without my comrades, whom I normally saw so often—I felt lonely and disconnected.
There was a knock on my door, and I opened it to my maid, who held a small, cream-colored envelope addressed to Madame Aurore Dudevant. From the handwriting, I knew it was from Jules, and my face must have betrayed me; the maid’s bland expression changed: her mouth tightened, and one eyebrow lifted.
“Merci
,
”
I said, and she said nothing, just turned on her heel and walked away.
I closed my door and read the brief message; it set my heart racing. Jules, missing me terribly, had made a hasty trip from his parents’ home in western France to Château d’Ars, the home of our friend Gustave Papet, which was a mere mile and a half up the road.
Late that night, I sat in the upstairs bedroom I had taken, longing to have an opportunity to see him. As if in answer to a prayer, I heard a light tapping at my window. It was Jules, my own Romeo, standing on a ladder he had carried from the orchard, pleading with me to let him in. He had seen the light in my window, had seen me pacing back and forth.
I let him in, laughing, crying, and covered his face with kisses.
Then: “Are you insane?” I whispered. “Casimir is here! If he finds you, he will fill you with buckshot!”
Jules put his hands to either side of my face and regarded me tenderly. “I would happily die for this moment. Anyway, we are protected: Gustave has volunteered to lie in a ditch in the gardendirectly beneath your window. He will throw a stone if he sees or hears anything.”
As it happened, there was no cause for worry. The whole time Jules was in my bed with me, Casimir lay in his bed, snoring, and there was a nearly comical aspect to it. It also enlivened our lovemaking, the thought that perhaps Casimir might awaken.
We were already in a rush—we had missed each other’s minds and bodies—but this secrecy added a kind of wild excitement we had not enjoyed before. We bit and pinched each other, he pulled on my hair until I gasped; and in the pain there was a low-down pleasure. We kept whispering to each other that we must hurry and then must part, poor Gustave out there lying in the dirt; but every time we gave each other a farewell kiss, it led to more and more, until our dear friend ended up spending the entire night outside, relieved of his duty only as dawn broke. I was deeply grateful to Gustave and later sent him a letter saying so, calling our friendship nothing less than holy and imploring him to find a way for Jules and me to repay him.
But first, after Jules had made his escape, I sat at my desk, still tingling, to write a letter to Émile Regnault, a medical student I loved as a brother. I wanted to tell someone of Jules and my adventuresome lovemaking; it had made me feel distinctively alive and powerful—and apparently in need of a bit of braggadocio, as well. I wrote, “I am covered with bites and bruises; so weak I can hardly stand I’m in such a frenzy of joy. If you were only here, I’d bite you too until blood flowed, just so you could share a little of our savage raptures.”
Then I began to make edits on the pages Jules had given me for our novel. It was due to be published in December. People were saying that no doubt Jules would contribute next to nothing. I hotly defended my lover but those rumors were true. With the exception of a few bawdy (and, in my opinion, tasteless) scenes that appealed to the juvenile aspects of Jules’s character—and apparently to our publisher’s as well—the book was mine.
Not for many years did it occur to me that there was another side to that evening of stolen pleasure with Jules, a way of looking at it that revealed me not as an independent and freethinking woman who had the right to live her own life but as one blind to the needs of her children. For my lover and I would be warned in the event that my husband’s lamp got lit and he began coming toward Jules and me. But what about Solange and
There was a knock on my door, and I opened it to my maid, who held a small, cream-colored envelope addressed to Madame Aurore Dudevant. From the handwriting, I knew it was from Jules, and my face must have betrayed me; the maid’s bland expression changed: her mouth tightened, and one eyebrow lifted.
“Merci
,
”
I said, and she said nothing, just turned on her heel and walked away.
I closed my door and read the brief message; it set my heart racing. Jules, missing me terribly, had made a hasty trip from his parents’ home in western France to Château d’Ars, the home of our friend Gustave Papet, which was a mere mile and a half up the road.
Late that night, I sat in the upstairs bedroom I had taken, longing to have an opportunity to see him. As if in answer to a prayer, I heard a light tapping at my window. It was Jules, my own Romeo, standing on a ladder he had carried from the orchard, pleading with me to let him in. He had seen the light in my window, had seen me pacing back and forth.
I let him in, laughing, crying, and covered his face with kisses.
Then: “Are you insane?” I whispered. “Casimir is here! If he finds you, he will fill you with buckshot!”
Jules put his hands to either side of my face and regarded me tenderly. “I would happily die for this moment. Anyway, we are protected: Gustave has volunteered to lie in a ditch in the gardendirectly beneath your window. He will throw a stone if he sees or hears anything.”
As it happened, there was no cause for worry. The whole time Jules was in my bed with me, Casimir lay in his bed, snoring, and there was a nearly comical aspect to it. It also enlivened our lovemaking, the thought that perhaps Casimir might awaken.
We were already in a rush—we had missed each other’s minds and bodies—but this secrecy added a kind of wild excitement we had not enjoyed before. We bit and pinched each other, he pulled on my hair until I gasped; and in the pain there was a low-down pleasure. We kept whispering to each other that we must hurry and then must part, poor Gustave out there lying in the dirt; but every time we gave each other a farewell kiss, it led to more and more, until our dear friend ended up spending the entire night outside, relieved of his duty only as dawn broke. I was deeply grateful to Gustave and later sent him a letter saying so, calling our friendship nothing less than holy and imploring him to find a way for Jules and me to repay him.
But first, after Jules had made his escape, I sat at my desk, still tingling, to write a letter to Émile Regnault, a medical student I loved as a brother. I wanted to tell someone of Jules and my adventuresome lovemaking; it had made me feel distinctively alive and powerful—and apparently in need of a bit of braggadocio, as well. I wrote, “I am covered with bites and bruises; so weak I can hardly stand I’m in such a frenzy of joy. If you were only here, I’d bite you too until blood flowed, just so you could share a little of our savage raptures.”
Then I began to make edits on the pages Jules had given me for our novel. It was due to be published in December. People were saying that no doubt Jules would contribute next to nothing. I hotly defended my lover but those rumors were true. With the exception of a few bawdy (and, in my opinion, tasteless) scenes that appealed to the juvenile aspects of Jules’s character—and apparently to our publisher’s as well—the book was mine.
Not for many years did it occur to me that there was another side to that evening of stolen pleasure with Jules, a way of looking at it that revealed me not as an independent and freethinking woman who had the right to live her own life but as one blind to the needs of her children. For my lover and I would be warned in the event that my husband’s lamp got lit and he began coming toward Jules and me. But what about Solange and
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