ty, the smiles, the youthful caresses, the hopes! Should not all that
be eternal?

"How I have wept whole nights-thinking of those poor women of former
days, so beautiful, so loving, so sweet, whose arms were extended in an
embrace, and who now are dead! A kiss is immortal! It goes from lips to
lips, from century to century, from age to age. Men receive them, give
them and die.

"The past attracts me, the present terrifies me because the future means
death. I regret all that has gone by. I mourn all who have lived; I
should like to check time, to stop the clock. But time goes, it goes, it
passes, it takes from me each second a little of myself for the
annihilation of to-morrow. And I shall never live again.

"Farewell, ye women of yesterday. I love you!

"But I am not to be pitied. I found her, the one I was waiting for, and
through her I enjoyed inestimable pleasure.

"I was sauntering in Paris on a bright, sunny morning, with a happy heart
and a high step, looking in at the shop windows with the vague interest
of an idler. All at once I noticed in the shop of a dealer in antiques a
piece of Italian furniture of the seventeenth century. It was very
handsome, very rare. I set it down as being the work of a Venetian artist
named Vitelli, who was celebrated in his day.

"I went on my way.

"Why did the remembrance of that piece of furniture haunt me with such
insistence that I retraced my steps? I again stopped before the shop, in
order to take another look at it, and I felt that it tempted me.

"What a singular thing temptation is! One gazes at an object, and, little
by little, it charms you, it disturbs you, it fills your thoughts as a
woman's face might do. The enchantment of it penetrates your being, a
strange enchantment of form, color and appearance of an inanimate object.
And one loves it, one desires it, one wishes to have it. A longing to own
it takes possession of you, gently at first, as though it were timid, but
growing, becoming intense, irresistible.

"And the dealers seem to guess, from your ardent gaze, your secret and
increasing longing.

"I bought this piece of furniture and had it sent home at once. I placed
it in my room.

"Oh, I am sorry for those who do not know the honeymoon of the collector
with the antique he has just purchased. One looks at it tenderly and
passes one's hand over it as if it were human flesh; one comes back to it
every moment, one is always thinking of it, wherever or