Théophile Gautier

“ 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. ”

“ I love nothing, as I have said, but alas! I am afraid of loving something.—It would be a hundred thousand times better to hate than to have such a love!—I have found the type of beauty that I have so long dreamed of.—I have found the body of my phantom; I have seen it, it has spoken to me, I have touched its hand, it exists; it is not a chimera. I knew that I could not be mistaken and that my presentiments never lied.—Yes, Silvio, lam living beside the dream of my life;—my chamber is here, its chamber is there ”

“ You have been a flash of light in my darkness, and you have illuminated many dark places in my soul; you have opened new perspectives in my life.—I owe it to you that I know what love is,—unhappy love, it is true; but there is a melancholy and profound fascination in loving without being loved, and it is pleasant to remember those who forget us. It is a joy simply to be able to love, even when one loves alone, and many die without having had it, and often they who love are not the most to be pitied.
THÉODORE.
They suffer and feel their wounds, but at all events they live. ”

“ If you could have imagined, at times when my arms clasped you so tightly, when my mouth was most closely united to yours, that your beauty and your love had nothing to do with my passion, that the thought of you was a hundred leagues from my mind; what if some one had told you that those eyes, veiled with amorous languor, were cast down simply in order not to look at you and not to banish the illusion that you served only to complete, and that, instead of being a mistress, you were simply an instrument of lust, a means of assuaging a desire impossible of realization! ”

“ I am ill at ease for the shadow of a shade; I heave sighs that mean nothing; I have sleepless nights embellished by no adored vision; I shed tears that flow to the ground without being wiped away; I give the wind kisses that are not returned to me; I wear out my eyes trying to distinguish a vague, deceitful shape in the distance; I await what cannot come, and I count the hours with feverish anxiety as if I had an appointment.
Whoever you be, angel or demon, virgin or courtesan, shepherdess or princess, whether you come from north or south, you whom I do not know but whom I love! ”

“ ROSETTE.
You resemble D'Albert in many ways, and, when you speak, it seems to me sometimes as if he were speaking.—I have no doubt that, when you know him better, you will become much attached to him; you cannot fail to suit each other.—He is tormented as you are, by these same aimless impulses; he is head over ears in love but does not know with what; he would like to ascend to Heaven, for the earth seems to him like a stool hardly fit for one of his feet to rest upon, and he has more pride than Lucifer before his fall. ”

“ Through the openings in the foliage the sky showed millions of blue eyes; the water rippled gently and I gave myself up to the enjoyment of the moment, plunged in blissful tranquillity, saying nothing, with my hand still in Rosette's tiny hands.
It is of no use to talk: happiness is white and pink; it can hardly be represented otherwise. Delicate colors belong to it as of right. It has on its palette only sea-green, sky-blue and light yellow: its pictures are all light like those of the Chinese painters. ”

“ Your present felicity is augmented by all the happiness in store for you. You are happy and you are certain of being happier soon.—What a destiny is yours!—Your beloved is beautiful, but what you have loved in her is not the mortal, palpable beauty, material beauty, but the invisible, immortal beauty, the beauty that does not grow old, the beauty of the soul.—She is full of charm and innocence; she loves you as such souls know how to love.—You never looked to see if the golden shade of her hair resembled the golden hair painted by Rubens or Giorgione ”

“ Théodore seated himself at the foot of Rosette's bed, for D'Albert had taken his place at her pillow, by right of having arrived first. The conversation wandered for some time from subject to subject, very bright and gay and animated, and that is why we do not report it; we should be afraid that it would lose too much in being transcribed. The manner, the tone, the vivacity of speech and gesture, the countless ways of uttering a word, the effervescent wit, like the foam of champagne which sparkles and evaporates at once, are details that it is impossible to note down and reproduce. ”

“ 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? ”

“ I have no idea who I am nor who others are, I doubt whether I am a man or a woman, I have a horror of myself, I feel strange, inexplicable impulses, and there are moments when it seems to me that my reason is going, and when the idea of my existence abandons me altogether. For a long time I have been unable to believe in anything; I have listened to myself and watched myself closely. I have tried to disentangle the skein that has become entangled in my soul. At last, through all the veils in which it was enveloped, I have discovered the ghastly truth—Silvio, I love—Oh! ”

“ A pleasant, penetrating odor of linden-trees comes up from the garden. It is as beautiful a day as can be imagined; the sky is as blue as an Englishwoman's eye. We rise, and, after breakfasting with a good appetite, we take a long drive in the country. The clear air, the beauty of the landscape and the aspect of nature in her joyous mood instilled enough sentimentality and tenderness into my soul to make Rosette agree that, after all, I have something in the shape of a heart like other men. ”

“ 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! ”

“ I would give fifty souls for a dainty foot, and all poetry and all the poets for the hand of Joanna of Aragon, or the brow of Foligno's virgin.—Above all things I adore a beautiful figure; to my mind beauty is manifest Divinity, palpable happiness, heaven come down to earth.—There are certain undulations of outline, certain turns of the lip, a certain droop of the eyelids, certain inclinations of the head, certain elongations of the profile which enchant me beyond all expression and fix my attention for whole hours. ”

“ Rosette has one arm under my neck and lies perfectly still for fear of waking me. From time to time she rises a little on her elbow and leans over my face, holding her breath. I see all this through my eyelashes, for I have been awake an hour. Rosette's night-dress has a neck ruffle of Malines lace which is all torn: it has been a stormy night; her hair protrudes in disorder from under her little cap. She is as pretty as a woman can be, when one doesn't love her and is lying in bed with her. ”