He sought nothing but a woman in
women, and cultivated cynicism, until it became with him a habit
of mind. When his mistress, from the couch on which she lay,
soared and was lost in regions of ecstatic bliss, Don Juan
followed suit, earnest, expansive, serious as any German student.
But he said I, while she, in the transports of intoxication, said
We. He understood to admiration the art of abandoning himself to
the influence of a woman; he was always clever enough to make her
believe that he trembled like some boy fresh from college before
his first partner at a dance, when he asks her, "Do you like
dancing?" But, no less, he could be terrible at need, could
unsheathe a formidable sword and make short work of Commandants.
Banter lurked beneath his simplicity, mocking laughter behind his
tears--for he had tears at need, like any woman nowadays who says
to her husband, "Give me a carriage, or I shall go into a
consumption."
For the merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass of
circulating bills; for most young men it is a woman, and for a
woman here and there it is a man; for a certain order of mind it
is a salon, a coterie, a quarter of the town, or some single
city; but Don Juan found his world in himself.
This model of grace and dignity, this captivating wit, moored his
bark by every shore; but wherever he was led he was never carried
away, and was only steered in a course of his own choosing.
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