turned up at the corners, the lips so pure and so firmly cut, so amorous and so inviting for a kiss, the low full brow, the hair undulating like the sea and knotted carelessly behind the head, the firm and lustrous shoulders, the back with its thousand charming curves, the small and gently swelling bosom, all the well-rounded shapes, the breadth of hips, the delicate strength, the expression of superhuman vigor in a body so adorably feminine, ravish and enchant me to a degree of which you can form no idea, you who are a Christian and discreet.
“Mary, in spite of the humble air which she affects, is far too proud for me; scarcely does even the tip of her foot, in its encircling white bandelets, touch the surface of the globe which is already growing blue and on which the old serpent is writhing. Her eyes are the most beautiful in the world, but they are always turned towards heaven or cast down; they never look you in the face and have never reflected a human form. And then, I do not like the nimbuses of smiling cherubs which circle her head in a golden vapor. I am jealous of the tall pubescent angels with floating robes and hair who are so amorously eager in her assumptions; the hands entwined to support her, the wings in motion to fan her, displease and annoy me. These heavenly coxcombs, so coquettish and triumphant, with their tunics of light, their perukes of golden thread, and their handsome blue and green feathers, seem too gallant for me, and if I were God I should take care not to give such pages to my mistress.
“Venus emerges from the sea to land upon the world- as is fitting in a divinity that loves men-quite naked and quite alone. She prefers the earth to Olympus, and has more men than gods for her lovers; she does not enwrap herself in the languorous veils of mysticism; she stands erect, her dolphin behind her, her foot on her couch of mother of pearl; the sun strikes upon her polished body, and with her white hand she holds up in the air the flood of her beautiful hair on which old Father Ocean has strewn his most perfect pearls. You may look at her, she conceals nothing, for modesty was made for the ugly alone, and is a modern invention, daughter of the Christian contempt for form and matter.
“Oh ancient world! so all that thou hast revered is scorned; so thy idols are overthrown in the dust; wasted anchorites, clad in rags that are full of holes, and blood-covered martyrs, with shoulders torn by the tigers in thy circuses, have perched themselves upon the pedestals of thy beautiful, charming gods: Christ has wrapped the world in his shroud. Beauty must blush at itself and assume a winding sheet. Beautiful youths with oil-rubbed limbs who wrestle in lyceum or gymnasium, beneath the brilliant sky, in the full light of the Attic sun, before the astonished crowd; young Spartan girls who dance the bibasis, and run naked to the summit of Taygetus, resume your tunics and your chlamydes: your reign is past. And you, shapers of marble, Prometheuses of bronze, break your chisels: there are to be no more sculptors. The palpable world is dead. A dark and lugubrious thought alone fills the immensity of the void. Cleomene goes to the weavers to see what folds are made by cloth or linen.
“Virginity, bitter plant, born on a soil steeped with blood, whose etiolated and sickly flower opens painfully in the dark shade of cloisters, beneath a cold lustral rain;- scentless rose all bristling with thorns, thou hast taken the place, with us, of the beautiful, joyous roses bathed in spikenard and Falemian of the dancing women of Sybaris!
“The ancient world did not know thee, fruitless flower; never didst thou enter into its wreaths of intoxicating fragrance; in that vigorous and healthy society thou wouldst have been trampled scornfully underfoot. Virginity, mysticism, melancholy, — three unknown words, — three new maladies brought in by Christ. Pale spectres who flood our world with your icy tears, and who, with your elbow on a cloud and your hand in your bosom, can only say-'O death! O death!' you could not have set foot in that world so well peopled with indulgent and wanton gods I
“I consider woman, after the manner of the ancients, as a beautiful slave designed for our pleasure. Christianity has not rehabilitated her in my eyes. To me she is still something dissimilar and inferior that we worship and play with, a toy which is more intelligent than if it were of ivory or gold, and which gets up of itself if we let it fall. I have been told, in consequence of this, that I think badly of women; I consider, on the contrary, that it is thinking very well of them.
“I do not know, in truth, why women are so anxious to be regarded as men: I can understand a person wishing to be a boa, a lion or an elephant; but that anyone should wish to be a man is something quite beyond my comprehension. If I had been at the Council of Trent when they discussed the important question of whether a woman is a man, I should certainly have given my opinion in the negative.
