Found on a Drowned Man
by Guy de Maupassant
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
by Guy de Maupassant
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
Madame, you ask me whether I am laughing at you? You
cannot believe that a man has never been in love. Well, then, no, no, I have
never loved, never!
Why is this? I really cannot tell. I have never
experienced that intoxication of the heart which we call love! Never have I
lived in that dream, in that exaltation, in that state of madness into which
the image of a woman casts us. I have never been pursued, haunted, roused to
fever heat, lifted up to Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the
possession of, a being who had suddenly become for me more desirable than any
good fortune, more beautiful than any other creature, of more consequence than
the whole world! I have never wept, I have never suffered on account of any of
you. I have not passed my nights sleepless, while thinking of her. I have no
experience of waking thoughts bright with thought and memories of her. I have
never known the wild rapture of hope before her arrival, or the divine sadness
of regret when she went from me, leaving behind her a delicate odor of violet
powder.
I have never been in love.
I have also often asked myself why this is. And truly
I can scarcely tell. Nevertheless I have found some reasons for it; but they
are of a metaphysical character, and perhaps you will not be able to appreciate
them.
I suppose I am too critical of women to submit to
their fascination. I ask you to forgive me for this remark. I will explain what
I mean. In every creature there is a moral being and a physical being. In order
to love, it would be necessary for me to find a harmony between these two
beings which I have never found. One always predominates; sometimes the moral,
sometimes the physical.
The intellect which we have a right to require in a
woman, in order to love her, is not the same as the virile intellect. It is
more, and it is less. A woman must be frank, delicate, sensitive, refined,
impressionable. She has no need of either power or initiative in thought, but
she must have kindness, elegance, tenderness, coquetry and that faculty of
assimilation which, in a little while, raises her to an equality with him who
shares her life. Her greatest quality must be tact, that subtle sense which is
to the mind what touch is to the body. It reveals to her a thousand little
things, contours, angles and forms on the plane of the intellectual.
Very frequently pretty women have not intellect to
correspond with their personal charms. Now, the slightest lack of harmony
strikes me and pains me at the first glance. In friendship this is not of
importance. Friendship is a compact in which one fairly shares defects and
merits. We may judge of friends, whether man or woman, giving them credit for
what is good, and overlooking what is bad in them, appreciating them at their
just value, while giving ourselves up to an intimate, intense and charming
sympathy.
In order to love, one must be blind, surrender one's
self absolutely, see nothing, question nothing, understand nothing. One must
adore the weakness as well as the beauty of the beloved object, renounce all
judgment, all reflection, all perspicacity.
I am incapable of such blindness and rebel at
unreasoning subjugation. This is not all. I have such a high and subtle idea of
harmony that nothing can ever fulfill my ideal. But you will call me a madman.
Listen to me. A woman, in my opinion, may have an exquisite soul and charming
body without that body and that soul being in perfect harmony with one another.
I mean that persons who have noses made in a certain shape should not be
expected to think in a certain fashion. The fat have no right to make use of
the same words and phrases as the thin. You, who have blue eyes, madame, cannot
look at life and judge of things and events as if you had black eyes. The shade
of your eyes should correspond, by a sort of fatality, with the shade of your
thought. In perceiving these things, I have the scent of a bloodhound. Laugh if
you like, but it is so.
And yet, once I imagined that I was in love for an
hour, for a day. I had foolishly yielded to the influence of surrounding
circumstances. I allowed myself to be beguiled by a mirage of Dawn. Would you
like me to tell you this short story?
I met, one evening, a pretty, enthusiastic little
woman who took a poetic fancy to spend a night with me in a boat on a river. I
would have preferred a room and a bed; however, I consented to the river and
the boat.
It was in the month of June. My fair companion chose a
moonlight night in order the better to stimulate her imagination.
We had dined at a riverside inn and set out in the
boat about ten o'clock. I thought it a rather foolish kind of adventure, but as
my companion pleased me I did not worry about it. I sat down on the seat facing
her; I seized the oars, and off we starred.
I could not deny that the scene was picturesque. We
glided past a wooded isle full of nightingales, and the current carried us
rapidly over the river covered with silvery ripples. The tree toads uttered
their shrill, monotonous cry; the frogs croaked in the grass by the river's
bank, and the lapping of the water as it flowed on made around us a kind of
confused murmur almost imperceptible, disquieting, and gave us a vague
sensation of mysterious fear.
The sweet charm of warm nights and of streams
glittering in the moonlight penetrated us. It was delightful to be alive and to
float along thus, and to dream and to feel at one's side a sympathetic and
beautiful young woman.
I was somewhat affected, somewhat agitated, somewhat
intoxicated by the pale brightness of the night and the consciousness of my
proximity to a lovely woman.
