Deadly embraces, tiger-bites, the hug of a boa-constrictor, an elephant's foot placed upon a breast that is crushed and flattened beneath it, the poisoned tail of the scorpion, the milky juice of the Euphorbia, the curved kris of the Javanese, blades that gleam at night and extinguish their gleam in blood--I call upon you now, it is you who shall replace for me the leafless roses, the moist kisses and the warm embrace of love! I love nothing, as I have said, but alas! I am afraid of loving something.--It would be a hundred thousand times better to hate than to have such a love!--I have found the type of beauty that I have so long dreamed of.--I have found the body of my phantom; I have seen it, it has spoken to me, I have touched its hand, it exists; it is not a chimera. I knew that I could not be mistaken and that my presentiments never lied.--Yes, Silvio, lam living beside the dream of my life;--my chamber is here, its chamber is there; I can see from here the curtain trembling at its window, and the light of its lamp. Its shadow has just passed across the curtain: in an hour we shall sup together. Those lovely Turkish eyelashes, that clear, profound gaze, that warm hue of pale amber, that long glossy black hair, that nose, of proud and delicate shape, those joints and extremities, supple and slender after the manner of Palmegiani, the graceful curves and the pure oval contour that give such an air of aristocratic refinement to a face--all that I longed for and would have been overjoyed to find distributed among five or six persons, I have found united in a single person! The thing that I adore most fervently among all earthly things is a lovely hand.--If you could see the hand of my dream! such perfection! such dazzling whiteness! such soft skin! such penetrating moisture! the ends of the fingers so admirably tapered! the half-moon of the nails so clearly marked! such polish and such brilliant color! you would say they were the inner petals of a rose;--Anne of Austria's hands, so vaunted and famous, were no more than the hands of a turkey-keeper or scullery-maid compared with these.--And then what grace, what art in the slightest movements of the hand! how gracefully the little finger bends and stays a little apart from its tall brothers!--The thought of that hand drives me mad and makes my lips quiver and burn.--I close my eyes to avoid looking at it; but with its delicate fingers it seizes my eyelashes and raises the lids, causing countless visions of ivory and snow to pass before me. Ah! doubtless it is Satan's claw gloved in that satin skin; it is some mocking demon making sport of me; there is witchcraft in it.--It is too monstrously impossible. That hand--I propose to go to Italy, to see the pictures of the great masters, to study, compare, draw, become a painter in short, in order to be able to reproduce it as it is, as I see it, as I feel it; it will perhaps serve the purpose of ridding me of this sort of obsession.