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Page 1
We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of women
and love. Then, with all the circumspection demanded in such
matters, we proceeded naturally to the topic of our lady-loves.
Young as we both were, we still admired "the woman of a certain
age," that is to say, the woman between thirty-five and forty.
Oh! any poet who should have listened to our talk, for heaven
knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have reaped a
harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very
tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections,
our blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an
eloquence, a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must
remain young, no doubt, to understand youth.
Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the
essential points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at
the very outset, that in theory and practice there was no such
piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate of
birth; that plenty of women were younger at forty than many a
girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a woman is no
older than she looks.
This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out,
in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had
portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us,
women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we
had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately
fragrant skin, then came the admission--on his part that Madame
Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, and on mine that I
worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if released on either
side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences came thick and
fast, when we found that we were in the same confraternity of
love. It was which of us should overtop the other in sentiment.
One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress for
an hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, had
prowled about her park to meet her one night. Out came all our
follies in fact. If it is pleasant to remember past dangers, is
it not at least as pleasant to recall past delights? We live
through the joy a second time. We told each other everything, our
perils, our great joys, our little pleasures, and even the humors
of the situation. My friend's countess had lighted a cigar for
him; mine made chocolate for me, and wrote to me every day when
we did not meet; his lady had come to spend three days with him
at the risk of ruin to her reputation; mine had done even better,
or worse, if you will have it so. Our countesses, moreover, were
adored by their husbands; these gentlemen were enslaved by the
charm possessed by every woman who loves; and, with even
supererogatory simplicity, afforded us that just sufficient spice
of danger which increases pleasure. Ah! how quickly the wind
swept away our talk and our happy laughter!
When we reached Pouilly, I scanned my new friend with much
interest, and truly, it was not difficult to imagine him the hero
of a very serious love affair. Picture to yourselves a young man
of middle height, but very well proportioned, a bright,
expressive face, dark hair, blue eyes, moist lips, and white and
even teeth. A certain not unbecoming pallor still overspread his
delicately cut features, and there were faint dark circles about
his eyes, as if he were recovering from an illness. Add,
furthermore, that he had white and shapely hands, of which he was
as careful as a pretty woman should be; add that he seemed to be
very well informed, and was decidedly clever, and it should not
be difficult for you to imagine that my traveling companion was
more than worthy of a countess. Indeed, many a girl might have
wished for such a husband, for he was a Vicomte with an income of
twelve or fifteen thousand livres, "to say nothing of
expectations."
About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. My
luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the edge of
a newly-ploughed field, instead of following the fortunes of the
vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. He either
miscalculated in some way, or he slipped; how it happened, I do
not know, but the coach fell over upon him, and he was crushed
under it.
We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid the
moans wrung from him by horrible sufferings, he contrived to give
me a commission--a sacred task, in that it was laid upon me by a
dying man's last wish. Poor boy, all through his agony he was
torturing himself in his young simplicity of heart with the
thought of the painful shock to his mistress when she should
suddenly read of his death in a newspaper. He begged me to go
myself to break the news to her. He bade me look for a key which
he wore on a ribbon about his neck. I found it half buried in the
flesh, but the dying boy did not utter a sound as I extricated it
as gently as possible from the wound which it had made. He had
scarcely given me the necessary directions--I was to go to his
home at La Charite-sur-Loire for his mistress' love-letters,
which he conjured me to return to her--when he grew speechless in
the middle of a sentence; but from his last gesture, I understood
that the fatal key would be my passport in his mother's house. It
troubled him that he was powerless to utter a single word to
thank me, for of my wish to serve him he had no doubt. He looked
wistfully at me for a moment, then his eyelids drooped in token
of farewell, and his head sank, and he died. His death was the
only fatal accident caused by the overturn.
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