swear to you on their honor that she is the most virtuous creature in existence. She is just the contrary. It is a curious study to anatomize virtue of that kind on a pillow. Being forewarned you will not run any risk, and you will not have the awkwardness to fall really in love with her.'
“'And how old is this adorable person?' I asked, for, examining her with the most scrupulous attention, I found it impossible to determine her age.
“'Ah! how old is she? That is just the mystery, and God alone knows. I, who pique myself on telling a woman's age to within a minute, have never been able to find out. I merely estimate approximately that she is perhaps from eighteen to thirty-six years of age. I have seen her in full dress, in dishabille, and less scantily clad, and I can tell you nothing with respect to this. My knowledge is at fault; the age which she seems particularly to be is eighteen, yet that cannot be the case. She has the body of a maiden and the soul of a gay woman, and to become so deeply and so speciously depraved, much time or genius is necessary; it is needful to have a heart of bronze in a breast of steel; she has neither one nor the other, and I therefore think that she is thirty-six; but practically I do not know.'
“'Has she no intimate friend who could give you information on this point?”
“'No. She arrived in this town two years ago. She came from the country, or from abroad, I forget which- an admirable situation for a woman who knows how to turn it to account. With such a face as hers she might give herself any age she liked, and date only from the day that she arrived here.'
“'Nothing could be more pleasant, especially when some impertinent wrinkle does not come to give you the lie, and time, the Great Destroyer, has the goodness to lend himself to this falsification of the certificate of baptism.'
“He showed me some others who, according to him, would favorably receive all the petitions that it might please me to address to them, and would treat me with most particular philanthropy. But the woman in rose at the corner of the fire-place, and the modest dove who served as her antithesis, were incomparably better than all the rest; and if they had not all the qualities which I require, they had, in appearance, at least, some of them.
“I conversed the whole evening with them, especially with the latter, and was careful to cast my ideas in the most respectful mould. Although she scarcely looked at me, I thought that I saw her eyes gleam sometimes beneath their curtain of eyelashes, and, when I ventured some rather lively gallantries, clothed, however, in most modest guise, a little blush, checked and suppressed, pass two or three lines below her skin, similar to that produced by a rose-colored liquid when poured into a semi-opaque cup. Her replies were, in general, sober and circumspect, yet acute and full of point, and they suggested more than they expressed. All this was intermingled with omissions, hints, indirect allusions, each syllable having its purpose, and each silence its import. Nothing in the world could have been more diplomatic and more charming. And yet, whatever pleasure I may have taken in it for the moment, I could not keep up a conversation of the kind for long. One must be perpetually on the alert and on one's guard, and what I like best of all in a chat is freedom and familiarity.
“We spoke at first of music, which led us quite naturally to speak of the Opera, next of women, and then of love, a subject in which it is easier than in any other to find means of passing from the general to the particular. We vied with each other in making love; you would have laughed to listen to me. In truth, Amadis on the poor Boche was but a pedant without fire beside me. There was generosity, and abnegation, and devotion enough to cause the deceased Italian, Curtius, to blush for shame. I really did not think myself capable of such transcendent balderdash and bombast.
“I playing at the most quintessential Platonism-does it not strike you as a most facetious thing, as the best comedy scene that could be presented? And then, good heavens! the perfectly devout air, the little, demure, and hypocritical ways that I displayed! I looked most innocent, and any mother who had heard me reasoning would not have hesitated at all in letting me go about with her daughter, and any husband would have entrusted his wife to me. On that evening I appeared more virtuous, and was less so than ever in my life before. I thought that it was more difficult than that to play the hypocrite, and to say things without in the least believing them. It must be easy enough, or I must be very apt to have succeeded so agreeably the first time. In truth, I have some fine moments.
