Spirite by Theophile Gautier

Author:Theophile Gautier
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909232495
Publisher: Dedalus Ebooks
Published: 2013-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

When, after a certain period of time, one confronts the memory of something with the image, it is often the case that the imagination has worked like a painter who carries on with a portrait in the absence of the model. He softens the straight lines, blends the hues, blurs the contours and despite himself guides the specimen back to his own notion of the ideal. I had not seen you for more than three years, but my heart had kept an exact record of your features. It was just that you looked less like my memory of you. Your face had acquired character and confidence and the tan from your travels had given your complexion a warmer and more robust hue. The man within the young man was becoming clearer and you had this air of calm authority and self-confident strength which is perhaps more appealing to women than good looks. I kept this first drawing of you in the depths of my soul, this faint but indelible sketch of the individual who was to exert so much influence on me: it was no less precious to me than a miniature of a young boy kept next to a portrait of his present self. You had emerged unscathed from my dreams and seeing you again I did not have to strip you of a cloak of fantastical perfections.

I was musing on all of this, curled up in my bed, watching the glow from the night-light tremble on the blue roses of the carpet, as I waited for the sleep that would not come; towards morning it came down over my eyes, mixed with disjointed dreams and vague harmonies.

Some weeks later, we received an invitation to attend a grand ball given by the duchess de C… A girl’s first ball is an important affair. The whole thing became even more interesting for me, since it was extremely likely you would be at the party, the duchess being one of your best female friends. Balls are our battleground and they are either lost or won. It is where a young lady, having left the shadows of the girls’ boarding-school, shines in all her glory. During this short space of time, tradition allows the pretext of a dance to give her a sort of relative freedom and for her the ball is a foyer at the Opéra, where the faces behind the dominoes are exposed. An invitation to dance a quadrille or a mazurka allows her to approach a man and address a few words to him during the moves of the contra-dance. Very often, however, the little book in which she notes down the invitations made to her is full of a long list of names but does not contain the very one she would have wanted.

I had to take care with my outfit; dressing up for a ball is a veritable poem and for a girl, it presents real problems. It must be simple but its simplicity must be rich, two qualities that are mutually exclusive.

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