which six hundred thousand men cut each other to pieces'; the weather is as fine as possible; the flowers display unparalleled coquetry, and impudently open their luxuriant bosoms beneath the very feet of the horses. To-day a fabulous number of good deeds have been performed; it is pouring fast, there is snow and thunder, lightning and hail; you would think that the world was coming to an end. The benefactors of humanity are muddy to the waist and as dirty as dogs, unless they have carriages. Creation mocks pitilessly at the creature, and shouts keen sarcasms at it every minute. Everything is indifferent to everything, and each lives or vegetates in virtue of its own law. What difference does it make to the sun, to the beetroots, or even to men, whether I do this or that, live or die, suffer or rejoice, dissemble or be sincere?
“A straw falls upon an ant and breaks its third leg at the second articulation; a rock falls upon a village and crushes it: I do not believe that one of these misfortunes draws more tears than the other from the golden eyes of the stars. You are my best friend, if the expression is not as hollow as a bell; but were I to die it is very evident that, mourn as you might, you would not abstain from dining for even two days, and would, in spite of such a terrible catastrophe, continue to play trick-track very pleasantly. Which of my friends or mistresses will know my name and Christian names twenty years hence, or would recognize me in the street if I were to appear with a coat out at elbows? Forgetfulness and nothingness are the whole of man.
“I feel myself as perfectly alone as is possible, and all the threads passing from me to things and from things to me have been broken one by one. There are few examples of a man who, preserving a knowledge of the movements that take place within him, has arrived at such a degree of brutishness. I am like a flagon of liquor which has been left uncorked and whose spirit has completely evaporated. The beverage has the same appearance and color; but taste it, and you will find in it nothing but the insipidity of water.
“When I think of it, I am frightened at the rapidity of this decomposition; if it continues I shall be obliged to salt myself, or I shall inevitably grow rotten, and the worms will come after me, seeing that I have no longer a soul, and that the latter alone constitutes the difference between a body and a corpse. One year ago, not more, I had still something human in me; I was disquieted, I was seeking. I had a thought cherished above all others, a sort of aim, an ideal; I wanted to be loved and I had the dreams that come at that age, — less vaporous, less chaste, it is true, than those of ordinary youths, but yet contained within just limits.
“Little by little the incorporeal part was withdrawn and dissipated, and there was left at bottom of me only a thick bed of coarse slime. The dream became a nightmare, and the chimera a succubus; the world of the soul closed its ivory gates against me: I now understand only what I touch with my hands; my dreams are of stone; everything condenses and hardens about me, nothing floats, nothing wavers, there is neither air nor breath; matter presses upon me, encroaches upon me and crushes me; I am like a pilgrim who, having fallen asleep with his feet in the water on a summer's day, has awaked in winter with his feet locked fast in the ice. I no longer wish for anybody's love or friendship: glory itself, that brilliant aureola which I had so desired for my brow, no longer inspires me with the slightest longing. Only one thing, alas! now palpitates within me, and that is the horrible desire which draws me toward Theodore. You see to what all my moral notions are reduced. What is physically beautiful is good, all that is ugly is evil. I might see a beautiful woman who, to my own knowledge, had the most villainous soul in the world, and was an adulteress and a poisoner, and I confess that this would be a matter of indifference to me and would in no way prevent me from taking delight in her, if the shape of her nose suited me.
“This is the way in which I picture to myself supreme happiness: there is a large square building, without any windows looking outward; a large court surrounded by a white marble colonnade, a crystal fountain in the centre with a jet of quicksilver after the Arabian fashion, and boxes of orange and pomegranate trees placed alternately; overhead, a very blue sky and a very yellow sun; large greyhounds with pike-like noses should be sleeping here and there; from time to time barefooted negroes with rings of gold on their legs, and beautiful white, slender serving women, clothed in rich and capricious garments, should pass through the hollow arcades, a basket on their arm or an amphora on their head. For myself, I should be there, motionless and silent, beneath a magnificent canopy, surrounded with piles of cushions, having a huge tame lion supporting my elbow and the naked breast of a young slave like a stool beneath my foot, and smoking opium in a large jade pipe.
