The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 4Maupassant, Guy de
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The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 4
Maupassant, Guy de
French fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, French -- Translations into English
I have found her, I believe. She has about her something ideal which does
not belong to this world, and which furnishes wings to my dream. Ah! my
dream! How it reveals to me beings different from what they really are!
She is a blonde, a delicate blonde, with hair whose delicate shade is
inexpressible. Her eyes are blue! Only blue eyes can penetrate my soul.
All women, the woman who lives in my heart, reveal themselves to me in
the eye, only in the eyes. Oh! what a mystery, what a mystery is the eye!
The whole universe lives in it, inasmuch as it sees, inasmuch as it
reflects. It contains the universe, both things and beings, forests
and oceans, men and beasts, the settings of the sun, the stars, the
arts--all, all, it sees; it collects and absorbs all; and there is still
more in it; the eye of itself has a soul; it has in it the man who
thinks, the man who loves, the man who laughs, the man who suffers! Oh!
regard the blue eyes of women, those eyes that are as deep as the sea, as
changeful as the sky, so sweet, so soft, soft as the breezes, sweet as
music, luscious as kisses; and transparent, so clear that one sees behind
them, discerns the soul, the blue soul which colors them, which animates
them, which electrifies them. Yes, the soul has the color of the looks.
The blue soul alone contains in itself that which dreams; it bears its
azure to the floods and into space. The eye! Think of it, the eye! It
imbibes the visible life, in order to nourish thought. It drinks in the
world, color, movement, books, pictures, all that is beautiful, all that
is ugly, and weaves ideas out of them. And when it regards us, it gives
us the sensation of a happiness that is not of this earth. It informs us
of that of which we have always been ignorant; it makes us comprehend
that the realities of our dreams are but noisome ordures.
* * * * *
I love her too for her walk. "Even when the bird walks one feels that it
has wings," as the poet has said. When she passes one feels that she is
of another race from ordinary women, of a race more delicate, and more
divine. I shall marry her to-morrow. But I am afraid, I am afraid of so
many things!
* * * * *
Two beasts, two dogs, two wolves, two foxes, cut their way through the
plantation and encounter one another. One of each two is male, the other
female. They couple. They couple in consequence of an animal instinct,
which forces them to continue the race, their race, the one from which
they have sprung, the hairy coat, the form, movements and habitudes. The
whole of the animal creation do the same without knowing why.
We human beings, also.
It is for this I have married; I have obeyed that insane passion which
throws us in the direction of the female.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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