We remained for a moment contemplating this
marvel, which seemed due to some supernatural
brush. The picture represented Adonis reclining
on a lion skin. The lamp suspended in the middle
of the boudoir, and contained in an alabaster vase,
illuminated this canvas with a soft light which per-
mitted us to see all the beauties of the painting.

"Can so perfect a being exist?" she asked me,
after having examined, not without a soft smile of
contentment, the exquisite grace of the contours,
the attitude, the color, the hair, everything in fact.

"He is too beautiful for a man," she added, after
such a scrutiny as she would have given a rival.
Oh ! how I then experienced the attacks of that



SARRASINE 225

jealousy in which a poet had vainly endeavored to
make me believe! the jealousy of engravings, of
paintings, of statues, in which the artists exagger-
ate human beauty, carrying out the doctrine which
leads them to idealize everything.

"It is a portrait," I replied to her. "It is a pro-
duct of the talent of Vien. But this great painter
never saw the original, and your admiration will be
less lively, perhaps, when you learn that this aca-
demical study was painted from a statue of a
woman."

"But who is it?"

I hesitated.

"I wish to know," she added, quickly.

"I think," I said to her, "that this Adonis rep-
resents a — a — a relative of Madame de Lanty. "

I had the pain of seeing her absorbed in the con-
templation of this figure. She seated herself in
silence. I placed myself beside her and took her
hand without her perceiving it! Forgotten for a
portrait! At this moment, the slight sound of the
step of a woman whose dress rustled was heard in
the silence. We saw the young Marianina enter,
still more brilliant by her expression of innocence
than by her grace and by her fresh toilet; she was
walking slowly, and leading with a maternal
care, with a filial solicitude, the clothed spectre
which had caused us to fly from the music-room;
she conducted him, watching with a species of
inquietude, the slow march of his debilitated feet.
They both arrived with sufficient difficulty at a door
15



226 SARRASINE

hidden in the tapestry. There Marianina knocked
softly. There immediately appeared, as if by
magic, a tall, dry man, a species of familiar genius.
Before confiding the old man to this mysterious
guardian, the beautiful child kissed respectfully the
walking skeleton, and her chaste caress was not
exempt from that graceful cajolery the secret of
which belongs to some privileged women.

"Addio, addio!" she said, with the most charm-
ing inflections of her young, voice.

She even added to the last syllable a roulade
admirably executed, but in a low voice, and as if to
paint by a poetic expression the effusion of her
heart. The old man, suddenly struck by some
souvenir, remained on the threshold of this secret
retreat. We then heard, owing to a profound
silence, the heavy sigh which issued from his chest;
he drew off the richest of the rings with which his
skeleton fingers were loaded and placed it in Mari-
anina's breast. The young girl commenced to
laugh, took the ring, slipped it over one of her gloved
fingers, and turned swiftly toward the salon, from
which might be heard at this moment the preludes
of a contradance. She perceived us.

"Ah! you were there!" she said, blushing.

After having looked at us as if to interrogate us,
she hastened to her partner with the careless petu-
lance of her age.

"What does it all mean?" asked of me my young
companion. "Is it her husband? I think I am
dreaming. Where am I?"



SARRASINE 227

"You," I replied, "you, Madame, who are exalted,
and who, comprehending so well the most imper-
ceptible emotions, know how to cultivate in a man's
heartthemost delicate sentiments, without blighting
them, without bruising them from the very first day ;
you who have pity for all the pains of the heart, and
who, to the wit of a Parisienne, join a passionate
soul worthy of Italy or of Spain — "

She saw clearly that my language was that of
bitter irony; and, without appearing to pay any
attention to it, she interrupted me:

"Oh! you make me according to your own ideas.
What a singular tyranny! You would so have me
that I should not be myself."

"Oh! I wish nothing," I cried, terrified at her
severe attitude. "At least, is it true that you like
to hear the recital of the histories of those vivid
passions awakened in our hearts by the ravishing
women of the South?"

"Yes. Well, then?"

"Well, then, I will come to see you to-morrow
evening about nine o'clock, and I will reveal to you
this mystery."

"No," she replied, with a mutinous air, "I wish
to learn it immediately."