“I cannot imagine paradise differently; and, if God really wishes me to go there after my death, he will build me a little kiosk on this plan in the corner of some star. Paradise, as it is commonly described, appears to me much too musical, and I confess, with all humility, that I am perfectly incapable of enduring a sonata which would last for merely ten thousand years.
“You see the nature of my Eldorado, of my promised land: it is a dream like any other; but it has this special feature, that I never introduce any known countenance into it; that none of my friends has crossed the threshold of this imaginary palace; and that none of the women that I have possessed has sat down beside me on the velvet of the cushions: I am there alone in the midst of phantoms.
I have never conceived the idea of loving all the women's faces, and graceful shadows of young girls with whom I people it; I have never supposed one of them in love with me. In this fantastic seraglio I have created no favorite sultana. There are negresses, mulattoes, Jewesses with blue skin and red hair, Greeks and Circassians, Spaniards and Englishwomen; but they are to me only symbols of color and feature, and I have them just as a man has all kinds of wines in his cellar, and every species of hummingbird in his collection. They are objects to be admired, pictures which have no need of a frame, statues which come to you when you call them and wish to look at them closely. A woman possesses this unquestionable advantage over a statue, that she turns of herself in the direction that you wish, whereas you are obliged to walk round the statue and place yourself at the point of sight;- which is fatiguing.
“You must see that with such ideas I cannot remain in these times nor in this world of ours; for it is impossible to exist thus by the side of time and space. I must find something else.
“Such thoughts lead simply and logically to this conclusion. As only satisfaction of the eye, polish of form, and purity of feature are sought for, they are accepted wherever they are found. This is the explanation of the singular aberrations in the love of the ancients.
“Since the time of Christ there has not been a single human statue in which adolescent beauty has been idealized and represented with the care that characterizes the ancient sculptors. Woman has become the symbol of moral and physical beauty: man has really fallen from the day that the infant was born at Bethlehem. Woman is the queen of creation; the stars unite in a crown upon her head, the crescent of the moon glories in waxing beneath her foot, the sun yields his purest gold to make her jewels, painters who wish to flatter the angels give them women's faces, and, certes, I shall not be the one to blame them.
“Previous to the gentle and worthy narrator of parables, it was quite the opposite; gods or heroes were not made feminine when it was wished to make them charming; they had their own type, at once vigorous and delicate, but always able, however amorous their outlines might be, and however smooth and destitute of muscles and veins the workman might have made their divine legs and arms. He was more ready to bring the special beauty of women into accordance with this type. He enlarged the shoulders, attenuated the hips, gave more prominence to the throat, and accentuated the joints of the arms and thighs more strongly. There is scarcely any difference between Paris and Helen. And so the hermaphrodite was one of the most eagerly cherished chimeras of idolatrous antiquity.
“This son of Hermes and Aphrodite is, in fact, one of the sweetest creations of Pagan genius. Nothing in the world can be imagined more ravishing than these two bodies, harmoniously blended together and both perfect, these two beauties so equal and so different, forming but one superior to both, because they are reciprocally tempered and improved. To an exclusive worshipper of form, can there be a more delightful uncertainty than that into which you are thrown by the sight of the back, the ambiguous loins, and the strong, delicate legs, which you are doubtful whether to attribute to Mercury ready to take his flight or to Diana coming forth from the bath? The torso is a compound of the most charming monstrosities: on the bosom, which is plump and quite pubescent, swells with strange grace the breast of a young maiden; beneath the sides, which are well covered and quite feminine in their softness, you may divine the muscles and the ribs, as in the sides of a young lad; the belly is rather flat for a woman and rather round for a man, and in the whole habit of the body there is something cloudy and undecided which it is impossible to describe, and which possesses quite a peculiar attraction. Theodore would certainly be an excellent model for this kind of beauty; nevertheless, I think, that the feminine portion prevails with him, and that he has preserved more of Salmacis than did the Hermaphrodite of the Metamorphoses.
“It is a singular thing that I have nearly ceased to think about his sex, and that I love him in perfect indifference to it. Sometimes I seek to persuade myself that such love is ridiculous, and I tell myself so as severely as possible; but it only comes from my lips-it is a piece of reasoning which I go through but do not feel: it really
