She rose slowly before me with the perfume of the heart of a hundred-petalled rose.--I will not try to describe her beauty. It is one of those things that words decline to attempt. How describe the indescribable? how paint that which has neither form nor color? how note down a voice without quality and speechless?--I have never had so much love in my heart; I would have pressed nature to my bosom, I embraced the empty void as if my arms were clasped about a virgin form; I kissed the air that blew upon my lips, I swam in the magnetic fluids that exhaled from my glowing body. Ah! if Rosette had been there, what adorable rhapsodies I would have indulged in! But women never know enough to arrive at the opportune moment.--The nightingale ceased to sing; the moon, who could keep awake no longer, pulled her cap of clouds over her eyes, and I left the garden; for the cool night air was beginning to make itself felt.
As I was cold, I naturally thought that I should be warmer in Rosette's bed than my own, and I went to lie with her.--I let myself in with my pass-key, for everybody in the house was asleep.--Rosette herself had fallen asleep, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that it was over a volume uncut, of my latest poems. She had both arms under her head, her mouth half open and smiling, one leg stretched out and the other partly curled up, in an attitude instinct with ease and grace; she was so lovely that I mortally regretted that I was no longer in love with her.
As I looked at her I reflected that I was as stupid as an ostrich. I had what I had so long desired, a mistress as entirely my own as my horse and my sword, young, pretty, amorous and clever; with no stern-principled mother, no father with a decoration, no cross-grained aunt, no swaggering brother, and with the priceless advantage of a husband duly sealed and nailed up in a fine oaken casket lined with lead, the whole covered over with a large block of hewn granite, which is not to be despised; for, after all, it is a very doubtful pleasure to be caught in the act in the middle of a blissful paroxysm, and to complete one's sensations on the pavement, after describing an arc of 40 to 45 degrees, according to the floor on which you happen to be;--a mistress as free as the mountain air and rich enough to indulge in the most exquisite refinements and luxuries, and, moreover, free from anything like moral ideas, never talking about her virtue as she tries a new posture, nor of her reputation, any more than if she had never had one; with no intimate female friends, and despising all women almost as much as if she were a man, entertaining a very low opinion of platonic affection and making no secret of it, and always playing with her heart in the game; a woman who, if her lines had fallen in another sphere, would indubitably have become the most admirable courtesan on earth and dimmed the glory of the Aspasias and Imperias!
Now, that woman, so made, was mine. I did what I chose with her; I had the key to her room and her drawer; I broke the seals of her letters; I had taken away her name and given her another. She was my chattel, my property. Her youth, her beauty, her love, all belonged to me; I used them, I abused them. I made her go to bed in the daytime and sit up at night, if the whim seized me, and she obeyed simply, without any affectation of making a sacrifice, and without assuming the air of a resigned victim.--She was attentive, caressing, and--a most extraordinary thing!--absolutely faithful; that is to say, if in the days when I was lamenting that I had no mistress, six months ago, any one had given me a glimpse of such happiness, even in the distant future, I should have gone mad with joy and tossed my hat up to knock at the gates of heaven, in token of my delight. And now that I have that happiness, I am cold; I am hardly conscious that I have it, I am _not_ conscious of it, and my present position makes so little impression upon me that I often doubt if I have changed my position at all. If I should leave Rosette, I am convinced in my inmost soul that, at the end of a month, perhaps less, I should have so thoroughly and carefully forgotten her, that I shouldn't know whether I had ever known her or not! Would she do the same? I think not.
I reflected, as I say, upon all these things, and impelled by a sort of repentant feeling, I deposited on the fair sleeper's brow that most chaste and melancholy kiss that ever young man bestowed upon young woman--just on the stroke of midnight. She moved slightly, the smile about her mouth became a little more pronounced, but she did not wake. I undressed slowly, and, creeping under the clothes, stretched myself out by her side like a snake. The coolness of my body startled her; she opened her eyes, and, without speaking, put her mouth to mine and twined herself about me so completely that I was warmed in less than no time at all. All the poetry of the evening changed to prose, but to poetic prose at all events. That night was one of the sweetest sleepless nights I ever passed. I can hope for no more such.
We still have pleasurable moments, but they must be led up to and prepared for by some outside incident like this, and in the beginning I did not need to have my imagination excited by gazing at the moon and listening to the nightingale, in order to have all the pleasure one can have when one is not really in love. There are as yet no broken threads in our woof, but there are knots here and there, and the chain is not nearly so smooth as it was.
