Where did she go? God knows. Before she left I asked
her to embroider a purse for me. I still have that sad relic, it hangs in
my room a monument of the ruin that is wrought here below.
But here is another case:
It was about ten in the evening when, after a riotous day, we repaired to
Desgenais, who had left us some hours before to make his preparations.
The orchestra was ready and the room filled when we arrived.
Most of the dancers were girls from the theaters. As soon as we entered I
plunged into the giddy whirl of the waltz. That delightful exercise has
always been dear to me; I know of nothing more beautiful, more worthy of
a beautiful woman and a young man; all dances compared with the waltz are
but insipid conventions or pretexts for insignificant converse. It is
truly to possess a woman, in a certain sense, to hold her for a half hour
in your arms, and to draw her on in the dance, palpitating in spite of
herself, in such a way that it can not be positively asserted whether she
is being protected or seduced. Some deliver themselves up to the pleasure
with such modest voluptuousness, with such sweet and pure abandon that
one does not know whether he experiences desire or fear, and whether, if
pressed to the heart they would faint or break in pieces like the rose.
Germany, where that dance was invented, is surely the land of love.
I held in my arms a superb danseuse from an Italian theater who had come
to Paris for the carnival; she wore the costume of a bacchante, with a
dress of panther's skin.
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