Chapter VI

At this point, with the permission of the indulgent reader, we propose to abandon for some little time to his meditations, the worthy personage who has thus far occupied the stage all by himself and has spoken in his own behalf, and to adopt the ordinary form of the novel, reserving the right, however, to resume the dramatic form hereafter, if occasion should arise, and to draw still farther upon the species of epistolary confession that the aforesaid young man addressed to his friend, being fully persuaded that, however penetrating and sagacious we may be, we certainly cannot know so much about him as he knows about himself.

The little page was so overdone that he slept in his master's arms, and his little head, with its hair all in disorder, rolled from side to side as if he were dead. It was some distance from the stoop to the apartment set aside for the new arrival, and the servant who escorted him offered to take his turn at carrying the child; but the young gentleman, to whom the burden seemed no more than a feather-weight, thanked him and declined to relinquish it; he laid him gently on the couch, taking the utmost care to avoid waking him; a mother could have done no better. When the servant had retired and the door was closed, he knelt beside him and tried to remove his boots; but his little feet were so swollen and painful that the operation was a difficult one, and the pretty sleeper uttered from time to time vague, inarticulate exclamations, like a person who is on the point of waking; thereupon the young gentleman would stop and wait until he was sound asleep again. The boots yielded at last and the most important point was gained; the stockings made little resistance.--This operation at an end, the master took the child's feet and placed them side by side on the velvet covering of the sofa; surely they were the two loveliest feet in the world, no larger than that, white as new ivory, and reddened a little by the pressure of the boots in which they had been imprisoned seventeen hours--feet that were too small for a woman and looked as if they had never walked; the part of the leg that could be seen was round, plump, smooth, transparent, delicately veined, and of the most exquisitely graceful shape--a leg worthy of the foot.

The young man, still on his knees, gazed at the two little feet with amorous, admiring intentness; he stooped, raised the left one and kissed it, then the right one and kissed that; then, from kiss to kiss, he ascended the leg to the place where the clothes began.--The page raised his long lashes slightly and cast an affectionate, sleepy glance at his master, in which there was no trace of surprise.--"My belt hurts me," he said, passing his finger under the ribbon; and he fell asleep again.--The master loosened the belt, placed a cushion beneath the page's head, and finding that his feet, which had been burning hot, were a little cold, he wrapped them carefully in his cloak, drew an arm-chair close to the sofa and sat down. Two hours passed thus, the young man watching the sleeping child and following the shadow of his dreams on his brow. The only sounds to be heard in the room were his regular breathing and the ticking of the clock.

It was certainly a very lovely picture. In the contrast between the two types of beauty there was an opportunity for effect, of which a skilful painter might have made good use.--The master was as beautiful as a woman--the page as lovely as a young girl. The round, rosy face, set in its frame of hair, resembled a peach among its leaves; it had the same fresh and velvety look, although the fatigue of the journey had lessened somewhat its usual brilliancy; the half-open mouth disclosed two rows of small teeth of a milky whiteness, and beneath the full, gleaming temples a network of blue veins crossed and recrossed; his eyelashes, like the golden threads around the heads of virgins in missals, reached almost to the middle of his cheeks; his long, silky hair resembled both gold and silver--gold in the shadow, silver in the light; his neck was at the same time plump and slender, and gave no sign of the sex indicated by his clothes; two or three buttons of his doublet were unbuttoned to enable him to breathe more freely and as the fine shirt of Dutch lawn beneath was open, a glimpse was afforded of an inch or two of firm rounded flesh of admirable whiteness, and the beginning of a certain curved line difficult to account for on a young boy's breast; upon looking closely one might have discovered also that his hips were a little too fully developed.--The reader will form what opinion he chooses; these are simple conjectures that we put forward; we have no better information on the subject than he, but we hope to learn something more in a short time, and we promise to keep him fully informed of our discoveries.--Let the reader, if his sight is keener than ours, bury his eyes under the lace of that shirt and decide conscientiously whether the contour is too swelling or not; but we warn him that the curtains are drawn and that there is a sort of half-light in the room, ill-adapted to that sort of investigation.

The young gentleman was pale, but his was a golden pallor, full of strength and vitality; his eyes swam in a crystalline blue fluid; his straight, thin nose imparted a wonderful air of pride and energy to his profile, and the flesh was of so fine a texture that it allowed the light to pass through it on the edge; his mouth wore the sweetest smile at certain moments, but ordinarily it was arched at the corners, curving in rather than out, as in some of the faces we see in the pictures of the old Italian masters; a detail that gave a charmingly disdainful expression to his face, a _smorfia_ alluring beyond words, an air of childish sulkiness and ill humor, very unusual and very fascinating.

