have plunged my mouth into hers, and steeped my arms in her hair, and how closely I have strained her round and supple form! Like the ancient Salmacis enamoured of the young Hermaphrodite, I strove to blend her frame with mine; I drank her breath and the tepid tears caused by voluptuousness to overflow from the brimming chalice of her eyes. The more she drew me towards her, and the closer our embraces, the less I loved her. My soul, seated mournfully, gazed with an air of pity on this lamentable marriage to which she was not invited, or veiling her face in disgust, wept silently beneath the skirt of her cloak. All this comes perhaps from the fact that in reality I do not love Rosette, worthy as she is of being loved, and wishful as I am to love her.
“To get rid of the idea that I was myself, I devised very strange surroundings, in which it was altogether improbable that I would encounter myself, and not being able to cast my individuality to the dogs, I endeavored to place it in such a different element that it would recognize itself no longer. I had but indifferent success, and this devil of a self pursues me obstinately; there are no means of getting rid of it. I cannot resort to telling it like other intruders that I am out, or that I have gone to the country.
“When my mistress has been in her bath, I have tried to play the Triton. The sea was a very large tub of marble. As to the Nereid, what was seen of her accused the water, all transparent as it was, of not being sufficiently so for the exquisite beauty of what it concealed. I have been with her, too, at night by the light of the moon in a gondola accompanied by music.
“This would be common enough at Venice, but it is not at all so here. In her carriage, flying along at full gallop, amid the noise of the wheels, with leaps and joltings, now lit up by the lamps, and now plunged into the most profound darkness, I have loaded her with caresses and found a pleasure therein which I advise you taste. But I was forgetting that you are a venerable patriarch, and that you do not go in for such refinements. I have come into her house through the window with the key of the door in my pocket I have made her come to me at noon-day; and, in short, I have compromised her in such a fashion that nobody now (myself, of course, excepted) has any doubt that she is my mistress.
“By reason of all these devices, which, if I were not so young, would look like the expedients of a worn-out libertine, Rosette worships me chiefly and above all others. She sees in them the eagerness of a petulant love which nothing can restrain, and which is the same notwithstanding the diversity of times and places. She sees in them the constantly reviving effect of her charms, and the triumph of her beauty; truly, I wish that she were right, and to be just, it is neither my fault nor hers that she is not.
“The only respect in which I wrong her is that I am myself. If I were to tell her this, the child would very quickly reply that it is just my greatest merit in her eyes; which would be more kind than sensible.
“Once-it was at the beginning of our union-I believed that I had attained my end, for one minute I believed that I had loved-I did love. Oh! my friend, I have never lived save during that minute, and had that minute been an hour I should have become a god. We had both gone out on horseback, I on my dear Ferragus, she on a mare as white as snow, and with the look of a unicorn, so slim were its legs and so slender its neck. We were following a large avenue of elms of prodigious height; the sun was descending upon us lukewarm and golden, sifted, through the slashings in the foliage; lozenges of ultramarine sparkled here and there through the dappled clouds, great lines of pale blue strewed the edge of the horizon, changing into an apple green of exquisite tenderness when they met with the orange-colored tints of the west. The aspect of the heavens was charming and strange, the breeze brought to us an odor of wild flowers that was ravishing in the extreme. From time to time a bird rose before us, and crossed the avenue singing.
“The bell of a village that was not visible was gently ringing the Angelas, and the silver sounds, which reached us weakened by the distance, were infinitely sweet. Our animals were at a walk, and were going so equally side by side, that one was not in advance of the other. My heart expanded, and my soul overflowed my body. I had never been so happy. I said nothing, nor did Rosette, and yet we had never understood each other so well. We were so close together that my leg was touching the body of Rosette's horse. I leaned over to her, and passed my arm about her waist; she made the same movement on her side, and laid back her head on my shoulder. Our lips clung together; oh! what a chaste and delicious kiss! Our horses were still walking with their bridles floating on their necks. I felt Rosette's arm relax, and her loins yield more and more. For myself I was growing weak, and was ready to swoon. Ah! I can assure you that at that moment I thought little of whether I was myself or another. We went thus as far as the end of the avenue, when the noise of feet made us abruptly resume our positions; it was some people of our acquaintance, also on horseback, who came up and spoke to us. If I had had pistols, I believe that I should have fired upon them.
