Remy de Gourmont

“ Leonor, pleased at having made a witty remark, and afraid of not being able to think of another, had got up and was walking about the garden. Rose looked at him. The sight of this young animal interested her. And what curious words about love had issued from that mouth! So love was an exercise like tennis, or bicycling, or riding! What a revelation! And the most singular fancies took shape in her mind as she followed with her eyes the now distant figure of this ingenious and decisive young man.
"How do people play the game of love," she wondered, "real love? Xavier teaches me nothing. ”

“ Leonor looked at Rose. He felt a powerful emotion, for to be loved like this seemed to him the height of felicity. He had never believed that it was possible to inspire a young girl with such ingenuous confidence. And how frank she was! What a divine simplicity!
"How does one make oneself so much loved? What's his secret? Ah! if only I dared ask more! But now, I don't even want to try and violate an intimacy so charming to contemplate. I'm looking at happiness, and it's such a rare sight." ”

“ She would have liked to press it, to wring it so that all the caresses, all the kisses which had sunk into her skin, penetrated her veins, thrilled her nerves, might be drained out of it.
In her already perverted innocence she pictured to herself the mutual caresses of Xavier and this Gratienne woman. She pictured to herself this woman's body and compared it with her own. Was she more beautiful? In what is one woman's body more beautiful than another's? Xavier had loved to caress her, to crush her in his arms. And used he not to say: "How beautiful you are!" ”

“ Encoignard, the gardener from Valognes, was contemplating this wildness with a melancholy eye:
"It will have to be ploughed, M. Des Boys, or at least well hoed. Then we'll sift the earth we've broken up, level it down and sow ray-grass. In two years it will be like a carpet of green velvet."
Eyeing the landscape, he went on:
"Lime trees! You ought to have a segoya here and over there an araucaria. And what's that? An apple-tree. That's quite wrong. We'll have that up and put a magnolia grandiflora there. You want an English garden, don't you? ”

“ After an amusing little supper and some thrilling kisses, Rose would go to sleep on his shoulder and from time to time he would touch her breast, kiss her eyelids. She would be, at this moment, at once his wife and his mistress, the woman who has given herself, but whom one has not yet taken, a beautiful fruit to be looked at and delicately handled before it is at last relished. What an exquisite creature of love she would be. How docile her curiosity! What a pupil, like clay the hands of the sculptor. An elopement? Why not a marriage tour? ”

“ One can only stick to what one loves. To keep a treasure, you must have found it first."
He had spoken with passion.
"What eloquence!" said M. Des Boys.
All of a sudden, Rose began to laugh, a laugh so happy, so full of gratitude, that M. Hervart could make no mistake about its meaning.
"You're being laughed at, my poor friend," M. Des Boys went on.
At this mistake, Rose's laughter redoubled. It became gay, childish, uncontrollable.
"This is something," said Mme. Des Boys, "which will console you, I hope. But what a little demon my daughter is!" ”

“ The more he dreamed about Rose, the more disquietingly tense grew his nerves. His desire did not turn towards her; he caught himself one evening spying on the wife of the Barnavast keeper, who was showing her legs as she bent over the well. It made him feel rather ashamed, for this big Norman peasant woman, so young and fresh, could boast, he imagined, of nothing more than a peasant's cleanliness—wholly exterior, and he would only, could only tolerate woman in the state of the nymph fresh risen from the bath, like the companions of Diana. ”

“ Rose was only awaiting some act of humility to give herself to him again.
"She is hurt in her pride. Her heart is happy, if happiness consists in loving much more than in being loved. It is a painful pleasure, but none the less a pleasure, for her to talk of M. Hervart...."
That evening Leonor had no difficulty in putting on a melancholy and disenchanted look. He felt these two emotions to perfection, and Rose, who could not help looking at him, noticed it. ”

“ In this chilly young man, so cold and yet so romantic as well as sensual, Hortense had found a more durable love, which greatly increased her happiness. Under a very skilfully calculated reserve, she adored Leonor, who had, on his side, always shown himself obedient, respectful, adroit and tender. She realised that the furtive pleasures which she was able to give him without compromising herself did not altogether satisfy her lover. She too, in whom the avid sensuality of the woman of thirty had begun to wake, desired pleasures of a less rapid and more complicated nature. ”

“ It was time to go down.
"How dark the staircase is," said Rose. "Give me your hand."
At the bottom, as though to thank him for his help, she offered her cheek. His kiss settled on the corner of her mouth. Rose recoiled, warned of danger by this new sensation that was too intimate, too intense. But in the process of moving away, she came near to falling. Her hands clutched at his, and she found herself once more leaning towards M. Hervart. They looked at one another for a moment. Rose shut her eyes and waited for a renewal of the burning touch. ”

“ If I love Rose, it means that I desire her.... If I desire her, it means that I have physical needs. Once these needs are satisfied, I shall feel no desire for any woman and I shall stop thinking of this silly girl. Hervart can do what he likes with her; I shan't mind; and, after all, will the satisfaction which he derives from her be so different from that which some unknown woman will lavish so generously on me? A little coyness, does that add a spice? The sensation of a victory, a favour is better. ”

