“This, perhaps, results from the fact that I live a great deal with myself, and that the most petty details in a life so monotonous as mine assume too great an importance. I pay too much attention to my living and thinking. I hearken to the throbbing of my arteries, and the beatings of my heart; by dint of close attention I detach my most fleeting ideas from the cloudy vapor in which they float, and give them a body. If I acted more I should not perceive all these petty things, and I should not have time to be looking at my soul through a microscope, as I do the whole day long. The noise of action would put to flight this swarm of idle thoughts which flutter through my heart, and stun me with the buzzing of their wings. Instead of pursuing phantoms I should grapple with realities; I should ask from women only what they can give-pleasure; and I should not seek to embrace some fantastic ideal attired in cloudy perfections.
“This intense straining of the eye of my soul after an invisible object has distorted my vision. I cannot see what is for my gazing at what is not; and my eye, so keen for the ideal, is perfectly near-sighted in matters of reality. Thus I have known women who are declared charming by everybody, and who appear to me to be anything but that. I have greatly admired pictures generally considered bad, and odd or unintelligible verses have given me more pleasure than the most worthy productions. I should not be astonished if, after offering up so many sighs to the moon, staring so often at the stars, and composing so many elegies and sentimental apostrophes, I were to fall in love with some vulgar prostitute or some ugly old woman. That would be a fine downfall! Reality will perhaps revenge itself in this way for the carelessness with which I have courted her. Would it not be a nice thing if I were to be smitten with a fine romantic passion for some awkward cross-patch or some abominable trollop? Can you see me playing the guitar beneath a kitchen window, and ousted by a scullion carrying the pug of-an old dowager who is getting rid of her last tooth?
“Perhaps, too, finding nothing in the world worthy of my love, I shall end by adoring myself, like the late Narcissus of egotistical memory. To secure myself against so great a misfortune, I look into all the mirrors and all the brooks that I come across. In truth, with my reveries and aberrations, I am tremendously afraid of falling into the monstrous or unnatural. It is a serious matter and I must take care.
“Good-bye, my friend; I am going directly to see the lady in rose, lest I should give myself up to my customary meditations. I do not think that we shall pay much attention to entelechia, and I imagine that anything we may do will have no connection with spiritualism, although she is a very spiritual creature; I carefully roll up the pattern of my ideal mistress, and put it away in a drawer, that I may not use it as a test with her. I wish to enjoy peacefully the beauties and the merits that she possesses. I wish to leave her attired in a robe that suits her, without trying to adapt for her the vesture that I have cut out beforehand, and at all hazards for the lady of my thoughts. These are very wise resolutions; I do not know whether I shall keep them. Once more, good-bye.”
III
“I am the established lover of the lady in rose; it is almost a calling or a charge, and gives one stability in society. I am no longer like a schoolboy seeking good luck among the grandmothers, and not venturing to utter a madrigal to a woman unless she is a centenarian. I perceive that since my installation people think more of me, that all the women speak to me with jealous coquetry, and put themselves very much about on my account. The men, on the contrary, are colder, and there is something of hostility and constraint in the few words that we exchange. They feel that they have in me a rival who is already formidable, and who may become more so.
“I have been told that many of them had criticized my manner of dress with bitterness, and said that it was too effeminate; that my hair was curled and glossed with over much care; that this, joined to my beardless face, gave me the most ridiculously foppish appearance; that for my garments I affected rich and splendid materials which had the odor of the theatre about them, and that. I was more like an actor than a man-all the commonplaces in fact that people utter in order to give themselves the right of being dirty and of wearing sorry and badly-cut coats. But all this only serves to whitewash me, and all the ladies think that my hair is the handsomest in the world, and that my refinements in dress are in the best taste, and they seem very much inclined to indemnify me for the expense I have gone to on their account-for they are not so foolish as to believe that all this elegance is merely intended for my own personal adornment.
“The lady of the house seemed at first somewhat piqued by my choice, which she had thought must of necessity have fallen upon herself, and for a few days she harbored some bitterness on account of it (towards her rival only; for she has always spoken in the same way to me), which manifested itself in sundry little 'My dears,' uttered in that sharp, jerky manner which is the exclusive property of women, and in sundry unkind opinions respecting her toilet given in as loud a tone as possible, such as: 'Your hair is dressed a great deal too high, and does not suit your face in the least;' or, 'Your bodice is creased under the arms; whoever made that dress for you?' or, 'You look very wearied; you seem quite changed;' and a thousand other small observations, to which the other failed not to reply when an opportunity presented itself with all the malice that could be desired; and if the opportunity did not come soon enough, she herself provided one for her own use, and gave back more than she had received. But another object diverting the attention of the slighted Infanta, this little wordy war soon came to an end, and things returned to their usual order.
“I have told you summarily that-1 am the established lover of the lady in rose, but that is not enough for so exact a man as you. You will no doubt ask me what she is called. As to her name, I will not tell it to you; but if you like, to facilitate the narrative, and in memory of the color of the dress in which I saw her for the first time, we will call her Rosette; it is a pretty name, and it was thus that my little puss was called.
“You will wish to know in detail-for you love precision in matters of this kind-the history of our loves with this fair Bradamant, and by what successive gradations I passed from the general to the particular, and from the condition of simple spectator to that of actor; how from being an indifferent onlooker I have become a lover. I will gratify your wish with the greatest pleasure. There is nothing sinister in our romance. It is rose-colored, and no tears are shed in it save those of pleasure; no delays or repetitions are to be met with in it; and everything advances towards the end with the haste and swiftness so strongly recommended by Horace; it is a truly French romance.
“Nevertheless, do not imagine that I carried the fortress at the first assault The Princess, though very humane towards her subjects, is not so lavish of her favors as one might think at first. She knows the value of them too well not to make you buy them; and she further knows too well the eagerness given to desire by apt delay, and the flavor given to pleasure by a show of resistance, to surrender herself to you all at once, however strong the liking may be with which you have inspired her.
“To tell you the story in full I must go a little further back. I gave you a sufficiently circumstantial narrative of our first interview. I had one or two more in the same house, or perhaps three, and then she invited me to go and see her; I did not wait to be pressed, as you may well believe; I went at first with discretion, then somewhat oftener, then oftener still, and at last whenever I felt so inclined, and I must confess that that happened at least three or four times a day. The lady, after a few hours' absence, always received me as if I had just returned from the East Indies; I was very sensible of this, and it obliged me to show my gratitude in a manner marked with the greatest gallantry and tenderness in the world, to which she responded to the best of her ability.
“Rosette, since we have agreed to call her so, is a woman of great sense, and one who understands men admirably; and although she delayed the conclusion of the chapter for some time, I was never once out of temper with her. This is truly wonderful, for you know the fine passions I fall into when I have not at once what I desire, and when a woman exceeds the time that I have assigned her, in my head, for her surrender.
“I do not know how she managed it, but from the first interview she gave me to understand that she would be mine, and I was more sure of it than if I had had the promise written and signed with her own hand. It will be said, perhaps, that the boldness and ease of her manners left the ground clear for the rashness of hopes. I do not think that this can be the true reason: I have seen some women whose extraordinary freedom excluded in a measure the very shadow of a doubt, who have yet not produced this effect upon me, and with whom I have experienced timidity and disquietude when they were at the least out of place.
“What makes me much less amiable with the women whom I wish to overcome than with those about whom I am unconcerned, is the passionate waiting for the opportunity, and the uncertainty in which I am respecting the success of my undertaking: this makes me gloomy, and throws me into a delirium, which robs me of many of my talents and much of my presence of mind. When I see the hours which I had destined for a different employment
