Rosette, who, very luckily, doesn't know all this, believes me to be the most amorous man on earth; she takes that impotent _frenzy_ for a frenzy of passion, and she does her utmost to humor all the experimental caprices that pass through my brain. I have done all that I possibly could to convince myself that she belongs to me. I have tried to go down into her heart, but I have always stopped on the first step of the staircase, at her flesh or her mouth. Despite the intimacy of our corporeal relations, I feel that we have nothing in common. Never has an idea of the same tenor as mine spread its wings in that youthful, smiling head; never has that heart, overflowing with life and fire, whose palpitations cause that firm, white breast to rise and fall, beaten in unison with my heart. My soul has never coalesced with hers. Cupid, the god with the hawk's wings, has not kissed Psyche on her fair ivory brow. No!--that woman is not my mistress. If you know all that I have done to compel my heart to share the love of my body! with what frenzy I have glued my mouth to hers and wound my arms in her hair, and how tightly I have embraced her rounded, supple figure. Like Salmacis of old, enamored of the young Hermaphrodite, I have tried to melt her body and mine together; I have drunk her breath and her warm tears that bliss forced from the brimming chalice of her eyes. The more inextricably our bodies were intertwined, the closer our embrace, the less I loved her. My heart, sitting sadly by, looked on with a pitying air at that deplorable union to which it was not bidden, or veiled its face in disgust and wept silently behind the skirt of its cloak. All this is attributable perhaps to the fact that I do not really love Rosette, worthy to be loved though she be, and anxious as I am to love her. To rid myself of the idea that I was myself, I transported myself to most unusual surroundings, where it was altogether unlikely that I should meet myself, and being unable to cast my individuality to the dogs, I tried to expatriate it so that it would no longer recognize itself. I have had but moderate success therein, for that devil of a myself follows me persistently; there is no way of getting rid of him; I haven't the resource of sending word to him, as I do to other uncomfortable callers, that I am not at home or that I have gone into the country. I have had my mistress in the bath and I have played the Triton as best I could.--The sea was a huge marble tub. As for the Nereid, what she showed accused the water, transparent though it was, of not being sufficiently so for the exquisite beauty of what it concealed.--I have had her at night, by moonlight, in a gondola with music.