desires,--I am languishing and dying with lust;--for the coat I wear,
while it leads me into all sorts of adventures with women, protects
me too perfectly against the enterprises of men; an idea of pleasure
that is never realized floats vaguely in my brain, and the dull,
colorless dream fatigues and bores me.--So many women lead the life
of prostitutes amid the most chaste surroundings! and I, in most
ridiculous contrast to them, remain as chaste and unspotted as the
cold Diana herself, in the midst of the most reckless dissipation and
surrounded by the greatest rakes of the age.--This ignorance of the
body, unaccompanied by ignorance of the mind, is the most wretched
thing imaginable. In order that my flesh may not put on airs before my
mind, I propose to inflict an equal stain upon it--if indeed it is any
more of a stain than eating and drinking, which I doubt.--In a word, I
propose to know what a man is, and what sort of pleasure he affords.
As D'Albert recognized me through my disguise, it is no more than fair
that he should be rewarded for his penetration; he was the first person
to guess that I was a woman, and I will do my best to prove to him that
his suspicions were well founded.--It would be most uncharitable to let
him believe that he has developed an unnatural taste.
D'Albert then will solve my doubts, and give me my first lesson in
love; it only remains now to bring the thing about in poetic fashion. I
am inclined not to answer his letter, and to be cold to him for a few
days. When I see that he is very depressed and desperate, cursing the
gods, shaking his fist at all creation, and looking into wells to see
if they are too deep to throw himself into--then I will withdraw, like
Peau d'Ane, to the end of the corridor, and will don my multi-colored
dress--that is to say, my Rosalind costume, for my feminine wardrobe
is decidedly limited. Then I will go to him, as radiant as a peacock
spreading his feathers, showing ostentatiously what I generally conceal
with the greatest care, and wearing only a little lace tucker, very low
and very coquettish, and I will say to him in the most pathetic tone I
can command:
"O most poetic and most perspicacious of young men, I am in very
truth naught but a young and modest beauty, who, over and above all,
adores you, and whose only wish is to give pleasure to you and to
herself.--Tell me if that is agreeable to you, and if you still retain
any scruple, touch this, go in peace, and sin all you can."
That eloquent harangue concluded, I will sink, half-fainting, into
his arms, and while I heave a melancholy sigh or two, I will adroitly
unfasten the clasp of my dress and appear in the conventional costume,
that is to say, half naked.--D'Albert will do the rest, and I hope
that, on the following morning, I shall know what to believe about
all the fine things that have been troubling my brain so long.--While
gratifying my curiosity, I shall have the additional pleasure of making
a fellow-creature happy.
I propose also to pay Rosette a visit in the same costume, and to
prove to her that my failure to respond to her love was due neither to
coldness nor dislike.--I do not want her to retain that bad opinion
of me, and she deserves, no less than D'Albert, that I should betray
my _incognito_ in her favor.--How will she take that disclosure?--Her
pride will be comforted, but her love will groan.
Adieu, my loveliest and best; pray God that pleasure may not seem to me
so small a matter as they who dispense it. I have written flippantly
throughout this letter, and yet this that I am going to do is a serious
thing, and all the rest of my life may feel its effects.
XVI
More than a fortnight had passed since D'Albert placed his amorous
epistle on Théodore's table, and yet there was no perceptible change in
the latter's demeanor.--D'Albert did not know to what to attribute that
silence;--it seemed as if Théodore had no knowledge of the letter; the
pitiable D'Albert believed that it had been destroyed or lost; and yet
it was difficult to see how that could be, for Théodore had returned to
the room a moment after, and it would have been a most extraordinary
thing if he had failed to notice a large paper lying by itself in the
middle of the table, in such a way as to attract the most absent-minded
glance.
Or was it that Théodore was really a man and not a woman, as D'Albert
had imagined--or, in case she was a woman, had she such a pronounced
aversion for him, such contempt, that she would not even deign to take
the trouble to reply to him?--The poor fellow, who had not had, like
ourselves, the privilege of looking through the portfolio of _la
belle_ Maupin's confidante, Graciosa, was not in a condition to decide
affirmatively or negatively any of these important questions, and he
wavered sadly in the most wretched irresolution.
