“Originally, I could scarcely disguise the contempt with which they inspired me, but by degrees I became accustomed to their manner of life. I was as little annoyed by the jests that they launched against women as if I had myself belonged to their own sex. On the contrary, I made some very good ones, the success of which singularly flattered my pride; certainly none of my comrades went so far as I did in the matter of sarcasm and pleasantries on this subject. My perfect knowledge of the ground gave me a great advantage, and, besides any piquant turn that they might have, my epigrams shone in virtue of an accuracy that was often wanting in theirs. For although all the evil that is said of women has always some foundation, it is nevertheless difficult for men to preserve the composure requisite in order to jest about them well, and there is often a good deal of love in their invectives.
“I remarked that it was those that were most tender and had most feeling about women who treated them worse than the rest, and who returned to the subject with quite a peculiar bitterness as though they owed them a mortal grudge for not being what they wished them to be, and for falsifying the good opinion they had first formed about them.
“What I desired above all things was not physical beauty, it was beauty of the soul, love; but love, as I am sensible of it, is perhaps beyond human possibilities. And yet it seems to me that I should love in this way, and that I should give more than I require.
“What magnificent madness! what sublime extravagance!
“To surrender yourself entirely without any self-reservation, to renounce the possession of yourself and the freedom of your will, to place the latter in the hands of another, to see only with his eyes and hear only with his ears, to be but one in two bodies, to blend and mingle your souls so that you cannot tell whether you are yourself or the other, to absorb and radiate continually, to be now the moon and now the sun, to see the whole of the world and of creation in a single being, to displace the centre of life, to be ready, at any time, for the greatest sacrifices and the most absolute abnegation, to suffer in the bosom of the person loved as though it were your own; O wonder! to double yourself while giving yourself-such is love as I conceive it.
“Fidelity like that of the ivy, entwinings as of the young vine, and cooings as of the turtle-dove, these are matters of course, and are the first and simplest conditions.
“Had I remained at home, in the costume of my sex, turning my wheel with melancholy or making tapestry behind a pane in the embrasure of a window, what I have sought for through the world would perhaps have come and found me of itself. Love is like fortune, and dislikes to be pursued. It visits by preference those that are sleeping on the edge of wells, and the kisses of queens and gods often descend upon closed eyes. It is a lure and a deception to think that all adventures and all happiness exist only in those places where you are not, and it is a miscalculation to have your horse saddled and to post off in quest of your ideal. Many people make, and many others will again make this mistake. The horizon is always of the most charming azure, although when you reach it the hills composing it are usually but poor, cracked clay, or ochre washed by the rain.
“I had imagined that the world was full of adorable youths, and that populations of Esplandians, Amadises, and Lancelots of the Lake were to be met with on the roads in pursuit of their Dulcineas; and I was greatly astonished that the world took very little heed of this sublime search and was content to share the couch of the first prostitute that came in the way. I am well punished for my curiosity and distrust. I. am surfeited in the most horrible manner possible without having enjoyed. With me knowledge has gone before use; nothing can be worse than such premature experiences which are not the fruit of action.
“The completest ignorance would be a thousand times better; it would at least make you do many foolish things which would serve to instruct you and to rectify your ideas; for, beneath the disgust of which I have been speaking, there is always a lively and rebellious element which produces the strangest disorders; the mind is vanquished, but the body is not, and will not subscribe to this superb disdain. The young and robust body strives and kicks beneath the mind like a vigorous stallion ridden by a feeble old man, whom, however, he is unable to throw, for the cavesson holds his head and the bit tears his mouth.
Since I have lived with men, I have seen so many women basely betrayed, so many secret connections imprudently divulged, the purest loves dragged carelessly through the mire, young fellows hastening to frightful courtesans on leaving the arms of the most charming mistresses, the most firmly established amours suddenly broken off without any plausible motive, that I now find it impossible to decide on taking a lover. It would be to throw oneself in broad daylight and with open eyes into a bottomless abyss. Nevertheless, the secret desire of my heart is still to have one. The voice of nature stifles the voice of reason. I am quite sensible that I shall never be happy if I cannot love and be loved:-but the misfortune is that only a man can be had as a lover, and if men are not altogether devils, they are very far from being angels. It would be vain for them to stick feathers on their shoulder- blades, and put a glory of gilt paper on their heads: I know them too well to be deceived. All the fine things that they could whisper to me would be of no avail. I know beforehand what they are going to say, and could say it for them.
