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Army and Become a Fiddler
The wound was rapidly healing up, and I saw near at hand the moment
when Madame F---- would leave her bed, and resume her usual
avocations.
The governor of the galeasses having issued orders for a general review
at Gouyn, M. F----, left for that place in his galley, telling me to join
him there early on the following day with the felucca. I took supper
alone with Madame F----, and I told her how unhappy it made me to
remain one day away from her.
"Let us make up to-night for to-morrow's disappointment," she said,
"and let us spend it together in conversation. Here are the keys; when
you know that my maid has left me, come to me through my husband's
room."
I did not fail to follow her instructions to the letter, and we found
ourselves alone with five hours before us. It was the month of June, and
the heat was intense. She had gone to bed; I folded her in my arms, she
pressed me to her bosom, but, condemning herself to the most cruel
torture, she thought I had no right to complain, if I was subjected to the
same privation which she imposed upon herself. My remonstrances, my
prayers, my entreaties were of no avail.
"Love," she said, "must be kept in check with a tight hand, and we can
laugh at him, since, in spite of the tyranny which we force him to obey,
we succeed all the same in gratifying our desires."
After the first ecstacy, our eyes and lips unclosed together, and a little
apart from each other we take delight in seeing the mutual satisfaction
beaming on our features.
Our desires revive; she casts a look upon my state of innocence entirely
exposed to her sight. She seems vexed at my want of excitement, and,
throwing off everything which makes the heat unpleasant and interferes
with our pleasure, she bounds upon me. It is more than amorous fury, it
is desperate lust. I share her frenzy, I hug her with a sort of delirium, I

enjoy a felicity which is on the point of carrying me to the regions of
bliss.... but, at the very moment of completing the offering, she fails me,
moves off, slips away, and comes back to work off my excitement with
a hand which strikes me as cold as ice.
"Ah, thou cruel, beloved woman! Thou art burning with the fire of love,
and thou deprivest thyself of the only remedy which could bring calm
to thy senses! Thy lovely hand is more humane than thou art, but thou
has not enjoyed the felicity that thy hand has given me. My hand must
owe nothing to thine. Come, darling light of my heart, come! Love
doubles my existence in the hope that I will die again, but only in that
charming retreat from which you have ejected me in the very moment
of my greatest enjoyment."
While I was speaking thus, her very soul was breathing forth the most
tender sighs of happiness, and as she pressed me tightly in her arms I
felt that she was weltering in an ocean of bliss.
Silence lasted rather a long time, but that unnatural felicity was
imperfect, and increased my excitement.
"How canst thou complain," she said tenderly, "when it is to that very
imperfection of our enjoyment that we are indebted for its continuance?
I loved thee a few minutes since, now I love thee a thousand times
more, and perhaps I should love thee less if thou hadst carried my
enjoyment to its highest limit."
"Oh! how much art thou mistaken, lovely one! How great is thy error!
Thou art feeding upon sophisms, and thou leavest reality aside; I mean
nature which alone can give real felicity. Desires constantly renewed
and never fully satisfied are more terrible than the torments of hell."
"But are not these desires happiness when they are always accompanied
by hope?"
"No, if that hope is always disappointed. It becomes hell itself, because
there is no hope, and hope must die when it is killed by constant
deception."

"Dearest, if hope does not exist in hell, desires cannot be found there
either; for to imagine desires without hopes would be more than
madness."
"Well, answer me. If you desire to be mine entirely, and if you feel the
hope of it, which, according to your way of reasoning, is a natural
consequence, why do you always raise an impediment to your own
hope? Cease, dearest, cease to deceive yourself by absurd sophisms.
Let us be as happy as it is in nature to be, and be quite certain that the
reality of happiness will increase our love, and that love will find a new
life in our