to the point of regarding her under a hitherto unheard-of form; as a creature no longer of ecstasy only, but of voluptuousness; as Dea, with her head resting on the pillow.  He was ashamed of this visionary desecration.  It was like an attempt at profanation.  He resisted its assault.  He turned from it, but it returned again.  He felt as if he were committing a criminal assault.  To him Dea was encompassed by a cloud.  Cleaving that cloud, he shuddered, as though he were raising her chemise.  It was in April.  The spine has its dreams.  He rambled at random with the uncertain step caused by solitude.  To have no one by is a provocative to wander.  Whither flew his thoughts?  He would not have dared to own it to himself.  To heaven?  No.  To a bed.  You were looking down upon him, O ye stars.

Why talk of a man in love?  Rather say a man possessed.  To be possessed by the devil, is the exception; to be possessed by a woman, the rule.  Every man has to bear this alienation of himself.  What a sorceress is a pretty woman!  The true name of love is captivity.

Man is made prisoner by the soul of a woman; by her flesh as well, and sometimes even more by the flesh than by the soul.  The soul is the true love, the flesh, the mistress.

We slander the devil.  It was not he who tempted Eve.  It was Eve who tempted him.  The woman began.  Lucifer was passing by quietly.  He perceived the woman, and became Satan.

The flesh is the cover of the unknown.  It is provocative (which is strange) by its modesty.  Nothing could be more distracting.  It is full of shame, the hussey!

It was the terrible love of the surface which was then agitating Gwynplaine, and holding him in its power.  Fearful the moment in which man covets the nakedness of woman!  What dark things lurk beneath the fairness of Venus!

Something within him was calling Dea aloud, Dea the maiden, Dea the other half of a man, Dea flesh and blood, Dea with uncovered bosom.  That cry was almost driving away the angel.  Mysterious crisis through which all love must pass and in which the Ideal is in danger!  Therein is the predestination of Creation.  Moment of heavenly corruption!  Gwynplaine’s love of Dea was becoming nuptial.  Virgin love is but a transition.  The moment was come.  Gwynplaine coveted the woman.

He coveted a woman!

Precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope!

The indistinct summons of nature is inexorable.  The whole of woman—­what an abyss!

Luckily, there was no woman for Gwynplaine but Dea—­the only one he desired, the only one who could desire him.

Gwynplaine felt that vague and mighty shudder which is the vital claim of infinity.  Besides there was the aggravation of the spring.  He was breathing the nameless odours of the starry darkness.  He walked forward in a wild feeling of delight.  The wandering perfumes of the rising sap, the heady irradiations which float in shadow, the distant opening of nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy provocation.  The ideal no longer knows what it is saying.