XV
It was five o'clock in the morning when I entered the town. The houses were beginning to look out of window; the worthy natives were showing their benign countenances surmounted by colossal night-caps behind the panes. At the sound of my horses' iron-shod hoofs ringing upon the uneven flinty pavement there would emerge from every dormer window the big curiously red countenances and the matutinally uncovered breasts of the local Venuses who lost themselves in conjectures about the unwonted appearance of a traveller at C-, at such an hour and in such an equipment, for my attire was on a very small scale, and my appearance was, at the least, suspicious.
“I got a little rascal, who had his hair over his eyes, and lifted up his spaniel's muzzle in the air that he might consider me more comfortably, to point me out an inn; I gave him a few coppers for his trouble, and a conscientious cut with my riding-whip, which made him flee away screaming like a jay that had been plucked alive. I threw myself upon a bed and fell fast asleep. When I awoke it was three o'clock in the afternoon, — a length of time scarcely sufficient to rest me completely. In fact, it was not too much for a sleepless night, an intrigue, a duel, and a very rapid though quite victorious flight.
“I was very anxious about the wound that I had given Alcibiades; but some days afterwards I was completely reassured, for I learnt that it had not been attended by dangerous consequences, and that he was quite convalescent. This relieved me of a singular weight, for the idea of having killed a man tormented me strangely although it had been in lawful self-defence, and against my own wish. I had not yet arrived at that sublime indifference towards men's lives to which I afterwards attained.
“At C–I again came across several of the young fellows with whom we had travelled. This pleased me; I formed a closer connection with them, and they introduced me into several agreeable houses. I had become completely used to my dress, and the ruder and more active life that I had led, and the violent exercises to which I had devoted myself had made me twice as robust as I had been before. I followed these mad-caps everywhere; I rode, hunted, had orgies with them, for little by little I had come to drink; without attaining to the perfectly German capacity of some among them, I could empty two or three bottles for my share without getting very tipsy, which was very satisfactory progress. I made verses like a god with extreme copiousness, and kissed inn-servants with sufficient boldness.
“In short, I was an accomplished young cavalier in complete conformity with the last fashionable pattern. I got rid of certain countrified notions that I had had about virtue and other similar tarradiddles; on the other hand, I became so prodigiously delicate in point of honor that I fought a duel nearly every day: it even became a necessity with me to do so, a sort of indispensable exercise without which I should have felt out of sorts the whole day. Accordingly, when no one had looked at me or trodden on my foot and I had no motive for fighting, rather than remain idle and not exercise myself in fencing, I would act as second to my comrades or even to men whom I knew only by name.
“I had soon a colossal renown for bravery, and nothing short of it was necessary to check the pleasantries which would infallibly have been suggested by my beardless face and effeminate appearance. But two or three superfluous button-holes that I had opened in some doublets, and a few slices that I very delicately cut from some recalcitrant skins, caused my appearance to be generally considered more manly than that of Mars in person or of Priapus himself, and you might have met with people who would have sworn that they had held bastards of mine over the baptismal font.
“Through all this apparent dissipation, amid this riotous, extravagant life, I ceased not to pursue my original idea, that is to say, the conscientious study of man and the solution of the great problem of a perfect lover, a problem somewhat more difficult to solve than that of the philosopher's stone.
“Certain ideas are like the horizon which most certainly exists, since you see it in front of you in whatever direction you turn, but which flees obstinately before you, and, whether you go at a foot pace or at a gallop, keeps always at the same distance from you; for it cannot manifest itself except with a determined condition of remoteness; it is destroyed in proportion as you advance, to be formed further away with its fleeting, imperceptible azure, and it is in vain that you try to detain it by the hem of its flowing mantle.
“The further I progress in my knowledge of the animal, the more I saw how utterly impossible was the realization of my desire, and how completely external to the conditions of its nature was that which I found indispensable to an auspicious love. I convinced myself that the man who would be the most sincerely in love with me would with the greatest readiness in the world find means to make me the most wretched of women, and yet I had already abandoned many of my girlish requirements. I had come down from the sublime clouds, not altogether into the street and the kennel, but upon a hill of medium height, accessible though somewhat steep.
“The ascent, it is true, was rude enough; but I was so proud as to believe that I was quite worth the trouble of the effort, and that I should be a sufficient compensation for the pains that had been taken. I could never have prevailed upon myself to take a step forward; I waited, perched patiently upon my summit
“My plan was as follows: In my male attire I should have made the acquaintance of some young man whose exterior pleased me; I should have lived on familiar terms with him; by means of skilful questions and false confidences which would have challenged true ones, I should Boon have acquired a complete knowledge of his feelings and thoughts; and, if I found him such a one as I wished him to be, I should have alleged some journey, and kept away from him for three or four months to give him time to forget my features; then I should have returned in my woman's costume, and arranged a voluptuous little house, buried amid trees and flowers, in a retired suburb; then I should have so ordered matters that he would have met me and wooed me; and, if he showed a true and faithful love, I should have given myself to him without restriction or precaution:-the title of his mistress would have appeared honorable to me, and I should not have asked him for any other.
“But assuredly this plan will never be put into execution, for it is characteristic of plans never to be executed, wherein principally appear the frailty of the will and the mere nothingness of man. The proverb 'God wills what woman wills' has no more truth in it than any other proverb, that is to say, it has hardly any at all.
“So long as I had seen men only at a distance and through the medium of my desire, they had appeared comely to me, and my sight had deceived me. Now I consider them frightful in the highest degree, and do not understand how a woman can admit such a creature into her bed; for my part, it would turn my stomach, and I could never bring myself to it.
“How coarse and ignoble are their lineaments, and how devoid of delicacy and elegance! what unfinished and un-pleasing lines! what hard, dark, and furrowed skin! Some are as swarthy as men that had been hanged for six months, emaciated, bony, hairy, with violin-strings on their hands, large drawbridge feet, dirty moustaches always full of food and twirled back to the ears, hair as rough as a broom's bristles, chins ending like boars' heads, lips cracked and dried by strong liquors, eyes surrounded by three or four dark orbs, necks full of twisted veins, big muscles and prominent cartilages. Others are stuffed with red meat, and push on before them a belly that their waist-belt can scarcely span; they blink as they open their little sea-green eyes inflamed with luxury, and resemble hippopotamuses in breeches rather than human creatures. They always smell either of wine, or brandy, or tobacco, or else of their own natural odor, which is the very worst of all. As to those whose forms are somewhat less disgusting, they are like misshapen women. And that is all.
“I had not remarked all this. I had been in life as in a cloud, and my feet scarcely touched the earth. The odor of the roses and lilacs of spring went to my head like too strong a perfume. I dreamt only of accomplished heroes, faithful and respectful lovers, flames worthy of the altar, marvellous devotions and sacrifices, and I should have thought that I had found them all in the first blackguard that bade me good-day. Yet this first, coarse intoxication had no long duration; strange suspicions seized me, and I could have no rest until I had cleared them up.
“At first my horror of men was pushed to the last degree of exaggeration, and I looked upon them as dreadful monstrosities. Their modes of thought, their manners and their carelessly cynical language, their brutality and their scorn of women shocked and revolted me extremely, so little did the idea that I had formed of them correspond with the reality. They are not monsters, if you will, but something, on my word, that is much worse! They are capital fellows of very jovial disposition, who eat and drink well, will do you all kinds of services, are good painters and musicians, and are suitable for a thousand things, with, however, the single exception of that one for which they were created, namely, to be the male of the animal called woman, with which they have not the slightest affinity, physical or moral.
