Mademoiselle de Maupin. Theophile Gautier
a fashion and display such noble insolence. The women don't like her at all, for they despair of ever reaching that height of impudence, but, on the other hand, she is very popular with the men who find in her all the piquant flavor of the courtesan.—To be sure, her depravity is of a fascinating sort, she is full of wit and impulse and caprice.—She's an excellent mistress for a young man who has prejudices.—Within a week she will rid your conscience of all scruples and corrupt your heart to such an extent that you will never make yourself ridiculous or indulge in elegiacs. She has incredibly positive ideas on every subject; she goes to the bottom of everything with astonishing rapidity and accuracy of insight. The little woman is the incarnation of algebra; she is precisely what a dreamer and an enthusiast needs. She will soon cure you of your misty idealism: therein she will render you a great service. She will do it with the greatest pleasure, however, for her instinct leads her to disenchant poets."
My curiosity being aroused by De C——'s description, I emerged from my retreat, and, gliding from group to group, approached the lady in question and observed her closely—she may have been twenty-five or twenty-six years old. She was small, but well shaped, although a little inclined to be stout; she had round, white arms, well-formed hands and pretty feet, almost too small—plump, polished shoulders, breast but little exposed, but what there was, very satisfactory and affording a favorable idea of the rest; her hair was extremely glossy and of a blue-black shade like a jay's wing; the corner of the eye was turned well up toward the temple, nose thin, nostrils very open, mouth moist and sensuous, a little crease on the lower lip and an almost imperceptible down at the corners. And with it all, vivacity, animation, health, and an indefinable suggestion of wantonness adroitly tempered by coquetry and tact, which made her a very desirable creature and more than justified the very lively passions she had inspired and continued to inspire every day.
I desired her; but yet I understood that that woman, agreeable as she might be, was not my ideal, or could make me say: "At last I have a mistress!"
I returned to De C—— and said: "I like her looks, and perhaps I may come to an understanding with her. But, before saying anything definite which will bind me, I would be very glad if you would have the kindness to point out those indulgent beauties who are so condescending as to be impressed with me, so that I may make my choice.—You will also oblige me, as you are acting as showman on this occasion, by adding a little descriptive notice and a list of their good and bad qualities; how I must attack them and the tone I must adopt with them in order not to seem too much like a provincial or a literary man."
"I most certainly will," said De C——. "Do you see that lovely, melancholy swan who manages her neck so gracefully and makes her sleeves move like wings? she is modesty itself, the most chaste and virginal creature in the world; she has a snow-white brow, a heart of ice, the expression of a madonna, the smile of an Agnes; she has a white dress and a soul of the same color; she wears nothing but orange-blossoms or water-lily leaves in her hair, and is attached to earth only by a thread. She has never had an evil thought and has no idea wherein man differs from woman. The Blessed Virgin is a Bacchante beside her, all of which does not prevent her having had more lovers than any woman I know, and that is certainly saying a good deal. Just cast your eye on that discreet person's throat; it is a little masterpiece, and really it is very difficult to show so much without showing more; tell me if, with all her reserve and all her prudery, she isn't ten times more indecent than that good lady at her left, who bravely displays two hemispheres which, if they were united, would form a life-size globe—or the other one at her right, décolletée to the navel, who parades her nothingness with fascinating intrepidity?—That virginal creature, unless I am very much mistaken, has already figured out in her head how much love and passion your pallor and your black eyes may be taken to promise; and my reason for saying so is that she hasn't once looked in your direction, visibly at least; for she can manage her pupils with such art and roll them into the corner of her eyes so cleverly that nothing escapes her; one would think that she looked through the back of her head, for she knows perfectly well what is going on behind her.—She's a female Janus.—If you want to succeed with her, you must lay aside anything like a free-and-easy, victorious manner. You must talk to her without looking at her, without moving, in a contrite attitude and in a subdued, respectful voice; in that way you can say whatever you choose to her, provided that it is suitably glossed over, and she will allow you to take the greatest liberties, at first in words; afterward in deeds. Simply take care to roll your eyes tenderly when hers are cast down, and talk to her about the joys of platonic love and the communion of souls, while you employ with her the least platonic and least ideal pantomime imaginable! She is very sensual and very sensitive; kiss her as often as you choose, but don't forget, even in the most intimate intercourse, to call her madame at least three times per sentence: she fell out with me, because, when I was in her bed, I said something or other to her and called her thou. What the devil! a woman is not virtuous for nothing!"
"After what you tell me I have no great desire to try my luck. A prudish Messalina! an entirely novel and monstrous combination."
"Old as the world, my dear boy! it is seen every day and nothing is more common.—You are wrong not to try your hand with her.—She has one great charm, which is that with her you always seem to be committing a deadly sin, and the least kiss seems altogether damnable; while with others you think of it as nothing more than a venial sin, and often you don't think you're doing anything wrong at all.—That is why I kept her longer than any other mistress.—I should have her still if she had not left me herself; she's the only woman who ever got ahead of me, and I look upon her with a certain amount of respect on that account.—She has the most delicate little refinements of pleasure and the great art of appearing to be forced to grant what she grants very freely; which gives to each of her favors the fascination of rape. You will find in society ten of her lovers who will swear to you that she is one of the most virtuous creatures on earth.—She is precisely the contrary.—It is an interesting study to analyze that virtue of hers on a pillow. Being forewarned, you run no risk, and you won't make the blunder of falling in love with her in earnest."
"How old is this adorable creature?" I asked De C——, for it was impossible to decide, even after examining her with the most careful attention.
"Ah! there you are! how old is she? that's a mystery and God only knows the clue. For my own part, and I pride myself on telling a woman's age almost to a minute, I have never succeeded in finding out hers. I can only estimate approximately that she is somewhere between eighteen and thirty-six.—I have seen her in full dress, in déshabille, in her linen, and I can tell you nothing in that connection: my knowledge is at fault; the age that you would generally take her to be is eighteen, and yet that can't be her age.—She is a combination of a virgin body and the soul of a harlot, and she must have had much time or much genius to corrupt herself so thoroughly and so speciously; she must have a heart of brass in a breast of steel; but she has neither; that makes me think that she is thirty-six, but in reality I know nothing about it."
"Hasn't she any intimate friend who could enlighten you on the subject?"
"No; she arrived here two years ago. She came from the provinces or from abroad, I don't know which—that is an admirable position for a woman who knows how to make the most of it. With such a face as she has, she can make herself any age she chooses and date only from the day she arrived here."
"That certainly is a most agreeable state of things, especially when some impertinent wrinkle doesn't give you the lie, and Time, the great destroyer, is kind enough to connive at that falsification of the certificate of baptism."
He pointed out several others, who, he said, would receive favorably whatever requests it might please me to prefer to them, and would treat me with peculiar philanthropy. But the woman in pink in the chimney-corner and the modest dove who was her antithesis were incomparably superior to all the others; and, if they had not all the qualities I require, they had some of them, at least in appearance.
I talked all the evening with them, especially with the last, and I took pains to cast my ideas in the most respectful mould;—although she hardly looked at me, I fancied sometimes that I could see her eyes gleaming behind the curtain of their lashes, and at some compliments that I ventured to address to her, decidedly broad but shrouded in the most modest gauze, I noticed just below