What were the bonds that united the master to the page and the page to the master? Assuredly there was something more between them than any conceivable affection between master and servant. Were they friends or brothers?--In that case, why this masquerading?--It would have been difficult for any one witnessing the scene we have just described to believe that those two individuals were just what they seemed to be and nothing more.

"Dear angel, how he sleeps!" murmured the young man; "I don't believe he ever travelled so far in his life. Twenty leagues in the saddle, and he so delicate! I'm afraid that he will be sick with fatigue. But no, it will amount to nothing; to-morrow there will be no sign of it; he will have recovered his brilliant color and will be fresher than a rose after the rain.--How handsome he is like that! If I weren't afraid of waking him I would eat him up with kisses. What a fascinating dimple he has in his chin! what fine, white skin!--Sleep soundly, sweet treasure.--Ah! I am downright jealous of your mother, and I wish I had brought you into the world.--He can't be sick? No, his breathing is regular and he doesn't stir.--But I believe some one knocked."

In fact, some one had knocked twice, as gently as possible, on the panel of the door.

The young man rose, but, fearing that he might be mistaken, waited for a repetition of the knocking before opening the door.--Two more taps followed, a little more pronounced, and a soft female voice said, in a very low tone:--"It is I, Théodore."

Théodore opened the door, but with less eagerness than a young man naturally exhibits about admitting a woman whose voice is soft and who knocks mysteriously at his door at nightfall.--The open door gave passage to--whom do you suppose?--to the mistress of the perplexed D'Albert, to the Princess Rosette in person, rosier than her name, and her bosom as deeply moved as ever woman was upon entering a handsome youth's room in the evening.

"Théodore!" said Rosette.

Théodore lifted his finger and placed it on his lips so as to represent a statue of silence, and, pointing to the sleeping child, led her into the adjoining room.

"Théodore," continued Rosette, who seemed to take strange pleasure in repeating the name, and at the same time to be collecting her thoughts,--"Théodore," she continued, retaining the hand the young man had offered her to lead her to her chair, "so you have returned at last? What have you been doing all the time? where have you been?--Do you know that it is six months since I saw you! Ah! Théodore, that is not right; we owe some consideration, some pity to those who love us, even if we do not love them."

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.

THÉODORE.

And what does this young man think of you, who is your
lover to-day in the eyes of the world?

ROSETTE.