“As to the lady, she said many things that were most ingeniously detailed, and which, in spite of the appearance of f rankness which she threw into them, denoted the most consummate experience. You can form no idea of the subtlety of her distinctions. That woman would saw a hair into three parts lengthways, and would disconcert all the angelic and seraphic doctors. For the rest, she speaks in such a manner that it is impossible to believe that she has even the shadow of a body. She is immaterial, vaporous, and ideal enough to make you break your arms, and if De C- had not warned me about the ways of the animal, I should assuredly have despaired of success, and have stood piteously aside. And when a woman tells you for two hours, with the most disengaging air in the world, that love lives only by privations and sacrifices, and other fine things of the sort, how the devil can you decently hope to persuade her some day to place herself in such a situation with you as will enable you to discover whether you are both made alike?
“In short, we separated on very friendly terms, with reciprocal congratulations on the loftiness and purity of our sentiments.
“The conversation with the other one was, as you may imagine, of quite an opposite description. We laughed as much as we spoke. We made fun very wittily of all the women who were there; but I am mistaken when I say: 'We made fun of them very wittily.' I should have said that 'she' did so, for a man can never laugh effectively at a woman. For my part, I listened and approved, for it would have been impossible to draw a more lively sketch, or to color it more highly. It was the most curious gallery of caricatures that I have ever seen. In spite of the exaggeration, one could see the truth underlying it. De C- was quite right; the mission of this woman is to disenchant poets. She has about her an atmosphere of prose in which a poetical thought cannot live.
“She is charming and sparkling with wit, yet beside her one thinks only of base and vulgar things. While speaking to her I felt a crowd of desires incongruous and impracticable in the place where I was, such as to call for wine and get drunk, to place her on one of my knees and madly kiss her, to raise the hem of her skirt and see whether her ankle was slender or just the reverse, to sing a ribald refrain with all my might, to smoke a pipe, or to break the windows-in short, to do anything. All the animal part, all the brute, rose within me; I would willingly have spat on the Iliad of Homer; and I would have gone on my knees to a ham. I can now quite understand the allegory of the companions of Ulysses being changed into swine by Circe. Circe was probably some lively creature like my little woman in rose.
“Shameful to relate, I experienced great delight in feeling myself overtaken by brutishness; I made no resistance, but assisted it as much as I could-so natural is depravity to man, and so much mire is there in the clay of which he is formed.
“Yet for one moment I feared the canker that was seizing upon me, and wished to leave my corrupter; but the floor seemed to have risen to my knees, and it was as though I were set fast in my place.
“At last I took it on me to leave her, and the evening being far advanced, I returned home much perplexed and troubled, and without very well knowing what to do. I hesitated between the prude and her opposite. I found voluptuousness in one and piquancy in the other, and after a most minute and searching self-examination, I found, not that I loved them both, but that I wished sufficiently for them both, for one as much as for the other, to dream about them and be preoccupied with the thought of them.
“To all appearance, my friend, I shall gain over one of these women, and perhaps both; and yet I confess to you that the possession of them will only half satisfy me. It is not that they are not very pretty, but at sight of them nothing cried out within me, nothing panted, nothing said: 'It is they,' I did not recognize them. Nevertheless, I do not think that I shall meet with anything much better so far as birth and beauty are concerned, and De C- advisee me to go no further. I shall certainly take his advice, and one or other of them will be my mistress, or the devil will take me before very long; but at the bottom of my heart a secret voice reproaches me for being false to my love, and for stopping thus at the first smile of a woman for whom I care nothing, instead of seeking untiringly through the world, in cloisters and in evil places, in palaces and in taverns, for her who, whether she be princess or serving-maid, nun or courtesan, has been made for me and destined to me by God.
“Then I say to myself that I am fancying chimeras, and that it is after all just the same whether I sleep with this woman or with another; that it will not cause the earth to deviate by a hair's breadth from its path, or the four seasons to reverse their order; that nothing in the world can be of smaller moment; and that I am very simple to torment myself with such crotchets. This is what I say to myself; but it is all in vain! I am not more tranquil nor resolved than before.
