I begged for some water, she came to me, with M. D---- R-----, and then were both frightened to see me so red, when they had seen me pale and weak only one minute before.
Madame F---- gave me a glass of water in which she put some Eau des carmes which instantly acted as a violent emetic. Two or three minutes after I felt better, and asked for something to eat. Madame F---- smiled. The servant came in with the broth and the eggs, and while I was eating I told the history of Pandolfin. M. D---- R-----
thought it was all a miracle, and I could read, on the countenance of the charming woman, love, affection, and repentance. If M. D----
R----- had not been present, it would have been the moment of my happiness, but I felt certain that I should not have long to wait.
M. D---- R----- told Madame F---- that, if he had not seen me so sick, he would have believed my illness to be all sham, for he did not think it possible for anyone to rally so rapidly.
"It is all owing to my Eau des carmes," said Madame F-----, looking at me, "and I will leave you my bottle."
"No, madam, be kind enough to take it with you, for the water would have no virtue without your presence."
"I am sure of that," said M. D---- R-----, "so I will leave you here with your patient."
"No, no, he must go to sleep now."
I slept all night, but in my happy dreams I was with her, and the reality itself would hardly have procured me greater enjoyment than I
had during my happy slumbers. I saw I had taken a very long stride forward, for twenty-four hours of abstinence gave me the right to speak to her openly of my love, and the gift of her hair was an irrefutable confession of her own feelings.
On the following day, after presenting myself before M. F----, I went to have a little chat with the maid, to wait until her mistress was visible, which was not long, and I had the pleasure of hearing her laugh when the maid told her I was there. As soon as I went in, without giving me time to say a single word, she told me how delighted she was to see me looking so well, and advised me to call upon M. D---- R-----.
It is not only in the eyes of a lover, but also in those of every man of taste, that a woman is a thousand times more lovely at the moment she comes out of the arms of Morpheus than when she has completed her toilet. Around Madame F---- more brilliant beams were blazing than around the sun when he leaves the embrace of Aurora. Yet the most beautiful woman thinks as much of her toilet as the one who cannot do without it--,very likely because more human creatures possess the more they want.
In the order given to me by Madame F---- to call on M. D---- R-----, I saw another reason to be certain of approaching happiness, for I
thought that, by dismissing me so quickly, she had only tried to postpone the consummation which I might have pressed upon her, and which she could not have refused.
Rich in the possession of her hair, I held a consultation with my love to decide what I ought to do with it, for Madame F----, very likely in her wish to atone for the miserly sentiment which had refused me a small bit, had given me a splendid lock, full a yard and a half long. Having thought it over, I called upon a Jewish confectioner whose daughter was a skilful embroiderer, and I made her embroider before me, on a bracelet of green satin, the four initial letters of our names, and make a very thin chain with the remainder.
I had a piece of black ribbon added to one end of the chain, in the shape of a sliding noose, with which I could easily strangle myself if ever love should reduce me to despair, and I passed it round my neck. As I did not want to lose even the smallest particle of so precious a treasure, I cut with a pair of scissors all the small bits which were left, and devoutly gathered them together. Then I reduced them into a fine powder, and ordered the Jewish confectioner to mix the powder in my presence with a paste made of amber, sugar, vanilla, angelica, alkermes and storax, and I waited until the comfits prepared with that mixture were ready. I had some more made with the same composition, but without any hair; I put the first in a beautiful sweetmeat box of fine crystal, and the second in a tortoise-shell box.
>From the day when, by giving me her hair, Madame F---- had betrayed the secret feelings of her heart, I no longer lost my time in relating stories or adventures.; I only spoke to her of my cove, of my ardent desires; I told her that she must either banish me from her presence, or crown my happiness, but the cruel, charming woman would not accept that alternative. She answered that happiness could not be obtained by offending every moral law, and by swerving from our duties. If I threw myself at her feet to obtain by anticipation her forgiveness for the loving violence I intended to use against her, she would repulse me more powerfully than if she had had the strength of a female Hercules, for she would say, in a voice full of sweetness and affection, "My friend, I do not entreat you to respect my weakness, but be generous enough to spare me for the sake of all the love I feel for you."
"What! you love me, and you refuse to make me happy! It is impossible! it is unnatural. You compel me to believe that you do not love me. Only allow me to press my lips one moment upon your lips, and I ask no more."
"No, dearest, no; it would only excite the ardour of your desires, shake my resolution, and we should then find ourselves more miserable than we are now."
Thus did she every day plunge me in despair, and yet she complained that my wit was no longer brilliant in society, that I had lost that elasticity of spirits which had pleased her so much after my arrival from Constantinople. M. D---- R-----, who often jestingly waged war against me, used to say that I was getting thinner and thinner every day. Madame F---- told me one day that my sickly looks were very disagreeable to her, because wicked tongues would not fail to say that she treated me with cruelty. Strange, almost unnatural thought!
On it I composed an idyll which I cannot read, even now, without feeling tears in my eyes.