Théophile Gautier

“ Go, come; accustom yourself to Pharaonic magnificence; help yourself as you please to my treasures; make gold flow, heap up gems; order, make, unmake, raise, destroy; be my mistress, my wife, my queen. I give you Egypt with its priests, its armies, its toilers, its numberless population, its palaces, its temples and cities. Crumple it up as you would crumple up gauze,—I will win other kingdoms for you, larger, fairer, and richer. If the world is not sufficient, I will conquer planets for you, I will dethrone the gods. You are she whom I love; Tahoser, the daughter of Petamounoph is no more. ”

“ I have had ten lovers, but I am a virgin, and I shall die a virgin. Many virgins, on whose graves there is a constant snow of jasmine and orange blossoms, were veritable Messalinas.
THÉODORE.
I know what a noble creature you are, Rosette.
ROSETTE.
You only in all the world have seen what I am; for you have seen me under the influence of a love that is perfectly genuine and very deep-rooted, as it is hopeless; and no one who has not seen a woman in love can say what she is; that is the one thing that consoles me in my bitterness of spirit. ”

“ My sky has no clouds, or, if it has any, they are solid clouds, carved with the sculptor's chisel, made from blocks of marble that have fallen from the statue of Jupiter. Mountains with sharply-outlined peaks rise abruptly along its edges, and the sun, leaning on one of the highest summits, opens wide its yellow lion's eye with the golden eyelids.—The grasshopper chirps and sings, and the corn bursts its sheath; the vanquished shadow, unable to withstand the heat, musters its platoons and takes refuge at the foot of the trees; everything is radiant and glowing and resplendent. ”

“ The Sierra Neveda, whose denticulated ridges face the city on this side, assumes the most unimaginable hues. Its whole steep and rugged flank and all its peaks, struck by the light, become of a rose-colour, dazzling to behold; ideal, fabulous, shot with silver, and streaked with iris and opal-like reflections, which would make the freshest tints on the artist's palette appear thick and dirty: the hues of mother-of-pearl, the transparency of the ruby, and veins of agate and advanturine that would defy all the fairy jewellery of the "Thousand-and-one Nights," are to be seen there. ”

“ Her look had at first been one of caressing tenderness; it changed to an air of disdain and of mortification, as though at not having been able to make itself understood.
With an effort of will sufficient to have uprooted a mountain, I strove to cry out that I would not be a priest, but I could not speak; my tongue seemed nailed to my palate, and I found it impossible to express my will by the least syllable of negation. Though fully awake, I felt like one under the influence of a nightmare, who vainly strives to shriek out the one word upon which life depends. ”

“ I know not if you be a dream or a reality, a phantom or a woman; if, like Ixion, I press but a cloud to my cheated breast; if I am only the victim of some vile spell of sorcery—but what I do truly know is that you will be my first and my last love."
"May Eros, son of Aphrodite, hear your promise," returned Arria Marcella, dropping her head upon the shoulder of her lover, who lifted her in a passionate embrace. "Oh, press me to your young breast! Envelop me with your warm breath. I am cold through having remained so long without love." ”

“ God suffers himself to be adored; the stars receive the admiration of the humblest shepherd; it is the fate of all such lofty perfection as yours to, be beloved, adored, only by inferior beings, since it has not its equal upon earth, nor scarcely indeed in heaven. I, alas! am but a poor, wandering actor, yet were I a haughty duke or prince, my head would not be on a level with your beauteous feet, and there would be, all the same, between your heavenly height and my kneeling adoration, as great a distance as from the soaring summit of the loftiest Alp to the yawning abyss far, far below. ”

“ It is he!... Alas! he replied not: It is she! And now he is gone—he has left me! Dreadful awakening from so beautiful a dream!
Valentine, burn quickly the letter telling you of my ingenuous hopes, my confident happiness—yes, burn the foolish letter, so there will remain no witness of my unrequited love! What! that deep emotion agitating my whole being, whose language was the tears of joy that dimmed my eyes, and the counted beatings of my throbbing heart—that master-passion, at whose behest I trembled while blushes mantled and fled from my cheek, betraying me to him and him to me ”

“ I begin to believe that I am wrong, I demand more of nature and society than they can give. What I seek does not exist and I ought not to complain because I cannot find it. However, if the woman we dream of does not come within the conditions of human nature, how is it that we love only her and not others, since we are men and our instinct should draw us irresistibly toward them? What puts this imaginary woman into our head? with what clay do we mould this invisible statue? where do we get the feathers we fasten to the back of this chimera? ”

“ Are you not young, so fair that the loveliest envy you, and free to do what you please? And did not your father, the high-priest Petamounoph, whose mummy rests concealed within a rich tomb,—did he not leave you great wealth to do with as you please? Your palace is splendid, your gardens vast and watered by transparent streams, your coffers of enamelled ware and sycamore wood are filled with necklaces, pectorals, neck-plates, anklets, finely wrought seal-rings. Your gowns, your calasiris, your head-dresses are greater in number than the days of the year. ”

