these effusive jeers and bitter things, and they
weigh on my conscience now that I have been told the other side, the
equivocal enigma of that existence."

"A Punch and Judy secret," Bob Shelley said, throwing the end of his
cigar into the fire.

"Oh! yes; we were a hundred miles from the truth when we merely supposed
that he was unfit for service. This unhappy Lantosque, a well-born,
clever man, and very rich to boot, might have exhibited himself in some
traveling booth, for he was an hermaphrodite; do you understand? an
hermaphrodite. And his whole life was one of long, incessant torture, of
physical and moral suffering, which was more maddening than that which
Tantalus endured on the banks of the river Acheron. He had nearly
everything of the woman about him; he was a ridiculous caricature of our
sex, with his shrill voice, his large hips, his bust concealed by a
loose, wide coat, his cheeks, his chin, and upper lip without a vestige
of hair, and he had to appear like a man, to restrain and stifle his
instincts, his tastes, desires, and dreams, to fight ceaselessly against
himself, and never to allow anything of that which he endured, nor what
he longed for, nor that which was sapping his very life, to be
discovered.

"Once only he was on the point of betraying himself, in spite of
himself. He ardently loved a man, as Chloe must have loved Daphnis. He
could not master himself, or calm his feverish passion, and went towards
the abyss as if seized by mental giddiness. He could imagine nothing
handsomer, more desirable, or more charming than that chance friend. He
had sudden transports, fits of surprise, tenderness, curiosity,
jealousy, the ardent longings of an old maid who is afraid of dying a
virgin, who is waiting for love as for her deliverance, who attaches
herself and devotes herself to a lover with her whole being, and who
grows emaciated and dries up, and remains misunderstood and despised.

"And as they have both disappeared now, the lover dead from a sword
thrust in the middle of the chest, at Milan, on account of some ballet
girl, and as he certainly died without knowing that he had inspired such
a passion, I may tell you his name.

"He was Count Sebinico, who used to deal at faro with such delicate,
white hands, and who wore rings on nearly every finger, who had such a
musical voice, and who, with his wavy hair, and his delicate profile,
looked like a handsome, Florentine Condottiere.

"It must be v