This invisible charmer accompanied me wherever I went; I communed with her as with a real being; she varied in the measure of my folly: Aphrodite unveiled; Diana clad in the dew and the blue of heaven; Thalia with her laughing mask; Hebe bearing the cup of youth; sometimes she became a fairy who laid nature at my feet. I touched and retouched my canvas; I took one attraction from my beauty to replace it with another. I also changed her finery; I borrowed it from every country, every century, every art, every religion. Then, when I had completed a masterpiece, I dispersed my drawings and paints again; my one woman turned into a crowd of women in whom I idolized separately the charms I had adored when united. Pygmalion was less enamored of his statue: my difficulty was how to please mine. Recognizing in myself none of the qualities calculated to awaken love, I lavished upon myself all that I lacked. I rode like Castor and Pollux; I played the lyre like Apollo; Mars wielded his arms with less power and skill: a hero of romance or history, I heaped fictitious adventures on fiction itself! The shades of Morven's daughters, the sultanas of Bagdad and Granada, the ladies of the castles of olden time; baths, perfumes, dances, Asiatic delights were all borne to me by a magic wand. See this young queen coming, decked in diamonds and flowers (it was still my sylph): she fetches me at midnight, across gardens of orange-trees, in the galleries of a palace bathed by the waves of the sea, on the balmy shore of Naples or Messina, beneath a sky of love pierced by the light of Endymion's star; she advances, an animated statue by Praxiteles, amidst motionless statues, pale pictures and frescoes white and silent in the moonlight: the soft sound of her progress over the marble mosaic mingles with the imperceptible murmurs of the deep. The royal jealousy encompasses us. I fall at the knees of the sovereign of Enna's plains; the silk waves from her loosened diadem fall caressingly upon my brow as she bends her girlish head over my face, and her hands rest upon my breast, throbbing with respect and with desire. On emerging from these dreams, when I found myself once more a poor little obscure Breton lad, without fame, beauty, or talents, who would attract the looks of none, who would pass unknown, whom no woman would ever love, I was seized with despair: I no longer dared lift my eyes to the dazzling image I had attached to my steps. This delirium lasted two whole years, during which the faculties of my soul attained the loftiest pitch of exaltation. I used to speak little, I now spoke not at all; I used still to study, I flung my books aside; my taste for solitude redoubled. I had all the symptoms of a violent passion: my eyes grew hollow; I fell away; I could not sleep; I was absent, melancholy, ardent, fierce. My days slipped by in a manner that was wild, odd, insensate, and yet full of delights.