to married women; there were none of the discreet, polite,
playfully-childish sentences such as they addressed to me or my
companions, but a more flippant sportiveness, less grave and more
familiar manners, the significant reticence and circumlocutions that
follow quickly from a corrupt nature that knows it has one similarly
corrupt before it; I felt that there was an element of union between
them that did not exist between us, and I would have given everything
to know what that element was.
With what anxiety and frenzied curiosity did I follow with eye and ear
the buzzing, laughing groups of young men who, after breaking through
the circle at a few points, resumed their promenade, talking together
and casting ambiguous glances as they passed. Incredulous sneering
smiles flickered about their full lips; they had the appearance of
laughing at what they had said and of retracting the compliments and
words of adoration with which they had overwhelmed us. I did not hear
their words; but I understood, from the movement of their lips, that
they were talking a language that was unknown to me and that no one had
ever used before me. Even those who had the most humble and submissive
manner tossed their heads with very perceptible indications of ennui
and rebellion;--a panting sound, like that made by an actor when he
reaches the end of a long speech, escaped from their lungs in spite of
them, and they would half turn on their heels as they left us, in an
eager, hurried way that denoted inward satisfaction at being relieved
from the severe task of being courteous and gallant.
I would have given a year of my life to listen, unseen, to one hour of
their conversation. I frequently understood from certain attitudes,
from an occasional gesture or an oblique glance in my direction,
that I was the subject of conversation among them and that they were
discussing either my age or my face. At such times I was on burning
coals; the few indistinct words, the fragments of phrases that reached
my ears at intervals, excited my curiosity to the highest pitch but
could not satisfy it, and I fell into strange doubts and perplexities.
Generally what they said seemed to be favorable, and it was not that
that disturbed me: I cared very little whether they thought I was
beautiful; but the brief remarks whispered in the ear and almost
always followed by long laughter and significant winks--those were
what I would have liked to know about; and for one of those sentences
spoken in an undertone behind a curtain or in the angle of a door, I
would without regret have interrupted the sweetest and most delightful
conversation in the world.
If I had had a lover, I would have liked much to know how he would have
spoken of me to another man, and in what terms he would have boasted of
his good fortune to his boon companions, with a little wine in his head
and both elbows on the table.
I know now and in truth I am very sorry to know.--It is always so.
My idea was a mad one, but what is done is done and one cannot unlearn
what one has learned. I did not listen to you, my dear Graciosa, and I
am sorry for it; but one doesn't always listen to reason, especially
when it issues from such a pretty mouth as yours, for, I don't know why
it is, but one cannot believe that advice is good unless it is given by
some old bald or gray head, as if having been a fool for sixty years
could make you wise.
But all this tormented me too much, and I couldn't stand it; I was
broiling in my little skin like a chestnut on the stove. The fatal
apple was ripening in the foliage above my head, and I must needs bite
into it at last, being at liberty to throw it away afterwards, if it
seemed to me to have a bitter taste.
I did like fair-haired Eve, my dearest grandmother--I bit.
The death of my uncle, my only remaining kinsman, leaving me in control
of my actions, I carried out the plan I had so long dreamed of.--My
precautions were taken with the greatest care so that no one should
suspect my sex: I had learned to use the sword and pistol; I was a
perfect horsewoman and daring to a point that few equerries could
equal; I made a careful study of the proper way of wearing a cloak and
brandishing a crop, and in the course of a few months I succeeded in
transforming a girl who was considered very pretty, into a youth who
was much prettier and who lacked almost nothing except a moustache,--I
turned what property I had into cash, and left the town, resolved not
to return until I had acquired thorough experience.
It was the only way of solving my doubts: to have lovers would
have taught me nothing, or at least it would only have afforded me
incomplete information, and I wanted to study man thoroughly, to
dissect him fibre by fibre with an inexorable scalpel, and to watch
him, alive and palpitating, on my dissecting-table; for that, it was
necessary to see him alone in his own house, off his guard, to go with
him to walk, to the tavern and elsewhere.--With my disguise I could
go everywhere without being noticed; no one would conceal his true
character before me, all constraint and reserve would be laid aside, I
should receive confidences--I would make false ones in order to receive
true ones in return. Alas! women have read only the romance of man,
never his history.
