A few days later, she asked me why I looked so sad.
"Because you refuse to take my comfits."
"You are master of your secret," she said, "and I am mistress of my diet."
"That is my reward for having taken you into my confidence."
I opened my box, poured the contents into my hand, and swallowed them all.
"Two more doses like this," I said, "and I shall die mad with love for you. Then you will be revenged for my reserve. Farewell, madam."
I turned to leave.
She called me back and told me to sit near her.
"Do not commit follies which would make me unhappy," she said. "You know how much I love you, and you know it is not by the power of any drug."
Those words stopped my breath.
"To prove to you," she added, "that you do not require anything of the sort to be loved, here is a token of my affection."
She offered me her lovely lips, and upon them mine remained pressed until I was compelled to draw a breath.
I fell at her feet.
Tears of love and gratitude blinded me.
"Madam, I will confess my crime, if you promise to forgive me."
"Your crime! You frighten me. Yes, I forgive you, but speak quickly, and tell me all."
"Yes, everything. My comfits contain your hair reduced to a powder. Here on my arm, see this bracelet on which our names are written with your hair, and round my neck this chain of the same material, which will help me to destroy my own life when your love fails me. Such is my crime, but I would not have been guilty of it, if I had not loved you."
For a moment she was silent. Then she smiled.
"Rise."
I rose.
"You are indeed the most criminal of men."
She said it tenderly.
Then she wiped away my tears with her own hand.
"But you shall never have reason to strangle yourself with that chain."
After that conversation, after the first kiss in which I had tasted the sweet nectar of my divinity, I found courage to change my conduct.
She could see the fire that consumed me. Perhaps the same fire burned in her veins. Yet I I abstained from any attack.
One day she said,
"What gives you the strength to control yourself?"
"The kiss you gave me of your own accord."
"That gives you strength?"
"Yes. Since your heart granted me that happiness freely, I feel I have no right to ask for any favour which your heart does not give in the same way. You cannot imagine the happiness that kiss has given me."
"I not imagine it, you ungrateful man! Which of us has given that happiness?"
"Neither you nor I, angel of my soul! That kiss so tender, so sweet, was the child of love!"
"Yes, dearest," she said softly, "of love, whose treasures are inexhaustible."
The words had scarcely left her lips before our lips met again.
She held me tightly against her breast, so tightly that my hands could not seek any other victory. But I did not complain. I felt perfectly happy. Her heart beat against me; her breath mingled with mine.
When that delightful skirmish ended, I said,
"Are we never to go any further?"
"Never, dearest friend, never. Love is a child which must be amused with trifles; too substantial food would kill it."
"I know love better than you; it requires that substantial food, and unless it can obtain it, love dies of exhaustion. Do not refuse me the consolation of hope."
"Hope as much as you please, if it makes you happy."
"What should I do, if I had no hope? I hope, because I know you have a heart."
She smiled.
"Ah! yes. Do you recollect the day, when, in your anger, you told me that I had only a head, but no heart, thinking you were insulting me grossly!"
"Oh! yes, I recollect it."
"How heartily I laughed, when I had time to think! Yes, dearest, I have a heart, or I should not feel as happy as I feel now. Let us keep our happiness, and be satisfied with it, as it is, without wishing for anything more."
Obedient to her wishes, yet every day more deeply in love, I lived on hope.
I told myself that nature would at last prove stronger than prejudice, and that some fortunate crisis would deliver us both from this cruel wisdom. But, besides nature, fortune was my friend, and I owed my happiness to an accident.
One day Madame F. was walking in the garden, leaning on M. D. R.'s arm, when a large rosebush caught her dress. She tried to free herself, and the thorns tore her leg.
The wound was deep.
Blood flowed at once. M. D. R. tied his handkerchief around it to stop the bleeding, and she had to be carried home in a palanquin.
In Corfu, wounds on the legs are not trifles. Badly treated, they often become dangerous, and the sufferer must leave the city to recover. Madame F. was therefore confined to bed, and my fortunate position in the house placed me constantly at her orders.
I saw her every moment.
But for the first three days, the room was never empty. Visitors succeeded one another without pause.
In the evening, after the others had gone and her husband had retired to his own apartment, M. D. R. remained for another hour, and for the sake of propriety I had to take my leave at the same time that he did.
I had much more liberty before the accident, and I told her so half seriously, half jestingly.
