Chapter I: For ever?

ELISE

I remain.

HE

I will come back for you. Good-bye then, my friend, and this time really good-bye. You sought truth and you have found love. Good-bye.

Elise drew me along. By the door, I turned. My master had disappeared.

This separation, which I was expecting, caused me but a brief sorrow. I was holding Elise by the hand, I was holding a certainty.

We were now going silently along the deserted street. The joy that filled my heart lit up the sky, the trees, the houses and everything else.

Soon, like any other couple after a morning walk, we went home. Elise had not at any moment the air of a stranger.

Our day was short, that of two lovers mindful of living. My friend complied with all our customs. But for the memory of the night of magic that had placed her in my arms, I should not have distinguished her divine grace from that of a Parisian.

We made with profound joy the discovery of our souls and of our bodies. It seemed to us that we had known each other always, and always belonged to each other; it seemed also, at every kiss, that we touched each other for the first time: these feelings, no more contradictory than delightful, increased our intoxication, our heads turned, we could no longer find words for our ideas, and we said a great many childish things.

I did not, however, so far lose my reason as to forget that, alone among all men, without doubt, I held in my arms an immortal. Much pride was mingled with my love, and also much curiosity.

My goddess much resembles Giorgione's Venus. While I write this, she is sleeping in the same pose, her right arm folded under her head. The body is tapering, the breasts are two upturned cups; the face, of a pure oval, has great charm, with its very red mouth, and its large lowered eyelids that hide from me beautiful eyes of a glaucous and changeful blue. From head to foot she has the complexion of a blonde, but this whiteness is as if melted in gilded rose, because she is accustomed to wear only light and almost transparent veils. Her hair is of that rare chestnut colour, a colour which we scarcely know but by its name; but her eyelashes are much darker, of a very sombre brown.

I have kissed with piety the miracle of her feet, fresh as a spring, and with nails that shone like drops of dew under my lamp.

She accepts homage like caresses, and caresses as a flower accepts the evening rain. She is more feminine than the most sensitive of women, more trembling than the tenderest violins. The kiss that her mouth gives has first passed like a wave of harmony along her whole body, and the kiss that she receives makes her melt voluptuously like snow that has lingered in the sunlight.

O snow with the odour of violets, O flesh with the taste of figs!

1 have eaten and I have drunken, and now I write the praise of my delight, among some metaphysical memories. Of the life that goes on up there, or yonder, she has told me something more than my master. She has told me that perfect pleasure is a gift too common among the gods much to excite their gratitude. They walk under the trees of the orchard, and pluck the gilded fruit whose weight bends them within reach of their hands. More lively and more sensitive, the divine females feel now and then some vexation at being unable to knot their arms about the conquered male; there is sometimes melancholy in their eyes, at seeing light shoulders moving away that happiness has not crushed, and knees that gratitude has not bowed.

We speak.

ELISE

Tell me, you whom I love, are all men like you?

I

Men are not gods during love, but they are gods afterwards.

ELISE

That is to say that they become indifferent.

I

No, satisfied, and surfeited.

ELISE

Then they are not always hungry?

I

Alas! No.

ELISE

But, at least, they do not disdain the mouth whose moisture has made them drunk?

I

They forget even the taste of it.

ELISE

They too? I feel like crying.

I

There are some who love tears.

ELISE

You love tears?