Little Poems in Prose

“If, nervous as I know you to be, you, G——, easy-going and light-hearted as you are, K—— and J——, if you had been harnessed with a certain woman that I knew, you would have either fled or died. I have survived, as you see. Imagine to yourself a person incapable of committing an error of sentiment or of calcula- tion. Imagine to yourselves a devastating se- renity of character, a devotion without comedy and without emphasis, a sweetness without weakness, an energy without violence. The his- tory of my love resembles an interminable voyage upon a pure and polished surface like a mirror, monotonous enough to make one giddy, which would have reflected all my sen- timents and my gestures with the ironical ex- actitude of my own consciousness, so that I could never permit myself a gesture or an un- reasonable sentiment without immediately per- ceiving the mute reproach of my inseparable spectre. Love appeared to me as a tutelage.— How many silly actions she prevented me from doing which I regret not having committed! How many debts paid despite myself! She de- prived me of all the benefits which I might have drawn from my personal folly; with a cold and untransgressible rule she set up a bar against all my caprices; to crown the horror, she did not exact thanks when the danger was