Chapter VII: Toulon, March 15

Dear friend, the head of a satyr living in Toulon with a lyrical declaimer of verse, the people’s favorite, and seeing nothing but the ungraceful habitations of humanity, is subject to strange effervescences. So you will pardon the ramblings of my last letter in which I desired to describe a certain incident but did not know how to go about it. I have not yet learned how to assort my ideas into their compartments. They are jumbled together in complete disorder, and the result is confusion. When I wish to draw one of them out, the others interfere, and much time is spent in putting the whole into some semblance of order.

I was on the point of touching the matter in question when the hour struck for Cydalise to give to her rested features the smile that illuminates them. This is the same as saying that Cydalise awakes with a smile. It occurs like a rose unfolding quickly enough to let one observe the opening of its petals. I would not willingly miss the phenomenon, and from the rose I watch each morning I draw the dew of moist lips. The hamadryads and the oreads are beautiful. Happy is he who can surprise them in the freshness of dawn and awaken storms of pleasure in their breasts. But Cydalise effaces their memory by her indescribable grace in which promises and desires are blent. She is really the waking nymph, but she is the nymph who awaits her beloved, joyously taking possession at the same instant that she surrenders. I would never reach an end, dear friend, if I dared tell you all the delights Cydalise causes me to experience. It is an incantation, perhaps, but I lend myself happily to its consummation, and never am I surfeited by the divine potion, no more than by the ecstasy with which it fills me.

On a certain morning of the month that has passed, Cydalise was cruel. She permitted me to drink her dawning smile, but the perfumed, blossomed cup was rudely snatched from my lips, at the same time that her arms, clasped an instant round my neck, disengaged themselves and thrust me away.

“Tityrus,”—this is how she always addresses me—“I have business to attend. I must leave for I am already late. Be good, my dear.”

Not a word did I say; I merely looked at her distressfully. She quickly dressed, kissed me almost discreetly and disappeared.

She left me in a state which you, perhaps, will not understand, since you are not a faun. Within me these lines murmured:

Tant pis! vers le bonheur d’autres m’entraîneront
Par leur tresse nouée aux cornes de mon front....

She had forgotten to lock me in. I was out in a trice. I had taken pains with my attire, had given myself all the elegance worthy of my athletic, satyr form. It was the morning hour. Shrill cries issuing from a little garden gave me my bearings. There were all sorts of short-skirted creatures who were playing, leaping, running; but I particularly noticed two almost tall girls near a clump of trees. They were conversing while combing their dolls. Another bench was opposite; I sat down on it.

Already you are trembling because you know the person, because he has confessed several amusing anecdotes to you, because it is by a mere slip of a girl that you first learned of my existence. Well, my friend, nothing occurred, unless it be that I was suddenly seized with fear, that I took to my heels and returned home, followed, from a distance, happily—by a yelling troop of Yahoos.

“The satyr! The satyr!”

I was allayed. I did not desire to be led “by their tresses tied to the horns of my head.”

But what reflections are these!

Now you see the result of five or six months of living in a civilization of which I have not been a part. Certainly, I have never been foolhardy and I prefer to flee from blows to having the blows scathe me; but nonetheless, I would never have trembled, in the old days, like a hare at the shadow of my ears. Could it be the reading of your newspapers which has distracted me? I think so. An honest man—at least, I have the appearance of one—can no longer sit facing and smiling at the playful affectations of two little girls without having his ears tingle with the baying of a pack of hounds.

Yet these young lasses with hair down their backs are pretty; but since this foolish adventure, I detest them. Ah! how I suffer through my cowardice and faithfulness. Cydalise, always Cydalise! Does she imagine that, because I love her, I can love no one but her?

Alas! I am enchained. After having broken my bonds, I have myself rewelded them. I fear lest she grumble, I fear lest she ridicule, I fear her eyes, especially, her eyes in which I see and tremblingly await the dawning of suspicion.

Is it thus you love, you others? With such laceration and an equal submissiveness? Do you feel within you the roarings of an impatient and obedient animal? Perhaps, at bottom, men and gods are formed of the same elements, with the exception that the fauns have a more energetic leaven? This might easily be the case, since in all times the gods have mingled with your women and, to please and serve them, have occasionally abdicated their divinity. We all are children of destiny and our immortal life is, after all, but a succession of human lives badly joined to each other by the confused mortar of recollection. What matters the past to me, today? I easily perceive that there is only a present, for the present effaces every other instant of time. There is such a difference between the being I was yesterday and the being I am today that it is only with difficulty that I can establish any logical connection. Duration, or what you call by this name, is only an illusion of the passage of time. But it is motionless for me, who am ever the same and whose life is always recommencing, rather than continuing, since duration is time. Do you understand? My dear, I have read the metaphysicians and have concluded that life means nothing to mortals, since it has an end, and nothing to the gods, since it has none. All things are equal in absurdity. Yet, I still have a vague reminiscence of pleasures I knew as a free animal. I did not act the animal every day, but neither do I do so every day with Cydalise. By Jupiter! if I came to such a pass that I loved no longer, what would I become between these four walls, or outside, among those swarming Yahoos!

I want Cydalise to take me with her to the people she delights with her art. I must familiarize myself with external movement and speech. Have I not everything needful to please? Yes, I am satisfied with myself when I gaze into my darling’s mirror. Besides, since she looks upon me with pleasure, why should others be startled? I had no doubts concerning myself in the woody dells when my limbs were plastered with dried mud, with moss and leaves clinging to my hairy body; and never did woman flee long before me without bringing on an opportune fall. It is true that everything seemed good to me at that time and that I have since become more fastidious. I am even astounded by the number of ugly and unattractive women we meet in our walks. I jest so loudly about it to Cydalise that she scolds me, but she holds my opinion and often softly murmurs: “What figures?”

I did not wish to relate my experiences with the young girls to Cydalise. I have changed my mind. I want her to know of it. I even want to exaggerate the dangers—almost imaginary—which I risked among these Yahoos, so that she may see the necessity of familiarizing me with the world.

Yahoos! That is the feeling you all give me. Do not be offended! There are women, there are men among the Yahoos.

ANTIPHILOS,
_Satyr._

VIII

FENNEL WATER