“I would be about to approach you and say to you, 'My dear fair one, 'tis you that I adore,' and I would see you bending down tenderly to a lady's ear and breathing puffs of madrigals and compliments through her hair. Judge of my situation. Or, perhaps, some woman whom, in my strange jealousy, I could have flayed alive with all the voluptuousness in the world, would hang on your arm, and draw you aside to confide some puerile secrete to you, and would keep you for hours together in an embrasure of the window.
“I was maddened to see women talking to you, for it made me believe that you were a man, and, had you been so, it would have cost me extreme pain to endure it. When men came up in a free and familiar fashion, I was still more jealous, because then I thought that you were a woman and that they had a suspicion of it like myself; I was a prey to the most contrary passions and did not know what conclusion to arrive at
“I was angry with myself, and addressed the harshest reproaches to myself for being thus tormented by such a love and for not having the strength to uproot from my heart the venomous plant which had sprung up there in a night like a poisonous toad-stool; I cursed you, I called you my evil genius; I even believed for a moment that you were Beelzebub in person, for I could not explain the sensation which I experienced in your presence.
“When I was quite persuaded that you were in fact nothing else but a woman in disguise, the improbability of the motives with which I sought to justify such a caprice plunged me again into my uncertainty, and I began again to lament that the form which I had dreamed of for the love of my soul belonged to one of the same sex as myself;-I accused chance which had clothed a man with such charming appearance, and, to my everlasting misfortune, had caused me to meet with him just when I had lost the hope of seeing realized the absolute idea of pure beauty which I had cherished in my heart for so long.
“Now, Rosalind, I have the profound certainty that you are the most beautiful of women; I have seen you in the costume of your sex, I have seen your pure and correctly rounded shoulders and arms. The beginning of your bosom, of which your gorget gave a glimpse, could belong only to a young girl; neither the beautiful hunter Meleager, nor the effeminate Bacchus, with their dubious forms, ever had such sweetness of line or such delicacy of skin, even though they be both of Paros marble and polished by the kisses of twenty centuries. I am tormented no longer in this respect. But this is not all: you are a woman, and my love is no longer reprehensible, I may give myself up to it without remorse and abandon myself to the billow which is bearing me towards you; great and unbridled as the passion that I feel may be, it is permitted and I may confess it; but you, Rosalind, for whom I was consumed in silence and who knew not the immensity of my love, you whom this tardy revelation will only, it may be, surprise, do you not hate me, do you love me, can you ever love me? I do not know, — and I tremble, and am yet more unhappy than before.
“There are moments when it seems to me that you do not hate me; when we acted 'As you like it,' you gave a peculiar accent to certain passages in your part which strengthened their meaning, and, in a measure, invited me to declare myself. I believe that I could see in your eyes and smile gracious promises of indulgence, and could feel your hand respond to the pressure of mine. If I was deceived, O God! it is a thing on which I dare not reflect. Encouraged by all this and impelled by my love, I have written to you, for the dress you wear is ill-suited to such avowals, and my words have a thousand times been stayed upon my lips; even though I had the idea and firm conviction that I was speaking to a woman, that manly costume would startle all my tender loving thoughts and hinder them from taking their flight towards you.
“I beseech you, Rosalind, if you do not yet love me, strive to love me who have loved you in spite of everything, and beneath the veil in which you wrap yourself, no doubt out of pity for us; do not devote the remainder of my life to the most frightful despair and the most gloomy discouragement; think that I have worshipped you ever since the first ray of thought shone into my head, that you were revealed to me beforehand, and that when I was quite little, you appeared to me in my dreams with a crown of dew-drops, two prismatic wings, and the little blue flower in your hand; that you are the end, the means, and the meaning of my life; that without you I am but an empty shadow, and that, if you blow upon the flame that you have kindled, nothing will remain within me but a pinch of dust finer and more impalpable than that which besprinkles the very wings of death. Rosalind, you who have so many recipes to cure the sickness of love, cure me, for I am very sick; play your part to the end, cast aside the dress of the handsome page Ganymede, and stretch out your white hand to the younger son of the brave knight Rowland-des-Bois.”
