It was a formidable enterprise! But too many were called to this festivity to allow of there being many elect. Thanks to my slender figure, I was able to creep into a tent in the gardens of the Maison Papion, and got close to the armchair in which the Prince was enthroned. In an instant I was stifled by the heat, dazzled by the lights, by the crimson hangings, the gilt ornaments, the dresses and the diamonds of the first public function I had ever attended. I was pushed about by a throng of men and women, all hustling and crowding each other in a cloud of dust. The blatant brass and Bourbon strains of the military band were drowned by shouts of:
“Hurrah for the Duc d’Angoulême! Long live the King! Hurrah for the Bourbons!”
The fête was an outbreak of enthusiasm in which everyone vied with the rest in his vehement eagerness to hail the rising sun of the Bourbons, a display of party selfishness that left me cold, made me feel small, and shrink into myself.
Carried away like a straw in a whirlpool, I was childishly wishing that I were the Duc d’Angoulême, and could mingle with these Princes thus made a show of to the staring crowd. This silly provincial fancy gave rise to an ambition dignified by my character and by circumstances. Who might not have coveted this worship, repeated on a more splendid scale a few months later when all Paris rushed to greet the Emperor on his return from the island of Elba? This supreme power over the masses, whose feelings and vitality discharge themselves into one soul, made me a sudden devotee to Glory, the goddess who puts the French to the sword nowadays, as the Druidess of old sacrificed the Gauls.
And then, as suddenly, I saw the woman who was fated to goad perpetually my ambitious hopes and to crown them by throwing me into contact with Royalty.
Too shy to ask anyone to dance with me, and fearing, too, that I might make confusion in the figures, I naturally felt very awkward, not knowing what to do with myself. Just when I was most conscious of the fatigue of constantly moving under the pressure of the crowd, an officer trod on my feet, which were swollen by the pressure of my shoes and by the heat. This crowning annoyance disgusted me with the whole affair. It was impossible to get away, and I took refuge in a corner at the extreme end of a vacant bench, where I sat down, my gaze fixed, motionless, and sulky. A woman, misled by my delicate looks, took me for a boy half asleep while awaiting my mother’s pleasure, and seated herself by me with the light movement of a bird settling on its nest. I was at once aware of a feminine fragrance which flashed upon my soul as Oriental poetry has flashed upon it since. I looked at my neighbor, and was more dazzled by her than I had been by the ball.
If you have at all entered into my previous life, you can guess the emotions that swelled my heart. My eyes were suddenly fascinated by white rounded shoulders that made me long to bury my face in them, shoulders faintly pink, as if they were blushing to find themselves bare for the first time, bashful shoulders with a soul of their own and a satin skin shining in the light like a silken fabric. Between these shoulders ran a furrow which my eyes, bolder than my hand, glided into. My heart beat as I stood up to look over them, and I was entirely captivated by a bosom modestly covered with gauze, perfect in roundness, and bluely veined as it lay softly bedded in lace frills. The least details of the charming head were allurements stirring me to endless delight: the sheen of the hair knotted above a neck as peach-like as a little girl’s, the white partings made by the comb along which my imagination played as in a new-made path—everything together turned my brain.
Looking round to make sure that no one saw me, I buried my face in that back as a baby hides in its mother’s breast, and kissed those shoulders all over, rubbing my cheek against them. The lady gave a piercing cry, inaudible above the music; she turned sharply around, saw me, and said, “Monsieur!”
If she had said, “My good boy, what possesses you?” I should perhaps have killed her; but this word Monsieur brought hot tears to my eyes.
I was petrified by a look fired with righteous anger, and an exquisite face crowned with a plait of fair brown hair, in harmony with those adorable shoulders. The crimson of offended modesty flamed in her face, which was already softening with a woman’s forgiveness for a mad act when she is the cause of it, and when she sees a passion of worship in the tears of repentance. She rose and walked away with the dignity of a queen.
Then I understood how ridiculous was my position; then, and not till then, I felt that I was dressed like a Savoyard’s monkey. I was ashamed. I sat there quite stupefied, relishing the apple I had stolen, feeling on my lips the warmth of the blood I had scented; quite unrepentant, and following with my eyes this being come down from heaven. Then, overpowered by this first physical indulgence of my heart’s wild fever, I wandered through the ballroom, now a desert, without finding the unknown vision. I went home and to bed, an altered creature.
A new soul, a soul with iridescent wings, had burst its chrysalis within me. My favorite star, dropping from the blue waste where I had admired it, had become woman, while preserving its light, its sparkle, and its brilliancy. Suddenly, knowing nothing of love, I had fallen in love. Is not
