happy lover that you are, that you do not even know whether your mistress's type is Greek or Asiatic, English or Italian. O Silvio! how rare are the hearts that are satisfied with love pure and simple and desire neither a hermitage in the forests, nor a garden on an island in Lake Maggiore.
If I had the courage to tear myself from here, I would go and spend a month with you; it might be that I should be purified in the air that you breathe, and that the shadows of your avenues would shed a little freshness on my burning brow; but no, it is a paradise wherein I must not set my foot. Scarcely should I be permitted to gaze from a distance over the wall at the two beautiful angels walking in it, hand in hand and eye to eye. The demon cannot enter into Eden save in the form of a serpent, and, dear Adam, for all the happiness in heaven, I would not be the serpent to your Eve.
“What fearful work has been wrought in my soul of late? who has turned my blood and changed it into venom? Monstrous thought, spreading thy pale green branches and thy hemlock umbels in the icy shadow of my heart, what poisoned wind has lodged there the germ whence thou art sprung? It was this then that was reserved for me, it was to this that all the paths, so desperately essayed, were to lead me! O fate, how thou dost mock us! All the eagle-flights towards the sun, the pure flames aspiring to heaven, the divine melancholy, the love deep and restrained, the religion of beauty, the fancy so curious and graceful, the exhaustless and ever-mounting flood from the internal spring, the ecstasy ever open-winged, the dreaming that bore more blossoms than the hawthorn in May, all the poetry of my youth, all these gifts so beautiful and rare, were only to succeed in placing me beneath the lowest of mankind!
“I wished to love. I went like a madman calling and invoking love; I writhed with rage beneath the feeling of my impotence; I fired my blood, and dragged my body to the sloughs of pleasure; I clasped to suffocation against my arid heart a fair young woman who loved me; I pursued the passion that fled from me. I degraded myself, and acted like a virgin going to an evil place in hope of finding a lover among those brought thither by impure motives, instead of waiting patiently in discreet and silent shadow until the angel reserved for me by God should appear to me with radiant penumbra, a flower from heaven ready to my hand. All the years that I have wasted in childish disquietude, hastening hither and thither, and trying to force nature and time, I ought to have spent in solitude and meditation, in striving to render myself worthy of being loved; that would have been wisely done; but I had scales before my eyes and I walked straight to the precipice. Already I have one foot suspended over the void, and I believe that I shall soon raise the other. My resistance is in vain, I feel it, I must roll to the bottom of the new abyss which has just opened up within me.
“Yes, it was indeed thus that I had imagined love. I now feel that of which I had dreamed. Yes, here is the charming and terrible sleeplessness in which the roses are thistles and the thistles roses; here is the sweet grief and the wretched happiness, the unspeakable trouble which surrounds you with a golden cloud and, like drunkenness, causes the shape of objects to waver before you, the buzzings in the ear wherein there ever rings the last syllable of the well-beloved's name, the paleness, the flushings, the sudden quiverings, the burning and icy sweat; it is indeed thus; the poets do not lie.
“When I am about to enter the drawing-room in which we usually meet, my heart beats with such violence that it might be seen through my dress, and I am obliged to restrain it with both my hands lest it should escape. If I perceive this form at the end of an avenue or in the park, distance is straightway effaced, and the road passes away I know not where; the devil must carry it off or I must have wings. Nothing can divert my attention from it; I read, and the same image comes between the book and my eyes; I ride, I gallop, and I still believe that I can feel in the whirlwind its long hair mingling with mine, and hear its hurried respiration and its warm breath passing lightly over my cheek. This image possesses and pursues me everywhere, and I never see it more than when I see it not.
