

I hear you say at that: "Whom will you take, then?—You won't have unmarried girls nor married women, nor widows.—You don't love mammas; I don't imagine that you love grandmammas any better.—Whom in the devil do you love?"—That is the key to the charade, and if I knew it I should not torment myself so. Thus far I have never loved any woman, but I have loved and I do love love. Although I have had no mistresses and the women I have had have aroused in me nothing but desire, I have felt and I know the sensation of love itself: I do not love this one or that one, one rather than another, but some one I have never seen, who must exist somewhere, and whom I shall find, God willing. I know what she looks like, and when I meet her I shall know her.

I have very often imagined the place she lives in, the dress she wears, the color of her eyes and her hair.—I can hear her voice; I should know her step among a thousand others, and if, by chance, any one should mention her name, I should turn to look; it is impossible that she should not have one of five or six names I have assigned to her in my head.

She is twenty-six years old—no more, neither less nor more.—She is not ignorant and she has not yet become blasé. It is a charming age at which to make love as it should be made, without puerile nonsense and without libertinage.—She is of medium height. I don't like a giant or a dwarf. I want to be able to carry my deity from the sofa to the bed without assistance; but it would be unpleasant to me to have to hunt for her there. She must be just tall enough to put her mouth to mine for a kiss by standing on tiptoe. That is the proper height. As for her size, she is rather plump than thin. I am a little of a Turk on that point, and it would be very disagreeable to me to find an angle where I was looking for a rounded outline; a woman's skin should be well filled out, her flesh hard and firm as the pulp of an almost ripe peach: the mistress I shall have is made in just that way. She is a blonde with black eyes, the fair skin of a blonde and the rich coloring of a brunette, something red and sparkling in her smile. The lower lip a little thick, the pupil of the eye swimming in a sea of aqueous humor, the throat well-rounded and small, the wrists slender, the hands long and plump, the gait undulating like a snake rearing on its tail, the hips full and flexible, the shoulders broad, the back of the neck covered with down;—a refined and yet healthy style of beauty, animated and graceful, poetic and human; a sketch by Giorgione executed by Rubens.

This is her costume! she wears a dress of scarlet or black velvet slashed with white satin or cloth of silver, an open corsage, a huge ruff à la Medici, a felt hat, capriciously dented like Helena Systerman's, and long white feathers crisp and curled, a gold chain or a stream of diamonds around her neck, and on all her fingers a number of large rings of various enamels.

I would not waive a single ring or bracelet. The dress must be of velvet or brocade; if I should allow her to descend to satin, it would be the utmost concession I would make. I would rather rumple a silk skirt than a cotton one, and pull pearls or feathers from a head than natural flowers or a simple knot of ribbon; I am aware that the lining of the cotton skirt is often at least as appetizing as that of the silk skirt; but I prefer the latter.—And so, in my dreams, I have taken for my mistress many queens, many empresses, many princesses, many sultanas, many famous courtesans, but never middle-class women or shepherdesses; and in my most vagabond desires, I have never taken advantage of any one on a carpet of turf or in a bed of Aumale serge. I consider that beauty is a diamond which should be mounted and set in solid gold. I cannot imagine a lovely woman who has not a carriage, horses, servants, and everything that one has with a hundred thousand francs a year: there is a certain harmony between beauty and wealth. One demands the other; a pretty foot calls for a pretty shoe, a pretty shoe calls for carpets and a carriage, and so on. A lovely woman with mean clothes in a wretched house is, to my mind, the most painful spectacle one can see, and I could never fall in love with her. Only the comely and the rich can fall in love without making themselves ridiculous or pitiable.—On that principle few people have the right to fall in love: I myself should be shut out first of all; however, that's my opinion.

It will be evening when we meet for the first time—during a lovely sunset;—the sky will have the bright orange-yellow and pale-green tints that we see in some pictures by the great masters of the old days: there will be a broad avenue of chestnuts in flower and venerable elms all covered with ringdoves—lovely trees clothed in cool dark green, shadows full of mystery and moisture; here and there a statue or two, some marble vases, standing out in their snowy whiteness against the background of verdure, and a sheet of water in which the familiar swan disports itself—and in the background a château of brick and stone as in the days of Henri IV., pointed, slate-covered roof, tall chimneys, weather-cocks on every gable, long, narrow windows.—At one of the windows, leaning in melancholy mood upon the balcony rail, stands the queen of my heart in the costume I described to you a moment ago; behind her is a little negro carrying her fan and her parrot.—You see that nothing is lacking and that it is all utterly absurd.—The fair one drops her glove;—I pick it up, kiss it and return it. We engage in conversation; I display all the wit that I do not possess; I say some charming things; she answers me, I retort; it is a display of fireworks, a luminous shower of dazzling repartee.—In short, I am adorable—and adored.—The supper hour arrives, she invites me to join her;—I accept.—What a supper, my dear friend, and what a cook my imagination is!—The wine laughs in the crystal goblet, the white and gold pheasant smokes in a platter bearing her crest: the feast is prolonged far into the night and you can imagine that I don't finish up the night at home.—Isn't that a fine bit of imaginative work?—Nothing in the world could be simpler, and upon my word it's very surprising that it doesn't happen ten times rather than once.

Chapter I—What a supper——The wine laughs in the crystal goblet, the white and gold pheasant smokes in a platter bearing her crest: the feast is prolonged far into the night and you can imagine that I don't finish up the night at home.

Sometimes it is in a great forest.—The hunt sweeps by; the horn rings out, the pack gives tongue and crosses the path with the swiftness of lightning; the fair one in a riding habit is mounted on a Turkish horse, white as milk, spirited and swift beyond words. Although she is an excellent horsewoman, he paws and curvets and rears, and she has all the difficulty in the world in holding him; he takes the bit in his teeth and rushes straight toward a precipice with her. I fall from heaven for the express purpose of saving her, I stop the horse, I catch the swooning princess in my arms, I bring her to herself and escort her to her château. What well-born woman would refuse her heart to a man who has risked his life for her?—None;—and gratitude is a cross-cut that leads very quickly to love.

You will agree, at all events, that when I go into romance, I don't stop half-way, and that I am as mad as it is possible for a man to be. That is as it should be, for nothing in the world is more sickening than rational madness. You will agree also that, when I write letters, they are volumes rather than simple notes. I love whatever goes beyond ordinary bounds in everything.—That is why I love you. Don't laugh too much at all the nonsense I have scribbled; I lay aside my pen to carry some of it into execution; for I recur always to my refrain! I mean to have a mistress. I cannot say whether it will be the lady of the park or the lady of the balcony, but I bid you farewell to go in quest of her. My mind is made up. Though she whom I seek should hide herself in the heart of the kingdom of Cathay or Samarcand, I shall find a way to dislodge her. I will let you know of the success or non-success of my undertaking. I hope that it will be success: give me your prayers, my dear friend. As for myself, I dress up in my best coat, and go out of the house determined not to return except with such a mistress as I have in my mind.—I have dreamed long enough; now to work.

P.S.—Tell me something about little D——; what has become of him? no one here knows anything about him; and give my compliments to your good brother and all the family.