may lead her whither love leads. I shall not go too far. In my feeling
for her there is neither affection nor tenderness,--nothing but
rapture at the sight of nature's masterwork, and the attraction
natural in a man when that masterwork is a woman. My father said that
the height of victory would be to change an angel into a woman; I
maintain that it is no less a triumph to feel around one's neck the
arms, palpitating with life, of a Florentine Venus.

As far as beauty goes she is the highest expression of whatever the
most exalted imagination is able to conceive. She is a Phryne. It
would turn most men's heads to see her in a tight-fitting riding-habit
that shows the outline of her figure as beautiful as that of a statue.
In the boat, reading Dante, she looked like a Sybil, and one could
understand a Nero's sacrilegious passion. Hers is an almost baleful
beauty. Only the joining eyebrows make her appear a woman of our
times, and this makes her all the more irritating. She has a certain
habit of pushing back her hair by putting both hands at the back of
her head; then her shoulders are raised; the whole shape acquires a
certain curve, and the breast stands firmly out,--and one feels a
desire to carry her off in one's arms from everybody's eyes.

In each of us there is a hidden Satyr. As to myself, as I said
already, I am highly impressionable; therefore, when I think of it,
that there is something going on between me and this live statue of
a Juno, that some mysterious power pushes us towards each other,--my
head is in a whirl, and I ask myself what would I wish for more
perfect than this.


3 April.