"You have not yet given me the right to obey
you when you say: 'I wish.' "

"At present," she replied, with a coquetry that
would drive a man to despair, "1 have the greatest
desire to know this secret. To-morrow I will not
listen to you, perhaps — "



228 SARRASINE

She smiled, and we separated, she even more
proud, more forbidding, and I even more ridiculous
at this moment than ever. She had the audacity to
waltz with a young aide-de-camp, and I remained
alternately vexed, pouting, admiring, loving and
jealous.

"Till to-morrow," she said to me, near two o'clock
in the morning, when she left the ball.

"I will not go," thought I, "and I abandon thee.
Thou art more capricious, more fantastic a thousand
times, perhaps — than my imagination."

The next evening, we were before a good fire, in
an elegant little salon, seated both of us, she on a
low sofa, I on a cushion, almost at her feet, and my
eye under hers. The street was silent. The lamp
shed a soft light. It was one of those evenings
delightful to the soul, one of those moments which
are never forgotten, one of those hours passed in
peace and in desire, — and the charm of which is
later always a subject of regret, even when we are
more happy. What can efface the vivid impression
of the first solicitations of love?

"Go on," she said, "I am listening."

"But I dare not commence. The adventure has
some passages dangerous for the narrator. If I be-
come enthusiastic, you will silence me."

"Speak."

"1 obey."

"Ernest- Jean Sarrasine was the only son of a pro-
curator of Franche-Comte," I resumed, after a pause.
"His father had acquired with sufficient honesty



SARRASINE 229

from six to eight thousand francs of income, a prac-
titioner's fortune, which, formerly, in the provinces,
was considered colossal. The old Maitre Sarrasine,
having but one child, resolved to neglect nothing
for his education : he hoped to make of him a mag-
istrate, and to live long enough to see, in his old
days, the grandson of Mathieu Sarrasine, laborer in
the country of Saint-Die, seated on his fleur-de-lys
and sleeping through the hearing for the greater
glory of justice; but Heaven did not reserve this joy
for the procurator. The young Sarrasine, confided
at an early age to the Jesuits, gave proofs of an
uncommon turbulence. He had the childhood of a
man of talent. He would not study save as he
chose, was often in revolt, and remained sometimes
for hours plunged into confused meditation, occupied
sometimes in contemplating his comrades at their
play, sometimes in representing to himself the heroes
of Homer. Then, when he did choose to divert
himself, he brought into his plays an extraordinary
ardor. When a quarrel occurred between himself
and one of his comrades, it was but seldom that the
combat ended without bloodshed. If he were the
weaker of the two, he bit. Alternately acting or
passive, without aptitude or being too intelligent, his
singular character caused him to be feared by his
masters as much as by his comrades. Instead of
acquiring the elements of the Greek language, he
made a drawing of the reverend father who
explained to them a passage of Thucydides; he
sketched the master of mathematics, the prefect, the



230 SARRASINE

valets, the corrector, and covered all the walls with
shapeless outlines. Instead of chanting the praises
of the Lord in the church, he amused himself, dur-
ing the service, with carving a bench; or, when
he had stolen a piece of wood, he sculptured some
figure of a saint. If he had no wood, nor stone, nor
crayon, he gave form to his ideas with soft bread.
Whether he was copying the figures in the paintings
which ornamented the choir, or whether he was
originating, he left always behind him gross
sketches, the licentious character of which filled
with horror the younger fathers; and the slanderers
pretended that the old Jesuits smiled over them.
Finally, if the chronicle of the college may be
believed, he was expelled for having, while waiting
his turn at the confessional on a Good Friday,
carved a large billet into the shape of Christ. The
impiety of this statue was too great not to draw
down chastisement on the artist. Had he not even
had the audacity to place on top of the tabernacle
this sufficiently cynical figure! Sarrasine came to
seek at Paris a refuge against the menaces of the
paternal malediction. Having one of those strong
wills which know no obstacles, he followed the
commands of his genius and entered the atelier of
Bouchardon. He worked throughout the day, and
in the evening begged for his livelihood. Bouchar-
don, surprised at the progress and at the intelligence
of the young artist, soon became aware of the pov-
erty in which his pupil was living; he aided him,
took him into his affections and treated him as his