One evening he was in his room, with his forehead pressed against the
window, gazing gloomily, without seeing them, at the chestnut-trees in
the park, already partly bare of leaves and bright red in spots. The
horizon was swimming in a thick haze, night was already descending,
rather gray than black, and cautiously placing its velvet feet on the
tree-tops;--a large swan amorously dipped her neck and shoulders again
and again in the steaming water of the stream, and her white body
resembled in the shadow a large star of snow.--She was the only living
creature that gave life to that dull landscape.
D'Albert was musing as sadly as a disappointed man can muse at five
o'clock on a cloudy autumn afternoon, with no music but the whistling
of a shrill north wind and no other outlook than the skeleton of a
leafless forest.
He was thinking of throwing himself into the river, but the water
seemed very black and cold, and the swan's example only half persuaded
him; of blowing out his brains, but he had neither pistol nor powder,
and he would have been sorry if he had; of taking a new mistress, or
even two--an ominous resolution! but he knew nobody who suited him, or,
for that matter, who did not suit him.--He carried his despair so far
as to think of renewing his relations with women who were perfectly
unendurable to him and whom he had had his lackeys drive out of his
house with horse-whips. He ended by deciding upon something even more
ghastly--writing a second letter.
O sextuple idiot!
He was at that point in his meditations when he felt upon his
shoulder--a hand--like a little dove alighting on a palm-tree.--The
simile halts a little in that D'Albert's shoulder bore but slight
resemblance to a palm; no matter, we retain it from a sentiment of pure
Orientalism.
The hand was attached to the end of an arm which corresponded with a
shoulder forming part of a body, which body was nothing more nor less
than Théodore-Rosalind, Mademoiselle d'Aubigny, or Madelaine de Maupin,
to give her her true name.
Who was surprised?--Neither you nor I, for you and I were fully
prepared for this visit; but D'Albert, who had not the slightest
expectation of it.--He gave a little cry of surprise half-way between
oh! and ah! However, I have the best of reasons for thinking that it
was nearer an ah! than an oh!
[Illustration: Chapter XVI--_He was at that point in his meditations
when he felt upon his shoulder--a hand--like a little dove alighting on
a palm-tree.--* * * The hand was attached to the end of an arm which
corresponded with a shoulder forming part of a body, which body was
nothing more nor less than Théodore-Rosalind, Mademoiselle d'Aubigny,
or Madelaine de Maupin, to give her her true name._]
It was Rosalind herself, so fair and radiant that she lighted up the
whole room,--with the strings of pearls in her hair, her prismatic
dress, her ample lace sleeves, her red-heeled shoes, her lovely
peacock's-feather fan,--in a word, just as she was on the day of the
play. But there was this important and decisive difference, that she
had neither neckerchief nor wimple nor ruff nor anything at all to
conceal from his eyes those two charming hostile twin brothers,--who,
alas! are only too often inclined to be reconciled.
A breast entirely bare, as white and transparent as antique marble, of
the purest and most exquisite form, protruded boldly from a very scanty
corsage and seemed to challenge kisses. It was a very reassuring sight;
and D'Albert was quickly reassured, and gave way in all confidence to
his wildest emotions.
"Well, Orlando, do you not recognize your Rosalind?" said the fair one,
with the most charming smile; "or have you left your love hanging with
your sonnets on the bushes in the forest of Arden? Are you really
cured of the disease for which you asked me so persistently for a
remedy? I am very much afraid so."
"Oh, no! Rosalind, I am sicker than ever. I am in the death-agony; I am
dead, or nearly so."
"You look very well for a corpse, and many living men have not so good
a color as you."
"What a week I have passed!--You can't imagine it, Rosalind. I hope
that it will be worth at least a thousand years of purgatory to me in
the other world.--But, if I may venture to ask you, why did you not
answer sooner?"
"Why?--I am not quite sure, unless it was just because.--If that reason
doesn't strike you as satisfactory, here are three others not so good;
you can take your choice: first, because, in the excitement of your
passion, you forgot to write legibly and it took me more than a week to
guess what your letter was about;--secondly, because my modesty could
not accustom itself in less time to the ridiculous idea of taking a
dithyrambic poet for a lover; and thirdly, because I was not sorry to
find out if you would blow out your brains, poison yourself with opium,
or hang yourself with your garter.--There you are."
"You wicked jester!--You did well to come to-day, I assure you, for you
might not have found me to-morrow."
