those clear yellow and pale-green orange-colored tints that we see in the pictures of the old masters; there will be a great avenue of flowering chestnut trees and venerable elms filled with wood-pigeons-fine trees of fresh dark green, giving a shade full of mystery and dampness; a few statues here and there, some marble vases with their snowy whiteness standing out in relief on the ground of green, a sheet of water with the familiar swan, and, quite in the background, a mansion of brick and stone, as in the time of Henry IV., with a peaked slate roof, lofty chimneys, weathercocks on all the gables, and long narrow windows.
“At one of these windows, the queen of my soul, in the dress I have just described, leaning with an air of melancholy on the balcony, and behind her a little negro holding her fan and her parrot. You see that nothing is wanting, and that the whole thing is perfectly absurd. The fair one drops her glove; I pick it up, kiss it, and bring it to her. We enter into conversation; I display all the wit that I do not possess; I say charming things; I am answered in the same way, I rejoin, it is a display of fireworks, a luminous rain of dazzling words. In short, I am adorable-and adored. Supper-time arrives; I am invited, and accept the invitation. What a supper, my dear friend, and what a cook is my imagination! The wine laughs in the crystal, the brown and white pheasant smokes in the blazoned dish; the banquet is prolonged far into the night, and you may be quite sure that I do not end the latter at my own home. Is not this well conceived? Nothing in the world can be more simple, and it is truly very astonishing that it has not come to pass ten times rather than once.
“Sometimes it is in a large forest. The hunt sweeps by; the horn sounds, and the pack giving tongue crosses the path with the swiftness of lightning; the fair one, in a riding habit is mounted on a Turkish steed as white as milk, and as frisky and mettlesome as possible. Although she is an excellent horsewoman, he paws the ground, caracoles, rears, and she has all the trouble in the world to hold him in; he gets the bit between his teeth and takes her straight towards a precipice. I fall there from the sky for the purpose, check the horse, take the fainting princess in my arms, restore her, and bring her back to the mansion. What well-born woman would refuse her heart to a man who has risked his life for her? Not one; and gratitude is a cross-road which very quickly leads to love.
“You will, at all events, admit that when I go in for romance, it is not by halves that I do so, and that I am as foolish as it is possible to be. It is always so, for there is nothing in the world more disagreeable than folly with reason in it. You will almost admit that when I write letters they are volumes rather than simple notes. In everything, I like what goes beyond ordinary limits. That is the reason why I am fond of you. Do not laugh too much at all the nonsense I have scribbled to you: I am laying my pen aside in order to put it into practice; for I ever come back to the same refrain; I want to have a mistress. I do not know whether it will be the lady of the park or the beauty of the balcony, but I bid you good-bye that I may commence my quest. My resolution is taken. Should she, whom I seek, be concealed in the remotest part of the kingdom of Cathay or Samarcand, I shall manage to find her out. I will let you know of the success or failure-I hope it will be the success-of my enterprise. Pray for me, my dear friend. For my own part, I am putting on my finest coat, and am leaving the house determined not to return without a mistress in accordance with my ideas. I have been dreaming long enough; to action now.
“P.S.-Send me some news of little D-; what has become of him? No one here knows anything about him; and give my compliments to your worthy brother and to the whole family.”
II
“Well! my friend, I have come in again without having been to Cathay, Cashmere, or Samarcand; but it is right to say that I have not a mistress any more than before. Yet I had taken myself by the hand and sworn my greatest oath that I would go to the end of the world-and I have not even been to the end of the town. I do not know how it is, but I have never been able to keep my word to any one, even to myself: the devil must have a hand in it. If I say, 'I shall go there to-morrow,' I am sure to remain where I am; if I purpose going to the wine shop, I go to church; if I wish to go to church, the roads become as confused beneath my feet as skeins of thread, and I find myself in quite a different place; I fast when I have determined on an orgy, and so on. Thus I believe that my resolve to have a mistress is what prevents me from having one.