“I looked at them with a gloomy and furious air, which must have appeared very singular to them. After all, I was wrong to become so angry with them, for they had, without intending it, done me the service of interrupting my pleasure at the very moment when, by reason of its own intensity, it was on the point of becoming a pain, or of sinking beneath its own violence. The science of stopping in time is not regarded with all the respect which is its due. Sometimes when toying with a woman you pass your arm around her waist; it is at first most voluptuous to feel the gentle warmth of her frame, to come almost in contact with her soft and velvety flesh, the polished ivory of her skin, and to watch the heaving of her swelling and quivering breast. The fair one falls asleep in this amorous and charming position; the curve of her body becomes less pronounced, her breast becomes calm; her sides heave with the larger and more regular respiration of sleep; her muscles relax, her head rolls over in her hair.
“Your arm, however, is pressed more than before, and you begin to perceive that it is a woman and not a sylphid; yet you would not take away your arm for anything in the world, and for this there are many reasons. First, it is rather dangerous to awake a woman who has fallen asleep beside you; you must be prepared to substitute for the delicious dream that she has been having a reality more delicious still. Secondly, by asking her to raise herself that you may withdraw your arm, you tell her indirectly that she is heavy and in your way, which is not polite, or perhaps you give her to understand that you are weak or fatigued-a most humiliating thing for you, and one which will prejudice you infinitely in her mind. Thirdly, you believe that as you have experienced pleasure in this position, you may do so again by maintaining it, and in this you are mistaken. The poor arm finds itself caught beneath the mass that oppresses it, the blood stops, the nerves twitch, and the numbness pricks you with its millions of needles. You are a sort of little Milo of Crotona, and the surface of your couch and the back of your divinity represent with sufficient exactness the two parts of the tree which are joined together again. Day comes at last to release you from this martyrdom, and you leap down from this rack with more eagerness than any husband displays in descending from the nuptial stage.
“Such is the history of many passions.
“It is that of all pleasures.
“Be that as it may, in spite of the interruption, or by reason of it, never did such voluptuousness pass over my head; I really felt myself to be another. The soul of Rosette had entered in its integrity into my body. My soul had left me, and filled her heart as her own soul filled mine. No doubt they had met on the way in that long equestrian kiss, as Rosette afterwards called it (which, by the way, annoyed me), and had crossed each other, and mingled together as intimately as is possible for the souls of two mortal creatures on a grain of perishable mud.
“The angels must surely embrace one another thus, and the true paradise is not in the sky, but on the lips of one we love.
“I have waited in vain for a similar moment, and I have tried, but without success, to provoke its return. We have very often gone to ride in the avenue of the wood during beautiful sunsets; the trees had the same verdure, the birds were singing the same song, but the sun looked dull to us, and the foliage yellowed; the singing of the birds seemed harsh and discordant, for there was no longer harmony within ourselves. We have brought our horses to a walk, and we have tried the same kiss. Alas I our lips only were united, and it was but the spectre of the old kiss. The beautiful, the sublime, the divine, the only true kiss that I have ever given and received in my life had disappeared forever. Since that day I have always returned from the wood with a depth of inexpressible sadness. Rosette, gay and playful as she usually is, cannot escape from the impression of this, and her reverie is betrayed by a little, delicately wrinkled pout, which at the least is worth her smile.
“There is scarcely anything but the fumes of wine, and the brilliancy of wax-candles that can recall me from these melancholy thoughts. We both drink like persons condemned to death, silently and continually, until we have reached the necessary dose; then we begin to laugh and to make fun most heartily of what we call our sentimentality.
“We laugh-because we cannot weep. Ah! who will cause a tear to spring in the depths of my exhausted eye?
“Why had I so much pleasure that evening? It would be very difficult to say. Nevertheless I was the same