"Really! poor boy!--Don't put on such a disconsolate expression,
for I shall be touched too, and that would make me stupider in my
single person than all the animals that were in the ark with the late
Noah.--If I once open the flood-gates of my sentimentality, you will be
submerged, I warn you.--Just now I gave you three bad reasons, I offer
you now three good kisses; will you accept, on condition that you are
to forget the reasons for the kisses?--I owe you that much, and more."
As she spoke, the lovely girl stepped up to the doleful lover and
threw her beautiful bare arms around his neck.--D'Albert kissed her
effusively on both cheeks and on the mouth.--The last kiss lasted
longer than the others and might well have counted for four.--Rosalind
saw that all that she had done hitherto was mere child's play. Her debt
paid, she sat on D'Albert's knee, still deeply moved, and said, passing
her hands through his hair:
"All my cruelty is exhausted, my sweet friend; I took this fortnight
to satisfy my natural ferocity; I will confess that it seemed very
long to me. Don't be conceited because I speak frankly, but that is
the truth.--I put myself in your hands, take your revenge for my past
rigor.--If you were a fool, I would not say this to you, nor indeed
would I say anything else, for I don't care for fools.--It would have
been very easy for me to make you believe that I was tremendously
incensed by your boldness and that you would not have a sufficient
store of platonic sighs and highly concentrated rhapsodies to obtain
forgiveness for an offence with which I was well pleased; I might,
like other women, have haggled with you for a long while and given
you in instalments what I give you freely and all at once; but I do
not think you would have loved me a single hair's breadth more.--I do
not ask you for an oath of everlasting love nor for any extravagant
protestations.--Love me as much as God pleases.--I will do the same
for my part.--I will not call you a perfidious villain when you cease
to love me.--You will have the kindness also to spare me the odious
corresponding titles, if I should happen to leave you.--I shall
simply be a woman who has ceased to love you--nothing more.--It isn't
necessary for us to hate each other all our lives because we have
lain together for a night or two.--Whatever happens, and wherever
my destiny may guide me, I swear to you, and this is an oath one can
keep, that I will always retain a delightful memory of you, and, even
if I am no longer your mistress, that I will always be your friend
as I have been your comrade.--For you I have laid aside my man's
clothes for to-night; to-morrow morning I shall resume them again for
all.--Remember that I am Rosalind only at night, and that through the
day I am and can be only plain Théodore de Sérannes--"
The conclusion of the sentence was stifled by a kiss, succeeded by many
others, which they ceased to count and of which we will not undertake
to furnish an exact reckoning, because it would certainly be a little
long and perhaps very immoral--in the eyes of some people--for, so far
as we are concerned, we know of nothing more moral and more sacred
under heaven than the caresses of a man and a woman, when both are
young and beautiful.
As D'Albert's solicitations became more passionate and more earnest,
Théodore's lovely face, instead of expanding and beaming, assumed an
expression of dignified melancholy which caused her lover some anxiety.
"Why, my dear sovereign, have you the chaste and solemn air of an
antique Diana, when you should display the smiling lips of Venus rising
from the sea?"
"You see, D'Albert, I resemble the huntress, Diana, more than anything
else on earth.--When I was very young, I assumed this masculine costume
for reasons which it would be tedious and useless to tell you.--You
alone have divined my sex--and if I have made conquests, they have
been of women only, superfluous conquests by which I have more than
once been embarrassed.--In a word, although it may seem absurd and
incredible, I am a virgin--as spotless as the snow of the Himalayas,
as the Moon before she had lain with Endymion, as Mary before she made
the acquaintance of the heavenly dove, and I am serious like everybody
who is about to do something that can never be undone.--I am about
to undergo a metamorphosis, a transformation.--To change the name of
maiden for the name of woman, to have not that to give to-morrow which
I had yesterday; something that I do not know and am going to learn; an
important leaf turned in the book of life.--That is why I am sad, my
friend, and not because of anything for which you are to blame."
As she spoke, she put aside the young man's long hair with her two
lovely hands, and pressed her softly clinging lips to his pale forehead.
D'Albert, deeply moved by the gentle, solemn tone in which she
delivered her speech, took her hands and kissed all the fingers, one
after another,--then gently broke the fastenings of her dress so that
the corsage opened and the two white treasures appeared in all their
splendor: upon that gleaming bosom, as pure as silver, bloomed the
two loveliest roses in paradise. He softly pressed his mouth to the
blushing points and so ran over the whole surface. Rosalind, with
inexhaustible good nature, allowed him to do as he pleased, and tried
to return his caresses as exactly as possible.
