“If it would please you, I could send you a copy of Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie,” he said, in a shy way that endeared him to me. I had heard of his book, a collection of poems and sketches that had been very well reviewed.
“I would welcome the opportunity to read it,” I said, and it was true. I could never get enough of good poetry, and Sainte-Beuve was not the only one who thought Musset divine.
I gave him my address, and each line I wrote set my heart to beating faster.
“Perhaps I shall deliver it myself,” he said. “Tomorrow evening?”
“I work in the evenings.”
“In the morning, then.”
“I’m afraid I sleep quite late, as I often work through the night.”
“I see.” He was embarrassed now, and a silence fell between us.
Finally: “Come at one in the afternoon,” I said.
“There, you see? I knew you would let me come!”
I laughed. “How did you know?”
“Ah, George,” he said, leaning nearly imperceptibly toward me. “Your eyes are portals.”
—
THE NEXT DAY, I awakened early: around noontime. After breakfast, I inspected my wardrobe to see what might be interesting to wear. I settled on a pair of harem pants and a loose-fitting red silk robe that had a habit of falling open. With this I wore a pair of backless slippers that were considered very daring. Never mind that my heart was not fully repaired from the devastation I’d suffered at the hands of Marie; I was still a passionate woman whose soul thrived on a certain kind of stimulation. Besides, Marie and I had resumed enough of a friendship that I was not entirely without her; in fact, I had every intention of telling her every detail about this meeting with Musset.
He arrived promptly at one. He had wrapped his book in beautiful marbled paper and anchored upon it a single red rose.
I thanked him, then ushered him in. I could see that he was very much intrigued by my outfit—not to say stimulated, if his widened eyes and sudden nervousness were any indication. I saw, too, a fine trembling in his hands.
I asked if he would like to smoke some Egyptian tobacco with me. He declined but said he would be happy to sit with me while I enjoyed it. And so I gave him a chair, then sat at his feet with my hookah, drawing in smoke and blowing it up toward the ceiling.
I said nothing, nor did he, for long moments at a time. When we did talk, we spoke of last night’s dinner, of the various people who had attended it with us. We talked, as well, about the beauty of the chestnut trees, which were flowering, and I told him that at Nohant I loved to lie beneath those trees and think. On the pretext of deciding that he would like to try the tobacco after all, he came to sit on the floor beside me. I offered him my pipe, he took a puff, and pronounced the tobacco very good indeed. Then, expressing keen interest in my Oriental slippers, he reached out a finger to trace the raised design on the fabric. Ever so slowly, with his eyes locked on mine, he slid a finger in to stroke the arch of my foot. I felt a rush of longing that, were I not seated, might have knocked me over.
And then: a rapping on the door. Surprised, I went to open it and found Gustave Planche, who had come to call on me, as he often did. We would sometimes lunch together in a café, fueling rumors that we were lovers, though in all candor Planche’s problems with hygiene would never have allowed me to be intimate with him. Still, one had to give him his due: he was a genius not only as a critic, but as a person with the perceptive skills of an artist. He had remarkable insight into a number of things, including the look on Musset’s face when he came to the door behind me. “I was just leaving,” Musset said, and Planche stepped quickly aside, so that he might pass.
After he had gone, I glared at Planche.
“Come, now, you can’t be serious,” he said.
I said nothing.
“You? He can even have you? George, I beg you, do not be so stupid as to join that bunch of vapid and immoral women who fall mewling at his feet.”
“I have work to do,” I told Planche, pushing him out the door.
Later that day, a note was delivered to me from Musset. He had read Indiana and said he must have more of me as soon as possible. I made arrangements for him to receive the proofs of Lélia, which would be published in a few days, though I knew full well that what he wanted more of was not just my words. But Planche’s reaction had given me pause. I would wait awhile to see Musset again.
A week later, I received a note from Musset praising Lélia to the skies. He also added this:
You have nothing to offer but a chaste love, and that is something I can give to no one. But I can, if you think me worthy, be to you—perhaps not a friend, for even that sounds too chastely in my ears—but an inconsequent comrade, who makes no claims and will therefore be neither jealous nor quarrelsome, but will smoke your tobacco, crumple your négligées, and catch a cold in the head as a result of philosophizing with you under all the chestnut trees of contemporary Europe.
I wrote back that I would receive him that evening at eight for dinner, so long as he departed by ten, when I would begin work.
That night, when he arrived, I escorted him to my table, where candles burned in spite of the still-light summer sky. We started to sit down, and then he cried out, “I cannot continue with…I must tell you all that is in my heart.”
He stood trembling while I stared at him, astonished but, it must be admitted, flattered as well.
I took him by the hand, led him to the living room, sat in a chair, and gestured for him to sit opposite me. But he remained standing before me, his hands clenched at his sides. “I cannot work. I think of nothing but you!” Then, startling me, he fell to his knees and began weeping. I reached out to touch his shoulder, and he put his head on my lap, his arms around my waist, and sobbed.