Rosette, who is still in love, does what she can to avert all these inconveniences. Unfortunately there are two things in the world that cannot be guided: love and ennui.--For my own part I make superhuman efforts to conquer the drowsiness that steals over me in spite of myself, and like the provincials who fall asleep at ten o'clock in Parisian salons, I keep my eyes as wide open as possible and hold up my eyelids with my fingers!--nothing serves the purpose and I take conjugal liberties that are most unpalatable.
The dear child, who found the rural expedition so successful the other day, took me off to her country estate yesterday.
It would not be out of place, perhaps, to give you a little description of the aforesaid estate, which is very attractive; it will lighten up all this metaphysics a little, and then, too, we must have a background for the characters, and figures will not stand out in relief against an empty void, or against the vague shade of brown with which painters fill up the field of their canvas.
The approach is very picturesque.--Driving through a broad avenue, lined with venerable trees, you come to a star, the centre of which is marked by a stone obelisk surmounted by a sphere of gilded copper: five roads form the points of the star. Then the land suddenly descends. The road plunges down into a narrow valley, with a small stream flowing at the bottom, which is crossed by a bridge of a single span; then, ascends the opposite slope, where the village lies, whose slated church-tower can be seen among the thatched roofs and the rounded tops of the apple-trees. The view is not very extensive, for it is limited on both sides by the crest of the hill, but it is bright and pleasant and rests the eye.--Beside the bridge there is a mill and a tower-shaped structure built of red stone: almost incessant barking and the sight of a brach-hound or two and some young terriers with crooked legs warming themselves in the sun before the door, would inform you that it was the head-keeper's abode, if the buzzards and martens nailed to the shutters could leave you for a moment in doubt. At that point an avenue of sorb-trees begins; the red berries attract clouds of birds; as there is little passing, there is only a band of white in the middle of the road; all the rest is covered with short, fine moss, and, in the double rut made by carriage wheels, little grasshoppers, as green as emeralds, buzz and hop about.
After driving some little distance along this avenue you come to a painted iron fence, with gilt trimmings, and bristling with spikes and _chevaux de frise._ Thence the road leads to the château--which is still invisible, for it is buried in verdure like a bird in its nest--but its progress is leisurely and it frequently turns aside to visit a brook and a fountain, a dainty summer-house or a point from which a fine view can be had, crossing and recrossing the stream over Chinese or rustic bridges. The inequality of the land and the dams built for the purposes of the mill cause several waterfalls some four or five feet in height, and you can imagine nothing more delightful than to hear the splashing of all these cascades close beside you, but generally out of sight, for the osiers and elders that line the bank form an almost impenetrable curtain. But all that part of the park is, so to speak, only the antechamber of the other part: unfortunately, a public highway passes through the estate and cuts it in two, a drawback for which a very ingenious remedy has been devised. Two high crenelated walls, provided with barbicans and loopholes in imitation of a ruined fortress, stand on each side of the road; connected with a tower on the château side, completely covered by gigantic ivy plants, is a genuine drawbridge which is lowered every morning, by iron chains, upon the opposite bastion. You drive through a lovely ogive archway inside the tower, and thence into the second enclosure, where the trees, which have not been cut for more than a century, are of extraordinary height, with gnarled trunks swathed in parasitic plants--the handsomest and most curious trees I have ever seen. Some have leaves only at the very top like broad umbrellas; others taper toward the top like plumes; others, on the contrary, have a large tuft of foliage near the bottom, from which the naked trunk rises toward the sky like a second tree planted in the first; you would say it was the foreground of a landscape painting or flies painted for a scene on the stage, the trees are so curiously misshapen;--ivies that reach from one to another and hug them so tight as to choke them, mingle their dark hearts with the green leaves and seem like their shadow. Nothing can be more picturesque. The stream widens at that spot, so as to form a little lake, and it is so shallow that you can see, through the transparent water, the lovely aquatic plants that carpet its bed. There are nymphæas and lotuses swimming nonchalantly in the purest crystal with the reflection of the clouds and the weeping-willows that lean over the bank: the château is on the other side, and yonder little skiff, painted apple-green and bright red, will save you a long detour to the bridge. The château is a collection of buildings built at different periods with gables of unequal heights and a multitude of little turrets. One ell is of brick with stone trimmings; another portion is in the rustic style, with quantities of excrescences and vermiculated work. Another ell is entirely modern; it has a flat Italian roof with vases and a tile balustrade, and a canvas porch in the shape of a tent. The windows are all of different sizes and do not correspond; there are some of all styles, even the trefoil and ogive, for the chapel is Gothic. Certain parts are trellised, like Chinese houses, with trellises painted different colors, covered with climbing honeysuckle, jasmin, nasturtiums, and virgin's bower, whose tendrils look familiarly in at the chamber windows and seem to put out their hands to you as they say good-morning.