I had plenty of audacity in my character, but none in my manner.
Later, I found out that women did not like to be implored. I have from afar adored many a one to whom I devoted a soul proof against all tests, a heart to break, energy that shrank from no sacrifice and from no torture; they accepted fools whom I would not have engaged as hall porters.
How often, mute and motionless, have I not admired the lady of my dreams, swaying in the dance; given up my life in thought to one eternal caress, expressed all my hopes in a look, and laid before her, in my rapture, a young man's love, which should outstrip all fables.
At some moments I was ready to barter my whole life for one single night.
Well, as I could never find a listener for my impassioned proposals, eyes to rest my own upon, a heart made for my heart, I lived on in all the sufferings of impotent force that consumes itself; lacking either opportunity or courage or experience.
I despaired, maybe, of making myself understood, or I feared to be understood but too well; and yet the storm within me was ready to burst at every chance courteous look.
In spite of my readiness to take the semblance of interest in look or word for a tenderer solicitude, I dared neither to speak nor to be silent seasonably.
My words grew insignificant, and my silence stupid, by sheer stress of emotion.
I was too ingenuous, no doubt, for that artificial life, led by candle-light, where every thought is expressed in conventional phrases, or by words that fashion dictates; and not only so, I had not learned how to employ speech that says nothing, and silence that says a great deal.
In short, I concealed the fires that consumed me, and with such a soul as women wish to find, with all the elevation of soul that they long for, and a mettle that fools plume themselves upon, all women have been cruelly treacherous to me.
"So in my simplicity I admired the heroes of this set when they bragged about their conquests, and never suspected them of lying.
No doubt it was a mistake to wish for a love that springs for a word's sake; to expect to find in the heart of a vain, frivolous woman, greedy for luxury and intoxicated with vanity, the great sea of passion that surged tempestuously in my own breast.
Oh! to feel that you were born to love, to make some woman's happiness, and yet to find not one, not even a noble and courageous Marceline, not so much as an old Marquise!
Oh! to carry a treasure in your wallet, and not find even some child, or inquisitive young girl, to admire it!
In my despair I often wished to kill myself."
"Finely tragical to-night!" cried Emile.
"Let me pass sentence on my life," Raphael answered.
"If your friendship is not strong enough to bear with my elegy, if you cannot put up with half an hour's tedium for my sake, go to sleep!
But, then, never ask again for the reason of suicide that hangs over me, that comes nearer and calls to me, that I bow myself before.
If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man's life would only serve to make a chronological table—a fool's notion of history."
Emile was so much struck with the bitter tones in which these words were spoken, that he began to pay close attention to Raphael, whom he watched with a bewildered expression.
"Now," continued the speaker, "all these things that befell me appear in a new light.
The sequence of events that I once thought so unfortunate created the splendid powers of which, later, I became so proud.
If I may believe you, I possess the power of readily expressing my thoughts, and I could take a forward place in the great field of knowledge; and is not this the result of scientific curiosity, of excessive application, and a love of reading which possessed me from the age of seven till my entry on life?
The very neglect in which I was left, and the consequent habits of self-repression and self-concentration; did not these things teach me how to consider and reflect?
Nothing in me was squandered in obedience to the exactions of the world, which humble the proudest soul and reduce it to a mere husk; and was it not this very fact that refined the emotional part of my nature till it became the perfected instrument of a loftier purpose than passionate desires?
I remember watching the women who mistook me with all the insight of contemned love.
"I can see now that my natural sincerity must have been displeasing to them; women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy.
And I, who in the same hour's space am alternately a man and a child, frivolous and thoughtful, free from bias and brimful of superstition, and oftentimes myself as much a woman as any of them; how should they do otherwise than take my simplicity for cynicism, my innocent candor for impudence?
They found my knowledge tiresome; my feminine languor, weakness.
I was held to be listless and incapable of love or of steady purpose; a too active imagination, that curse of poets, was no doubt the cause.
My silence was idiotic; and as I daresay I alarmed them by my efforts to please, women one and all have condemned me.
With tears and mortification, I bowed before the decision of the world; but my distress was not barren.
I determined to revenge myself on society; I would dominate the feminine intellect, and so have the feminine soul at my mercy; all eyes should be fixed upon me, when the servant at the door announced my name.
I had determined from my childhood that I would be a great man; I said with Andre Chenier, as I struck my forehead,
'There is something underneath that!' I felt, I believed, the thought within me that I must express, the system I must establish, the knowledge I must interpret.
"Let me pour out my follies, dear Emile; to-day I am barely twenty-six years old, certain of dying unrecognized, and I have never been the lover of the woman I dreamed of possessing.
Have we not all of us, more or less, believed in the reality of a thing because we wished it?
I would never have a young man for my friend who did not place himself in dreams upon a pedestal, weave crowns for his head, and have complaisant mistresses.
I myself would often be a general, nay, emperor; I have been a Byron, and then a nobody.
After this sport on these pinnacles of human achievement, I became aware that all the difficulties and steeps of life were yet to face.
My exuberant self-esteem came to my aid; I had that intense belief in my destiny, which perhaps amounts to genius in those who will not permit themselves to be distracted by contact with the world, as sheep that leave their wool on the briars of every thicket they pass by.
I meant to cover myself with glory, and to work in silence for the mistress I hoped to have one day.
Women for me were resumed into a single type, and this woman I looked to meet in the first that met my eyes; but in each and all I saw a queen, and as queens must make the first advances to their lovers, they must draw near to me—to me, so sickly, shy, and poor.
For her, who should take pity on me, my heart held in store such gratitude over and beyond love, that I had worshiped her her whole life long.
Later, my observations have taught me bitter truths.
"In this way, dear Emile, I ran the risk of remaining companionless for good.
The incomprehensible bent of women's minds appears to lead them to see nothing but the weak points in a clever man, and the strong points of a fool. They feel the liveliest sympathy with the fool's good qualities, which perpetually flatter their own defects; while they find the man of talent hardly agreeable enough to compensate for his shortcomings.
All capacity is a sort of intermittent fever, and no woman is anxious to share in its discomforts only; they look to find in their lovers the wherewithal to gratify their own vanity.
It is themselves that they love in us!