Letter Found on a Drowned Man
You ask me whether I am making fun of you, Madame? You cannot believe that a man has never been in love? All I can say is that I have never loved anyone!
How did that happen? I really don’t know. I have never known that intoxication which is called love. I have never known that particular dream, that state of exaltation, of folly, which the thought of some one woman can produce. I have never been pursued, haunted, thrown into a fever or entranced by the thought of meeting, or by the possession of, a being who suddenly seemed more desirable than all other happiness, more beautiful than any other creature, or more important than the whole world. Not one of you has ever made me shed tears or caused me a moment’s pain. I have never spent long nights, wide-awake, thinking of her. Awakenings radiant with the thought, the memory of her, are unknown to me. I know nothing of the maddening folly of hope when waiting for her arrival, the divine melancholy of regret after she has vanished leaving behind a faint scent of violets mingled with the odour of her skin.
I have never loved.
I have also often asked myself why. I must confess I hardly know. It is true that I have found reasons but, as they touch on metaphysics, you would probably not appreciate them.
I am afraid I am too critical of women to be entirely dominated by their charm. You must excuse this remark. I will explain what I mean. Every human being is composed of a moral and a physical nature; I would have to meet someone in whom the two natures were completely harmonious before I could fall in love. So far as I have seen, the one invariably outweighs the other, sometimes the moral predominates, sometimes the physical.
The intelligence which we have a right to demand from a woman when we love her has nothing of man’s intelligence. It is greater and it is less. A woman should have an open mind, she should be tactful, tenderhearted, refined, and sensitive. She need not be strong-minded or original, but she must be amiable, elegant, kind, coaxing, and possess that faculty of assimilation which will make her like her life’s partner within a short time. Tact must be her greatest quality: that subtle sense which is to the mind what touch is to the body, which reveals a thousand and one little things to her: the contours, angles and shapes of the intellectual world. The intelligence of the greater number of pretty women does not correspond with their physical charms, and the slightest lack of harmony in this connection strikes me at once. In friendship this is of no importance, for friendship is a compact in which defects and merits are both recognised. Friends may be criticised, their good qualities taken into consideration, their faults passed over, they may be estimated at their real value and still be the objects of a deep and beautiful feeling, full of intimacy.
In love one must be blind, give up one’s self entirely; neither see, think, nor understand. You must worship the weakness as well as the beauty of the loved one, renounce all judgment, all reflection, all perspicacity. I am incapable of this blindness and rebel against such unreasoning bondage.
That’s not all. I have such a high and subtle idea of harmony that nothing can ever realise my ideal. You will call me mad! Listen. A woman, in my opinion, may have an exquisite soul and a delightful body, and still the body and soul may not be in perfect tune.
What I mean is that people whose noses are a certain shape have no right to think in a certain way. The fat have no right to use the same words and phrases as the thin. You, Madame, with your blue eyes, cannot look at life, and judge of things and events as if they were black. The colour of your eyes must inevitably correspond with the colour of your thoughts. I have the scent of a hound for this sort of thing. You may laugh, but it’s true.
And yet, once, for an hour, for a day, I thought I was in love. Foolishly I had submitted to the influence of propinquity, I allowed myself to be beguiled by the hallucination of a dawn. Shall I tell you about it?
One evening I met a pretty little woman, very emotional, who, driven by a caprice, wanted to spend a night with me in a boat on the river. I would have preferred a room and a bed; however, I consented to the river and the boat.
It was in June. My friend chose a moonlight night so that she might work herself up thoroughly. We had dined at a riverside inn and started off at about ten o’clock. I thought it rather a stupid thing to do, but did not worry much, since my companion was very attractive. I sat down, seized the oars, and off we went. The scene was certainly picturesque. We glided past a wooded isle full of nightingales, the current carrying us swiftly over the water covered with rippling silver. The toads uttered thin clear and monotonous cries; the frogs croaked in the grass by the river’s bank, and the lapping of the water made a confused, muffled murmur, very disquieting and producing a vague sensation of mysterious dread upon us.
Our spirits were stirred by the sweet charm of the warm night and of the river glittering in the moonlight. It was good to be alive, to float idly on the water, to dream and to feel a young loving woman was by my side.
I was slightly agitated, slightly troubled, slightly intoxicated, by the pale brightness of the night and the presence of my companion.
“Come and sit beside me,” she said. I obeyed and she continued: “Recite some poetry to me.”