“I have seen them studying their parts and rehearsing them before going on in front; I know the chief of the tirades that they intend to be effective and the passages on which they rely. Neither paleness of face nor alteration of feature would convince me. I know that these prove nothing. A night of orgy, a few bottles of wine, and two or three girls, are sufficient to wrinkle your face most becomingly. I have seen this trick practiced by a young marquis, by nature very rosy and fresh-colored, who found himself all the better for it, and owed the crowning of his passion only to this touching and well-gained paleness. I know also how the most languorous Celadons console themselves for the harshness of their Astiwas and find means for being patient while waiting for the happy hour. I have seen sluts serving as substitutes for chaste Ariadnes.
“Truly, after this, man tempts me but little; for he does not possess beauty like woman, beauty, that splendid garment which so well disguises the imperfections of the soul, that divine drapery cast by God over the nakedness of the world, and which makes it in some measure excusable to love the vilest courtesan of the kennel if she owns this magnificent and royal gift.
“In default of the virtues of the soul, I should at least wish for exquisite perfection of form, satinity of flesh, roundness of contour, sweetness of line, delicacy of skin, all that makes the charm of women. Since I cannot have love, I would have voluptuousness, and, well or ill, replace the brother by the sister. But all the men that I have seen seem to me frightfully ugly. My horse is a hundred times more handsome, and I should have less repugnance to kissing him than to kissing sundry wonderful fellows who believe themselves very charming. Certainly a fop like those of my acquaintance would not be a brilliant theme for me to embellish with variations of pleasure.
“A soldier would suit me nearly as little; military men have something mechanical in their walk and something bestial in their face which makes me look upon them as scarcely human creatures; gentlemen of the long robe are not more delightful to me, they are dirty, oily, shaggy, threadbare, with glaucous eyes and lipless mouths; they smell immoderately rancid and mouldy, and I should feel no inclination to lay my face against their lynx or badgerlike muzzles. As to poets, they think of nothing in the world but the endings of words and go no further back than to the penultimate, and, in truth, are difficult to make use of suitably; they are more wearisome than the others, but they are as ugly and have not the least distinction or elegance in their figure and dress, which is truly singular: — men who are occupied the whole day with form and beauty do not perceive that their boots are badly made and their hats ridiculous! They look like country apothecaries or teachers of learned dogs out of work, and would give you a distaste for poetry and verse for several eternities.
“As for painters, their stupidity also is enormous; they see nothing except the seven colors. One with whom I had spent a few days at E-, and who was asked what he thought of me, made this ingenious reply: 'He is rather warm in tone, and in the shadows pure Naples yellow should be employed instead of white, with a little Gassel ochre and reddish brown.' Such was his opinion, and, moreover, his nose was crooked and his eyes like his nose; which did not improve his chances. Whom shall I take? — a soldier with bulging crop, a limb of the law with convex shoulders, a poet or painter with a wild look, a lean little coxcomb without consistence? Which cage shall I choose in this menagerie? I am quite unable to say; I feel as little inclination in one direction as in another, for they are as perfectly equal in point of foolishness and ugliness as they can possibly be.
“Another alternative would still be open to me, which would be to take any one that I loved though he were a porter or a jockey; but I do not love even a porter. O unhappy heroine that I am! unmated turtle-dove condemned eternally to utter elegiac cooings!
“Oh! how many times have I wished to be really a man as I appear to be! How many women are there with whom I should have had a fellow-feeling, and whose hearts would have understood mine! how perfectly happy should I have been rendered by those delicacies of love, those note flights of pure passion to which I could have
