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She told herself, that it was very naughty and very wicked of
her, to have forgotten the words uttered by Marius.
She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablu-
tions of soul and body, her prayers and her toilet.
One may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into
a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would
hardly venture it, prose must not.
It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is
whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily,
which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun
has not gazed upon it. Woman in the bud is sacred. That in-
nocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is
afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a slip-
per, that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a
mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise
up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture
or a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened,
those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and
modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement, that al-
most winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm,
the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds
of dawn,— it is not fitting that all this should be narrated,
and it is too much to have even called attention to it.
The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of
the rising of a young girl than in the presence of the rising
of a star. The possibility of hurting should inspire an aug-
mentation of respect. The down on the peach, the bloom
on the plum, the radiated crystal of the snow, the wing of
the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse compared