A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called nympholepsy—­a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal aspect, “the breast of the nymph in the brake.”  And the disease is not extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know of, and they call their malady—­the woman of thirty.

CHAPTER VI

A Japanese dressing gown, the ideality of whose tissue delights me, some fresh honey and milk set by this couch hung with royal fringes; and having partaken of this odorous refreshment, I call to Jack my great python that is crawling about after a two months’ fast.  I tie up a guineapig to the tabouret, pure Louis XV., the little beast struggles and squeaks, the snake, his black, bead-like eyes are fixed, how superb are the oscillations ... now he strikes, and slowly and with what exquisite gourmandise he lubricates and swallows.

Marshall is at the organ in the hall, he is playing a Gregorian chant, that beautiful hymn, the “Vexilla Regis,” by Saint Fortunatus, the great poet of the Middle Ages.  And, having turned over the leaves of “Les Fetes Gallantes,” I sit down to write.

My original intention was to write some thirty or forty stories varying from thirty to three hundred lines in length.  The nature of these stories is easy to imagine:  there was the youth who wandered by night into a witches’ sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and old.  There was the light o’ love who went into the desert to tempt the holy man; but he died as he yielded, and the arms stiffening by some miracle to iron-like rigidity, she was unable to free herself, and died of starvation, as her bondage loosened in decay.  And I had increased my difficulties by adopting as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I was working in sand, I could make no progress, the house I was raising crumbled and fell away on every side.  These stories had one merit:  they were all, so far as I can remember, perfectly constructed.  For the art of telling a story clearly and dramatically, selon les procedes de M. Scribe, I had thoroughly learnt from old M. Duval, the author of a hundred and sixty plays, written in collaboration with more than a hundred of the best writers of his day, including the master himself, Gautier.  I frequently met M. Duval at breakfast at a neighbouring cafe, and our conversation turned on l’exposition de la piece, preparer la situation, nous aurons des larmes, etc.  One day, as I sat waiting for him, I took up the Voltaire.  It contained an article by M. Zola. Naturalisme, la verite, la science, were repeated some half-a-dozen times.  Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc.  I rose up from breakfast, ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who has received a violent blow on the head.