“ Rose made an abrupt movement which parted them, and looking full at M. Hervart, her face radiant with tenderness, she said:
"I'm not unhappy now."
She got up, and they moved away together through the wood, exchanging little insignificant phrases in voices full of tenderness. Each time their eyes met, they smiled. They kept on fingering leaves, flowers, mere pieces of wood, so as to have an excuse for touching each other's hand. Coming to a clearing where they could walk abreast, they allowed their arms on the inner side to hang limply down, so that their hands touched and were soon joined. ”

“ These movements were understood by Leonor, who had been trying for some few moments to guess what were the relations between Rose and Hervart.
"They are in love," he said to himself. "Hervart has a genius for making love. I am twenty-eight, which is my only point of superiority over him. And even that is very illusory, for it is only women who know something about life, whether through experience or through the confidences of some one else, who pay any attention to a man's age. A woman is as old as her face: a man is as old as his eyes. ”

“ To my mind, restoration means giving back to a monument the appearance that the centuries would have given it if it had been well looked after. Restoration doesn't mean making a thing look new; it doesn't consist in giving an old man the hair, beard, complexion and teeth of a youth; it consists in bringing a dying man back to life and giving him the health and beauty of his age."
"How glad I am to hear you talk like this," said Rose. "I hope M. Lanfranc shares your ideas." ”

“ Besides, he noticed that Lanfranc was making up to this good creature and doing it in all seriousness. Sure of giving him satisfaction by taking himself off for a few days, he drove to Valognes and took the Paris train.
Leonor, without making pretensions to conquests, would have liked to have certain kinds of adventures. He wanted to find one of those women whom some careless husband, whether through avarice or poverty, deprives of the joy of fashionable elegance or who, adorned by a lover's prodigalities, dreams of giving for nothing the present which they none the less very gladly sell. ”

“ I love you more than chance, I love you more than the woman I was looking for, because you are the woman I found. Besides, the perfume of your soul will make sweet your own pleasure without thinking at all of mine. In love, egotism is a homage; it is also a sign of confidence."
The moment came. Silence fell with the night. She strove to hide her shyness under an impudent smile. ”

“ Rose had answered his salutation by a word of welcome; conversation had then passed to the old house at Barnavast, finally to Mme. Suif. But Leonor was discreet and vague, so much so that at one of Rose's questions the conversation had switched off on to sentimental commonplaces. But, for Rose, nothing in the world was commonplace yet.
"Isn't she rather old to marry again?" she asked.
"Ah, but Mme. Suif is one of those whose hearts are always young."
"Then there are some hearts that grow old more slowly than others?"
"Some never grow old at all, just as some have never been young." ”

“ Feeling herself the object of an unceasing attention, Rose had concluded that he wanted to capture her, and she had allowed herself to be caught. M. Hervart considered himself too expert in feminine psychology to admit the possibility of a young girl's having deliberately taken the first step. He felt like an absent-minded sportsman who, forgetting that he has fired, wakes up to find a partridge in his game-bag. ”

“ Why should the flower of these fine graceful plants be silliness?
"But isn't it the same with animals, and especially among the animals that approach our physiology most closely? The great apes, so intelligent in their youth, become idiotic and cruel as soon as they reach puberty. There is a cape there which they never double. A few men succeed; their intelligence escapes shipwreck, and they float free and smiling on the tranquillized sea. Sex is an absinthe whose strength only the strong can stand; it poisons the blood of the commonalty of men. Women succumb even more surely to this crisis. ”

“ What are my children's kisses after the kisses of my lover? It is like the smell of the humble pink after the heady perfume of the rarest flowers...."
"What a fool the woman is," said Leonor inwardly. "Why does she write. She has intelligence, her conversation is agreeable, she has taste, and see what she writes! ”

“ Rose welcomed him with a happy smile, a smile of delicious frankness.
"Good," thought M. Hervart, "he isn't my rival yet. My rôle for the moment is to act the part of the man who is sure of himself, the man who possesses, dominates, the lord who is above all changes and chances...."
And he began to talk of his stay at Robinvast and of the pleasure he found in the midst of this rich disorderly scene of nature. ”

“ Women are ruminants: they can live for months, for years it may be, on a voluptuous memory. That is what explains the apparent virtue of certain women; one lovely sin, like a beautiful flower with an immortal perfume, is enough to bless all the days of their life. Women still remember the first kiss when men have forgotten the last.
Hortense dreamed, Leonor desired. He thought only of yesterday's mistress, when he did think of her, in order to make her the mistress of to-morrow. His sentimentality was material. ”

“ While, feeling very uncomfortable, he was deploring his virtue, Rose fondled him and called him naughty.
"It's curious," he thought, "that they all have the same vocabulary by nature."
He was ashamed. Nothing makes a man ashamed so much as having failed in his purpose, what ever may have been the cause of his failure. He said, a little nervously:
"Let's walk a little. Let's do something."
"What an idiot I am," he thought, as they walked along the Couville road, where there are rocks and a little heather and foxgloves among the birch-trees; "after all, she's my wife." ”