iples in our existence. A prey to that first fever of love which
resembles pain as much as pleasure, he sought to defeat his impatience
and his frenzy by sketching La Zambinella from memory. It was a sort of
material meditation. Upon one leaf La Zambinella appeared in that pose,
apparently calm and cold, affected by Raphael, Georgione, and all
the great painters. On another, she was coyly turning her head as she
finished a roulade, and seemed to be listening to herself. Sarrasine
drew his mistress in all poses: he drew her unveiled, seated, standing,
reclining, chaste, and amorous--interpreting, thanks to the delirious
activity of his pencil, all the fanciful ideas which beset our
imagination when our thoughts are completely engrossed by a mistress.
But his frantic thoughts outran his pencil. He met La Zambinella, spoke
to her, entreated her, exhausted a thousand years of life and happiness
with her, placing her in all imaginable situations, trying the future
with her, so to speak. The next day he sent his servant to hire a
box near the stage for the whole season. Then, like all young men of
powerful feelings, he exaggerated the difficulties of his undertaking,
and gave his passion, for its first pasturage, the joy of being able
to admire his mistress without obstacle. The golden age of love, during
which we enjoy our own sentiments, and in which we are almost as happy
by ourselves, was not likely to last long with Sarrasine. However,
events surprised him when he was still under the spell of that
springtime hallucination, as naive as it was voluptuous. In a week he
lived a whole lifetime, occupied through the day in molding the clay
with which he succeeded in copying La Zambinella, notwithstanding the
veils, the skirts, the waists, and the bows of ribbon which concealed
her from him. In the evening, installed at an early hour in his box,
alone, reclining on a sofa, he made for himself, like a Turk drunk with
opium, a happiness as fruitful, as lavish, as he wished. First of all,
he familiarized himself gradually with the too intense emotions which
his mistress' singing caused him; then he taught his eyes to look at
her, and was finally able to contemplate her at his leisure without
fearing an explosion of concealed frenzy, like that which had seized
him the first day. His passion became more profound as it became more
tranquil. But the unsociable sculptor would not allow his solitude,
peopled as it was with images, adorned