THÉODORE.
What have I been doing.--I have no idea.--I have gone away and come home, I have waked and slept, I have sung and wept, I have been hungry and thirsty, I have been too warm and too cold, I have been bored, I have less money and am six months older--I have lived, that's the whole of it.--And how about yourself, what have you been doing?
ROSETTE.
I have loved you.
THÉODORE.
Have you done nothing but that?
ROSETTE.
Absolutely nothing.--I have made a bad use of my time, haven't I?
THÉODORE.
You might have made a better use of it, my poor Rosette; for example, you might have loved some one who could return your love.
ROSETTE.
I am unselfish in love as in everything.--I don't lend love at interest; it is a pure gift on my part.
THÉODORE.
That is a very rare virtue and one that can exist only in a noble heart. I have often wished that I could love you, especially as you desire it; but there is an insurmountable obstacle between us which I cannot tell you.--Have you had any other lover since I left you?
ROSETTE.
I have had one whom I still have.
THÉODORE.
What sort of a man is he?
ROSETTE.
A poet.
THÉODORE.
The devil! who is this poet, and what has he written?
ROSETTE.
I haven't a very clear idea--a volume that nobody knows anything about, and that I tried to read one evening.
THÉODORE.
So you have an unpublished poet for a lover?--That must be interesting.--Is he out at elbows, does he wear dirty linen and rumpled stockings?
ROSETTE.
No; he dresses very well, washes his hands and has no ink-spots on the end of his nose. He's a friend of C----; I met him at Madame de Thémines',--you know, that tall woman, who plays the child and puts on such innocent airs.
THÉODORE.
And might one know the name of this eminent personage?
ROSETTE.
Oh! _Mon Dieu_, yes! he is the Chevalier d'Albert.
THÉODORE.
Chevalier d'Albert! I think that was the young man who was on the balcony when I alighted from my horse.
ROSETTE.
Precisely.
THÉODORE.
And who examined me so closely.
ROSETTE.
Himself.
THÉODORE.
He's a very good-looking fellow.--And he has not made you forget me?
ROSETTE.
No. Unfortunately you are not one of those whom one forgets.
THÉODORE.
He loves you dearly no doubt?
ROSETTE.
I am not so sure of that.--There are moments when you would think he loved me very dearly; but at heart he doesn't love me, and he is not far from hating me, for he is angry with me because he can't love me.--He did as many others before him have done; he developed a very keen taste for passion, and was greatly surprised and disappointed when his desire was surfeited.--It is a mistake to think that two people must mutually adore each other because they have lain together.
THÉODORE.
And what do you propose to do with this lover who is not a lover?
ROSETTE.
What we do with bygone quarters of the moon or with last year's fashions.--He hasn't courage enough to leave me the first, and although he does not love me in the true sense of the word, he is bound to me by the habit of enjoyment, and those are the habits it is hardest to break. If I don't assist him, he is quite capable of conscientiously submitting to be bored with me till the last judgment and beyond; for he has within him the germ of all noble qualities; and the flowers of his soul ask naught but an opportunity to bloom in the sunshine of everlasting love.--Really I am very sorry that I did not prove to be the sunbeam for him. Of all my lovers whom I have not loved, I love him the most; and, if I were not as kind-hearted as I am, I would not give him back his liberty, but I would still keep him.--But that is what I will not do; I am finishing with him at this moment.
THÉODORE.
How long will it last?
ROSETTE.
A fortnight, three weeks, but at all events not so long as if you had not come.--I know that I shall never be your mistress.--There is, you say, an unknown reason for that, to which I would bow if it were possible for you to disclose it to me. Thus I am forbidden to entertain any hope in that direction, and yet I cannot make up my mind to be another man's mistress when you are here; it seems to me like a profanation, and as if I should not have the right to love you.
THÉODORE.
Keep this lover for love of me.
ROSETTE.
If it will give you pleasure I will do it.--Ah! if you could have been mine, how different my life might have been from what it has been!--The world has a very false idea of me, and I should have lived and died without any one suspecting what I am--except you, Théodore, the only one who has understood me and been cruel to me.--I have never wanted any one but you for a lover, and I have never had you. O Théodore, if you had loved me, I should have been virtuous and chaste, I should have been worthy of you; instead of that, I shall leave behind me--if any one remembers me--the reputation of a dissolute woman, a sort of courtesan, who differed from her of the gutter only in rank and fortune.--I was born with the highest aspirations; but nothing depraves one so much as being unloved.--Many people despise me who have no idea what I have had to suffer before reaching my present position.--Being sure that I shall never belong to the man I would prefer above all others, I have allowed myself to float with the current, I have not taken the trouble to defend a body that could not be yours.--As for my heart, no one has had it and no one ever will. It is yours, although you have broken it;--and I am different from the majority of women who believe themselves virtuous provided they have not passed from one bed to another, in this respect--although I have prostituted my flesh, I have been faithful in heart and soul to the thought of you.--At all events I shall have made some few people happy, I shall have caused white-robed illusions to dance about some pillows. I have innocently deceived more than one noble heart. I have been so miserable at being spurned by you, that I have always been horrified at the thought of compelling any one else to undergo such torture. That is the sole worthy motive of adventures which are commonly attributed to a spirit of libertinage pure and simple!--I, a libertine! O society!--If you knew, Théodore, how intensely painful it is to feel that your life is a failure, that you have let slip your chance of happiness, to see that everybody misunderstands you and that it is impossible to make people change their opinion of you, that your most estimable qualities are tortured into defects, your purest essences into deadly poisons, that nothing except the evil in you has transpired; to have found doors always open to your vices and always closed to your virtues, and to have been unable to bring to perfection, amid such a wilderness of hemlock and aconite, a single lily or a single rose! you know nothing of that, Théodore.
THÉODORE.
Alas! alas! Rosette, what you have just said includes the history of the whole world; the best part of us is that which remains within us and which we cannot display.--It is the same with poets.--Their noblest poem is the one they have not written; they carry more poems to the grave than they leave in their library.
ROSETTE.
I shall carry my poem to the grave with me.
THÉODORE.
And I mine.--Who has not written one at some time in his life? who is so fortunate, or so unfortunate, as not to have composed his in his head or in his heart?--Even headsmen may have composed poems, all moist with tears of the tenderest sensibility; poets perhaps have composed some that would be suited to headsmen, so bloody and monstrous they are.
ROSETTE.
Yes.--White roses can fitly be placed on my grave. I have had ten lovers, but I am a virgin, and I shall die a virgin. Many virgins, on whose graves there is a constant snow of jasmine and orange blossoms, were veritable Messalinas.
THÉODORE.
I know what a noble creature you are, Rosette.
ROSETTE.
You only in all the world have seen what I am; for you have seen me under the influence of a love that is perfectly genuine and very deep-rooted, as it is hopeless; and no one who has not seen a woman in love can say what she is; that is the one thing that consoles me in my bitterness of spirit.