feigned disquiet and jealousy; I shed false tears, and called to my lips swarms of affected smiles. I attired this puppet of love in the richest stuffs; I made it walk in the avenues of my parks; I invited all my birds to sing as it passed, and all my dahlias and daturas to salute it by bending their heads; I had it cross my lake on the silvery back of my darling swan; I concealed myself within, and lent it my voice, my wit, my beauty, my youth, and gave it so seductive an appearance that the reality was not so good as my falsehood.
“When the time comes to shiver this hollow statue I shall do it in such a way that he will believe all the wrong to be on my side, and will be spared remorse. I shall myself give the prick of the pin through which the air that fills this balloon will escape. Is this not meritorious and honorable deception? I have a crystal urn containing a few tears which I collected at the moment when they were about to fall. They are my jewel-box and diamonds, and I shall present them to the angel who comes to take me away to God.”
Theodore-“They are the most beautiful that could shine on a woman's neck. The ornaments of a queen have less value. For my part I think that the liquid poured by Magdalene upon the feet of Christ was made up of the former tears of those whom she had comforted, and I think, too, that it is with such tears as these that the Milky Way is strewn, and not, as was pretended, with Juno's milk. Who will do for you what you have done for him?”
Rosette-“No one, alas! since you cannot.”
Theodore-“Ah! dear soul, to think that I cannot! But do not lose hope. You are still beautiful, and very young. You have many avenues of flowering limes and acacias to traverse before you reach the damp road bordered with box and leafless trees, which leads from the porphyry tomb where your beautiful dead years will be buried, to the tomb of rough and moss-covered stone into which they will hastily thrust the remains of what was once you, and the wrinkled, tottering spectres of the days of your old age. Much of the mountain of life is still left for you to climb, and it will be long ere you come to the zone of snow. You have only arrived at the region of aromatic plants, of limpid cascades wherein the iris hangs her tri-colored arch, of beautiful green oaks and scented larches. Mount a little higher, and from there, on the wider horizon which will be displayed at your feet, you shall perhaps see the bluish. smoke rising from the roof Where sleeps the man who is to love you. Life must not be despaired of at the very beginning; vistas of what we had ceased to look for are opened up thus in our destiny.
“Man in his life has often reminded me of a pilgrim following the snail-like staircase in a Gothic tower. The long granite serpent winds its coils in the darkness, each scale being a step. After a few circumvolutions the little light that came from the door is extinguished. The shadow of the houses that are not passed as yet prevents the airholes from letting in the sun. The walls are black and oozy; it is more like going down into a dungeon never to come forth again than ascending to the turret which from below appeared to you so slender and fine, and covered with laces and embroideries as though it were setting out for a ball.
“You hesitate as to whether you ought to go higher, this damp darkness weighs so heavily on your brow. The staircase makes some further turns and more frequent lucarnes cut out their golden trefoils on the opposite wall. You begin to see the indented gables of the houses, the sculptures in the entablatures, and the whimsical shapes of the chimneys; a few steps more and the eye looks down upon the entire town; it is a forest of spires, steeples and towers which bristle up in every direction, indented, slashed, hollowed, punched and allowing the light to appear through their thousand cuttings. The domes and cupolas are rounded like the breasts of some giantess or the skulls of Titans. The islets of houses and palaces stand out in shaded or luminous slices. A few steps more and you will be on the platform; and then, beyond the town walls, you will see the verdant cultivation, the blue hills and the white sails on the clouded ribbon of the river.
“You are flooded with dazzling light, and the swallows pass and repass near you, uttering little joyous cries. The distant sound of the city reaches you like a friendly murmur, or the buzzing of a hive of bees; all the bells strip their necklaces of sonorous pearls in the air; the winds waft to you the scents from the neighboring forest and from the mountain flowers; there is nothing but light, harmony and perfume. If your feet had become weary, or if you had been seized with discouragement and had remained seated on a lower step, or if you had gone down again altogether, this sight would have been lost to you.
