Mistresses' Portraits

In a men's boudoir, that is, in a smoking room adjoining a fashionable
brothel, four men were smoking and drinking. They were not exactly
either young or old, either handsome or ugly; but, old or young,
they bore that unmistakable distinction of veterans of joy, that
indescribable something-or-other, that cold and scoffing sadness that
so clearly says: "We have lived forcefully, and we seek what we can
love and prize."

One of them drew the talk to the subject of women. It would have been
more philosophical not to have spoken of them at all; but there are men
of parts who, after drinking, do not disdain commonplace conversations.
One listens, then, to the one that speaks as to the music of a dance.

"All men," said this one, "have passed through the age of the Cherub:
that is the period when, in default of dryads, one embraces, without
disgust, the trunks of oaks. It is the first degree of love. At the
second degree, one begins to choose. To be able to deliberate is
already decadence. Then it is that one makes a decided search for
beauty. As for me, gentlemen, I take pride in having long ago reached
the climactic period of the third degree, when beauty itself no longer
suffices, unless it be seasoned with perfume, with finery, et cetera. I
will even confess that I sometimes aspire, as to an unknown happiness,
to a certain fourth degree which is marked by absolute calm. But, all
through my life, except at the Cherub age, I have been more sensible
than all others of the enervating folly, of the irritating mediocrity,
of women. What I like above all in animals is their candor. Judge then
how much I suffered at the hands of my last mistress.

"She was a prince's bastard. Beautiful, that goes without saying;
otherwise, why should I have taken her? But she spoiled that great
quality by an unseemly, deformed ambition. She was a woman who wanted
always to play the man. 'You're not a man!' 'Of the two, it is I who am
the man!' Such were the unbearable refrains that came from her mouth
when I wished to see nothing but songs take wing.

"In regard to a book, a poem, an opera, for which I let my admiration
escape: 'So you think this is rather powerful?' she would say at once;
'since when are you a judge of power?' and she would argue on.

"One fine day she took to chemistry; so that between her mouth and mine
I found thenceforth a mask of glass. With all that, quite squeamish. If
now and then I jostled her with too amorous a gesture, she raved like a
ravished virgin."

"How did it end?" asked one of the three others. "I never knew you so
patient."

"God," he replied, "found the remedy in the ill. One day I found this
Minerva, craving for ideal force, alone with my servant, and in a
situation which forced me to retire discreetly, so as not to make them
blush. That evening, I dismissed them both, giving them the arrears of
their wages."

"As for me," continued the interrupter, "I have only myself to complain
of. Happiness came to dwell with me, and I did not know her. Fate once
granted me the enjoyment of a woman who was indeed the sweetest, the
most submissive, the most devoted of creatures, and always ready, and
without enthusiasm. 'I am quite willing, since it's agreeable to you.'
That was her usual response. You might give a bastinado to this wall
or this couch and draw from it as many sighs as the most infuriate
transports of love would draw from the breast of my mistress. After a
year of life together, she confessed to me that she had never known
pleasure. I lost taste in the unequal duel, and that incomparable girl
got married. Later I had a fancy to see her, and she said, showing me
six fine children: 'Well, my dear friend, the wife is still as much a
virgin as was your mistress.' Nothing had changed. Sometimes I regret
her; I should have married her."

The others burst into laughter, and a third spoke in turn:

"Gentlemen, I have known joys which you have perhaps neglected. I mean
the comical in love, and a comical which does not bar admiration. I
admired my last mistress, I think, more than you could have loved or
hated yours. And every one admired her as much as I. When we entered
a restaurant, after a few minutes every one forgot to eat in watching
her. The barmaid and the waiters themselves felt the contagious ecstasy
so far as to neglect their duties. In short, I lived for some time face
to face with a living phenomenon. She ate, chewed, ground, devoured,
swallowed up, but with the lightest and most careless air imaginable.
In this way she kept me for a long time in ecstasy. She had a soft,
dreamy, English and romantic way of saying: 'I am hungry.' And she
repeated these words day and night, revealing the prettiest teeth in
the world, which would soften and enliven you together.--I could have
made my fortune exhibiting her at fairs, as a polyphagous monster. I
nourished her well, but none the less she left me...."

"For a purveyor of provisions, undoubtedly?"

"Something of the sort, a kind of employee in the commissariat who, by
some by-profit unknown to her, perhaps furnished the poor child with
the rations of several soldiers. At least, so I imagine."

"As for me," said the fourth, "I have endured grievous sufferings
through the opposite of that with which we usually reproach the female
egoist. You are quite unjustified, too happy mortals, in complaining of
the imperfections of your mistresses!"

This was said in a very serious tone, by a man of pleasant and sedate
appearance, of an almost clerical countenance, unhappily lighted by
clear grey eyes, those eyes whose glances spoke: "I wish it!" or "It is
necessary!" or indeed "I never forgive!"

"If, nervous as I know you to be, you, G----, slothful and trifling
as you are, you two, K---- and J----, if you had been matched with a
certain woman I know, either you would have fled, or you would have
died. I survived, as you see. Imagine a person incapable of making an
error, from feeling or from design; imagine a provoking serenity of
mind, a devotion without sham and without parade, a softness without
weakness, an energy without violence. The story of my love is like
an endless voyage on a surface as pure and polished as a mirror,
dizzily monotonous, reflecting all my feelings and my movements with
the ironic exactness of my own conscience, so that I could not allow
myself an unreasonable move or emotion without immediately beholding
the dumb reproach of my inseparable spectre. Love seemed to me like a
protectorate. How much nonsense she stopped me from committing, which
I regret not having done! How many debts I paid despite myself! She
deprived me of all the benefits I could have reaped from my personal
folly. With a cold and impassable rule, she barred all my caprices.
To crown the horror, she demanded no gratitude when the danger was
passed. How many times have I not held myself from leaping at her
throat, crying: 'Be imperfect, wretch! so that I can love you without
uneasiness and wrath!' For several years I wondered at her, my heart
full of hate. Finally, it was not I that died of it!"

"Ah!" said the others, "then she is dead?"

"Yes. Things could not go on like that. Love had become an overwhelming
nightmare to me. Victory or death, as the Politics says, such was the
alternative which destiny imposed. One evening, in a wood..., at the
edge of a pond..., after a melancholy walk in which her eyes reflected
the gentleness of heaven, and my heart was thrilling with hell...."

"What!"

"What's that?"

"What do you mean?"

"It was inevitable. I had too great a sense of justice to beat, to
insult, or to dismiss an irreproachable servant. But I had to reconcile
that feeling to the horror which that being inspired in me; rid myself
of that being without losing her respect. What would you want me to do
with her, since she was perfect?"

The three others looked at him with an uncertain and somewhat stupefied
gaze, as though feigning not to understand and as though tacitly
avowing that they did not feel themselves capable of so rigorous an
act, however sufficiently accounted for in another.

Then they ordered fresh bottles, to kill time whose life is so sturdy,
and to speed life, whose movement is so slow.