I thought about what I might say to him. I knew his father had died in last year’s cholera epidemic and that he and his older brother were dependent on their mother for an income that had been substantially reduced. I was sympathetic to the kind of pressure he must be under to make his writing pay. I decided to tell him that the best thing to do was to try to not think about it, to make his writing a kind of chapel, a sacred place to which he did not admit anything but his imagination. I wanted to soothe him into a calmer state, to offer again to be his friend, even a kind of mother substitute who could give him comfort, advice, companionship, and the occasional roasted chicken. For as much as I enjoyed the eroticism I had felt with him so far, I thought it best to go no further.
Before I could speak, however, he leapt to his feet and rushed out of the apartment.
I sat stunned for a while, then ate dinner alone, thinking about what had transpired. Then I changed into my dressing gown and wrote until night gave way to the rose gold of morning. I moved to the window to regard the street below: still quiet, but with signs of life stirring: a merchant washing down the sidewalk outside his store; a man setting up to show off his performing dogs, an artist at his easel. I stretched, yawned, arched and massaged my back. Then I performed a sleepy toilette and climbed between lavender-scented sheets to enjoy a sweet release. I hoped for dreams I would remember, and could use.
It seemed there was something to using material from the unconscious: Lélia had enjoyed a first print run of fifteen hundred, an inordinately large number for the time, and it had sold out immediately. This was in spite of the fact that it garnered several bad reviews—one source called it “dangerous, teaching skepticism.” But that review served only to make it sell better. Gustave Planche had said in the Revue des Deux Mondes that women would understand Lélia:
They will underline those passages in which they have found, set down in words, the memories they harbor of their own past lives, the record of their own unpublished miseries. With tears in their eyes and veneration in their hearts, they will acknowlege the impotence which here proclaims itself and reveals its torments. They will stand amazed at the courage of such an avowal. Some will blush to think their s
ecrets have been fathomed, but in the privacy of their own minds, they will admit that Lélia is a speech not for the prosecution, but for the defense.
It had become the book one had to have, even if one did not read it.
—
THE DAY AFTER MUSSET fled from my apartment, there came a knock at the door and I was handed a note by a messenger. It was from Musset, and I sat down to read it, not having any idea what to expect. These are the words he wrote:
I have something stupid and ridiculous to say to you. You will laugh in my face, and hold that, in all I have said to you so far, I was a mere maker of phrases. You will show me the door, and you will believe that I am lying.
I am in love with you. I have been in love with you since the day when I came to see you for the first time. I thought I could cure myself by continuing with you on the level of friendship. There is much in your character that might bring about a cure and I have tried hard to persuade myself of this: but I pay too high a price for the moments which I spend with you. And now, George, you will say—‘Just another importunate bore!’ (to use your own words). I know precisely how you regard me, and, in speaking as I have done, delude myself with no false hopes. The only result will be that I shall lose a dear companion. But in truth, I lack the strength of mind to keep silent.
I read the note again. I kissed it.
And then I did nothing. I did not write back to him. I tried to will him away from my thoughts. If what so many people said about him was true, he was dangerous, making women fall in love with him and then discarding them with impunity; and in any case, I was not ready to enter into another love affair. Deep in my heart, I still burned for Marie.
But the next day, another note from Alfred arrived:
I was a fool to show you more than one side of myself. You should love only those who know how to love. I know only how to suffer. Adieu, George; I love you like a child.
I sent a note back immediately: “Come to me.” And he did.
—
A FEW DAYS LATER, I had dinner with a group of my Berry friends, all of whom had renewed their friendships with me after my break with Jules. They had heard about my goings-on with Musset, and rather than be happy about our finding the joy we both deserved, they looked like they were gathered around my casket for a final goodbye. Gustave Planche said, “To put it bluntly, my dear, I fear you have taken leave of your senses.” I told him I appreciated his concern, then stopped seeing him.
If I could not have Marie, at least I could have this besotted young poet who called me—the pants-wearing, cigar-smoking, low-voiced independent—the most feminine woman he had ever known. On more than one occasion I found myself dizzy with the delights he offered me. I did not experience that release I had found with Marie, but I loved loving Musset. Never mind Mérimée—here was the skillful lover!
Musset began our lovemaking with poetic praises of my body, with caresses so soft I could barely perceive them, and ended with the headboard banging into the wall so hard I finally had to move it out several inches. He covered me with kisses from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, he entered me from on top, from behind, from the side. He put his fists in my hair and pulled until I gasped in pleasure, he called out my name over and over as he thrust himself inside me. We made love on the floor of the bedroom before the fireplace, on a settee in the parlor, and once on the dining room table in a frenzy that was like nothing we had known previously. No china was lost, but some silver made a magnificent clatter as it fell to the floor. I arose from that session with candle wax in my hair, with my lips swollen and bruised.
We were happy outside the bedroom, too. Our politics aligned: we looked with nostalgic favor on the old days of the empire, which had at least been run with precision, as opposed to the present government, which often seemed full of confusion and at odds with itself. As advocates of civil liberty, we were sympathetic to the effects of the 1830–31 November Uprising in Warsaw, and we made friends with many Polish expatriates.
