Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/79

Rh clasped in his arms! Dea clasped in them! He heard nature in his heart crying out for her. Like a Pygmalion modelling a Galatea out of the azure, in the depth of his soul he retouched the chaste outlines of Dea's form,—outlines with too much of heaven, too little of Eden about them; for Eden is Eve, and Eve was a female, a carnal mother, a terrestrial nurse, the sacred womb of future generations, the breast of unfailing milk, the rocker of the cradle of the new-born world; and wings are incompatible with the bosom of woman. Virginity is but the hope of maternity.

Still, in Gwynplaine's dreams heretofore, Dea had been enthroned above flesh. Now, however, he made wild efforts in thought to draw her downwards by that thread, sex, which binds every girl to earth. Not one of these birds is free. Dea was not exempt from this law, surely; and Gwynplaine, though he scarcely acknowledged it, felt a vague desire that she should submit to it. This desire possessed him in spite of himself, and with an ever-recurring persistency. He pictured Dea as woman. He came to the point of regarding her under a hitherto unheard-of form,—as a creature no longer of ecstasy alone, but of voluptuousness as well. He was ashamed of this visionary desecration. It was like an attempt at profanation. He resisted its assault. He turned from it, but it returned again and again. He felt as if he were committing a criminal assault. To him, Dea was encompassed as by a cloud.

It was in April, when even the spine has its dreams. He rambled on with an uncertain step in the solitude. To have no one by is an incentive to wander. Whither flew his thoughts? He would not have dared to own it to himself. To heaven? No, and yet you were looking down on him, ye stars!

Why talk of a man in love? Rather say a man