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Precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope!
The indistinct summons of nature is inexorable. The whole of woman--what
an abyss!
Luckily, there was no woman for Gwynplaine but Dea--the only one he
desired, the only one who could desire him.
Gwynplaine felt that vague and mighty shudder which is the vital claim
of infinity. Besides there was the aggravation of the spring. He was
breathing the nameless odours of the starry darkness. He walked forward
in a wild feeling of delight. The wandering perfumes of the rising sap,
the heady irradiations which float in shadow, the distant opening of
nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of
waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness,
the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast
diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of
voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy
provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it is saying.
Any one observing Gwynplaine walk would have said, "See!--a drunken
man!"
He almost staggered under the weight of his own heart, of spring, and of
the night.
The solitude in the bowling-green was so peaceful that at times he spoke
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