SARRASINE 23 1

own child. Then, when the genius of Sarrasine
had revealed itself by one of those works in which
the dawning talent struggles against the efferves-
cence of youth, the generous Bouchardon endeavored
to restore him to the good graces of the old procur-
ator. Before the authority of the celebrated sculp-
tor the parental anger was appeased. All Besan^on
congratulated itself on having given birth to a future
great man. In the first moments of ecstasy which
his flattered vanity brought him, the avaricious
practitioner enabled his son to again appear with
advantage before the world. The long and labor-
ious studies required by the art of sculpture kept
for a long time in subjection the impetuous charac-
ter and the wild genius of Sarrasine. Bouchardon,
foreseeing the violence with which the passions
would be unchained in this young soul, perhaps as
vigorously constituted as that of Michael Angelo,
smothered the energy under continual labors. He
succeeded in maintaining within reasonable bounds
the extraordinary impetuosity of Sarrasine, in for-
bidding him to work, in proposing some distraction
when he saw him carried away by the fury of an
idea or in confiding important works to him at the
moment when he was about to deliver himself up to
dissipation. But, upon this passionate soul, gentle-
ness was always the most powerful of arms, and the
master only assumed a great empire over his pupil
when he excited his gratitude by a paternal kindness.
"At the age of twenty-two, Sarrasine was forci-
bly withdrawn from the salutary influence which



232 SARRASINE

Bouchardon exercised over his manners and his
habits. He carried off the fruits of his genius in
gaining the prize in sculpture founded by the Mar-
quis de Marigny, the brother of Madame de Pompa-
dour, who did so much for the arts. Diderot
extolled as a masterpiece the statue of Bouchardon's
pupil. It was not without deep grief that the sculp-
tor to the king saw depart for Italy a young man in
whom, through principle, he had inculcated pro-
found ignorance of the things of life. Sarrasine
had been for six years of the household of Bouchar-
don. Fanatical in his art, as Canova was later, he
rose at day-break, entered his atelier, from which
he did not issue till night, and lived only with his
Muse. If he went to the Comedie-Francaise, he
was dragged there by his master. He felt himself
so awkward in the house of Madame Geoffrin and in
the great world in which Bouchardon endeavored to
introduce him, that he preferred to remain alone,
and repudiated the pleasures of this licentious epoch.
He had no other mistresses than sculpture and
Clotilde, one of the celebrities of the opera. But
this intrigue did not last long. Sarrasine was suffi-
ciently ugly, always badly dressed, and naturally
so free, so little regular in his private life that the
illustrious nymph, fearing some catastrophe, very
soon returned the sculptor to the love of art. Sophie
Arnould said a good thing on this subject that I have
forgotten. She was astonished, I believe, that her
comrade had been able to drag him away from the
statues. Sarrasine departed for Italy in 1758.



SARRASINE 233

During the journey, his ardent imagination took fire
under a glowing sky and at the sight of the marvel-
ous monuments with which the country of the arts
is sown. He admired the statues, the frescoes, the
paintings; and, full of emulation, he came to Rome
a prey to the desire to inscribe his name between
those of Michael Angelo and of Bouchardon; thus,
during the first days, he divided his time between
his work in the atelier and the examination of the
works of art which abound in Rome. He had
already passed two weeks in that state of ecstasy
which seizes all young imaginations at the aspect
of the queen of ruins, when, one evening, he entered
the theatre of Argentina, before which a great
crowd was gathered. He inquired the cause of this
multitude and everybody answered him with two
names :

" 'Zambinella! Jomelli!'

"He entered and took a seat in the parterre,
crowded by two abbati notably fat ; but he was for-
tunately placed near the stage. The curtain went
up. For the first time in his life he heard that
music of which Monsieur Jean- Jacques Rousseau
had so eloquently praised the delights to him, during
a soiree of the Baron d'Holbach. The senses of the
young sculptor were, so to speak, lubricated by the
accents of the sublime harmony of Jomelli. The
languorous originalities of these Italian voices, skil-
fully commingled, plunged him into a ravishing
ecstasy. He remained mute, motionless, not even
feeling himself crowded by the two priests. His