“I must give you a detailed account of my expedition; it is quite worthy of the honors of narration. That day I had spent two full hours at least at my toilet. I had my hair combed and curled, the small amount of moustache that I possess turned up and waxed, and with my usually pale face animated somewhat by the emotion of desire, I was really not so bad. At last, after looking at myself carefully in the glass in different lights to see whether I had a sufficiently handsome and gallant appearance, I went resolutely out of the house, with lofty countenance, chin in air, and one hand on my hip, looking straight before me, making the heels of my boots rattle like an anspessade, elbowing the townsfolk, and with quite a victorious and triumphal mien.
“I was like another Jason going to the conquest of the Golden Fleece. But, alas! Jason was more fortunate than I: besides the conquest of the fleece he at the same time effected the conquest of a beautiful princess, while, as for me, I have neither princess nor fleece.
“I went away, then, through the streets, noticing all the women, and hastening up to them and looking at them as closely as possible when they seemed worth the trouble of an examination. Some would assume their most virtuous air, and pass without raising their eyes. Others would at first be surprised, and then, if they had good teeth, would smile. Others again would turn after a little to see me when they thought I was no longer looking at them, and blush like cherries when they found themselves. face to face with me.
“The weather was fine, and there was a crowd of people out walking. And yet, I must confess, in spite of all the respect I entertain towards that interesting half of the human race, that which it is agreed to call the fair sex is devilish ugly: in a hundred women there was scarcely one that was passable. This one had a moustache; that one had a blue nose; others had red spots instead of eyebrows. One was not badly made, but her face was covered with pimples. A second had a charming head, but she might have scratched her ear with her shoulder. A third would have shamed Praxiteles with the roundness and softness of certain curves, but she skated on feet that were like Turkish stirrups. Yet another displayed the most magnificent shoulders that one could see; but as a set off, her hands resembled for shape and size those enormous scarlet gloves which haberdashers use as signs. And generally, what fatigue was there on these faces! how blighted, etiolated, and basely worn by petty passions and petty vices! What expressions of envy, evil curiosity, greediness, and shameless coquetry! And how much more ugly is a woman who is not handsome than a man who is not so!
“I saw nothing good-except some grisettes. But there is more linen than silk to rumple in that quarter, and they are no affair of mine. In truth, I believe that man, and by man I also understand woman, is the ugliest animal on earth. This quadruped who walks on his hind legs seems to me singularly presumptuous in assigning quite as a matter of right the first rank in creation to himself. A lion, or a tiger, is handsomer than man, and many individuals in their species attain to all the beauty that belongs to their nature. This is extremely rare among men. How many abortions for one Antinous! how many Gothones for one Phyllis!
“I am greatly afraid, my dear friend, that I shall never embrace my ideal, and yet there is nothing extravagant or unnatural in it. It is not the ideal of a third-form schoolboy. I do not require globes of ivory, nor columns of alabaster, not traceries of azure; and in its composition I have employed neither lilies, nor snow, nor roses, nor jet, nor ebony, nor coral, nor ambrosia, nor pearls, nor diamonds; I have left the stars of heaven in peace, and I have not unhooked the sun out of season. It is almost a vulgar ideal, so simple is it; and it seems to me that with a bag or two of piastres I might find it ready made and completely realized in no matter which bazaar of Constantinople or Smyrna; it would probably cost me less than a horse or a thorough-bred dog. And to think that I shall never attain to this-for I feel that I shall never do so! It is enough to madden one, and I fall into the finest passions in the world against my fate.
“As for you-you are not so foolish as I am, and you are fortunate; you have simply given yourself up to your life without tormenting yourself to shape it, and you have taken things as they came. You have not sought happiness, and it has sought you; you are loved, and you love. I do not envy you-you must not think that, at least- but when I reflect on your bliss, I feel less joyous than I ought to be, and I say to myself with a sigh that I would gladly enjoy similar felicity.
“Perhaps my happiness has passed close to me, and in my blindness I have not seen it. Perhaps the voice has spoken and the noise of the storms within me has prevented me from hearing.
“Perhaps I have been loved in obscurity by some humble heart that I have disregarded and broken. Perhaps I have myself been the ideal of another, the lode-star of some soul in suspense, the dream of a night and the thought
