diver has yet gone down, I may fish up a pearl of the purest water and fit to be the fellow of Cleopatra's; but to do this I should loose the bond that ties me to Rosette, — for it is not probable that I shall realize my wish with her, — and I do not in truth feel the power to do so.
“And then, if I must confess it, I have at bottom a secret and shameful motive which dares not come forth into the light, and which I must nevertheless mention to you, seeing that I have promised to hide nothing from you, and that a confession to be meritorious must be complete-a motive which counts for much amid all this uncertainty. If I break with Rosette, some time must necessarily elapse before she can be replaced, however compliant may be the kind of woman in whom I shall seek for her successor, and with her I have made pleasure a habit which I should find it painful to interrupt. It is of course possible to fall back upon courtesans-I liked them well enough once, and did not spare them on a like emergency-out now they disgust me horribly, and give me nausea. Having tasted of a more refined though still impure passion, such creatures are not again to be thought of. On the other hand, I cannot endure the idea of being one or two months without a woman for my companion. This is egoism, and of a depraved description; but I believe that the most virtuous, if they would be frank, might make somewhat analogous confessions.
“It is in this respect that I am most surely caught, and were it not for this reason, Rosette and I would have quarrelled irreparably long ago. And then in truth it is so mortally wearisome to pay court to a woman that I have no heart for it. To begin again to say all the charming fooleries that I have said so many times already, to re-enact the adorable, to write notes and to reply to them; to escort beauties in the evening two leagues from your own house; to catch cold in your feet and your head before a window while watching for a beloved shadow; to calculate on a sofa how many superposed tissues separate you from your goddess; to carry bouquets and frequent balls only to arrive at my present position-it is well worth the trouble!
“It were as good to remain in one's rut. Why come out of it only to fall again into one precisely similar, after disquieting one's self and doing one's self much harm? If I were in love, matters would take their own course, and all this would seem delightful to me; but I am not, although I have the greatest wish to be so, for after all there is only love in the world; and if pleasure, which is merely its shadow, has such allurements for us, what must the reality be? In what a flood of unspeakable ecstasy, in what lakes of pure delight must those swim whose hearts have been reached by one of its gold-tipped arrows, and who burn with the kindly ardor of a mutual flame!
“By Rosette's side I experienced that dull calm, and that kind of lazy comfort which results from the gratification of the senses, but nothing more; and this is not enough. Often this voluptuous enervation turns to torpor, and this tranquillity to weariness; and I then fall into purposeless absence of mind, and into a kind of dull dreaming which fatigues me and wears me out. It is a condition that I must get out of at all costs.
“Oh! if I could be like certain of my friends who kiss an old glove with intoxication, who are rendered completely happy by a pressure of the hand, who would not exchange a few paltry flowers, half withered by the perspiration of the ball, for a Sultana's jewel-box, who cover with their tears and sew into their shirts, just over their hearts, a note written in wretched style, and stupid enough to have been copied from the 'Complete Letter Writer,' who worship women with big feet, and excuse themselves for doing so on the ground that they have a beautiful soul!
“If I could follow with trembling the last folds of a dress, and wait for the opening of a door that I might see a dear, white apparition pass into a flood of light; if a whispered word made me change color; if I possessed the virtue to forego dining that I might arrive the sooner at a trysting place; if I were capable of stabbing a rival or fighting a duel with a husband; if, by the special favor of heaven, it were given to me to find wit in ugly women, and goodness in those who are both ugly and foolish; if I could make up my mind to dance a minuet and listen to sonatas played by young persons on a harpsichord or harp; if my capacity could reach to the height of understanding ombre and reversis; if, in short, I were a man, and not a poet, I should certainly be much happier than I am; I should be less wearied and less wearisome.
“Only one thing have I ever asked of women-beauty; I am very willing to dispense with wit and soul. For me a woman who is beautiful has always wit; she has the wit to be beautiful, and I know of none that is equal to this. It would take many brilliant phrases and sparkling flashes to make up the worth of the lightning from a beautiful eye. I prefer a pretty mouth to a pretty word, and a well-modelled shoulder to a virtue, even a theological one; I would give fifty souls for a delicate foot, and all our poetry and poets for the hand of Jeanne d'Aragon or the brow of the Virgin of Foligno. I worship beauty of form above all things; beauty is to me visible divinity, palpable happiness, heaven come down upon earth. There are certain undulating outlines, delicate lips, curved eyelids, inclinations of the head, and extended ovals which ravish me beyond all expression, and engage me for whole hours at a time.
