IV.—­A Great Picture

The first stage of my journey round my room is accomplished.  While my soul has been explaining my new system of metaphysic, I have been sitting in my armchair in my favourite attitude, with the two front feet raised a couple of inches off the floor.  By swaying my body to and fro, I have insensibly gained ground, and I find myself with a start close to the wall.  This is the way in which I travel when I am not in a hurry.

My chamber is hung with prints and paintings which embellish it in an admirable manner.  I should like the reader to examine them one after the other, and to entertain himself during the long journey that we must make in order to arrive at my desk.  Look, here is a portrait of Raphael.  Beside it is a likeness of the adorable lady whom he loved.

But I have something still finer than these, and I always reserve it for the last.  I find that both connoisseurs and ignoramuses, both women of the world and little children, yes, and even animals, are pleased and astonished by the way in which this sublime work renders every effect in nature.  What picture can I present to you, gentlemen; what scene can I put beneath your lovely eyes, ladies, more certain of winning your favour than the faithful image of yourselves?  The work of which I speak is a looking-glass, and nobody up to the present has taken it into his head to criticise it; it is, for all those who study it, a perfect picture in which there is nothing to blame.  It is thus the gem of my collection.

You see this withered rose?  It is a flower of the Turin carnival of last year.  I gathered it myself at Valentin’s, and in the evening, an hour before the ball, I went full of hope and joy to present it to Mme. de Hautcastel.  She took it, and placed it on her dressing-table without looking at it, and without looking at me.  But how could she take any notice of me?  Standing in an ectasy before a great mirror, she was putting the last touches to her finery.  So totally was she absorbed in the ribbons, the gauzes, the ornaments heaped up before her, that I could not obtain a glance, a sign.  I finished my losing patience, and being unable to resist the feeling of anger that swept over me, I took up the rose and walked out without taking leave of my sweetheart.

“Are you going?” she said, turning round to see her figure in profile.

I did not answer, but I listened at the door to learn if my brusque departure produced any effect.

“Do you not see,” exclaimed Mme. de Hautcastel to her maid, after a short silence, “that this pelisse is much too full at the bottom?  Get some pins and make a tuck in it.”

That is how I come to have a withered rose on my desk.  I shall make no reflections on the affair.  I shall not even draw any conclusions from it concerning the force and duration of a woman’s love.