seems to me as if it were the simplest thing in the world and as if any one else would do the same in my place.
“I see him, I listen to him speaking or singing-for he sings admirably-and take an unspeakable pleasure in doing so. He produces the impression of a woman upon me to such an extent that one day, in the heat of conversation, I inadvertently called him Madame, which made him laugh in what appeared to me to be a somewhat constrained manner.
“Yet, if it were a woman, what motives could there be for this disguise? I cannot account for them in any way. It is comprehensible for a very young, very handsome and perfectly beardless cavalier to disguise himself as a woman; he can thus open a thousand doors which would have remained obstinately shut against him, and the quid pro quo may involve him in quite a labyrinthine and jovial complication of adventures. You may, in this manner, reach a woman who is strictly guarded, or realize a piece of good fortune under favor of the surprise.
“But I am not very clear as to the advantages to be derived by a young and beautiful woman from rambling about in man's clothes. A woman ought not to give up in this way the pleasure of being courted, madrigalized and worshipped; she should rather give up her life, and she would be right, for what is a woman's life without all this? nothing, or something worse than death. And I am always astonished that women who are thirty years old, or have the small-pox, do not throw themselves down from the top of a, steeple.
“In spite of all this, something stranger than any reasoning cries to me that it is a woman, and that it is she of whom I have dreamed, she whom alone I am to love, and by whom I alone am to be loved. Yes, it was she, the goddess with eagle glance and beautiful royal hands, who used to smile with condescension upon me from the height of her throne of clouds. She has presented herself to me in this disguise to prove me, to see whether I should recognize her, whether my amorous gaze would penetrate the veils which enwrap her, as in those wondrous tales where the fairies appear at first in the forms of beggars, and then suddenly stand out resplendent with gold and precious stones.
“I have recognized thee, O my love! At the sight of thee my heart leaped within my bosom as did St. John in the womb of St. Anne, when she was visited by the Virgin; a blazing light was shed through the air; I perceived, as it were, an odor of divine ambrosia; I saw the trail of fire at thy feet, and I straightway understood that thou wert not a mere mortal.
“The melodious sounds of St. Cecilia's viol, to which the angels listen with rapture, are harsh and discordant in comparison with the pearly cadences which escape from thy ruby lips; the Graces, young and smiling, dance a ceaseless roundel about thee; the birds, warbling, bend their little variegated heads to see thee better as thou passest through the woods, and pipe to thee their prettiest refrains; the amorous moon rises earlier to kiss thee with her pale silver lips, for she has forsaken her shepherd for thee; the wind is careful not to efface the delicate print of thy charming foot upon the sand; the fountain becomes smoother than crystal when thou bendest over it, fearing to wrinkle and distort the reflection of thy celestial countenance; the modest violets themselves open up their little hearts to thee and display a thousand coquetries before thee; the jealous strawberry is piqued to emulation and strives to. equal the divine carnation of thy mouth; the imperceptible gnat hums joyously and applauds thee with the beating of its wings: all nature loves and admires thee, who art her fairest work!
“Ah I now I live;-until this moment I was but a dead man; now I am freed from the shroud, and stretch both my wasted hands out of the grave towards the sun; my blue, ghastly color has left me; my blood circulates swiftly through my veins. Tie frightful silence which reigned around me is broken at last. The black, opaque vault which weighed heavy on my brow is illumined. A thousand mysterious voices whisper in my ear; charming stars sparkle above me, and sand the windings of my path with their spangles of gold; the daisies laugh sweetly to me, 'and the bell-flowers murmur my name with their little restless tongues. I understand a multitude of things which I used not to understand, I discover affinities and marvellous sympathies, I know the language of the roses and nightingales and I read with fluency the book which once I could not even spell.
“I have recognized that I had a friend in the respectable old oak all covered with mistletoe and parasitic plants, and that the frail and languid periwinkle, whose large blue eye is ever running over with tears, had long cherished a discreet and restrained passion for me. It is love, it is love that has opened my eyes and given me the answer to the enigma. Love has come down to the bottom of the vault where my soul cowered numb and somnolent; he has taken it by the finger-tips and has brought it up the steep and narrow staircase leading without. All the locks of the prison were picked, and for the first time this poor Psyche came forth from me in whom she had been shut up.
“Another life has become mine. I breathe with the breast of another, and a blow wounding him would kill me. Before this happy day I was like those gloomy Japanese idols which look down perpetually at their own bellies. I was a spectator of myself, the audience of the comedy that I was playing; I looked at myself living, and I listened to the oscillations of my heart as to the throbbing of a pendulum. That was all. Images were portrayed on my heedless eyes, sounds struck my inattentive ear, but nothing from the external world reached my soul. The existence of any one else was not necessary to me; I even doubted any existence other than my own, concerning which again I was scarcely sure. It seemed to me that I was alone in the midst of the universe, and that all the rest was but vapors, images, vain illusions, fleeting appearances destined to people this nothingness. What a difference!
“And yet what if my presentiment is deceiving me, and Theodore is really a man, as every one believes him to be? Such marvellous beauties have sometimes been seen, and great youth assists such an illusion. It is something that I will not think of and that would drive me mad; the seed fallen yesterday into the sterile rock of my heart has already pierced it in every direction with its thousand filaments; it has clung vigorously to it, and to pluck it up would be impossible. It is already a blossoming and green-growing tree with twisting muscular roots. If I came to know with certainty that Theodore is not a woman, I do not know, alas! whether I should not still love him.”
X
“My fair friend, you were quite right in dissuading me from the plan that I had formed of seeing men and studying them thoroughly before giving my heart to any among them. I have for ever extinguished love within me, and even the possibility of love.
“Poor young girls that we are, brought up with so much care, surrounded in such maidenly fashion with a triple wall of reticence and precaution, who are allowed to understand nothing, to suspect nothing, and whose principal knowledge is to know nothing, in what strange errors do we live, and what treacherous chimeras cradle us in their arms!
“Ah! Graciosa, thrice cursed be the minute when the idea of this disguise occurred to me; what horrors, infamies, brutalities have I been forced to witness or to hear! what a treasure of chaste and precious ignorance have I dissipated in but a short time!
“It was in a fair moonlight, do you remember? we were walking together, at the very bottom of the garden, in that dull, little-frequented alley, terminated at one end by a statue of a flute-playing Faun which has lost its nose, and whose whole body is covered with a thick leprosy of blackish moss, and at the other by a counterfeit view painted on the wall, and half-effaced by the rain.
“Through the yet spare foliage of the yoke-elm we could here and there see the twinkling of the stars and the curved crescent of the moon. A fragrance of young shoots and fresh plants reached us from the parterre with the languid breath of a gentle breeze; a hidden bird was piping a languorous and whimsical tune; we, like true young girls, were talking of love, wooers, marriage, and the handsome cavalier that we had seen at mass; we were exchanging our few ideas of the world and things; we were turning over an expression that we had chanced to hear and whose meaning seemed obscure and singular to us, in a hundred different ways; we were asking a thousand of those absurd questions which only the most perfect innocence can imagine. What primitive poetry and what adorable foolishness were there in those furtive conversations between two little simpletons who had but just left a boarding-school I
“You wished to have for your lover a bold, proud young fellow, with black moustache and hair, large spurs, large feathers and a large sword-a sort of bully in love, and you indulged to the full in the heroic and triumphant; you dreamed of nothing but duels and escalades, and miraculous devotion, and you would have been ready to throw your glove into the lions' den that your Esplandian might follow to fetch it. It was very comical to see you, a little girl as you were then, blonde, blushing, and yielding to the faintest blast, delivering yourself of such generous