“Beauty the only thing that cannot be acquired, inaccessible for ever to those who are without it at first; ephemeral and fragile flower which grows without being sown, pure gift of heaven! O beauty! the most radiant diadem wherewith chance could crown a brow-thou art admirable and precious like all that is beyond the reach of man, like the azure of the firmament, like the gold of the star, like the perfume of the seraphic lily! We may exchange a stool for a throne; we may conquer the world, and many have done so; but who could refrain from kneeling before thee, pure personification of the thought of God?
“I ask for nothing but beauty, it is true; but I must have it so perfect that I shall probably never find it. Here and there I have seen, in a few women, portions that were admirable accompanied by what was commonplace, and I have loved them for the choice parts that they had, without taking the rest into account; it is, however, a rather painful task and sorrowful operation to suppress half of one's mistress in this way, and to mentally amputate whatever is ugly or ordinary in her by confining one's gaze to whatever goodness she may possess. Beauty is harmony, and a person who is equally ugly throughout is often less disagreeable to look at than a woman who is unequally beautiful. No sight gives me so much pain as that of an unfinished masterpiece, or of beauty which is wanting in something; a spot of oil offends less on a coarse drugget than on a rich material.
“Rosette is not bad; she might pass for being beautiful, but she is far from realizing my dream; she is a statue, several portions of which have been finished to a nicety. The rest has not been wrought so clearly out of the block; there are some parts indicated with much delicacy and charm, and others in a more slovenly and negligent fashion. In the eyes of the vulgar the statue appears entirely finished, and its beauty complete; but a more attentive observer discovers many places where the work is not close enough, and outlines which, to attain to the purity that they sought to possess, would need the nail of the workman to pass and re-pass many more times over them; it is for love to polish this marble and complete it, which is as much as to say that it will not be I who will finish it.
“For the rest I do not limit beauty to any particular sinuosity of lines. Mien, gesture, breath, color, tone, perfume, all that life is enters into the composition of my ideal; everything that has fragrance, that sings, or that is radiant belongs to it as a matter of course. I love rich brocades, splendid stuffs with their ample and powerful folds; I love large flowers and scent boxes, the transparency of spring water, the reflecting splendor of fine armor, thoroughbred horses and large white dogs such as we see in the pictures of Paul Veronese. I am a true pagan in this respect, and I in no wise adore gods that are badly made. Although I am not at bottom exactly what is called irreligious, no one is in fact a worse Christian than I.
“I do not understand the mortification of matter which is the essence of Christianity, I think it a sacrilegious act to strike God's handiwork, and I cannot believe that the flesh is bad, since He has Himself formed it with His own fingers and in His own image. I do not approve much of long dark-colored smock-frocks with only a head and two hands emerging from them, and pictures in which everything is drowned in shadow except a radiant countenance. My wish is that the sun should enter everywhere, that there should be as much light and as little shadow as possible, that there should be sparkling color and curving lines, that nudity should be displayed proudly, and that matter should be concealed from none, seeing that, equally with mind, it is an everlasting hymn to the praise of God.
“I can perfectly understand the mad enthusiasm of the Greeks for beauty; and for my part I see nothing absurd in the law which compelled the judges to hear the pleadings of the lawyers in a dark place, lest their good looks and the gracefulness of their gestures and attitude should prepossess them favorably and incline the scale.
“I would buy nothing of an ugly shop woman; I would be more willing to give to beggars whose rags and leanness were picturesque. There is a little feverish Italian as green as a citron, with large black and white eyes which are half his face-you would think it was an unframed Murillo or Espagnolet exposed for sale by a second-hand dealer on the pavement; he always has a penny more than the others. I would never beat a handsome horse or dog, and I should not like to have a friend or a servant who had not an agreeable exterior.
