or Ariadne. It was a big kiss, solidly and frankly applied, which left two little white marls on the wench's flaming cheek, and the trace of which she wiped away with the back of the hand that had just washed the plates and dishes. I do not believe that he ever gave so naturally tender a one to his heart's pure deity. This was apparently his own thought, for he said in an undertone, with quite a scornful movement of his elbow-
“'To the devil with lean women and lofty sentiments P
“This moral appeared to suit the company, and they all wagged their heads in token of assent.
“'Upon my word,' said the other, following out his idea, 'I am unfortunate in everything. Gentlemen, I must confide to you under the seal of the greatest secrecy, that I, I who am speaking to you, have at this moment a flame.'
“'Oh! oh!' said the others, 'a flame! That is lugubrious to the last degree. And what do you do with a flame?'
“'She is a virtuous woman, gentlemen, you must not laugh, gentlemen; for, after all, why should I not have a virtuous woman? Have I said anything ridiculous. Here! you over there! I will throw the house at your head if you are not quiet.'
“'Well! what next?'
“'She is mad about me. She has the most beautiful soul in the world; in point of souls, I understand them, — I understand them at least as well as I do horses, and I assure you that it is a soul of the first quality. There are elevations, ecstasies, devotions, sacrifices, refinements of tenderness, everything you can think of that is most transcendent; but she has scarcely any bosom, she has none at all, even, like a little girl of fifteen at most. She is otherwise pretty enough; her hand is delicate, and her foot small; she has too much mind and not enough flesh, and I often think of leaving her in the lurch. The devil! One can't be content with minds. I am very unfortunate; pity me, my dear friends.' And, affected by the wine that he had drunk, he began to weep bitterly.
“'Jeannette will console you for the misfortune of going to bed with sylphids,' said his neighbor, pouring him out a bumper; 'her soul is so thick that you might make bodies of it for other people, and she has flesh enough to clothe the carcasses of three elephants.'
“O pure and noble woman! didst thou but know what is said at random of thee, in a tavern, and in the presence of strangers, by the man whom thou lovest best in the world, and to whom thou hast sacrificed everything! how he strips thee without shame, and impudently surrenders thee in thy nakedness to the drunken gaze of his comrades, whilst thou art mournful yonder, thy chin in thy hand, and thine eyes turned towards the road by which he is to return!
“Had some one come and told thee that thy lover, twenty-four hours perhaps after leaving thee, was courting a base servant-girl, and had arranged to pass the night with her, thou wouldst have maintained that it was impossible, and wouldst have refused to believe it; scarcely wouldst thou have trusted thine eyes and ears. Yet it was so.
“The conversation lasted some time longer, and was the maddest and most shameless in the world; but through all the facetious exaggeration and the often filthy jests, there was apparent a deep and genuine feeling of perfect contempt for women, and I learned more during that evening than by reading twenty cart-loads of moralists.
“The monstrous and unheard of things that I was listening to imparted a tinge of sadness and severity to my face, which the rest of the guests perceived, and about which they teased me good-naturedly; but my gaiety could not return. I had, indeed, suspected that men were not such as they appear to us, but yet I did not think that they were so different from their masks, and my disgust was not greater than my surprise.
“I should require only half an hour of such conversation to cure a romantic young girl forever; it would do her more good than any maternal remonstrances.
“Some boasted of gaining as many women as they pleased, and that to do so cost them only a word; others communicated recipes for procuring mistresses, or enlarged upon the tactics to be pursued when laying siege to virtue; others again ridiculed the women whose lovers they were, and proclaimed themselves the most arrant fools on earth to be attached, in this way, to such trulls. They all made light of love.
“These, then, are the thoughts which they conceal from us beneath all their fair appearances! Who would ever think it, to see them so humble, so cringing, so ready to do anything? Ah! how hardily they raise their heads after a conquest, and insolently set the heel of their boot on the brow which they used to worship at a distance on their knees! what vengeance they take for their passing abasement! how dearly must their politeness be paid for! and through what many insults they repose after the madrigals they made. What mad brutality of language and thought! what inelegance of manners and deportment! It is a complete change, and one which certainly is not to their advantage. However far my previsions might reach, they fell far short of the reality.