"Come and sit beside me," she said.
I obeyed.
She went on:
"Recite some poetry for me."
This appeared to be rather too much. I declined; she
persisted. She certainly wanted to play the game, to have a whole orchestra of
sentiment, from the moon to the rhymes of poets. In the end I had to yield,
and, as if in mockery, I repeated to her a charming little poem by Louis
Bouilhet, of which the following are the last verses:
"I hate the poet who with tearful eye Murmurs
some name while gazing tow'rds a star, Who sees no magic in the earth or sky,
Unless Lizette or Ninon be not far.
"The bard who in all Nature nothing sees Divine,
unless a petticoat he ties Amorously to the branches of the trees Or nightcap
to the grass, is scarcely wise.
"He has not heard the Eternal's thunder tone, The
voice of Nature in her various moods, Who cannot tread the dim ravines alone,
And of no woman dream mid whispering woods."
I expected some reproaches. Nothing of the sort. She
murmured:
"How true it is!"
I was astonished. Had she understood?
Our boat had gradually approached the bank and become
entangled in the branches of a willow which impeded its progress. I placed my
arm round my companion's waist, and very gently approached my lips towards her
neck. But she repulsed me with an abrupt, angry movement.
"Have done, pray! How rude you are!"
I tried to draw her toward me. She resisted, caught
hold of the tree, and was near flinging us both into the water. I deemed it
prudent to cease my importunities.
She said:
"I would rather capsize you. I feel so happy. I
want to dream. This is so delightful." Then, in a slightly malicious tone,
she added:
"Have you already forgotten the verses you
repeated to me just now?"
She was right. I became silent.
She went on:
"Come, now!"
And I plied the oars once more.
I began to think the night long and my position
ridiculous.
My companion said to me:
"Will you make me a promise?"
"Yes. What is it?"
"To remain quiet, well-behaved and discreet, if I
permit you--"
"What? Say what you mean!"
"Here is what I mean: I want to lie down on my
back at the bottom of the boat with you by my side. But I forbid you to touch
me, to embrace me-- in short--to caress me."
I promised. She said warningly:
"If you move, 'I'll capsize the boat."
And then we lay down side by side, our eyes turned
toward the sky, while the boat glided slowly through the water. We were rocked
by its gentle motion. The slight sounds of the night came to us more distinctly
in the bottom of the boat, sometimes causing us to start. And I felt springing
up within me a strange, poignant emotion, an infinite tenderness, something
like an irresistible impulse to open my arms in order to embrace, to open my
heart in order to love, to give myself, to give my thoughts, my body, my life,
my entire being to some one.
My companion murmured, like one in a dream:
"Where are we; Where are we going? It seems to me
that I am leaving the earth. How sweet it is! Ah, if you loved me--a
little!!!"
My heart began to throb. I had no answer to give. It
seemed to me that I loved her. I had no longer any violent desire. I felt happy
there by her side, and that was enough for me.
And thus we remained for a long, long time without
stirring. We had clasped each other's hands; some delightful force rendered us
motionless, an unknown force stronger than ourselves, an alliance, chaste,
intimate, absolute, of our beings lying there side by side, belonging to each
other without contact. What was this? How do I know? Love, perhaps?
Little by little the dawn appeared. It was three
o'clock in the morning. Slowly a great brightness spread over the sky. The boat
knocked up against something. I rose up. We had come close to a tiny islet.
But I remained enchanted, in an ecstasy. Before us
stretched the firmament, red, pink, violet, spotted with fiery clouds
resembling golden vapor. The river was glowing with purple and three houses on
one side of it seemed to be burning.
I bent toward my companion. I was going to say,
"Oh! look!" But I held my tongue, quite dazed, and I could no longer
see anything except her. She, too, was rosy, with rosy flesh tints with a
deeper tinge that was partly a reflection of the hue of the sky. Her tresses
were rosy; her eyes were rosy; her teeth were rosy; her dress, her laces, her
smile, all were rosy. And in truth I believed, so overpowering was the
illusion, that the dawn was there in the flesh before me.
She rose softly to her feet, holding out her lips to
me; and I moved toward her, trembling, delirious feeling indeed that I was
going to kiss Heaven, to kiss happiness, to kiss a dream that had become a
woman, to kiss the ideal which had descended into human flesh.
She said to me: "You have a caterpillar in your
hair." And, suddenly, I felt as sad as if I had lost all hope in life.
That is all, madame. It is puerile, silly, stupid. But
I am sure that since that day it would be impossible for me to love. And
yet--who can tell?
[The young man upon whom this letter was found was
yesterday taken out of the Seine between Bougival and Marly. An obliging
bargeman, who had searched the pockets in order to ascertain the name of the
deceased, brought this paper to the author.]
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