It is a terrifying thing to think of--a thing we do not think of--how
profoundly ignorant we are of the life and conduct of those who seem
to love us and whom we marry. Their real existence is as absolutely
unknown to us as if they were inhabitants of Saturn or some other
planet a hundred million leagues from our sublunary ball; you would
say that they were of another species, and that there is not the least
intellectual bond between the two sexes;--the virtues of one make the
vices of the other, and the things that a man admires make a woman
blush.
Our lives are transparent and may be penetrated at a glance.--It is
easy to follow us from the house to the boarding-school, from the
boarding-school back to the house;--what we do is a mystery to no
one; every one can see our wretched crayon drawings, our bouquets in
water-color, consisting of a pansy and a rose of the size of a cabbage,
sweetly tied together by the stems with a bow of delicate-hued ribbon;
the slippers we embroider for our father's or grandfather's birthday
have nothing in themselves very occult or very disquieting.--Our
sonatas and our romanzas are executed with all desirable lack of
warmth. We are well and duly tied to our mother's apron-strings, and
at nine o'clock, or ten at the latest, we go to our little white beds
in our clean and virtuous little cells, where we are scrupulously
bolted and padlocked in until the next morning. The most alert and most
jealous sensitiveness could find nothing objectionable in that.
The clearest crystal is not so transparent as such a life.
The man who takes us knows what we have done from the moment we were
weaned and even before, if he cares to carry his investigations so
far.--Our life is not life, it is a sort of vegetating existence
like that of moss and flowers; the freezing shadow of the maternal
stalk hovers around us, poor, dwarfed rose-buds, who dare not open.
Our principal business is to sit very straight, tightly laced and
whaleboned, with our eyes properly downcast, and to outdo, in
immobility and stiffness, mannikins and dolls on springs.
We are forbidden to speak, to join in the conversation farther than to
answer yes and no if we are questioned. As soon as anything interesting
is to be said we are sent away to practise on the harp or spinet, and
our music masters are always at least sixty years old and take snuff
disgustingly. The models hung in our rooms are anatomically very vague
and evasive. The Greek gods, before making their appearance in young
ladies' boarding-schools, take care to purchase very full box-coats at
a second-hand clothing shop, and to be engraved in stipple, which makes
them look like porters or cab-drivers and renders them but ill-adapted
to excite our imaginations.
By dint of seeking to prevent us from becoming romantic, they make us
idiots. The time when we are being educated is passed, not in teaching
us something, but in preventing us from learning anything.
We are really prisoners, in body and mind; but a young man, free to
do what he will, who goes out in the morning not to return until the
next morning, who has money, who can earn money and dispose of it as he
pleases--how could he justify his method of employing his time?--who
is the man who would be willing to tell his beloved what he has done
during the day and night?--Not one, even of those who are reputed the
purest.
I sent my horse and my clothes to a little farm that I own at some
distance from the town. I dressed myself, mounted and rode away, not
without a strange oppression at the heart.--I regretted nothing, I
left nothing behind, neither relatives nor friends, not a dog, not a
cat, and yet I was sad, I almost had tears in my eyes; the farm, which
I had never visited more than five or six times, had no sentimental
attraction for me, and there was none of the fondness you sometimes
feel for certain spots, which saddens you when you are obliged to leave
them; but I turned two or three times to watch the spiral column of
bluish smoke rising among the trees.
There I had left my title of woman, with my skirts and petticoats; in
the chamber in which I had dressed were confined twenty years of my
life, which were no longer to count and no longer concerned me. On the
door might have been written:--"Here lies Madelaine de Maupin;"--for I
was no longer Madelaine de Maupin, but Théodore de Sérannes,--and no
one was to call me again by the sweet name of Madelaine.
The drawer in which my dresses, useless thenceforth, were placed,
seemed to me like the coffin of my maidenly illusions;--I was a man, or
at least I had the appearance of one; the maiden was dead.
When I had altogether lost sight of the tops of the chestnut-trees that
surrounded the farm, it seemed to me that I was no longer myself but
another, and I remembered my former acts as those of a stranger whom
I had watched, or as the beginning of a novel which I had not finished
reading.
