I have found her, I believe.  She has about her something ideal which does not belong to this world, and which furnishes wings to my dream.  Ah! my dream!  How it reveals to me beings different from what they really are!  She is a blonde, a delicate blonde, with hair whose delicate shade is inexpressible.  Her eyes are blue!  Only blue eyes can penetrate my soul.  All women, the woman who lives in my heart, reveal themselves to me in the eye, only in the eyes.  Oh! what a mystery, what a mystery is the eye!  The whole universe lives in it, inasmuch as it sees, inasmuch as it reflects.  It contains the universe, both things and beings, forests and oceans, men and beasts, the settings of the sun, the stars, the arts—­all, all, it sees; it collects and absorbs all; and there is still more in it; the eye of itself has a soul; it has in it the man who thinks, the man who loves, the man who laughs, the man who suffers!  Oh! regard the blue eyes of women, those eyes that are as deep as the sea, as changeful as the sky, so sweet, so soft, soft as the breezes, sweet as music, luscious as kisses; and transparent, so clear that one sees behind them, discerns the soul, the blue soul which colors them, which animates them, which electrifies them.  Yes, the soul has the color of the looks.  The blue soul alone contains in itself that which dreams; it bears its azure to the floods and into space.  The eye!  Think of it, the eye!  It imbibes the visible life, in order to nourish thought.  It drinks in the world, color, movement, books, pictures, all that is beautiful, all that is ugly, and weaves ideas out of them.  And when it regards us, it gives us the sensation of a happiness that is not of this earth.  It informs us of that of which we have always been ignorant; it makes us comprehend that the realities of our dreams are but noisome ordures.

* * * * *

I love her too for her walk.  “Even when the bird walks one feels that it has wings,” as the poet has said.  When she passes one feels that she is of another race from ordinary women, of a race more delicate, and more divine.  I shall marry her to-morrow.  But I am afraid, I am afraid of so many things!

* * * * *

Two beasts, two dogs, two wolves, two foxes, cut their way through the plantation and encounter one another.  One of each two is male, the other female.  They couple.  They couple in consequence of an animal instinct, which forces them to continue the race, their race, the one from which they have sprung, the hairy coat, the form, movements and habitudes.  The whole of the animal creation do the same without knowing why.

We human beings, also.

It is for this I have married; I have obeyed that insane passion which throws us in the direction of the female.

* * * * *

She is my wife.  In accordance with my ideal desires, she comes very nearly to realize my unrealizable dream.  But in separating from her, even for a second, after I have held her in my arms, she becomes no more than the being whom nature has made use of, to disappoint all my hopes.