I did think that was too much of a joke: I refused: she insisted. She was determined to have a full dress performance, with the whole gamut of sentiment, ranging from the moon to the rhymed couplet. In the end I had to yield and mockingly recited a charming little poem by Louis Bouilhet of which the following are the last stanzas:
Je déteste surtout ce barde à l’oeil humide
Qui regarde une étoile en murmurant un nom
Et pour qui la nature immense serait vide
S’il ne portait en croupe ou Lisette ou NinonCes gens-là sont charmants qui se donnent la peine
Afin qu’on s’interésse à ce pauvre univers,
D’attacher des jupons aux arbres de la plaine
Et la cornette blanche au front des coteaux vertsCerte ils n’ont pas compris les musiques divines,
Eternelle nature aux frémissantes voix,
Ceux qui ne vont pas seuls par les creuses ravines
Et rêvent d’une femme au bruit que font les bois.14I expected to be reproached: nothing of the sort. She murmured: “How true.” I was astonished: could she have understood!
Our boat had gradually reached the bank and become entangled with a willow which stopped it dead. I put my arm round my companion’s waist and very gently approached my lips to her neck. But I was repulsed with an abrupt, angry movement. “That’s enough! How crude you are.” I tried to draw her to me. She resisted, caught hold of the tree, and nearly flung us both into the water. I thought it prudent to give up the pursuit. She said: “I would rather give you a ducking. I am so happy! I am in a dream. It is so delightful.” And she added with a touch of malice: “Have you already forgotten the lines you have just been reciting?”
She was right. I held my tongue.
She continued: “Now then, row,” and I seized the oars again.
I was beginning to find the night very long and my position ridiculous.
My companion said: “Will you promise me something?”
“Yes, what?”
“To keep quite quiet, to behave yourself properly, and to be discreet if I allow you …”
“What? Tell me.”
“This. I want to lie flat on my back in the bottom of the boat, by your side, and look at the stars.”
I said quickly: “I am all for that.”
She exclaimed: “You don’t understand. We are going to lie side by side, but I forbid you to touch me, to kiss me, or to fondle me.”
I promised. She added:
“If you move, I’ll capsize the boat.”
We lay down side by side, our eyes turned toward the sky while the boat floated along. We were rocked by the gentle motion of the water, and the faint sounds peculiar to night that could be heard more distinctly lying in the bottom of the boat, sometimes made us start. I felt a strange and poignant emotion welling up within me, an infinite gentleness like an irresistible impulse stretch out my arms in an embrace, to take someone to my heart, to give myself, my thoughts, my body, my life, my whole being to someone.
My companion murmured as if in a dream: “Where are we? Where are we going? I feel that I am in heaven. How beautiful! Oh! if you only loved me … a little!!!”
My heart began to throb. I was incapable of saying a word: I felt that I loved her. All urgent desire had fled from me, I felt quite happy by her side, and wanted nothing more.
For a very long time we never stirred. We held each other’s hands; we were in the grip of an enchantment that held us motionless: an unsuspected superior force, a chaste, intimate and absolute alliance of our two beings side by side, belonging to each other without contact! What was it? How can I know? Perhaps it was love?
The day began to break. It was three o’clock in the morning and very slowly a great brightness spread over the sky. I started up when the boat bumped against something, and found we had run into a little island. I was in ecstasies at the sight I saw, the heavens stretched above us were a mixture of red, rose and violet, and dappled with fiery clouds like golden vapour. The river was glowing with purple, three houses set on a hill seemed to be on fire.
I leaned over my companion to say: “Do look,” but remained silent with awe, I could see nothing but her. For she, too, was rosy, with exquisite rosy flesh tints which must have been partly a reflection from the sky. Her hair was rosy, so were her eyes, her teeth, her dress, her lace, her smile; she was rosy from head to foot, and I really believed that I beheld the dawn, so completely was I the victim of an hallucination.
She rose softly to her feet, holding up her lips to me. I approached her trembling, delirious, feeling convinced that I was going to kiss heaven, happiness, a dream become woman, the ideal in human form.
She said to me: “You’ve got a caterpillar in your hair!”
And that was why she was smiling! It was like receiving a nasty blow on the head, and I suddenly felt as sad as if I had lost all hope in life.
That’s all, Madame. It is childish, silly, stupid. But ever since then I am sure that I’ll never fall in love.
Still … you never can tell.
This letter was found upon a young man taken out of the Seine between Bougival and Marly, yesterday. It was brought along by an obliging bargee who had searched his pockets to find out who he was.