“Ideal, blue flower with heart of gold, blooming all pearly with dew beneath the sky of spring, in the scented breath of soft dreamings, whose fibrous roots, a thousand times more slender than fairies' silken tresses, sink into the depths of our souls with their thousand hair-covered heads to drink in thence the purest substance; flower so sweet and so bitter, we cannot pluck thee forth without causing the heart to bleed in all its recesses; from the broken stem ooze red drops, which, falling one by one into the lake of our tears serve to measure for us the limping hours of our death-watch by the bedside of expiring Love.
“Ah! cursed flower, how thou hadst sprung up in my soul! thy branches had multiplied more than nettles in a ruin. The young nightingales came to drink from thy cup and sing beneath thy shade; diamond butterflies, with emerald wings and ruby eyes, hovered and danced about thy frail gold-powdered pistils; swarms of flaxen bees sucked thy poisonous honey without mistrust; chimeras folded their swan-like wings and crossed their lion claws beneath their beauteous throats to rest beside thee. The tree of the Hesperides was not better guarded; sylphids gathered the tears of the stars in the urns of the lilies, and watered thee each night with their magic watering- vessels.
“Plant of the ideal, more venomous than the manchineel or the upas tree, what it costs me, despite thy treacherous blossoms and the poison inhaled with their perfume, to uproot thee from my soul! Neither the cedar of Lebanon, nor the gigantic baobab, nor the palm a hundred cubits high, could together fill the place which thou didst occupy quite alone, little blue flower with the heart of gold!
“Supper came to an end at last, and we contemplated going to bed; but as the number of sleepers was double that of the beds, it naturally followed that we must go to bed in turn or else two together. It was a very simple matter for the rest of the company, but not so by any means for me, taking into account certain protuberances which were disguised conveniently enough beneath vest and doublet, but which a simple shirt would have betrayed in all their damnable roundness; and I was certainly little disposed to disclose my incognito in favor of any of these gentlemen who at that moment appeared to me veritable and ingenuous monsters, though I afterwards found them very decent fellows, and, worth at least as much as any of their species.
“He with whom I was to share a bed was fairly drunk. He threw himself on the mattress, with one leg and arm hanging to the ground, and at once went to sleep, not the sleep of the just, but a sleep so profound that if the angel of the last judgment had come and blown his clarion in his ear he would have failed to wake him. Such a sleep greatly simplified the difficulty; I took off nothing but my doublet and boots, strode over the sleeper's body, and stretched myself on the sheets at the edge of the bed.
“I was careful to keep my distance. It was not a bad beginning! I confess that, in spite of my assurance, I was singularly troubled. The situation was so strange, so novel, that I could scarcely admit that it was not a dream. The other slept his best, but I could not close an eye the whole night.
“He was a young man, about twenty-four years of age, with rather a handsome face, dark eyelashes, and a nearly blonde moustache; his long hair rolled around his head like the waves from the inverted urn of a river-god, a light blush passed beneath his pale cheeks like a cloud beneath the water, his lips were half open and smiling with a vague and languid smile.
“I raised myself upon my elbow, and remained a long time watching him by the flickering light of a candle, of which the tallow had nearly run down in broad sheets, and the wick was laden with black wasters.
“We were separated by a considerable interval. He occupied one extreme edge of the bed, while 1, as an additional precaution, had thrown myself quite on the other.
“What I had heard was assuredly not of a nature to predispose me to tenderness and voluptuousness: I held men in abomination. Nevertheless I was more disquieted and agitated than I ought to have been: my body did not share in the repugnance of my mind so completely as it should have done. My heart was beating violently, I was hot, and on whatever side I turned I could not find repose.