“Sometimes, however, the tower has only a single opening in the middle or above. The tower of your life is constructed in this way; then there is need of more obstinate courage, of perseverance armed with nails that are more hooked, so as to cling in the shadow to the projections of the stones and reach the resplendent trefoil through which the sight may escape over the country; or perhaps the loop-holes have been filled up, or the making of them has been forgotten, and then it is necessary to ascend to the summit; but the higher you mount without seeing, the more immense seems the horizon, and the greater is the pleasure and the surprise.”
Rosette.-“O Theodore, God grant that I may soon come to the place where the window is! I have been following the spiral for a long time through the profoundest night; but I am afraid that the opening has been built up and that I must climb to the summit; and what if this staircase with its countless steps were only to lead to a walled-up door or a vault of freestone?”
Theodore.-” Do not say that, Rosette; do not think it. What architect would construct a staircase that should lead to nothing? Why suppose the gentle architect of the world more stupid and improvident than an ordinary architect? God does not mistake, and He forgets nothing. It is incredible that He should amuse Himself by shutting you up in a long stone tube without outlet or opening, in order to play you a trick. Why do you think that He should grudge poor ants such as we are their wretched happiness of a minute, and the imperceptible grain of millet that falls to them in this broad creation? To do that He should have the ferocity of a tiger or a judge; and, if we were so displeasing to Him, He would only have to tell a comet to turn a little from its path and strangle us with a hair of its tail. Why the deuce do you think that God would divert Himself by threading us one by one on a golden pin, as the Emperor Domitian used to treat flies? God is not a portress, nor a churchwarden, and although He is old, He has not yet fallen into childishness. All such petty viciousness is beneath Him, and He is not silly enough to try to be witty with us and play pranks with us. Courage, Rosette, courage! If you are out of breath, stop a little to recover it, and then continue your ascent: you have, perhaps, only twenty steps to climb in order to reach the embrasure whence you will see your happiness.
Rosette-“Never! oh, never! and if I come to the summit of the tower, it will be only to cast myself from it.”
Theodore-“Drive away, poor afflicted one, these gloomy thoughts which hover like bats about you, and shed the opaque shadow of their wings upon your brow. If you wish me to love you, be happy, and do not weep.” (He draws her gently to him and kisses her on the eyes).
Rosette-“What a misfortune it is to me to have known you! and yet, were it to be done over again, I should still wish to have known you. Your severity has been sweeter to me than the passion of others; and, although you have caused me much suffering, all the pleasure that I have had has come to me from you; through you I have had a glimpse of what I might have been. You have been a lightning-flash in my night, and you have lit up many of the dark places of my soul; you have opened up vistas in my life that are quite new. To you I owe the knowledge of love, unhappy love, it is true; but there is a deep and melancholy charm in loving without being loved, and it is good to remember those who forget us. It is a happiness to be able to love even when you are the only one who loves, and many die without having experienced it, and often the most to be pitied are not those who love.”
Theodore-“They suffer and feel their wounds, but at least they live. They hold to something; they have a star around which they gravitate, a pole to which they eagerly tend. They have something to wish for; they can say to themselves: 'If I arrive there, if I have that, I shall be happy.' They have frightful agonies, but when dying they can at least say to themselves: 'I die for him.' To die thus is to be born again. The really, the only irreparably unhappy ones are those whose foolish embrace takes in the entire universe, those who wish for everything and wish for nothing, and who, if angel or fairy were to descend and say suddenly to them: 'Wish for something and you shall have it,' would be embarrassed and mute.
Rosette.-” If the fairy came, I know what I should ask her.”
Theodora-“You do, Rosette, and in that respect you are more fortunate than I, for I do not. Vague desires stir within me which blend together, and give birth to others which afterwards devour them. My desires are a cloud of birds whirling and hovering aimlessly; your desire is an eagle who has his eyes on the sun, and who is prevented by the lack of air from rising on his outstretched wings. Ah! if I could know what I want; if the idea which pursues me would extricate itself clear and precise from the fog that envelops it; if the fortunate or fatal star would appear in the depths of my sky; if the light which I am to follow, whether perfidious will-o'-the-wisp or hospitable beacon, would come and be radiant in the night; if my pillar of fire would go before me, even though it were across a desert without manna and without springs; if I knew whither I am going, though I were only to come to a precipice! — I would rather have the mad riding of accursed huntsmen through quagmires and thickets than this absurd and