I recalled complacently a thousand little details, whose childish
innocence brought to my lips an indulgent smile, sometimes a little
mocking, like that of a young rake listening to the Arcadian, pastoral
confidences of a school-boy of thirteen; and, at the moment I was
parting from them forever, all my girlish and young-womanish follies
flocked to the roadside, making friendly gestures to me and sending me
kisses with the tips of their white, tapering fingers.
I put spurs to my horse to fly from this enervating emotion; the trees
flew swiftly by on the right hand and the left; but the madcap swarm,
buzzing louder than a swarm of bees, rushed along the paths beside the
road, calling: "Madelaine! Madelaine!"
I struck my horse a sharp blow on the neck which made him double his
speed. My hair stood out almost straight behind my head, my cloak was
in a horizontal position, as if the folds had been carved out of stone,
our pace was so swift; I looked back once and saw, like a tiny white
cloud far away on the horizon, the dust that my horse's feet had raised.
I stopped a moment.
In an eglantine bush, on the edge of the road, I saw something
white moving, and a voice, clear and soft as silver, struck my
ear:--"Madelaine, Madelaine, where are you going so far from home,
Madelaine? I am your virginity, my dear child; that is why I have
a white dress, a white crown and a white skin. But why do you wear
boots, Madelaine? I thought that you had a very pretty foot. Boots and
short-clothes and a great plumed hat like a cavalier going to the war!
Why that long sword that strikes and bruises your thigh? You have a
strange outfit, Madelaine, and I am not sure if I ought to accompany
you."
"If you are afraid, my dear, go back to the house, water my flowers and
take care of my doves. But really you are wrong, you would be safer in
these garments of stout cloth than in your gauze and fine linen. My
boots prevent any one from seeing if I have a pretty foot; this sword
is to defend myself and the plume waving in my hat is to frighten away
the nightingales that come to sing false songs of love in my ear."
I continued my journey; in the sighs of the wind I thought I could
recognize the last bar of the sonata I had learned for my uncle's
birthday, and in a great rose that showed its full-blown head
above a low wall, the model of the rose I had painted so often in
water-colors; as I rode by a house I saw the phantoms of my curtains
waving at a window. My whole past seemed to be clinging to me to
prevent my going forward and arriving at a new future.
I hesitated two or three times, and I turned my horse's head the other
way.
But the little blue snake, curiosity, softly hissed insidious words
into my ear, and said to me:--"Go on, go on, Théodore; it is a good
opportunity to learn; if you don't learn to-day, you will never
know.--And will you bestow your noble heart, at random, on the first
honest and passionate exterior?--Men conceal some very extraordinary
secrets from us, Théodore!"
I started off at a gallop.
The short-clothes were on my body and not in my mind; I had a very
unpleasant feeling, a sort of shiver of fear, to call it by its right
name, at a dark place in the forest; a gunshot, fired by a poacher,
almost made me faint. If it had been a highwayman, the pistols in my
holsters and my long sword would certainly have been of small use to
me. But gradually I recovered and paid no farther attention to it.
The sun sank slowly beneath the horizon like the lights in a theatre
which are turned down when the performance is at an end. Rabbits and
pheasants crossed the road from time to time; the shadows lengthened
and all distant objects were tinged with red. Certain parts of the sky
were of a most soft, deep lilac, others of a pale lemon or orange; the
birds of night began to sing, and a multitude of curious sounds arose
from the woods: the little remaining light faded away, and it became
quite dark,--darker because of the shadow cast by the trees. And I,
who had never been out alone at night, was in the midst of a great
forest at eight o'clock! Can you imagine it, my Graciosa,--I who used
almost to die of fear at the foot of the garden? My fright returned
with ten-fold force and my heart beat terribly fast; it was with great
satisfaction, I confess, that I saw the lights of the town for which I
was bound gleaming and twinkling on a hillside. As soon as I saw those
bright specks--like little earthly stars they were--my fright passed
away completely. It seemed to me that those unthinking lights were the
open eyes of so many friends watching for me.