234 SARRASINE

soul passed into his ears and into his eyes. He
thought he listened by every one of his pores. All
at once, an outbreak of applause sufficient to bring
down the house welcomed the appearance on the
scene of the prima donna. She advanced coquet-
tishly to the front of the scene and saluted the
public with an infinite grace. The lights, the en-
thusiasm of a whole audience, the illusion of the
scene, the attraction of her costume, which at that
period was sufficiently distinguished, all conspired
in favor of this woman. Sarrasine uttered cries of
pleasure. At that moment he was able to admire
that ideal beauty the perfections of which he had,
up to that moment, sought in vain throughout
nature, compelled to require from a model, often
ignoble, the roundness of a perfect leg; from such
another, the contours of a breast; from this one, her
white shoulders; reduced, in fact, to take the neck of
a young girl, and the hands of this woman, and the
polished knees of that infant, without ever finding
under the cold sky of Paris the rich and suave crea-
tions of antique Greece. These, La Zambinella
displayed to him all united in one figure, truly
living and delicate, those exquisite proportions of
feminine nature so ardently desired, of which a
sculptor is at once the judge the most severe and
the most enthusiastic. There was an expressive
mouth, loving eyes, skin of a dazzling whiteness.
And join to these details, which would have ravished
a painter, all the marvels of that Venus revered
and rendered by the chisel of the Greek. The



SARRASINE 235

artist was never weary of admiring the inimitable
grace with which the arms were joined to the
chest, the bewitching roundness of the neck, the
harmonious lines described by the eyebrows, by
the nose; then the perfect oval of the visage, the
purity of its living contour, and the effect of the
heavy eyelashes, curled upward, which terminated
the heavy and voluptuous eyelids. It was more
than a woman, it was a chef-d'oeuvre. There were
to be found in this unhoped-for creation, love to
ravish all men, and beauty worthy to satisfy a
critic. Sarrasine devoured with his eyes the statue
of Pygmalion, for him descended from its pedestal.
When La Zambinella sang, it was a delirium. The
artist grew cold; then he was conscious of a fire
which sparkled suddenly in the depths of his in-
most being, of that which we call the heart for
want of a word! He did not applaud, he said noth-
ing; he experienced a sensation of madness, a spe-
cies of frenzy which only agitates us at that age in
which desire has, I know not what, of terrible and of
infernal. Sarrasine longed to spring upon the stage
and to take possession of this woman. His strength,
increased a hundred-fold by a moral depression
impossible to explain, since these phenomena take
place in a sphere inaccessible to human observation,
had a tendency to project him forward with an un-
happy violence. To see him, you would have taken
him for a cold and stupid man. Glory, science,
future, existence, crowns, everything crumbled.
" 'To be loved by her, or to die!' Such was the



236 SARRASINE

judgment which Sarrasine pronounced upon him-
self.

"He was so completely intoxicated that he saw
no longer either the theatre, or the spectators, or
the actors; he heard no longer the music. Still
more, no distance existed between him and La
Zambinella; he possessed her, his eyes, fastened on
her, took her for his own. A power almost dia-
bolical permitted him to feel the breath of this
voice, to respire the balmy powder with which her
hair was impregnated, to see the details of this
countenance, to count upon it the blue veins which
marked the satin skin. And finally this voice,
active, fresh and of a silvery tone, delicate as a
thread to which the least breath of air gives a form,
which it rolls and unrolls, develops and disperses,
this voice attacked his soul so vividly, that he uttered
more than once involuntary cries torn from him by
the convulsive delights too rarely given by human
passion. Presently he was obliged to leave the
theatre. His trembling legs almost refused to sus-
tain him. He was overwhelmed, weak as a nervous
man who had delivered himself to some fright-
ful anger. He had experienced so much pleasure,
or perhaps he had suffered so much, that his life
had flowed away from him like the water of a vase
overturned by a shock. He felt within him a void,
a swooning similar to those debilities which are the
despair of convalescents recovering from a grave
malady. A prey to an inexplicable sadness, he
went and seated himself on the steps of a church.