"You must find me very awkward and very cold, my poor D'Albert; but I
hardly know what I am to do;--you will have much trouble to teach me,
and really I am putting a very hard task upon you."
D'Albert made the simplest of all replies, he did not reply at
all,--and embracing her with increased passion, he covered her bare
shoulders and breast with kisses. The half-fainting girl's hair became
unfastened, and her dress fell to her feet as if by enchantment.
She stood like a white phantom with a simple chemise of the most
transparent linen. The happy lover knelt and had soon tossed the two
pretty little red-heeled shoes into opposite corners of the room;--the
stockings with embroidered clocks followed them close.
The chemise, endowed with a happy spirit of emulation, did not lag
behind the dress: first it slipped from the shoulders before she
thought of preventing it; then, taking advantage of a moment when
the arms were perpendicular, it escaped from them with much address
and fell as far as the hips, whose waving contour half stopped
it.--Thereupon Rosalind noticed the perfidy of her last garment and
raised her knee a little to prevent it from falling altogether.--In
that pose she was a perfect copy of the marble statues of goddesses,
whose intelligent drapery, grieved to conceal so many charms,
regretfully envelops the shapely thighs, and by well-planned treachery
stops just below the place it is intended to hide.--But as the chemise
was not of marble, and its folds did not sustain it, it continued its
triumphal descent, fell upon the dress and lay in a circle at its
mistress's feet like a great white greyhound.
[Illustration: Chapter XVI--_The chemise, endowed with a happy spirit
of emulation, did not lag behind the dress: first it slipped from the
shoulders before she thought of preventing it; then, taking advantage
of a moment when the arms were perpendicular, it escaped from them with
much address and fell as far as the hips, whose waving contour half
stopped it._]
Of course, there was a very simple means of avoiding all this
confusion; namely, by holding the fleeing garment with the hand; but
that idea, natural as it was, did not occur to our modest heroine.
She was left, therefore, without any veil, her fallen clothing forming
a sort of pedestal, in all the transparent splendor of her lovely
nudity, in the soft light of an alabaster lamp that D'Albert had
lighted.
D'Albert, fairly dazzled, gazed at her in ecstasy.
"I am cold," she said, folding her arms across her breast.
"Oh! one moment more! I pray you!"
Rosalind unfolded her arms, rested the tip of her finger on the back of
a chair, and stood perfectly still; she leaned slightly to one side in
order to bring out all the grace of the undulating line;--she seemed in
no wise embarrassed, and the imperceptible flush on her cheek did not
deepen a single shade: but the somewhat hurried beating of her heart
made the contour of her left bosom tremble.
The young enthusiast in beauty could not feast his eyes enough on
such a spectacle: we must say, to the unbounded praise of Rosalind,
that this time the reality surpassed his dream, and that he was not
conscious of the slightest disillusionment.
Everything was combined in the lovely body posing before him;--delicacy
and strength, form and coloring, the outlines of a Grecian statue
of the most glorious days of the art, and the tones of a Titian.--He
saw there, palpable and crystallized, the misty chimera he had tried
so many times to check in its flight--he was not compelled, as he had
complained so bitterly to his friend Silvio, to confine his glances to
some special well-formed portion of the body, and not to look beyond
it, under penalty of seeing something horrible, and his amorous eyes
descended from the head to the feet and ascended from the feet to the
head, always softly caressed by a harmonious, correctly proportioned
line.
The knees were wonderfully pure, the ankles slender and shapely, the
legs and thighs built upon a noble, superb model, the belly as lustrous
as agate, the hips supple and strong, a bosom that might well tempt the
gods to come down from heaven to kiss it, arms and shoulders of the
most magnificent shape;--a torrent of beautiful brown hair, curling
slightly, as in the heads drawn by the old masters, fell in tiny waves
along a back of polished ivory, marvellously heightening the effect of
its whiteness.
The painter satisfied, the lover gained the upper hand; for, however
great one's love of art, there are things which one cannot long remain
contented in looking at.
He took the fair one in his arms and carried her to the bed; in a
twinkling he had undressed himself and jumped in beside her.