The next day, to make up for my disappointment, she contrived a moment of happiness for me.
An elderly surgeon came every morning to dress her wound. Only her maid was allowed to be present during the operation.
I, however, had formed my own little habit. In my morning dishabille, I went to the maid's room and waited there, so that I might be the first to learn how my dear invalid had passed the night.
That morning, the maid came to me.
"Madame says you may enter. The surgeon is dressing the wound."
I obeyed with a beating heart.
Madame F. lay in bed, the curtain drawn back just enough to show the injured leg. She looked at me with that mixture of innocence and calculation which women employ when they wish to grant a favour without seeming to know its value.
"Tell me," she said, "whether my leg is less inflamed."
"To give an opinion, madam, I ought to have seen it yesterday."
"True. I feel great pain, and I am afraid of erysipelas."
"Do not be afraid, madam," said the surgeon. "Keep to your bed, and I answer for your complete recovery."
He turned away to prepare a poultice at the other end of the room.
The maid had gone out.
I enquired whether she felt any hardness in the calf of the leg, and whether the inflammation went up the limb; and naturally, my eyes and my hands kept pace with my questions.... I saw no inflammation, I felt no hardness, but... and the lovely patient hurriedly let the curtain fall, smiling, and allowing me to take a sweet kiss, the perfume of which I had not enjoyed for many days. It was a sweet moment; a delicious ecstacy.
From her mouth my lips descended to the wounded place. I was convinced, in that instant, that my kisses were the best of medicines. I would have kept them there longer if the sound of the maid returning had not forced me to abandon my delightful cure.
When we were left alone, burning with intense desires, I entreated her to grant happiness at least to my eyes.
She looked away.
"I feel humiliated," I said, "by the thought that the felicity I have just enjoyed was only a theft."
She turned back to me, and her smile returned.
"But suppose you were mistaken?"
The next day I was again present while the surgeon dressed her wound.
As soon as he had gone, she asked me to arrange her pillows.
I obeyed at once.
To make the service easier, or perhaps to make it more dangerous, she raised the bedclothes and leaned forward. The movement revealed beauties which struck my eyes with a force that left me almost breathless.
I took great care with the pillows.
Too much care, perhaps.
I smoothed, lifted, settled, and corrected them with a slowness she did not reproach. When I had done I was in a fearful state, and I threw myself in an arm-chair opposite her bed, half dead, in a sort of trance.
I was looking at that lovely being who, almost artless, was continually granting me greater and still greater favours, and yet never allowed me to reach the goal for which I was so ardently longing.
"What are you thinking of?" she asked.
"Of the supreme felicity I have just been enjoying."
"You are a cruel man."
"No, I am not cruel, for, if you love me, you must not blush for your indulgence. You must know, too, that, loving you passionately, I must not suppose that it is to be a surprise that I am indebted for my happiness in the enjoyment of the most ravishing sights, for if I owed it only to mere chance I should be compelled to believe that any other man in my position might have had the same happiness, and such an idea would be misery to me. Let me be indebted to you for having proved to me this morning how much enjoyment I can derive from one of my senses. Can you be angry with my eyes?"
"Yes."
"They belong to you. Tear them out."
The next day, the moment the surgeon had gone, she sent her maid out out to make some purchases.
A few minutes later, she gave a little cry.
"Ah! My maid has forgotten to change my chemise."
"Allow me to take her place."
"Very well," she said. "But recollect that I give permission only to your eyes to take a share in the proceedings."
"Agreed!"
She unlaced herself.
Then she removed her stays and her chemise, and told me to be quick and put on the clean one, but I was not speedy enough, being too much engaged by all I could see.
"Give me my chemise," she exclaimed. "It is there, on that little table."
"Where?"
"There, near the bed. Well then, I will take it myself."
She leaned over towards the table, and exposed almost everything I was longing for, and, turning slowly round, she handed me the chemise.
I could hardly hold it. My whole body trembled with fearful excitement.
She saw my state and took pity on me.
This time, my hands shared something of the happiness my eyes had stolen. I fell into her arms. Our lips fastened together, and, in a voluptuous, ardent pressure, we enjoyed an amorous exhaustion not sufficient to allay our desires, but delightful enough to deceive them for the moment.
With greater control over herself than women have generally under similar circumstances, she took care to let me reach only the porch of the temple, without granting me yet a free entrance to the sanctuary.