The mind of a lover is a gulf deeper than the Bay of
Portugal, and it is very difficult to say what there is
in the depths of a man; if the lead were attached to a
line a hundred fathoms long and every fathom unreeled, it
would still sink without meeting anything to stop it. Yet
I have touched bottom several times with this man, and
the lead has sometimes brought up mud, sometimes lovely
shells, but most frequently mud and fragments of coral
mixed together.--As to his opinion of me, it has varied
greatly; he began where others leave off, he despised me;
young men with vivid imaginations are likely to do that.
There is always a tremendous fall in the first step they
take, and the passage from their chimera to reality cannot
be made without a shock.--He despised me and I entertained
him; now he esteems me and I bore him. In the early days
of our liaison he saw only the commonplace side of me, and
I think that the certainty of meeting with no resistance
had much to do with his determination. He seemed in great
haste to have an affair, and I thought at first that it
was a case of a full heart seeking only an opportunity to
overflow, one of those vague passions that a man has in
the May of youth and that impel him, in default of women,
to throw his arms around the trunks of trees, and to
kiss the flowers and grass in the fields.--But it wasn't
that;--he simply passed through me to reach something
else. I was a means to him, and not an end.--Beneath the
fresh exterior of his twenty years, beneath the first down
of adolescence, he concealed profound corruption. He was
tainted to the core; he was a fruit containing nothing
but ashes. In that young and lusty body was a heart as
old as Saturn--a heart as incurably wretched as heart
ever was.--I confess, Théodore, that I was frightened and
that I was almost taken with vertigo as I looked into
the black depths of that existence. Your sorrows and
mine are nothing compared to those. If I had loved him
more I should have killed him. Something irresistibly
attracts and summons him--something that is not of this
world or in this world, and he cannot rest day or night;
and like the heliotrope in a cellar, he twists about to
turn toward the sun which he cannot see.--He is one of
those men whose mind was not completely dipped in the
waters of Lethe before being attached to his body, but
retains memories of the eternal beauty of the heaven from
which it comes--memories that work upon it and torment
it--and remembers that it once had wings and now has feet
only.--If I were God, I would deprive of poetry for two
eternities, the angel guilty of such negligence.--Instead
of being under the necessity of building a castle of
bright-colored cards in which to shelter a fair, youthful
fancy for a single spring, it was necessary to erect a
tower higher than the eight temples of Belus piled one
upon another. I had not the strength, I pretended not
to have understood him, and I let him flutter about on
his wings in search of a peak from which he could take
flight into boundless space.--He thinks I have noticed
nothing of all this, because I have fallen in with all his
caprices without seeming to suspect their object. Being
unable to cure him, I determined--and I hope that I shall
receive credit for it some day before God--to give him at
least the happiness of believing that he was passionately
loved.--He aroused in me so much pity and interest that I
was easily able to assume a tone and manner sufficiently
affectionate to deceive him. I have played my part like a
consummate actress; I have been playful and melancholy,
sensible and voluptuous; I have feigned anxiety and
jealousy; I have shed false tears, and I have summoned
flocks of ready-made smiles to my lips. I have arrayed
this counterfeit of love in the richest stuffs; I have
taken him to drive through the avenues of my parks; I have
requested all my birds to sing as he passed, and all my
dahlias and daturas to bend their heads in salutation; I
have sent him across my lake on the silvery back of my
darling swan; I have concealed myself inside the manikin
and bestowed my voice, my wit, my youth and beauty upon it
and given it such a seductive appearance that the reality
fell far short of my deception. When the time comes to
shatter this hollow statue, I shall do it in such a way
that he will think the wrong is all on my side and so will
have no remorse. I shall be the one to make the pinhole
through which the air with which the balloon is filled
will make its escape.--Is not that sanctified prostitution
and honorable deception? I have in a glass jar some
tears that I have collected just as they were about to
fall.--They are my jewel-case and my diamonds, and I shall
present them to the angel who comes for me to lead me
before God.

THÉODORE.

They are the loveliest that can glisten on a woman's
neck. A queen's jewels are less precious than they. For
my own part, I believe that the ointment Magdalen poured
on Christ's feet was made of the tears of those she had
comforted, and I believe, too, that the Milky Way is
strewn with such tears, and not, as has been said, with
drops of Juno's milk.--Who will do for you what you have
done for him?

ROSETTE.

No one, alas! since you cannot.

THÉODORE.

O dear heart! would that I could!--But do not lose hope.
You are lovely and still very young. You have many avenues
of lindens and flowering acacias to pass through before
reaching the damp road lined with box and leafless trees,
which leads from the tomb of porphyry in which your happy
dead years will be buried, to the tomb of rough and
moss-covered stone where they will hasten to bestow the
remains of what once was you, and the wrinkled, tottering
spectres of the days of your old age. You still have much
of the mountain of life to climb and it will be long
before you reach the zone where the snow begins. You
are now only at the level of aromatic plants, of limpid
cascades over which the iris suspends its tri-colored
arches, of stately green oaks and sweet-smelling larches.
Mount a little higher and from that point, with the
broader horizon spread out before you, perhaps you will
see the blue smoke rising above the roof beneath which
he who will love you sleeps. You must not, in the very
beginning, despair of life, for vistas open in our destiny
which we had ceased to expect. Man, in his life, has
often made me think of a pilgrim toiling up the winding
stairway of a Gothic tower. The long granite serpent winds
upward in the darkness, every coil a stair. After a few
circumvolutions the little light that came from the door
dies out. The shadow of the houses, which are not yet
passed, does not allow the loopholes to admit the sun:
the walls are black and moisture oozes from them; you
seem rather to be going down into a dungeon from which
you are never to come forth, than ascending to the turret
which, from below, seemed to you so slender and graceful,
covered with lace-work and embroidery as if it were about
starting for the ball.--You hesitate whether you ought
to go higher, the damp shadows weigh so heavily upon
your forehead.--A few more turns of the staircase and
more frequent openings cast their golden trefoils on the
opposite wall. You begin to see the notched gables of the
houses, the carving of the entablatures, the strange forms
of the chimneys; a few steps more and your eye overlooks
the whole city; it is a forest of steeples, of spires and
towers, bristling upon all sides, toothed and slashed and
hollowed, stamped as with dies, and allowing the light to
shine through their numberless apertures. The domes and
cupolas raise their rounded forms like a giant's breasts
or the skulls of Titans. The islets formed by houses and
palaces appear through shadowy or luminous openings. A
few steps more and you will be on the platform; and then
you will see, beyond the walls of the city, the green
fields, the blue hill-sides and the white sails on the
changing ribbon of the stream. A dazzling light bursts
upon you, and the swallows fly hither and thither, close
at hand, with their joyous twitter. The distant sounds
reach your eyes like a soothing murmur or the hum of a
swarm of bees; all the bells scatter their necklaces of
pearls of sound through the air; the breezes bring you
the odors of the neighboring forest and of the mountain
flowers: it is all light and melody and perfume. If your
feet had been weary or discouragement had seized upon
you, and you had remained on a lower step or had turned
back and gone down again, that spectacle would have been
lost to you.--Sometimes, however, the tower has only a
single opening, in the centre or at the top.--The tower of
your life is built so.--In that case you must have more
obstinate courage, perseverance armed with sharper nails,
to cling, in the darkness, to the protruding stones, and
to reach the opening, resplendent with light, through
which the eye embraces the surrounding country; or it
may be that the loopholes have been filled up, or no one
has thought to cut them, and then you must go on to the
summit; but the higher one goes without looking out, the
more extended the horizon seems, and the greater the
surprise and pleasure.