Our fair reader of the gentler sex would surely look askance at
her lover if we should disclose the formidable figure attained by
D'Albert's love, assisted by Rosalind's curiosity. Let her remember the
most completely filled and the most delightful of her own nights, the
night when--the night she would remember a hundred thousand days if she
did not die long before; let her put the book beside her and count upon
her pretty white fingers how many times he who loved her best loved
her that night, and thus fill the gap which we leave in this glorious
history.
Rosalind was extremely well disposed, and made astonishing progress in
that one night.--The artlessness of body which wondered at everything,
and the finesse of mind which wondered at nothing, formed a most
alluring and fascinating contrast.--D'Albert was enchanted, bewildered,
transported, and would have liked the night to last forty-eight hours,
like that in which Hercules was conceived.--Toward morning, however,
despite an infinity of the most amorous kisses, and caresses, and
endearments, well adapted to keep a man awake, he was obliged, after
a superhuman effort, to take a little rest. Sweet, luxurious slumber
touched his eyelids with the end of its wing, his head sank and he fell
asleep between his fair mistress's bosoms.--She gazed at him for some
time with an air of profound and melancholy meditation; then, as the
dawn cast its first rays through the curtains, she raised him gently,
laid him beside her, rose and passed lightly over his body.
She seized her clothes and dressed in haste, then, returning to the
bed, leaned over D'Albert, who was still sleeping, and kissed both his
eyes on their long silky lashes.--That done, she left the room, walking
backward and still looking at him.
Instead of returning to her room, she went to Rosette's.--What she said
there, what she did there, I have never been able to learn, although
I have striven most conscientiously to do so.--I have not found
among Graciosa's papers or D'Albert's or Silvio's anything relating
to that visit. But one of Rosette's maids told me of this singular
circumstance: although her mistress did not lay with her lover that
night, her bed was rumpled and tossed about and bore the impressions
of two bodies.--Furthermore, she showed me two pearls exactly like
those Théodore wore in his hair when he played Rosalind. She had found
them in the bed when she made it. I state the fact and leave the reader
to draw whatever deductions he may choose therefrom; for my own part I
have made a thousand conjectures each more unreasonable than the last,
and so ridiculous that I really do not dare to write them even in the
most virtuously periphrastic style.
It was quite noon when Théodore left Rosette's chamber.--He did
not appear at dinner or supper.--D'Albert and Rosette did not seem
surprised.--He went to bed early, and the next morning, at daybreak,
without a word to any one, he saddled his horse and his page's and left
the chateau, telling a servant not to expect him at dinner, and that he
might not return for some days.
D'Albert and Rosette were greatly astonished, and did not know how to
account for this sudden disappearance--especially D'Albert, who, by
the prowess he displayed the first night, thought he had well earned a
second. Toward the end of the week, the unhappy, disappointed lover
received a letter from Théodore which we propose to transcribe. I am
afraid it will not satisfy my readers of either sex; but the letter was
written so and not otherwise, and this glorious romance shall have no
other conclusion.
XVII
Doubtless, my dear D'Albert, you are greatly surprised by what I now do
after what I have done.--I permit you to be, there is good reason for
it.--I will wager that you have already applied to me at least twenty
of the epithets we agreed to strike out of our vocabulary: perfidious,
inconstant, vile creature--is it not so?--At all events, you will not
call me cruel or virtuous, which is so much gained.--You curse me and
you are wrong.--You desired me, you loved me, I was your ideal:--very
good. I granted you on the spot what you wanted; it was nobody's fault
but your own that you hadn't it sooner. I served as body to your dream
in the most accommodating way.--I gave you what I certainly shall never
again give any one--a surprise upon which you hardly reckoned and for
which you certainly ought to be most grateful to me.--Now that I have
satisfied you, it pleases me to go away.--What is there so monstrous in
that?
You had me absolutely and without reserve a whole night; what more do
you want? Another night and then still another; you would even put
up with a few days at need.--And so you would go on until you were
disgusted with me.--I can hear you from here crying most politely that
I am not one of those with whom men become disgusted. _Mon Dieu_! yes,
with me as with others.
It would last six months, two years, even ten years, if you choose, but
it must end at some time or other.--You would keep me through a sort
of feeling of duty, or because you had not the courage to give me my
dismissal. What is the use of waiting until it comes to that?