'...That which I demanded before all was not physical beauty, it was beauty of the soul, love; but love as I feel it is perhaps not in the human possibilities - and yet it appears to me that I must love thus and that I give more than I exact. What magnificent folly! What sublime prodigality! To deliver yourself entirely without caring anything for self, renouncing the possession of yourself and your freedom of will, placing it in the hands of another, to see no more with your eyes or hear with your ears, being one in two bodies, to melt and mingle your souls in such fashion that you would not know if you were yourself or the other being, now the sun, now the moon, to see all the world created in one being only, displacing the center of life, to be ready at all times for the greatest sacrifices and the most absolute abnegation, to suffer in the bosom of the person loved as if it was your own, oh, wonder, to double yourself while giving yourself!..'
from Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier (Chapter XV)
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