SARRASINE 237

There, his back against a column, he lost himself in
a meditation confused as a dream. Passion had
overwhelmed him. On his return to his lodging,
he fell into one of those paroxysms of activity which
reveal to us the presence of entirely new principles
in our existence. A prey to this first fever of love
which is connected as closely with pleasure as with
sorrow; he wished to deceive his impatience and
his delirium by designing La Zambinella from mem-
ory. It was a sort of material meditation. On
this sheet of paper, La Zambinella was seen in that
attitude, apparently calm and cold, favored by
Raphael, by Giorgione and by all the great painters.
On such another, she turned her head with an
appreciative delicacy, terminating a roulade, and
seemed to be listening to herself. Sarrasine cray-
oned his mistress in all poses : he made her unveiled,
seated, upright, lying, or chaste, or amorous, in
realizing, thanks to the delirium of his crayon,
all the capricious ideas which solicit our imagina-
tion when we think strongly of a mistress. But
his furious thought went farther than his designing.
He saw La Zambinella, he spoke to her, supplicated
her, exhausted a thousand years of life and of hap-
piness with her, placing her in all imaginable situ-
ations, in essaying— so to speak — the future with
her. The next day, he sent his lackey to hire for
the whole season a box near the stage. Then, like
all young people in whom the soul is powerful, he
exaggerated to himself the difficulties of his enter-
prise, and gave for first food to his passion the



238 SARRASINE

happiness of being able to admire his mistress with-
out obstacles. This golden age of love, during which
we draw enjoyment from our own feeling and in
which we find ourselves happy almost by ourselves,
was not destined to endure long in the case of Sar-
rasine. Nevertheless, he was surprised by events
while he was still under the charm of this spring-
time hallucination, as naive as it was voluptuous.
During a week he lived a whole life, occupying his
mornings with modeling the clay by the aid of
which he succeeded in copying La Zambinella,
despite the veils, the petticoats, the corsets and the
knots of ribbon which hid her from him. In the
evening, installed at an early hour in his box, alone,
reclining on a sofa, he procured for himself, after
the manner of a Turk intoxicated with opium, a
happiness as fruitful, as prodigal as he could wish.
At first, he familiarized himself gradually with the
too vivid emotions which the song of his mistress
occasioned him; then he subdued his eyes to see
her, and finished by contemplating her without fear-
ing the explosion of that dumb rage by which he
had been animated on the first day. His passion
became more profound as it became more tranquil.
For the rest, the ferocious sculptor would not per-
mit that his solitude, peopled with images, adorned
with the fantasies of hope and full of happiness,
should be troubled by his comrades. He loved with
so much strength, and so ingenuously, that he had
to submit to the innocent scruples with which we
are assailed when we love for the first time. In



SARRASINE 239

commencing to perceive that it would be necessary
very soon to act, to intrigue, to ask where La Zam-
binella lived, to know if she had a mother, an uncle,
a guardian, a family; in thinking, in short, on the
methods of seeing her, of speaking to her, he felt
his heart swell so strongly with such ambitious
ideas, that he put off all these cares till the morrow,
happy because of his physical sufferings as much as
of his intellectual pleasures."

"But," said Madame de Rochefide to me, inter-
rupting me, "I do not see anything yet, either of
Marianina or of her little old man."

"You see nothing but him," I cried, impatient as
an author who had been compelled to spoil the effect
of his theatrical demonstration.

"For several days," I resumed after a pause,
"Sarrasine had come so faithfully to take his place
in his box, and his looks expressed so much love,
that his passion for the voice of Zambinella would
have been the news of all Paris if this adventure
had happened there; but, in Italy, Madame, at the
theatre each one is present on his own account,
with his own passions, with an interest of the heart
which excludes the spying of the lorgnettes. How-
ever, the frenzy of the sculptor was not destined to
long escape the observation of the singers and the
cantatrices. One evening, the Frenchman per-
ceived that they were laughing at him in the side-
scenes. It would have been difficult to know to
what extremity he might not have been carried if
La Zambinella had not entered on the scene. She



240 SARRASINE

threw upon Sarrasine one of those eloquent looks
which often say much more than the women wish
them to. This look was a complete revelation.
Sarrasine was loved!

"'If it is only a caprice,' thought he, already
accusing his mistress of too much ardor, 'she does
not know the domination under which she is going
to fall. Her caprice will endure, I hope, as long as
my life.'

"At this moment, three blows lightly struck on
the door of his box attracted the attention of the
artist He opened the door. An old woman entered
mysteriously.

"'Young man,' said she, 'if you wish to be
happy, have prudence. Wrap yourself up in a cape,
pull down over your eyes a broad hat; then, about
ten o'clock in the evening, place yourself in the
Rue du Corso, before the Hotel de Spagna. '

" '1 will be there,' he replied, putting two louis in
the withered hand of the duenna.

"He slipped out of his box, after having made a
sign of intelligence to La Zambinella, who lowered
timidly her voluptuous eyelids like a woman happy