Theophile Gautier - Mademoiselle de Maupin

You complain, my dear friend, of the scarcity of my letters. What would you have me write, except that I am well, and that I have ever the same affection for you? These are things of which you are quite aware, and which are so natural, considering my age, and the excellent qualities to be discerned in you, that it is almost ridiculous to send a wretched sheet of paper on a journey of a hundred miles with no more information than that. All my seeking is in vain, I have no news worth relating; my life is the most uniform in the world, and nothing comes to disturb its monotony. To-day is followed by to-morrow, just as yesterday was followed by to-day; and, without being so conceited as to play the prophet, I can in the morning boldly predict what will befall me in the evening.

Here is the plan of my day: I get up-that is of course, and is the beginning of every day; I breakfast, fence, go out, come in again, dine, pay visits or read something, and then I go to bed, just as I did the day before; I fall asleep, and my imagination, not having been excited by new objects, affords me but trite and hackneyed dreams as monotonous as my real life. This is not very diverting, as you see. Nevertheless, I am better pleased with such an existence than I should have been six months ago. I am dull, it is true, but it is in a peaceful and resigned fashion, not devoid of a certain sweetness, which I should be ready enough to compare to those wan and tepid autumn days in which we find a secret charm after the excessive heat of summer.

Although I have apparently accepted this kind of existence, it is nevertheless scarcely suitable for me, or at least it has very little resemblance to that of which I dream, and to which I consider myself adapted. It may be that I am mistaken, and that I really am suited only to this mode of life; but I can scarcely believe it, for if this were my true destiny, I should have fitted myself into it with greater ease, and should not have been bruised by the sharp corners of it at so many places and so painfully.

You know what an overpowering attraction strange adventures have for me, how I worship everything that is singular, extravagant, and perilous, and how greedily I devour novels and books of travels. There is not, perhaps, on earth a fancy more foolish or more vagrant than mine. Well, through some fatality or other, it so happens that I have never had an adventure and have never made a journey. So far as I am concerned, the circuit of the world is the circuit of the town in which I live; I touch my horizon on all sides; I rub shoulders with the real; my life is that of the shell on the sandbank, of the ivy round the tree, of the cricket on the hearth; in truth, I am surprised that my feet have not yet taken root.

Love is painted with bandaged eyes; but it is destiny that should be depicted thus.

I have as valet a species of clown, heavy and stupid enough, who has roved as much as the north wind, who has been to the devil, and I know not where besides, who has seen with his own eyes all those things about which I have formed such fine ideas, and who cares as much for them as he does for a glass of water; he has been placed in the strangest situations, and he has had the most astonishing adventures that one could have. I make him talk sometimes, and am maddened to think that all these glorious things have befallen a booby, who is capable of neither feeling nor reflection, and who is good for nothing but his usual work-brushing clothes and cleaning boots.

It is clear that this rascal's life ought to have been mine. As for him, he thinks me very fortunate, and is lost in wonder to see me melancholy, as I am.

All this is not very interesting, my poor friend, and is scarcely worth the trouble of writing, is it? But since you insist on my writing to you, I must relate my thoughts and feelings, and give you the history of my ideas, in default of events and actions. There will, perhaps, be little order and little novelty in what I shall have to tell you, but you must lay the blame on yourself alone. I shall be obeying your own wish.

You have been my friend from childhood, and I was brought up with you; our lives were passed together for a long time, and we are wont to tell each other our most secret thoughts. I can therefore, without blushing, give you an account of all the nonsense that passes through my idle brain. I shall neither add, nor deduct a single word, for I have no false pride with you. And so I shall be scrupulously exact, even in trifling and shameful matters; I shall certainly not veil myself before you.

Beneath this winding sheet of indifferent and depressing languor of which I have just told you, there sometimes stirs a thought, torpid rather than dead, and I do not always possess the sweet, sad calm that melancholy gives. I have relapses and I fall again into my old perturbations. Nothing in the world is so fatiguing as these purposeless whirlwinds and these aimless flights. On such days, although I have nothing to do any more than on others, I rise very early, before the sun, so persuaded am I that I am in a hurry, and that I shall not have the necessary time. I dress myself with all speed, as if the house were on fire, putting on my garments at random, and bewailing the loss of a minute. Any one seeing me would suppose that I was going to keep a love appointment or look for money. Not at all. I even do not know whither I am going; but go I must, and I should believe my safety compromised if I remained. It seems to me that I am called from without, that my destiny is at that moment passing in the street, and that the question of my life is about to be decided.

I go down with an air of wild surprise, my dress in disorder, and my hair uncombed. People turn and laugh when they meet me, and think that I am a young debauchee who has spent the night at the tavern or elsewhere. Indeed I am intoxicated, though I have drunk nothing, and I have the manner of a drunkard, even to his uncertain gait, now fast and now slow. I go from street to street, like a dog that has lost his master, seeking quite at a venture, very troubled, very much on the alert, turning at the least noise, gliding into every group, heedless of the rebukes of the people I run up against, and looking about me everywhere, with a clearness of vision which at other times I do not possess. Then it suddenly becomes evident to me that I am mistaken, that it is assuredly not there, that I must go further, to the other end of the town, I know not where, and I set off as if the devil were carrying me away. My toes only touch the ground, and I do not weigh an ounce. Truly I must present a singular appearance with my preoccupied and frenzied countenance, the gesticulations of my arms, and the inarticulate cries I utter. When I think of it in cold blood, I laugh heartily in my own face; but this, I would have you know, does not prevent me from doing just the same on the next occasion.

If I were asked why I rush along in this way, I certainly should be greatly at a loss for an answer. I am in no haste to arrive, since I am going nowhere. I am not afraid of being late, since I have no engagement. There is no one waiting for me, and I have no reason for being in a hurry here.

Is it an opportunity for loving, an adventure, a woman, an idea or a fortune, something which is wanting to my life, and which I seek without accounting to myself for it, but impelled by a vague instinct? Is it my existence which desires to complete itself? Is it the wish to emerge from my home and from myself, the weariness of my present life and the longing for another? It is something of this, and perhaps all of this put together. It is always a very unpleasant condition, a feverish irritation, which is usually succeeded by the dullest atony.

I often have an idea, that if I had set out an hour earlier, or had increased my pace, I should have arrived in time; that, while I was passing down one street, the object of my search was passing down the other, and that a block of vehicles was sufficient to make me miss what I have been pursuing quite at random for so long. You cannot imagine the sadness and the deep despair into which I fall when I see that all this ends in nothing, and that my youth is passing away with no prospect opening up before me; then all my idle passions growl dully in my heart, and prey upon themselves for lack of other food, like beasts in a menagerie that the keeper has forgotten to feed.