yield, condemned to live a lie in her heart, yet delightful in outward
appearance--for these English rest everything on appearances. Hence

the special charms of their women: the enthusiasm for a love which is
all their life; the minuteness of their care for their persons; the

delicacy of their passion, so charmingly rendered in the famous scene
of Romeo and Juliet in which, with one stroke, Shakespeare's genius

depicted his country-women.
You, who envy them so many things, what can I tell you that you do not

know of these white sirens, impenetrable apparently but easily
fathomed, who believe that love suffices love, and turn enjoyments to

satiety by never varying them; whose soul has one note only, their
voice one syllable--an ocean of love in themselves, it is true, and he

who has never swum there misses part of the poetry of the senses, as
he who has never seen the sea has lost some strings of his lyre. You

know the why and wherefore of these words. My relations with the
Marchioness of Dudley had a disastrouscelebrity. At an age when the

senses have dominion over our conduct, and when in my case they had
been violently repressed by circumstances, the image of the saint

bearing her slow martyrdom at Clochegourde shone so vividly before my
mind that I was able to resist all seductions. It was the lustre of

this fidelity which attracted Lady Dudley's attention. My resistance
stimulated her passion. What she chiefly desired, like many

Englishwoman, was the spice of singularity; she wanted pepper,
capsicum, with her heart's food, just as Englishmen need condiments to

excite their appetite. The dull languor forced into the lives of these
women by the constantperfection of everything about them, the

methodical regularity of their habits, leads them to adore the
romantic and to welcome difficulty. I was whollyunable to judge of

such a character. The more I retreated to a cold distance the more
impassioned Lady Dudley became. The struggle, in which she gloried,

excited the curiosity of several persons, and this in itself was a
form of happiness which to her mind made ultimatetriumph obligatory.

Ah! I might have been saved if some good friend had then repeated to
me her cruel comment on my relations with Madame de Mortsauf.

"I am wearied to death," she said, "of these turtle-dove sighings."
Without seeking to justify my crime, I ask you to observe, Natalie,

that a man has fewer means of resisting a woman than she has of
escaping him. Our code of manners forbids the brutality of repressing

a woman, whereas repression with your sex is not only allurement to
ours, but is imposed upon you by conventions. With us, on the

contrary, some unwritten law of masculine self-conceit ridicules a
man's modesty; we leave you the monopoly of that virtue, that you may

have the privilege of granting us favors; but reverse the case, and
man succumbs before sarcasm.

Though protected by my love, I was not of an age to be wholly
insensible to the triple seductions of pride, devotion, and beauty.

When Arabella laid at my feet the homage of a ball-room where she
reigned a queen, when she watched by glance to know if my taste

approved of her dress, and when she trembled with pleasure on seeing
that she pleased me, I was affected by her emotion. Besides, she

occupied a social position where I could not escape her; I could not
refuse invitations in the diplomaticcircle; her rank admitted her

everywhere, and with the cleverness all women display to obtain what
pleases them, she often contrived that the mistress of the house

should place me beside her at dinner. On such occasions she spoke in
low tones to my ear. "If I were loved like Madame de Mortsauf," she

said once, "I should sacrifice all." She did submit herself with a
laugh in many humble ways; she promised me a discretion equal to any

test, and even asked that I would merely suffer her to love me. "Your
friend always, your mistress when you will," she said. At last, after

an evening when she had made herself so beautiful that she was certain
to have excited my desires, she came to me. The scandal resounded

through England, where the aristocracy was horrified like heaven
itself at the fall of its highest angel. Lady Dudley abandoned her

place in the British empyrean, gave up her wealth, and endeavored to
eclipse by her sacrifices HER whose virtue had been the cause of this

great disaster. She took delight, like the devil on the pinnacle of
the temple, in showing me all the riches of her passionate kingdom.