My horse was no less content than I, and, scenting the sweet odors of a
stable, more agreeable to him than the perfume of all the marguerites
and wood strawberries on earth, he trotted straight to the Hôtel du
Lion-Rouge.
An enormous fire-place at the end of the room swallowed in its black
and red maw a bundle of fagots at every mouthful, and on each side
of the andirons, two dogs, almost as large as men, sat on their
hind-quarters, roasting themselves with all imaginable phlegm, content
to raise their paws a little and heave a sort of sigh when the heat
became more intense; but they certainly would have preferred to be
reduced to charcoal rather than move back an inch.
My arrival did not seem to please them, and I tried in vain to make
their acquaintance by patting them on the head several times; they cast
stealthy glances at me that boded no good.--That astonished me, for
animals generally take to me.
The inn-keeper approached to ask me what I wanted for supper.
He was a pot-bellied man, with a red nose, wall-eyes, and a smile that
made the circuit of his head. At every word he uttered he showed a
double row of pointed teeth with spaces between, like an ogre's. The
huge kitchen-knife that hung at his side had a doubtful look, as if
it might serve several different purposes. When I had told him what
I wanted, he went up to one of the dogs and kicked him. The dog got
up and walked toward a sort of wheel and went inside with a piteous,
complaining air and a reproachful glance at me. At last, seeing that
there was no hope for him, he began to turn the wheel and thereby the
spit on which the chicken was impaled that was to furnish my supper.--I
resolved to throw him the scraps as a reward for his trouble, and
looked about the kitchen while the repast was preparing.
[Illustration: Chapter X--_The inn-keeper approached to ask me what
I wanted for supper. He was a pot-bellied man, with a red nose,
wall-eyes, and a smile that made the circuit of his head. At every word
he uttered he showed a double row of pointed teeth with spaces between,
like an ogre's. A bright light shone through the leaded windows of the
hotel, whose tin sign swung from right to left and moaned like an old
woman, for the north wind was beginning to freshen.--I turned my horse
over to a groom and entered the kitchen._]
The ceiling was formed of huge oaken beams, all discolored and
blackened by the smoke from the fire-place and the candles. On the
sideboards pewter plates more highly polished than silver shone in the
darkness, and white crockery with blue flowers.--The numerous rows of
well-scoured saucepans along the walls reminded one not a little of
the antique bucklers that we see hung in rows along the sides of Greek
or Roman triremes--forgive me, Graciosa, the epic magnificence of
that simile. One or two buxom servant-maids were moving around a great
table, arranging plates and forks, music more agreeable than any other
when one is hungry, for the hearing of the stomach then becomes keener
than that of the ear. Take it for all in all, despite the landlord's
Christmas-box mouth and saw teeth, the inn had a very honest and
pleasing appearance; and even had his smile extended a fathom farther
and his teeth been three times as long and white, the rain began to
patter against the window-panes and the wind to howl in a fashion to
take away all desire to depart, for I know nothing more depressing than
the groaning of the wind on a dark and rainy night.
An idea came to me that made me smile--it was that no one in the world
would have come to look for me where I was.
Indeed, who would have dreamed that little Madelaine, instead of being
tucked away in her warm little bed, with her alabaster night-light
beside her, a novel under her pillow, her maid in the adjoining closet,
ready to run to her at the least nocturnal fright, was rocking to and
fro in a straw chair in a country inn twenty leagues from her home,
her booted feet resting on the andirons and her little hands buried
jauntily in her pockets?
Yes, Madelinette has not remained like her companions, her elbows
lazily resting on the balcony rail, between the window jasmine and
volubilis, watching the violet fringe of the horizon across the plain
or some little rose-colored cloud moving gently in the May breeze. She
has not carpeted mother-of-pearl palaces with lily leaves, to furnish
quarters for her chimeras; she has not, like you, lovely dreamers,
arrayed some hollow phantom in all imaginable perfections; she has
sought to compare the illusions of her heart with the reality; she
has chosen to know men before giving herself to a man; she has left
everything, her lovely dresses of bright-colored silks and velvets,
her necklaces, her bracelets, her birds and her flowers; she has
voluntarily renounced humble adoration, gallant speeches, bouquets and
madrigals, the pleasure of being considered lovelier and better adorned
than you, the sweet name of woman, everything that was part of her,
and has started all alone, the brave girl, to travel the world over to
learn the great science of life.
