It is a dangerous time, even more dangerous than spring
for those who have passed the days of youth.
It had proved dangerous to Carmen Barbille. The melancholy of the
gorgeously tinted trees, the flights of the birds to the south, the smell
of the fallow field, the wind with the touch of the coming rains--these
had given to a growing discontent with her monotonous life the desire
born of self-pity. In spite of all she could do she was turning to the
life she had left behind in Cadiz long ago.
It seemed to her that Jean Jacques had ceased to care for the charms
which once he had so proudly proclaimed. There was in her the strain of
the religion of Epicurus. She desired always that her visible corporeal
self should be admired and desired, that men should say, "What a splendid
creature!" It was in her veins, an undefined philosophy of life; and she
had ever measured the love of Jean Jacques by his caresses. She had no
other vital standard. This she could measure, she could grasp it and say,
"Here I have a hold; it is so much harvested." But if some one had
written her a poem a thousand verses long, she would have said, "Yes, all
very fine, but let me see what it means; let me feel that it is so."
She had an inherent love of luxury and pleasure, which was far more
active in her now than when she married Jean Jacques. For a Spanish woman
she had matured late; and that was because, in her youth, she had been
active and athletic, unlike most Spanish girls; and the microbes of a
sensuous life, or what might have become a sensual life, had not good
chance to breed.
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