“You pitied me for not loving, pity me now for loving, and above all for loving whom I love. What a misfortune, what a hatchet-stroke upon my life that was already so mutilated! what senseless, guilty, odious passion has laid hold upon me! It is a shame whose blush will never fade from my brow. It is the most lamentable of all my aberrations, I cannot understand it, I cannot comprehend it at all, everything is confused and upset within me; I can no longer tell who I am or what others are, I doubt whether I am a man or a woman, I have a horror of myself, I experience strange and inexplicable emotions, and there are moments when it seems to me as if my reason were departing, and when the feeling of my existence forsakes me altogether. For a long time I could not believe what was; I listened to myself and watched myself attentively. I strove to unravel the confused skein that was entangled in my soul. At last, through all the veils which enveloped it, I discovered the frightful truth. Silvio, I love-Oh I no, I can never tell you-I love a man.”
IX
It is so. I love a man, Silvio. I long sought to delude myself; I gave a different name to the feeling that I experienced; I clothed it in the garment of pure and disinterested friendship; I believed that it was merely the admiration which I entertain for all beautiful persons and things; for several days I walked in the treacherous, pleasant paths that wander about every waking passion; but I now recognize the profound and terrible road to which I am pledged. There is no means of concealment; I have examined myself thoroughly, and coldly weighed all the circumstances; I have accounted to myself for the smallest detail; I have explored my soul in every direction with the certainty which results from the habit of self-investigation; I blush to think and write about it; but the fact, alas! is only too certain, I love this young man not from friendship but from love;-yes, from love.
“You whom I have loved so much, Silvio, my good, my only comrade, you have never inspired me with a similar feeling, and yet, if ever there was under heaven a close and lively friendship, if ever two souls, though different, understood each other perfectly, it was our friendship and our two souls. What winged hours have we spent together! what talks without end and always too soon terminated! how many things have we said to each other which people have never said to themselves! We had towards each other in our hearts the window which Momus would have liked to open in man's bosom. How proud I was of being your friend, I who was younger than you, I so insane and you so full of reason!
“What I feel towards this young man is truly incredible; no woman has ever troubled me so singularly. The sound of his clear, silvery voice affects my nerves and agitates me in a strange manner; my soul hangs on his lips, like a bee on a flower, to drink in the honey of his words. I cannot brush him as I pass without quivering from head to foot, and when, in the evening, as we are separating, he gives me his soft, satin-like adorable hand, all my life rushes to the spot that he has touched, and an hour afterwards I still feel the pressure of his fingers.
“This morning I gazed at him for a long time without his seeing me. I was concealed behind my curtain. He was at his window which is exactly opposite to mine. This part of the mansion was built at the end of Henri IV.'s reign; it is half brick, half ashlar, according to the custom of the time; the window is long and narrow, with a lintel and balcony of stone. Theodore-for you have no doubt already guessed that it is he who is in question-was resting his elbow on the parapet with a melancholy air, and appeared to be in a profound reverie. A drapery of red, large- flowered damask, which was half caught up, fell in broad folds behind him and served him as a background. How handsome he was, and how marvellously his dark and pale head was set off by the purple tint! Two great clusters of black, lustrous hair, like the grape-bunches of the ancient Erigone, hung gracefully down his cheeks, and framed in a most charming manner the correct delicate oval of his beautiful face. His round, plump neck was entirely bare, and he had on a dressing-gown with broad sleeves which was tolerably like a woman's dress. In his hand he held a yellow tulip, picking it pitilessly to pieces in his reverie and throwing the fragments to the wind.
“One of the luminous angles traced by the sun on the wall chanced to be projected against the window, and the picture was gilded with a warm, transparent tone which would have made Giorgione's most brilliant canvas envious.
“With his long hair stirred softly by the breeze, his marble neck thus uncovered, his ample robe clasped around his waist, and his beautiful hands issuing from their ruffles like the pistils of a flower from the midst of their petals, he looked not the handsomest of men but the most beautiful of women, and I said in my heart-'It is a woman, oh! it is a woman!' Then I suddenly remembered the nonsense which, as you know, I wrote to you a long time ago, respecting my ideal and the manner in which I should assuredly meet with it: the beautiful lady in the Louis XIII. park, the red and white mansion, the large terrace, the avenues of old chestnut trees, and the interview at the window; I once gave you all these details. It was just so, — what I saw was the exact realization of my dream. It was just the style of architecture, the effect of light, the description of beauty, the color and the character