If people knew that, they would say that Madelaine was mad.--You
said so yourself, my dear Graciosa;--but the real mad women are they
who toss their hearts to the wind and sow their love at random on
the stones and on the rocks, without knowing if a single seed will
germinate.
O Graciosa! that is a thought I have never had without dismay: to
have loved some one who was not worthy! to have shown one's heart
all naked to impure eyes and allowed a profane creature to enter its
sanctuary! to have mingled its limpid stream for some time with a muddy
stream!--However perfectly they may be separated, some trace of the
slime always remains, and the stream can never recover its original
transparency.
To think that a man has kissed you and touched you; that he has seen
your body; that he can say: "She is thus and so; she has such a mark
in such a place; her mind runs upon this or that theme; she laughs
for this thing and weeps for that; her dreams are like this; I have
in my portfolio a feather from the wings of her chimera; this ring is
made from her hair; a bit of her heart is folded into this letter; she
caressed me so, and these are her usual words of endearment."
Ah! Cleopatra, I understand now why you always had the lover with whom
you had passed the night killed in the morning.--Sublime cruelty,
for which, formerly, I could find no imprecations strong enough!
Great voluptuary, how well you understood human nature, and what deep
purpose there was in that savagery! You did not choose that any living
man should divulge the mysteries of your bed; the words of love that
flew from your lips were not to be repeated.--Thus you retained your
pure illusion. Experience did not tear away, bit by bit, the charming
phantom you had cradled in your arms. You chose to be separated from
him by a sudden blow of the axe rather than by slow distaste.--What
torture, in very truth, to see the man one has chosen belying every
moment the idea one has conceived of him; to discover in his character
a thousand pettinesses you did not suspect; to discover that what
had seemed to you so beautiful through the prism of love is really
very ugly, and that he whom you had taken for a true hero of romance
is, after all, only a prosaic bourgeois, who wears slippers and a
dressing-gown!
I have not Cleopatra's power, and if I had it, I certainly should not
have the strength to use it. And so, being neither able nor desirous
to cut off my lovers' heads upon getting up in the morning, and being
no more inclined to endure what other women endure, I must needs look
twice before taking a lover; and that is what I propose to do three
times rather than twice, if I should have any desire for one, which I
very much doubt after what I have seen and heard; unless, however, I
should meet in some blessed unknown country a heart like my own, as the
novels say--a pure, virgin heart which has never loved and which is
capable of loving, in the true sense of the word; which is not, by any
manner of means, an easy thing to find.
Several cavaliers entered the inn; the storm and the darkness had
prevented them from continuing their journey.--They were all young, the
oldest certainly not more than thirty; their clothes indicated that
they belonged to the upper classes, and, even without their clothes,
their insolent familiarity and their manners would have made it
sufficiently evident. There were one or two who had interesting faces;
all the others had, in a greater or less degree, that sort of jovial
brutality and careless good-humor which men display among themselves,
and which they lay aside completely when they are in our presence.
If they could have suspected that the slender youth half-asleep on his
chair in the chimney-corner was by no means what he appeared to be,
but a young girl, a morsel for a king, as they say, certainly they
would very soon have changed their tone, and you would have seen them
swell out and spread their feathers on the instant. They would have
approached me with repeated reverences, legs straight, elbows out,
a smile in their eyes and mouth and nose and hair and their whole
attitude; they would have emasculated the words they used and would
have spoken only in velvet and satin phrases; at my slightest movement
they would have acted as if they were going to stretch themselves out
on the floor by way of carpet, for fear that my tender feet might
be bruised by its inequalities; every hand would have been held out
to support me; the softest chair would have been placed in the most
desirable position;--but I had the outward appearance of a pretty boy
and not of a pretty girl.
I confess that I was almost on the point of regretting my petticoats,
when I saw how little attention they paid me.--I was deeply mortified
for a moment; for from time to time I forgot that I was now wearing
man's clothes, and I had to remind myself of it in order to avoid an
attack of bad temper.