In short, after the little adventures we have lately gone through, we
are now leading a very pleasant existence.
You can see what a simple matter it is.
My famous system, you will tell me, has come to grief. Here I am, all
forlorn, among the ruins of my harem, running my head against
impossibilities opposed to our laws, morals, and conventionalities, with
my last sultana leaning on my arm; here I am, like some little St.
John,[B] reduced to shady expedients in order to get a minute's
interview with my mistress, imprisoned in her tower. I am trembling
between our caresses, you will say, lest a commissary of police should
come to cut the golden thread upon which my remaining blisses hang, and
force me by legal authority to give back Kondjé-Gul to her cruel mother.
[Footnote B: Referring to a familiar French nursery-legend similar
to that of Santa Claus.--Trans.] Well, my dear friend, I will answer you very briefly, I am in love! Yes,
I am in love! These words are a reply, I think, to everything; although
I must own that fear of the commissary, which certainly does threaten my
felicity, has considerably humbled my Oriental pride--I am in love! I
have burnt my essay for the Academy.
Well, then, I have abjured my polygamy. What more can I say to you?
To-day I must confide to you a most valuable discovery I have made; for
I beg you to believe that love is not, as so many foolish people
imagine, an extinguisher to the fire of the human intellect. On the
contrary, it stimulates the perceptions; and an enthusiastic lover, who
is familiar with the elements of science, can extend therein his field
of observations quite as easily as persons whose hearts are whole.
As an example of this, then, I have just been realising the beauty of a
charming phenomenon of nature--a most ordinary one, and yet one which so
far has remained, I think, completely unobserved. I refer to the spring!
As a great artist, you of course know, as well as any one in the world,
that this is the season which leads from the winter to the summer; but
what I feel sure you don't know is the full charm of this transitory
period, in which the whole forest awakens, in which the bushes sprout,
and the young birds twitter in their nests!
According to Vauvenargues, "The first days of spring possess less charm
than the growing virtue of a young man."
Well, it would ill befit me to depreciate the value of such an axiom,
coming from the pen of such a great philosopher; still, and without
wishing to disdain his politeness in so far as it is really flattering
to myself at this particular moment of my career, I do not hesitate to
raise my voice after his, and assert, without any pretence of modesty,
that this charm is at least as great in the case of Flora's lover as in
mine, and that it is only fair to accord to each his just portion. If my
budding virtue possesses ineffable charms, no less powerful are those of
the lilacs and the roses. It is really, I assure you, a wonderful
spectacle. You ought to have witnessed it! Some day I will tell you all
about it, as I have just been doing to my uncle, who finds it all very
curious, although he professes only to understand me "very
approximately."