Mademoiselle de Maupin. Theophile Gautier

      I

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      You complain, my dear friend, of the infrequency of my letters.—What would you have me write you except that I am well and that my affection for you never changes?—Those are facts that you know perfectly well, and that are so natural to my age and to the noble qualities that every one recognizes in you, that it is almost absurd to send a paltry sheet of paper a hundred leagues to say nothing more.—In vain do I cudgel my brains, I know of nothing that is worth the trouble of repeating; mine is the most monotonous life imaginable and nothing happens to break the monotony. To-day leads up to to-morrow as yesterday led up to to-day; and without claiming to be a prophet, I can boldly prophesy in the morning what will happen to me in the afternoon.

      This is how I arrange my day:—I rise, that goes without saying, and that is the beginning of every day; I breakfast, I fence, I go out to walk, I come home, I dine, make a few calls or amuse myself reading: then I go to bed precisely as I did the day before; I go to sleep, and as my imagination is not excited by unfamiliar objects, it supplies me with none but threadbare, often repeated dreams, as monotonous as my actual life: all this is not very entertaining, as you see. However, I reconcile myself to this existence better than I should have done six months ago.—I am bored, to be sure, but in a tranquil, resigned fashion, which does not lack a certain agreeableness, which might well be compared to those gray, mild autumn days in which one finds a secret charm after the excessive heat of summer.

      This sort of existence, although I have apparently accepted it, is hardly suited to me, however, or, at all events, it bears but little resemblance to the existence I dream of and consider myself well adapted for.—Perhaps I am mistaken and am in reality adapted for no other kind of life than this; but I can hardly believe it, for, if it were my real destiny, I should more readily have adapted myself to it and should not be so painfully bruised by its sharp corners in so many places.

      You know what a powerful attraction strange adventures have for me, how I adore everything out of the common course, extravagant and dangerous, and with what avidity I devour novels and tales of travel; I doubt if there is on this earth a madder, more vagabond fancy than mine; and yet, by some curious fatality or other, I have never had an adventure, I have never made a journey. So far as I am concerned, the tour of the world means the tour of the town in which I live; I touch my horizon on every side; I am elbow to elbow with reality. My life is that of the shell on the sand-bank, of the ivy clinging to the tree, of the cricket on the hearth.—Verily, I am surprised that my feet have never taken root.

      Cupid is represented with a bandage over his eyes; Destiny should be represented in the same condition.

      I have for a valet a sort of rustic boor, loutish and stupid enough, who has travelled as much as the north wind, who has been to the devil, to every conceivable place, who has seen with his eyes all the things of which I conceive charming ideas, and cares as little about them as about a glass of water; he has been in the most extraordinary situations; he has had the most amazing adventures that a man can have. I make him talk sometimes, and I rage inwardly when I think that all those fine things have happened to a clown who is capable neither of sentiment nor reflection, and who is good for nothing but to do what he does, that is to say, brush clothes and clean boots.

      It is clear that that knave's life should have been mine.—For his part, he considers me very fortunate, and his surprise is unbounded when he sees how melancholy I am.

      All this is not very interesting, my poor friend, and hardly worth the trouble of writing, is it? But as you insist upon it that I must write to you, I must tell you what I think and what I feel, and must give you the history of my ideas, in default of events and acts.—It may be that there will be little order and little novelty in what I shall have to say to you; but you must blame nobody but yourself for it. You would have it.

      You are the friend of my childhood, I was brought up with you; we lived our lives in common for a long, long while, and we are accustomed to exchange our most secret thoughts. I can tell you, therefore, without blushing, all the absurd things that pass through my unoccupied brain; I will not add a word, I will not cut out a word, I have no self-love with you. So I will be absolutely frank—even in petty, shameful things; not before you, certainly, will I cover my nakedness.

      Beneath the shroud of indifferent, depressed ennui to which I have referred just now, there stirs sometimes a thought that is benumbed rather than dead, and I have not always the sad and gentle tranquillity that melancholy gives.—I have relapses and fall back into my old attacks of agitation. Nothing in the world is so fatiguing as those motiveless paroxysms, those aimless impulses.—On those days, although I have no more to do than on any others, I rise very early in the morning, before sunrise, I have such a feeling of being in a hurry, of not having all the time I need; I dress in hot haste, as if the house were on fire, tossing on my clothes at random and bewailing a wasted minute.—Any one who happened to see me would think that I was going to keep an assignation or to hunt for money.—Not at all.—I have no idea where I shall go; but go I must, and I should think my salvation endangered if I remained at home.—It seems to me as if somebody were calling me outside, as if my destiny were passing through the street at the moment and the question of my life or death were on the point of being decided.

      I go down with an air of surprise and alarm, clothes in disorder, hair uncombed: people turn to look and laugh when they meet me, and take me for a young rake who has passed the night at the ale-house or elsewhere. I am drunk to all intent, although I have drunk nothing, and I have the aspect of a drunken man even to the uncertain gait, now slow, now fast. I go from street to street like a dog that has lost his master, looking in every direction, ill at ease, on the alert, turning at the slightest sound, gliding into the centre of every group, heedless of the rebuffs of the people I jostle against, and scrutinizing everything with a clear-sightedness that I do not possess at other times.—Then all of a sudden it is made clear to me that I am mistaken, that that surely is not the place, that I must go on farther, to the other end of the town, Heaven knows where.—And I rush off as if the devil were after me.—I touch the ground only with the tips of my toes and I don't weigh an ounce.—Really I must be a strange sight with my terrified, frantic manner, my waving arms and the inarticulate cries I utter.—When I think it over in cold blood, I laugh at myself with all my heart, which doesn't prevent me, I beg you to believe, from doing it all over again on the first occasion.

      If any one should ask me why I rush about so, I certainly should be much embarrassed to answer. I am in no hurry to arrive, as I am going nowhere. I am not afraid of being late, as I have no appointment.—No one is waiting for me—and I have no possible reason for hurrying so.

      Is it because an opportunity to love, an adventure, a woman, an idea, a fortune, or anything else is missing in my life, and I am seeking it unconsciously, impelled by a vague instinct? is my existence struggling to complete itself? is it a longing to get away from myself and my surroundings, the tiresomeness of my life and the wish for something different? It is one of these, or perhaps all of them together.—At all events, it is a very unpleasant experience, a feverish irritation ordinarily succeeded by the most complete collapse.

      I often have the idea that, if I had started an hour earlier, or if I had quickened my gait, I should have arrived in time; that, while I was passing through one street, the thing I was looking for passed through another, and that a block of carriages was enough to make me miss what I have been pursuing, regardless of everything else, for so long a time.—You cannot imagine the intense melancholy and profound despair into which I fall when I see that all this comes to nothing and that my youth is passing and no prospect opening before me; thereupon all my idle passions mutter in my heart and devour each other for lack of better food, like the wild beasts in a menagerie whom the keeper has forgotten to feed. Despite