so much that one wishes to die—that test I have had in adolescence, and the reasonable insensibility of the woman I adored has never shed any bitterness on that far off remembrance. I do not smile pityingly on these days of umbrageous follies. After ten or eleven years, I am as sure as I was at the first hour of having been deprived of the greatest happiness put within reach of my hands by the Decrees, and in moments of emotion this regret can still throw a gloom over my revery. Since then, nothing but transitory pluckings; barely, now and then, an attempt at the band broken at the first touch.

"Far from being the aim of my life, sensation is its accident: I reserve my voluntary strength for the tales I tell my contemporaries. They have been found cold and ironic, but I have neither the quality to be an enthusiast of my age, nor to take it too seriously. Another motive removes me from emotional researches: without being a pessimist, without denying the possibility of satisfaction, without even denying happiness, I scorn it. I do not seek to aggravate my miseries by meditations on the universal misery, to which my egoism, moreover, makes me almost indifferent. A state of perfect peace of mind agrees with me. It is possible for me to regret an unhatched joy, but I wish neither to provoke nor to lie in wait for the hatching. In fine, there is no doubt that I do not know how to live. A perpetual celebration, my existence is the very negation of ordinary life, which is composed of ordinary loves. I have no tendency towards the altruisms demanded by society. If ever I could be drawn from myself, for the benefit of some creation, it would be in the manner of an imaginative person, at all points re-creating the object of my passion, minutely scrutinizing the mechanism of my impressions. Such is my character: it is obvious that I have not applied myself to elude the knowledge of myself; and yet no one knows better than I do to what point this knowledge is puerile and unhealthy."

CHAPTER V

MORE TRAVEL NOTES

The Pale and Green Moon

"In hac hora anima ebria videtur,
Ut amoris stimulis magis perforetur."
Saint Bonaventure, Philomena.

Château de Rabodanges, in the portrait chamber, September 12.—Upon arriving, I was received by Henri de Fortier, director of la Revue spéculative, and Michel Paysant, whose novels, full of swelling busts and caressing glances, charm families which mistake impotence for chastity. Fortier mentions the names of the guests to me. None of my acquaintances are here. Separated from the general, her husband, Countess Aubry brings to the country, at the summer end, her cosmopolitan salon which is frequented by the grand courtiers of academic or worldly literature. It is rumored that Fortier succeeds, in her gallant nights, the Bonapartist deputy who recently died and with whom she had an open liaison. Fortier assumes the modest airs of a host. At the dinner, several aristocrats who live in the vicinity mention the fact that the hunting season has opened. The only interesting face to see is that of a young fair woman, with sparkling eyes, who is either silent or speaks to Madame Aubry alone. A stroll in the moonlight follows, then the neighbors call for their carriages. Fortier disappears with the countess. Paysant takes my arm and prattles.

He groans over his vexations as a chief clerk of literature. Just now he would like to rest, even to loaf, but a week does not pass without some publisher, old or young, coming to entreat of him a volume to restore his business or launch his bookshop. Accordingly, his repressed Gallic nature would freely awake and he would write several jolly stories. But the unity of his work! That would no longer turn out to be Paysant, and the Academy would perhaps knit its brow. He attempts a laugh, but one feels an apprehensive reverence within the depths of his deferential brain. A silence, and he greedily describes the young woman I had noticed. The technique of the patrician gives to his eloquence a disinterested tone, but one divines the wet mouth and the hand, with kneading gestures, caressing the absent forms. I maintain that women are neither beautiful nor ugly, and that their whole charm radiates from their sex: desire sketches beauty and love completes it. A certain ugly creature, in the vulgar sense of the word, has been able to assume an ideal beauty, while another woman, by all judged admirable, has not passed beyond the limbo of a rough draught, never having been loved. Paysant shouts this paradox: feminine beauty is real and independent of sentiment. She is capable of feeling, yes? Doubtless, that is a special pleasure, yes, a special one. By adroitly goading him, one could make him confess his tastes of a fondler, of a senile love of touching, but I know not why, I am afraid lest his pathology take up Madame Sixtine as a subject of demonstration.

We return to the château. Everybody has surrendered to the rare pleasure of retiring early. Only Fortier awaits us, to conduct me to my room. It seems that a friend of the countess is enthusiastic about the Revue spéculative and is going to espouse it under a dotal system, making it an allowance of fifty thousand francs, which it lacks. This Fortier has a mania for offering incomprehensible metaphors.

"Some one is going to put fifty thousand francs into the Revue!"

"Precisely."

"And you will become?"

"Editor in chief instead of director."

"And the director?"

"A pseudonym." I know Fortier; he will not take offense.

"Now, confess that it is the countess." He smiles and immediately gallops across the faded fields of the dithyramb:

"She is charming, generous, devoted to art, and without personal ambition."

"Except to be loved?"

"I charge myself with that."

This unconstraint interests my natural curiosity, and with little contradictions powdered with some skepticism, I excite him to the point where he tells me everything. He was presented by Malaval, who remarked that his elegance of a clipped dog would turn the head of the countess. It was an embarrassing introduction, but Fortier showed wit—so he claims. There followed allurements, sly winks, the habit of quarreling with each other, an absence, several letters wherein a light tenderness fluttered. She was alone when he returned. Without speech, their arms outstretched—there they were, trembling and lovers. Fortier is incapable of inventing and, perhaps, of lying. He even has the air of finding this natural and fatal. It had to happen.

"Is it not so?"

"Doubtless."

I take leave of him. Before departing, he asks me to furnish some pages for the first number of la Spéculative, new series. This line finished, I go to sleep, but why is this room called the portrait chamber?

September 13, morning.—I have dreamed of this portrait and I seek it in every corner, in every section of the walls. The room is quite remarkably bare: a uniform gray paper; above the Empire fireplace, a looking glass which reaches to the ceiling; the bed occupies one of the sides of the floor; to the right of the door, a bookcase contains some old books; to the left is a chest of drawers topped with a new mirror; opposite are two windows; between the two windows, a dressing table and another glass. Nothing else.

September 14, evening.—We took an excursion to Roches-Noires. Monsieur B——, who was our guide, killed a snake with a few blows of a little stick. Then, Madame Magne took the reptile and in an instant made a bracelet of the still moving creature. The countess uttered a cry, the viper had to be thrown into a hole, and I reflected upon the biblical and singular sympathy between women and serpents, for the countess cried without sincerity and Madame de B——. pitied the poor creature of the good Lord.