“Rosette-'If I am in your way, I will get up. Ah, heart of rock, drops of water pierce the stone, and my tears cannot penetrate you!' (She weeps.)
“Myself-'If you weep like that, you will certainly turn our bed into a bath. A bath? I should say into an ocean. Can you swim, Rosette?'
“Rosette-'Villain!'
“Myself-'Well! all at once I am a villain! You flatter me, Rosette, I have not the honor: I am a gentle citizen, alas, and have never committed the smallest crime; I have done a foolish thing, perhaps, which was to love you to distraction; that is all. Would you absolutely make me repent of it? I have loved you, and I love you as much as I can. Since I have been your lover, I have always walked in your shadow: I have given up all my time to you, my days and my nights. I have not used lofty phrases with you, because I do not like them except in writing; but I have given you a thousand proofs of my fondness. I will say nothing to you of the most scrupulous fidelity, for that is of course. I have become seven quarters of a pound thinner since you have been my adoration. What more would you have? Here I am by your side; do people behave in this way with those whom they do not love? I do everything that you wish. You say “Go,” and I go; “Stay,” and I stay. I am the most admirable lover in the world, it seems to me.”
“Rosette-'That is just what I complain about-the most perfect lover in the world, in fact.'
“Myself-'What have you to reproach me with?'
“Rosette-'Nothing, and I would rather have some cause of complaint against you.'
“Myself-'This is a strange quarrel.'
“Rosette-'It is much worse. You do not love me. I cannot help it nor can you. What would you have done in such a case? Unquestionably I should prefer to have some fault to pardon in you. I would scold you; you would excuse yourself well or ill, and we should make it up.'
“Myself-'It would be all to your advantage. The greater the crime the more splendid would the reparation be.”
“Rosette-'You are quite aware, sir, that I am not yet reduced to employ that expedient, and that if I pleased presently, although you do not love me, and we are quarrelling….”
“Myself-'Yes, I acknowledge it as purely an effect of your clemency. Do please a little; it would be better than syllogizing at random as we are doing.
“Rosette-'You wish to cut short a conversation which is inconvenient to you; but, if you please, my fine friend, we shall content ourselves with speaking!'
“Myself-'It is an entertainment that does not cost much. I assure you that you are wrong; for you are wonderfully pretty, and I feel towards you…”
“Rosette-'What you will express to me another time.'
“Myself-'Oh come, adorable one, are you a little Hyrcanian tigress? You are incomparably cruel to-day! Are you eager to become a vestal? It would be an original caprice.
“Rosette-'Why not? There have been stranger ones than that; but I shall certainly be a vestal for you. Learn, sir, that I am partial only to people who love me, or by whom I believe myself loved. You do not come under either of these two denominations. Allow me to rise!'
“Myself-'If you get up, I shall get up as well. You will have the trouble of getting into bed again: that is all.
“Rosette-'Let me alone!”
“Myself-'By heavens, no!'
“Rosette (struggling)-' Oh! you will let me go!'
“Myself-'I venture, madame, to assure you of the contrary.
“Rosette (seeing that she is not the stronger)-'Well! I will stay; you are squeezing my arm with such force! — What do you want with me?'
“Myself-'To remain where you are. I think you might have divined this much without asking any such superfluous question.
“Rosette (already finding it impossible to defend herself)-' On condition that you will love me a great deal- I surrender.
“Myself-'It is rather late to surrender when the enemy is already victorious.
“Rosette (throwing her arms round my neck)-'Then I surrender unconditionally-I trust to your generosity.
“Myself-'You do well.'
“The ray of sunshine has had time to make the circuit of the room since the beginning of this scene. An odor of lime-trees comes in from the garden, sweet and penetrating. The weather is the finest that could be seen; the sky is as blue as an Englishwoman's eye We get up, and after breakfasting with great appetite, go for a long rural walk. The transparency of the air, the splendor of the country, and the joyous aspect of nature inspired my soul with enough sentimentality and tenderness to make Rosette acknowledge that after all I had a sort of heart like other people.
“Have you never remarked how the shade of woods, the murmuring of fountains, the singing of birds, smiling prospects, fragrance of foliage and flowers, all the baggage of eclogue and description which we have agreed to laugh at, none the less preserves over us, however depraved we may be, an occult power which it is impossible to resist? I will confide to you, under the seal of the greatest secret, that quite recently I surprised myself in a state of most countrified emotion towards a nightingale that was singing.
“It was in — 's garden; although it was night, the sky had a clearness nearly equal to that of the finest day; it was so deep and so transparent that the gaze easily penetrated to God. It seemed to me that I could see the last folds of angels' robes floating over the pale windings of the Milky Way. The moon had risen, but a large tree hid her completely; she riddled its dark foliage with a million little luminous holes, and hung more spangles upon it than had ever the fan of a marchioness. Silence, filled with sounds and stifled sighs, was heard throughout the garden (this perhaps resembles pathos, but it is not my fault); although I saw nothing but the blue glimmering of the moon I seemed to be surrounded by a population of unknown and worshipped phantoms, and I did not feel alone, although there was only myself on the terrace.
“I was not thinking, I was not dreaming, I was blended with the nature that surrounded me; I felt myself quiver with the foliage, glisten with the water, shine, with the ray, expand with the flower; I was not myself more than the trees, the water, and the great night-shade. I was all of these, and I do not believe that it would be possible to be more absent from one's self than I was at that moment. All at once, as though something extraordinary were going to happen, the leaf was stilled at the end of the branch, the water-drop in the fountain remained suspended in air, and did not complete its fall; the silver thread which had set out from the edge of the moon stopped on its way-only my heart beat so sonorously that it seemed to fill all that great space with sound. It ceased to beat, and there fell such a silence that you might have heard the grass grow, and a word whispered at a distance of two hundred leagues. Then from the little throat of the nightingale, which probably was only waiting for this moment to begin its song, there burst a note so shrill and piercing that I heard it with my heart as much as with my ears. The sound spread suddenly through the crystalline sky, which was void of noise, and formed a harmonious atmosphere, wherein, beating their wings, hovered the other notes which followed.
“I understood perfectly what it said, as though I had had the secret of the language of the birds. It was the history of the loves which had not been mine that this nightingale sang. Never was a history more accurate and true. It did not omit the smallest detail or the most imperceptible tint. It told me what I had been unable to tell myself, and explained to me what I had been unable to understand; it gave a voice to my dreaming, and caused the phantom, mute until then, to reply. I knew that I was loved, and the most languishing trilling taught me that I should be happy soon. I thought that through the quivering song, and beneath the rain of notes, I could see the white arms of my beloved stretched out towards me in a ray from the moon. She came up slowly with the perfume from the heart of a large hundred-leaved rose.
“I shall not try to describe her beauty. It was one of those things to which words are denied. How speak the unspeakable? how paint that which has neither form nor color? how mark a voice which is without tone and speech? Never had I had so much love in my heart; I would have pressed nature to my bosom. I clasped the void in my arms as though I had closed them on a maiden's form; I gave kisses to the air that passed across my lips; I swam in effluence from my own radiant body. Ah! if Rosette had been there! What adorable nonsense would I have uttered