“I have written some love verses during my lifetime, or, at least, some which assumed to pass for such. I have just read a portion of them again. They are altogether wanting in the sentiment of modern love. If they were written in Latin distichs instead of in French rhymes, they might be taken for the work of a bad poet of the time of Augustus. And I am astonished that the women, for whom they were written, were not seriously angry, instead of being quite charmed with them. It is true that women know as little about poetry as cabbages and roses, which is quite natural and plain, being themselves poetry, or, at least the best instruments for poetry: the flute does not hear nor understand the air that is played upon it.
“In these verses nothing is spoken of but golden or ebony hair, marvelous delicacy of skin, roundness of arm, smallness of foot, and shapely daintiness of hand, and the whole terminates with a humble supplication to the divinity to grant the enjoyment of all these beautiful things as speedily as possible. In the triumphant passages there are nothing but garlands hung upon the threshold, torrents, of flowers, burning perfumes, Catullian addition of kisses, sleepless and charming nights, quarrels with Aurora, and injunctions to the same Aurora to return and hide herself behind the saffron curtains of old Tithonus;-brightness without heat, sonorousness without vibration. They are accurate, polished, written with consistent elaboration; but through all the refinements and veils of expression you may divine the short stern voice of the master trying to be mild while speaking to the slave. There is no soul, as in the erotic poetry written since the Christian era, asking another soul to love it because it loves; there is no azure-tinted, smiling lake inviting a brook to pour itself into its bosom that they may reflect the stars of heaven together; there is no pair of doves spreading their wings at the same time to fly to the same nest.
“Cynthia, you are beautiful; make haste. Who knows whether you will be alive to-morrow? Your hair is blacker than the lustrous skin of an Ethiopian virgin. Make haste; a few years hence, slender silver threads will creep into its thick clusters; these roses smell sweet to-day, but to-morrow they will have the odor of death, and be but the corpses of roses. Let us inhale thy roses while they resemble thy cheeks; let us kiss thy cheeks while they resemble thy roses. When you are old, Cynthia, no one will have anything more to do with you, — not even the lictor's servants when you would pay them, — and you will run after me whom now you repulse. Wait until Saturn with his nail has scratched this pure and shining brow, and you will see how your threshold, so besieged, so entreated, so warm with tears and so decked with flowers, will be shunned, and cursed, and covered with weeds and briars. Make haste, Cynthia; the smallest wrinkle may serve as a grave for the greatest love.
“Such is the brutal and imperious formula in which all ancient elegy is contained: it always comes back to it; it is its greatest, its strongest reason, the Achilles of its arguments. After this it has scarcely anything to say, and, when it has promised a robe of twice-dyed byssus and a union of equal-sized pearls, it has reached the end of its tether. And it is also nearly the whole of what I find most conclusive in a similar emergency.
“Nevertheless I do not always abide by so scanty a programme, but embroider my barren canvas with a few differently colored silken threads picked up here and there. But these pieces are short or are twenty times renewed, and do not keep their places well on the groundwork of the woof. I speak of love with tolerable elegance because I have read many fine things about it. It only needs the talent of an actor to do so. With many women this appearance is enough; my habitual writing and imagination prevent me from being short of such materials, and every mind that is at all practiced may easily arrive at the same result by application; but I do not feel a word of what I say, and I repeat in a whisper like the ancient poet: Cynthia, make haste.
“I have often been accused of deceit and dissimulation. Nobody in the world would be so pleased as myself to speak freely and pour forth his heart! but, as I have not an idea or a feeling similar to those of the people who surround me, — as, at the first true word that I let fall, there would be a hurrah and a general outcry, I have preferred to keep silence, or, if speaking, to discharge only such follies as are admitted and have Tights of citizenship. I should be welcome if I said to the ladies what I have just written to you! I do not think that they would have any great liking for my manner of seeing and ways of looking upon love.
“As for men, I am equally unable to tell them to their face that they are wrong not to go on all fours; and that is in truth the most favorable thought that I have with respect to them. I do not wish to have a quarrel at every word. What does it matter, after all, what I think or do not think; or if I am sad when I seem gay, and joyous when I have an air of melancholy? I cannot be blamed for not going naked: may I not clothe my countenance as I do my body? Why should a mask be more reprehensible than a pair of breeches, or a lie than a corset?
“Alas! the earth turns round the sun, roasted on one side and frozen on the other. A battle takes place in