The Duel
XIV
I WAS at my window engaged in looking at the stars which were blooming joyously in the gardens of the sky, and inhaling the perfume of the Marvel of Peru wafted to me by an expiring breeze. The wind from the open casement had extinguished my lamp, the last remaining light in the mansion. My thoughts were degenerating into vague dreaming, and a sort of somnolence was beginning to overtake me; nevertheless, whether owing to fascination by the charm of the night, or to carelessness and forgetfulness, I still remained leaning with my elbow on the stone balustrade. Rosette, no longer seeing the light of my lamp and being unable to distinguish me owing to a great corner of shadow which fell just across the window, had no doubt concluded that I was in bed, and it was for this that she was waiting in order to risk a last desperate attempt. She pushed open the door so softly that I did not hear her enter, and was within two steps of me before I had perceived her. She was very much astonished to see me still up; but, soon recovering from her surprise, she came up to me and took hold of my arm calling me twice by my name:-'Theodore, Theodore!'
“'What! you, Rosette, here, at this hour, quite alone, without a light and so completely undressed!”
“I must tell you that the fair one had nothing on her but a night-mantle of excessively fine cambric, and the triumphant lace-trimmed chemise which I was not willing to see on the day of the famous scene in the little kiosk in the park. Her arms, smooth and cold as marble, were entirely bare, and the linen covering her body was so supple and diaphanous that it allowed the nipples of her breasts to be seen, as in the statues of bathers covered with wet drapery.
“Is that a reproach, Theodore, that you are making against me, or is it only a simple, purely exclamatory phrase? Yes, I, Rosette, the fine lady here, in your very room and not in my own where I ought to be, at eleven or perhaps twelve o'clock at night, with neither duenna, chaperon, nor maid, scantily clad, in a mere night-wrapper; — that is very astonishing, is it not? I am as surprised at it as you are, and scarcely know what explanation to give you.'
“As she said this she passed one of her arms around my body, and let herself fall on the foot of my bed in such a way as to draw me along with her.
“'Rosette,' I said, endeavoring to disengage myself, 'I am going to try to light the lamp again; there is nothing more melancholy than darkness in a room; and then, when you are here, it is really a sin not to see clearly and so lose the sight of your charms. Allow me by a piece of tinder and a match to make myself a little portable sun to throw into relief all that the jealous night is effacing beneath its shades.'
“'It's not worth while; I would as soon you did not see my blushes; I can feel my cheeks burning all over, for it is enough to make me die of shame.' She hid her face upon my breast, and for some minutes remained thus as if suffocated by her emotion.
“As for myself, during this interval, I passed my fingers mechanically through the long ringlets of her disordered hair, and searched my brain for some honorable evasion to relieve me of my embarrassment. I could find none, however, for I had been driven into my last entrenchment, and Rosette appeared perfectly determined not to leave the room as she had entered it. Her attire was of a formidably easy nature, which did not promise well. I myself was wearing only an open dressing-gown which would have been a poor protection for my incognito, so that I was extremely anxious about the result of the battle.
“'Theodore, listen to me,' said Rosette, rising and throwing back her hair from both sides of her face, as far as I could see by the feeble light which the stars and a very slender crescent of the rising moon shed into the room through the still open window;-'the step which I am taking is a strange one;- everyone would blame me for having taken it. But you are leaving soon, and I love you! I cannot let you go in this way without coining to an explanation with you. Perhaps you will never return; perhaps it is the first and the last time that I am to see you. Who knows where you will go? But where-ever you go you will carry away my soul and my life with you. If you had remained I should not have been reduced to this extremity. The happiness of looking at you, of listening to you, of living by your