In addition, we both adored music, though he bowed to my superiority in both knowledge and practice. And he liked practical jokes as much as I. Once, when I gave a dinner for friends, he dressed as a girl to serve us our food and “accidentally” stumbled, dumping a water pitcher on the head of the philosopher Eugène Lerminier, who for once lost his overbearing and stuffy manner: he giggled like a madman as he wrung out his hair.
—
THAT SUMMER, THE HEAT in the city was unbearable. I got up early one morning to meet Marie Dorval for a walk at the Jardin des Plantes, but neither of us could find relief there. At one point Marie looked around, then raised her skirts high and called out loudly, “Come, breeze, to explore the place that everyone longs to visit! I invite you to come and take your pleasure, and in so doing cool my flesh!” But the air remained still, and finally Marie gave up and let her skirt fall and resettle itself. She was dressed all in white but for the blue satin ribbon around her waist and in the trim of her wide-brimmed hat. We walked slowly on, and I told her about Alfred. Only the night before, I had invited him to come to me at midnight, when I could be sure the children, who were staying with me, were sleeping. It had been a monumental effort to keep quiet.
“Well,” she said, “now that you are married, you must have a honeymoon.”
“It would be bliss to go away with him,” I said. “I long to be with him uninterrupted, day and night! But my resources are running low; it would be difficult to fund a vacation.”
Marie sighed, exasperated. “Someday you must endeavor to find a lover who has money!”
I didn’t bother to disagree; it was too hot to argue. But my belief was that a rich man only feels he has more license to control his woman—as well as everything else. There may have been some frustration in making more money than the man I was with, but there was power in it, too, and a strange satisfaction that I did not feel I could easily explain to anyone else.
Anyway, the success of Lélia meant that I would be paid more by my publisher as an advance against the next book, negotiations for which I had begun. In matters involving romance, I might not negotiate wisely; but when it came to business, I had become clever.
“Fontainebleau is not far,” Marie said. “You should go there. Take a riverboat; it is very pleasant. The forest there is romantic, so deep and dark and wild. And it will be cool!”
It did sound like wonderful relief. The sun was beating down so hard that my clothes burned my skin, and the heaviness of the air made it an effort to breathe. I thought of the oak trees and the Scotch pines and European beeches I knew to be in Fontainebleau, and I had heard praised the violet-colored orchids, the wild madder and cranesbill and peach-leaved bellflowers. There were imposing rock formations and gorges that invited exploration on foot, and I was an enthusiastic hiker. I had heard, too, about the great variety of birds there: woodpeckers, whose industrious rhythms never failed to amuse me, and blackcaps and tits.
I decided to propose a trip to Fontainebleau to Alfred that evening. I thought I knew what his answer would be. He would welcome the opportunity for our having more time in bed as much as I. It still astounded me, sometimes, where I had gotten to in matters of sex, considering where I had started out. It astounded me, too, that I had moved from such wariness of an individual to such love for him. But one can never untangle the intricacies of and motivation for love; one does best to simply enjoy the flowering of two hearts.
September 1822
NOHANT
“Why do you laugh?” Casimir asked, lifting himself off me and rolling away.
“I can’t help it,” I said. “It is comical, is it not?”
“Rather than satisfy you, your husband amuses you, is that it?” Casimir sat up at the side of the bed, and I heard a kind of hurt in his voice that I regretted causing. I put my hand to his back, but he pulled away from me and got up. “As for me, I find that sex with you is like lying on a board. Next time, should there be one, I shall give you a book to keep you occupie
d, so that you needn’t study the ceiling so intently, trying to find something to interest yourself.”
“Casimir,” I said, but it was too late. He was putting on his clothes.
“You should have told me of your frigid nature. After all, there are only so many ways for a man to check a horse’s teeth.”
“But I—”
He slammed the door, and I pulled my nightdress down and lay still in the bed. I stayed awake, waiting for him to come back and lie beside me, but he did not return. In the morning, he was cheerful at the breakfast table, and we planned our day as if nothing at all had happened.
—
CASIMIR AND I WERE never compatible in actes intimes. Most of the time, I continued to alternate between hilarity and confusion as a reaction to his lovemaking. But sometimes his brusqueness hurt me, and on one occasion when I cried out, he put his hand over my mouth to silence me, then proceeded.
Still, we were successful enough that I was enjoying my first pregnancy in the winter of 1822–23. I learned that when a woman is with child, her focus shifts dramatically: she cares for the one inside her with a single-mindedness, if not ferocity, that she is incapable of resisting. All her hope rests on what will be; all her efforts go toward preparation. Even when I was engaged with other pursuits, gauzy thoughts of the baby floated in and out of my brain; everything I did in caring for myself was an act for the protection and provision of my unborn child.
I was left alone often, for Casimir loved to hunt, and in long hours that might previously have been given over to reading and study and thought, I now became interested in and appreciative of the domestic arts. Much can be made of public speeches, political movements, and the might and right of various armies who take up arms in support of their ideals—or in blind allegiance to another’s will and ego—but in the end we are all human beings who long for our basic needs to be satisfied in the way that only home and hearth can.
The Dream Lover: A Novel of George Sand Page 21