Now, to take up your other warning: that of my passion born or to be born for Madame de l’Estorade. I quote your most judicious deductions for the purpose of answering them fully.
In 1837, when you left for Italy, Madame de l’Estorade was, you say, in the flower of her beauty; and the queer, audacious persistence which I have shown in deriving inspiration from her shows that it has not faded. Hence, if the evil be not already done, you warn me to be on my guard; from the admiration of an artist to the adoration of the man there is but a step, and the history of the late Pygmalion is commended to my study.
In the first place, learned doctor and mythologian, allow me this remark. Being on the spot and therefore much better placed than you to judge of the dangers of the situation, I can assure you that the principal person concerned does not appear to feel the least anxiety. Monsieur de l’Estorade quarrels with me for one thing only: he thinks my visits too few, and my reserve misanthropy.
_Parbleu_! I hear you say, a husband is always the last to know that his wife is being courted. So be it. But the high renown of Madame de l’Estorade’s virtue, her cold and rather calculating good sense, which often served to balance the ardent and passionate impetuosity of one you knew well,--what of that? And will you not grant that motherhood as it appears in that lady--pushed to a degree of fervor which I might almost call fanaticism--would be to her an infallible preservative?
So much for her. But it is not, I see, for her tranquillity, it is mine for which your friendship is concerned; if Pygmalion had not succeeded in giving life to his statue, a pretty life his love would have made him!
To your charitable solicitude I must answer, (1) by asserting my principles (though the word and the thing are utterly out of date); (2) by a certain stupid respect that I feel for conjugal loyalty; (3) by the natural preoccupation which the serious public enterprise I am about to undertake must necessarily give to my mind and imagination. I must also tell you that I belong, if not by spiritual height, at least by all the tendencies of my mind and character, to that strong and serious school of artists of another age who, finding that art is long and life is short--_ars longa et vita brevis_--did not commit the mistake of wasting their time and lessening their powers of creation by silly and insipid intrigues.