“ O Rosalind, I love you, I adore you, would that there were a word stronger than that! I have never loved, I have never adored any woman but you;—I prostrate myself, I annihilate myself before you, and I would like to compel all creation to bend the knee before my idol; to me you are more than all nature, more than myself, more than God;—indeed, it seems strange to me that God does not come down from heaven to be your slave. Where you are not, everything is a desert, everything is dead, everything is black ”

“ You are fortunate, my dear Edgar, in having found the woman you have always dreamed of and hoped for; you will have all the charms of love without its troubles; it is folly to believe that love is strengthened by its own torments and stimulated by sorrows. A storm is only admired by those on shore; the suffering sailors curse the raging sea and pray for a calm.
Your letter, my dear Edgar, is filled with that calm happiness that is the foundation of all true love; in return, I can only send you an account of my despair. Friendship is often a union of these two contrasts. ”

“ With love, this grim and arid Egypt would seem to me fairer than even Greece with her ivory gods, her temples of snowy marble, her groves of laurel, and fountains of living water. There I should never dream of the weird face of Anubis and the ghastly terrors of the cities underground."
Charmion smiled incredulously. "That ought not, surely, to be a source of much grief to you, O queen; for every glance of your eyes transpierces hearts, like the golden arrows of Eros himself."
"Can a queen," answered Cleopatra, "ever know whether it is her face or her diadem that is loved? ”

“ Isabelle had taken de Sigognac’s offered arm, and leaned on it proudly, glancing furtively up into his face, whenever he was looking away from her, with eyes full of tenderness and loving admiration, never suspecting, in her modesty, that it was for love of her that he had decided to turn actor—a thing so revolting, as she knew, to his pride as a gentleman. He was a hero in her eyes, and though she wished to reproach him for his hasty action, which she would have prevented if she could, she had not the heart to find fault with him for his noble devotion to the common cause after all. ”

“ The thing that I adore most fervently among all earthly things is a lovely hand.—If you could see the hand of my dream! such perfection! such dazzling whiteness! such soft skin! such penetrating moisture! the ends of the fingers so admirably tapered! the half-moon of the nails so clearly marked! such polish and such brilliant color! you would say they were the inner petals of a rose;—Anne of Austria's hands, so vaunted and famous, were no more than the hands of a turkey-keeper or scullery-maid compared with these.—And then what grace, what art in the slightest movements of the hand! ”

“ Ra'hel was the Hebrew ideal, as Tahoser was the Egyptian. Hard though it was to her loving heart, she was compelled to admit that Poëri's love was justified and well bestowed. The eyes with their full black eyelashes, the beautiful nose, the red mouth with its dazzling smile, the long, elegant oval face, the arms, full near the shoulders and ending in childish hands, the round, plump neck which, as it turned, formed folds more beautiful than necklaces of gems,—all this, set off by a quaint, exotic dress, was sure to please. ”

“ Lovers, poets, painters and sculptors, we all seek to erect an altar to thee, the lover in his mistress, the poet in his song, the painter in his canvas, the sculptor in his marble; but the source of everlasting despair is the inability to give tangible form to the beauty one feels, and to be enveloped by a body which does not realize the idea of the body you understand to be yours. ”

“ Oh! believe me to be serious, and accuse me not of comic-opera philosophy, my dear Valentine! I feel none of that proud disdain for importunate fortune that we read of in novels; nor do I regret "my pretty boat," nor "my cottage by the sea;" here, in this beautiful drawing-room of the Hotel de Langeac, writing to you, I do not sigh for my gloomy garret in the Marais, where my labors day and night were most tiresome, because a mere parody of the noblest arts, an undignified labor making patience and courage ridiculous, a cruel game which we play for life while cursing it. ”

“ But what a terrible fatality that this cursed Vallombreuse should turn out to be her brother! There is a dead body between us now—a stream of blood separates us—and yet, I could not save her honour in any other way. Unhappy mortal that I am! I have myself created the obstacle upon which my love is wrecked, and killed my hopes of future bliss with the very sword that defended the purity of the woman I adore. In guarding her I love, I have put her away from me forever. How could I go now and present myself to Isabelle with blood-stained hands? ”

“ Not a word, not a glance had been exchanged between himself and Nyssia, who probably ignored the very existence of the one being for whom her beauty would so soon cease to be a mystery. Unknown to her whose modesty would have naught to sacrifice for you, how strange a situation! To love a woman in secret and find one's self led by her husband to the threshold of the nuptial chamber, to have for guide to that treasure the very dragon who should defend all approach to it, was there not in all this ample food for astonishment and wonder at the combination of events wrought by destiny? ”

“ ROSETTE.
I longed so to have you love me that I helped to deceive myself. It is easy to believe what one desires; but now I see that I am mistaken. You made a mistake yourself; you mistook liking for love and desire for passion. It's something that happens every day. I bear you no ill will for it: it wasn't your fault that you weren't in love with me; my own lack of charm is all that I have to blame. I ought to have been prettier, more playful, more of a flirt; I ought to have tried to rise to your level, O my poet! ”