ROSETTE.

O Théodore, God grant that I may soon reach the point
where the window is! For a long, long time I have been
following the winding staircase in the most profound
darkness; but I am afraid the opening has never been
cut and I must climb to the very top; and suppose this
staircase with the countless stairs should end at a
walled-up doorway, or an arch closed by blocks of stone?

THÉODORE.

Do not say that, Rosette, do not think it.--What architect
would build a stairway that led nowhere? Why imagine that
the placid Architect of the world was stupider and less
far-sighted than an ordinary architect? God makes no
mistakes and forgets nothing. It is incredible that He
should have amused Himself by playing a trick upon you
and shutting you up in a long stone tunnel without exit
or opening. Why should you suppose that He would haggle
with such poor ants as we are over our paltry momentary
happiness and the imperceptible grain of millet that falls
to each of us in this immeasurable universe?--In order to
do that He must be as savage as a tiger or a judge; and if
we were so obnoxious to Him, He would simply have to bid
a comet turn aside a little from its path and annihilate
us all with a hair of its tail. How the devil can you
think that God diverts Himself by spitting us all on a
gold pin as the Emperor Domitian did with flies?--God
isn't a concierge or a church-warden, and although He is
old, He is not yet in His dotage. All such petty malice
is beneath Him and He is not foolish enough to show off
His smartness to us and play tricks on us.--Courage,
Rosette, courage! If you are out of breath, stop a bit and
take breath and then continue your upward course; perhaps
you have only a score more steps to climb to reach the
embrasure from which you will see your happiness.

ROSETTE.

Never! oh never! and if I reach the top of the tower, it
will only be to hurl myself from it.

THÉODORE.

Banish these gloomy thoughts that flutter about you like
bats, and cast the opaque shadow of their wings on your
fair brow, my poor afflicted one. If you want me to love
you, be happy, and do not weep. (_He draws her gently to
his side and kisses her on the eyes_).

ROSETTE.

What a misfortune for me that I ever knew you! and yet, if
I could live my life over, I would still prefer to have
known you.--Your harshness has been sweeter to me than
the passion of other men; and, although you have made me
suffer intensely, all the pleasure I have ever had has
come to me from you; through you I have caught a glimpse
of what I might have been. You have been a flash of
light in my darkness, and you have illuminated many dark
places in my soul; you have opened new perspectives in my
life.--I owe it to you that I know what love is,--unhappy
love, it is true; but there is a melancholy and profound
fascination in loving without being loved, and it is
pleasant to remember those who forget us. It is a joy
simply to be able to love, even when one loves alone, and
many die without having had it, and often they who love
are not the most to be pitied.

THÉODORE.

They suffer and feel their wounds, but at all events
they live. They have some interest in life; they have
a star about which they gravitate, a pole toward which
they ardently extend their hands. They have something to
long for; they can say to themselves: "If I reach that
point, if I obtain that, I shall be happy."--They suffer
frightful agony, but when they die, they can at least say
to themselves: "I am dying for him."--To die thus is to
be born again. The really unhappy, the only ones who are
irreparably so, are they whose wild embrace takes in the
whole universe, they who want everything and nothing, and
who would be embarrassed and speechless if an angel or
fairy should descend to earth and say suddenly to them:
"Express one wish and it shall be gratified."

