Chapter VIII: Toulon, April 1

Friend, I thank you for your advice which I found to the point. Everything has succeeded beautifully. My chagrin has touched Cydalise. It was real. I had but to feign an excess of feeling and simulate despair. A week of high comedy has reduced her to acquiescence. How easy it is to deceive women! I came to this conclusion long ago with the naive nymphs of my fatherland; women, just a little more subtle, fall into the same snares. Occupied with themselves more than with anyone else, and totally confident of the power of their charms, they do not know that one can deprive oneself of them for a week, merely to acquire that superior thing,—liberty. Creatures of instinct, they are superior in the conflicts of instinct, but the exercise of intelligence puts them to rout, because they never think of crediting their adversaries with this quality. Cydalise understood but one thing, that I might escape her tenderness; ever since, she redoubles her cajoleries. Mine reassure her and, as I have been well received by the society she frequents, we are more than ever united.

I secretly made preparations for my new mode of life. From the very first, I found myself at my ease. I owe it to myself, I said, to the antiquity and divinity of my race, and I assumed the disillusioned attitude of a superior person exiled among the Scythians. I converse little, save when Cydalise is near enough to nudge me with her elbow or knee, and by degree I am acquiring the reputation of a contemptuous or indifferent man.

“Some gentleman’s son, some solid country squire,” I have heard people remark.

Cydalise, to whom I repeated this, laughed heartily.

“Isn’t it true!” she kept on saying.

She informed me that a country squire signifies a nobleman of the country who has remained slightly rustic. Stroking my beard, she kissed me before everybody. This brought queer little cries from many of the women present. It took place in the café de l’Amirauté, where I made my debut in the career of a man of the world, of the vast world.

Women gaze at me intently. This does not astonish me, for I must seem supernatural to them, but hardly any one of them has yet pleased me, and Cydalise sees her anxieties dissipated from day to day. She has entrusted me to one of her friends, an old naval officer who has known human nature of every kind and who tells me, from morning to night, of his sea voyages and experiences. He is very proud of having known a girl named Rarahu who was inconsolable, like Calypso at the departure of Ulysses, and whom he, notwithstanding, consoled.

“I have never seen my equal,” he tells me, “in consoling mulatto girls abandoned by the whites.”

This inferior love inspires me with some pity, but I am glad to know of his function in love. If I ever leave Cydalise to follow my destiny, which is unlimited, besides, I shall place her in the hands of this fine fellow.

A crony came to see him and they began to recount what they term their lucky fortunes. This comrade is very agreeable, but a trifle of a bore.

What a poverty of recollections and sensations! From their recitals there emanates an indefinable odor of smutty talk which sickens. As for myself, love never made me laugh. It was to me the most serious, the most profound thing in the world. I have always found a savor of infinity even with the coarse farm girl, smelling of cow dung.

Besides, I really believe that love gives us what we already possess and that it can give us this alone. That is why, to natures like mine, the quality of the adversary matters little, allowing for youth and strength. Yet beauty has always been a fountain wherein my forces increased, and where I have ever found my desires renewed as soon as I abandoned myself to the secret of the waters.

But beauty is so rare! I can confess to you that even the immortal nymphs are sometimes a little flat-nosed, and there is a common quality in their eyebrows which are too close together, and their hair which falls too far down. Like myself, before the transformation, they are redolent of the earth, dead leaves and flowers crushed by thighs. Do not dream of those loves which are beautiful only by reason of their unconsciousness. They can still delight me, I can still renew my original essence with them and the vigorous youth of my Phrygian desires, but your Cydalises, so precious through their very fragility, surpass the deliciousness of the immortal creatures, and it is their skin which is fragrant with the odor of violets.

My two sailors drank a sort of grass-colored water with the aroma of fennel. Their complexion took on richer hues and, playing with some little bones, like Sicilian shepherds, they exchanged no speech save for a few words whose meaning I could not seize. They had forgotten the women and I was not at all sorry, for I hardly relish the insane conversations of which they are the pretext.

I was free to gaze at those who now filled the café and who seemed to be paying no attention to me. Yet I noticed that two eyes, apparently straying listlessly, were fixed on my figure from time to time, and vanity caused me to smile. A smile answered me. I, who was not drinking any of the fennel water, felt myself grow redder than my companions, and I suddenly made a movement to rise. My old instincts came to the surface, I was about to run toward my pleasure, as in days past. An instant, I thought I breathed real fennel and the odor of the Cogolin oranges. Had she also risen, had she made a gesture of flight like the wild creatures I once knew, how I would have bounded in pursuit! But she took a newspaper, behind which she concealed her face, and the source of enticement being removed, I remained tranquil. Cydalise approached. It is probable that her arrival, perceived in the mirror, had caused the newspaper to be unfolded. I promised myself to be, henceforth, more a master of myself and to survey the mirrors.

My beloved Cydalise annoyed, then exasperated me by stupidly calling me “her old Tityrus”; this caused the release of a little rusty spring in the old officer who labouriously let fall these words:

“_Tityre tu recubans, recubans_....”

The newspaper did not budge, but I prudently lowered my eyes. Fortunately, the game of bones was ended, the two old men turned towards her and assailed her with gallantries. The one who had arrived last was the most assiduous and Cydalise, amused, recovered a little of her animation. She accepted a glass of grass juice and the gentlemen profited by the occasion to fill their cups, begging me to follow their example.

“Not he, not he!” Cydalise cried. “It makes him wild. He wants some milk.”

The milk was bluish and tasted like old paper, but I preferred it to the fennel. How often, in my wanderings through fields, have I not pressed Io’s drugs to my lips! I wanted to mention this aloud. Happily, the grimace I made, in tasting this strange beverage, removed from my mind this unreasonable piece of confidence.

I kept silent, imbibing the benefits of civilization without a word.

“Well, there are compensations,” I told myself.

We left. On the threshold I turned toward the newspaper. It had been lowered. Cydalise examined the folds of her dress. I foolishly threw a kiss at the face which now was looking at me.

“Are you coming, Tityrus?”

I followed.

Am I beginning to understand?

ANTIPHILOS,
_Satyr._

IX

EREBUS