Read me, I pray you, with indulgence. The matter concerns one of the
most interesting problems of human life,--a crisis to which most men

are subjected, and which I desire to explain, if only to place a
warning light upon the reef. This beautiful woman, so slender, so

fragile, this milk-white creature, so yielding, so submissive, so
gentle, her brow so endearing, the hair that crowns it so fair and

fine, this tender woman, whose brilliancy is phosphorescent and
fugitive, has, in truth, an iron nature. No horse, no matter how fiery

he may be, can conquer her vigorous wrist, or strive against that hand
so soft in appearance, but never tired. She has the foot of a doe, a

thin, muscular little foot, indescribably graceful in outline. She is
so strong that she fears no struggle; men cannot follow her on

horseback; she would win a steeple-chase against a centaur; she can
bring down a stag without stopping her horse. Her body never

perspires; it inhales the fire of the atmosphere, and lives in water
under pain of not living at all. Her love is African; her desires are

like the whirlwinds of the desert--the desert, whose torrid expanse is
in her eyes, the azure, love-laden desert, with its changeless skies,

its cool and starry nights. What a contrast to Clochegourde! the east
and the west! the one drawing into her every drop of moisture for her

own nourishment, the other exuding her soul, wrapping her dear ones in
her luminousatmosphere; the one quick and slender; the other slow and

massive.
Have you ever reflected on the actual meaning of the manners and

customs and morals of England? Is it not the deification of matter? a
well-defined, carefully considered Epicureanism, judiciously applied?

No matter what may be said against the statement, England is
materialist,--possibly she does not know it herself. She lays claim to

religion and morality, from which, however, divine spirituality, the
catholic soul, is absent; and its fructifying grace cannot be replaced

by any counterfeit, however well presented it may be. England
possesses in the highest degree that science of existence which turns

to account every particle of materiality; the science that makes her
women's slippers the most exquisite slippers in the world, gives to

their linen ineffable fragrance, lines their drawers with cedar,
serves tea carefully drawn, at a certain hour, banishes dust, nails

the carpets to the floors in every corner of the house, brushes the
cellar walls, polishes the knocker of the front door, oils the springs

of the carriage,--in short, makes matter a nutritive and downy pulp,
clean and shining, in the midst of which the soul expires of enjoyment

and the frightfulmonotony of comfort in a life without contrasts,
deprived of spontaneity, and which, to sum all in one word, makes a

machine of you.
Thus I suddenly came to know, in the bosom of this British luxury, a

woman who is perhaps unique among her sex; who caught me in the nets
of a love excited by my indifference, and to the warmth of which I

opposed a stern continence,--one of those loves possessed of
overwhelming charm, an electricity of their own, which lead us to the

skies through the ivory gates of slumber, or bear us thither on their
powerful pinions. A love monstrously ungrateful, which laughs at the

bodies of those it kills; love without memory, a cruel love,
resembling the policy of the English nation; a love to which, alas,

most men yield. You understand the problem? Man is composed of matter
and spirit; animality comes to its end in him, and the angel begins in

him. There lies the struggle we all pass through, between the future
destiny of which we are conscious and the influence of anterior

instincts from which we are not wholly detached,--carnal love and
divine love. One man combines them, another abstains altogether; some

there are who seek the satisfaction of their anterior appetites from
the whole sex; others idealize their love in one woman who is to them

the universe; some float irresolutely between the delights of matter
and the joys of soul, others spiritualize the body, requiring of it

that which it cannot give.
If, thinking over these leading characteristics of love, you take into

account the dislikes and the affinities which result from the
diversity of organisms, and which sooner or later break all ties

between those who have not fully tried each other; if you add to this
the mistakes arising from the hopes of those who live more

particularly either by their minds, or by their hearts, or by action,
who either think, or feel, or act, and whose tendency is misunderstood

in the close association in which two persons, equal counterparts,
find themselves, you will have great indulgence for sorrows to which

the world is pitiless. Well, Lady Dudley gratified the instincts,
organs, appetites, the vices and virtues of the subtile matter of

which we are made; she was the mistress of the body; Madame de
Mortsauf was the wife of the soul. The love which the mistress

satisfies has its limits; matter is finite, its inherent qualities
have an ascertained force, it is capable of saturation; often I felt a