ROSETTE.

If a fairy should come I know what I would ask her.

THÉODORE.

You know, Rosette, and therein you are happier than I, for
I do not know. There are in my heart many vague longings,
which become confounded with one another and give birth
to others which eventually consume them. My desires are a
cloud of birds that fly aimlessly this way and that; yours
is an eagle that has its eyes on the sun and is prevented
by lack of air from soaring upward on its outspread wings.
Ah! if I could only know what I want; if the idea that
haunts me would stand out clear and well-defined from
the mist that envelops it; if the lucky or unlucky star
would appear in the depths of my sky; if the light I am to
follow would shine out through the darkness, a deceitful
will-o'-the-wisp or a friendly beacon; if my column of
fire would go on before me, even though it were through
a desert without manna and without springs of water; if
I knew where I am going, even though my path ends at a
precipice!--I would prefer the wild flights of accursed
huntsmen through bogs and thickets, to this absurd and
monotonous stamping and pawing. To live thus is to follow
a trade like that of the horses with bandages over their
eyes, who turn the wheel of a well, and travel thousands
of leagues without seeing anything or changing their
position.--I have been turning a long while, and the
bucket ought to be at the top.

ROSETTE.

You resemble D'Albert in many ways, and, when you speak,
it seems to me sometimes as if he were speaking.--I
have no doubt that, when you know him better, you will
become much attached to him; you cannot fail to suit each
other.--He is tormented as you are, by these same aimless
impulses; he is head over ears in love but does not know
with what; he would like to ascend to Heaven, for the
earth seems to him like a stool hardly fit for one of his
feet to rest upon, and he has more pride than Lucifer
before his fall.

THÉODORE.

I was afraid at first that he was one of those poets, of
whom there are so many, who have driven poetry off the
face of the earth, one of those stringers of false pearls
who see nothing in the world but the last syllables of
words, and who, when they have made _ombre_ rhyme with
_sombre, flame_ with _âme_, and _Dieu_ with _lieu_, fold
their arms and legs conscientiously and permit the spheres
to accomplish their revolutions.

ROSETTE.

He is not one of that kind. His verses are beneath him and
do not contain his thought. You would form a very mistaken
idea of his nature from what he has written; his real
poem is himself, and I don't know if he will ever produce
another. He has, in the depths of his mind, a seraglio of
choice ideas which he surrounds with a triple wall, and
of which he is more jealous than ever sultan was of his
odalisques.--He puts in his poetry only those ideas that
he holds in light esteem, or with which he has become
disgusted; he makes his verse the door through which he
expels them and the world receives only those for which he
has no further use.

THÉODORE.

I can understand his jealousy and his modesty.--Just as
many men do not care for the love they have had until they
no longer have it, or for their mistresses until they are
dead.

ROSETTE.

It is so hard for one to have anything to one's self in
this world! every candle attracts so many moths, every
treasure attracts so many thieves!--I love the silent men
who carry their ideas to the grave and do not choose to
abandon them to the filthy kisses and shameless handling
of the vulgar crowd. Those lovers please me best who do
not carve their mistress's name on the bark of any tree,
who confide it to no echo, and who, while they sleep, are
haunted by the fear that they may utter it in a dream. I
am one of that number; I have not divulged my thoughts
and no one shall know my love.--But it is almost eleven
o'clock, my dear Théodore, and I am preventing your taking
rest that you must sadly need. When I am obliged to leave
you I always have a feeling of oppression at my heart, and
it seems to me as if it were the last time I should ever
see you. I postpone it as long as I can; but I always have
to go at last. Good-night, for I am afraid D'Albert may
be looking for me; good-night, my dear friend.

Théodore put his arm around her waist and thus escorted her to the door; there he stopped and followed her a long time with his glance; the corridor was lighted at intervals by small windows with narrow panes, through which the moon shone, making alternate light and dark patches of fantastic shape. At each window Rosette's pure, white form gleamed like a silvery phantom; then it vanished to appear, even more brilliant, a little farther away; at last it disappeared altogether.

Théodore stood for some moments motionless, with folded arms, as if buried in profound meditation; then he passed his hand over his forehead and threw back his hair with a jerk of his head, returned to his room, and went to bed after kissing the brow of the page, who was still asleep.