some domineering lover who might treat me as his slave, and who could possibly force me to pay him for his caresses out of my hard-earned savings, thus reducing me one of these days to beggary. I do not belong to that breed of common street whores.
It may very well be that those who long for beautiful passion and platonic love can thrive on it; I feed by no means on hot and undulating passions, since pompous and artificial emotions while making love are not the kind of nourishment I consider healthy for my constitution. I need stronger fare. Mister Plato surely was a funny character prescribing his ways of love. What would have happened to the human race if everyone had followed the ruffled train of thought of this spoiler of our profession?
But, let us resume our story.
The news of my widowhood barely had time to spread through Paris, when I was besieged by a throng of new admirers from all classes and of all sorts. It was a special Ambassador who thoroughly liberated me from their molestations. I could not hide my joy of having made such an important conquest. My vanity was flattered enormously. It was an incredible satisfaction to know that I had intrigued and captured a man whose adroitness was able to sway opinions, who could change the entire system of European affairs with the acuteness of his brilliant thoughts and his thorough knowledge of the varied interests of the sovereign and his cabinet, and who could at the same time change everything for the common good and contribute to the greater glory of his country. That was the glorious picture I had in my mind of my new master, the Ambassador, ere I had met him personally. I did not doubt for a moment the existence of a thousand more beautiful characteristics in addition to the rare and outstanding talents I have just mentioned, and it did not dawn on me that one had to have a rather towering personality to be able to fulfill expectations of such magnitude. My high opinion of him was actually strengthened by the rather peculiar manner in which we conducted our transactions. We reached our agreement through negotiations. He sent secret emissaries to me, and I dispatched mine to him. They consulted with one another. They listened to the proposed bids which were carefully checked and debated. Each of the parties tried to make the most of it and thus multiplied the difficulties. Failures and disadvantages were found everywhere, and if there were none, they were created on the spot. Whenever they reached agreement at one point, they created disagreements at the next. After several disrupted and newly appointed conferences our plenipotentiaries finally (and luckily) signed the articles and, after having made out duplicates, we were finally satisfied and exchanged the copies of our contracts.
Since I now have reason to believe that the reader has become impatient, and finally wants to know the name of His Excellency, I will not wait any longer to give you his description.
The Ambassador had one of those faces which could be called insignificant and colorless and which is therefore extremely difficult to describe. His stature was slightly above average, not especially well-built, but not exactly too bad either. Like most people of quality, his legs were rather thin and bony. He carried a certain air of pretension which, however, contrasted unfavorably with his average and mediocre face. He held his chin high and his neck stiff which made his cheeks look rather puffy, and he glanced continuously down upon the many decorations which had been bestowed upon him. To judge by his stern, taciturn and introverted expression, one could conclude that he was continually in deep thought. He hardly ever talked, thus indicating that his mind was preoccupied, and his demeanor made it clear that he was very careful and kept a tight reign on his lips during conversations. Whenever a question was posed he answered with a barely discernible nod which was either accompanied by a secretive glance or an imperceptible smile. Who, then, would not believe that my partiality for the Ambassador should turn into regret in less than one month because of these peculiar airs of distinction and his ambiguous behavior? I could never have been talked out of believing that he was one of the most important personages of our time, were it not for the well-intentioned picture that his secretary drew of him. Earlier I have already stated that we have no more rigorous and unrelenting fault-finders than our own servants. If, despite their ignorance, our faults do not escape them, how could we possibly hope to avoid their sharp tongues when they happen to be intelligent and well-informed? This one was too enlightened to be taken in by the arrogance and forced seriousness of his Lord and Master. No matter whom the servants are talking about, I have always found that their observations are invariably correct, and thus I have decided, dear reader, to let you know what the findings of the Secretary were. This is the extent of what he had to say to me:
“Always remember, so that you may never be disappointed and cheated, that the great ones are only great when compared to our smallness and that a ridiculous bias infuses us with a blind and cowardly respect towards them, which makes them look so tall in our eyes. You just try it; look them straight in the eyes, divest them of the glitter with which they surround themselves, and suddenly their halo of respect and dignity will vanish into thin air. You will instantly recognize their true value and see for yourself that all those things which you had hitherto taken for greatness and dignity turn out to be nothing but arrogance and stupidity.
There is one axiom which you should never forget: do not overlook the fact that every personal merit merely matches the importance of the authority with which one has been invested, just as much as the quality of a horse is frequently judged by the costliness of its bridle. However, if you harness an old nag to its best advantage, cover it with a beautiful saddlecloth, put it before the most beautiful and costly carriage, all the adornment and decoration in the world will not change one whit the mere fact that you still have an old nag. In a similar manner, the limited mind of His Excellency cannot grasp the idea that a repelling demeanor, a serious and stereotyped behavior, proud and imperious gestures are the only characteristics necessary to make a minister of the King. Personally I find this the typical behavior of an idiot. He may, for all I care, pretend to be as imposing as he wants, act as if he can hear the grass grow, and puff himself up with the importance of his mission, one will always be able to recognize that, despite his so-called self-control and his exertions, the cross is too weak for such a heavy burden. It will never fail; the moment he is sure that the public eye is no longer upon him, he will unload this burden upon his secretaries. And then, what do you think is going on whilst we sweat and try to decipher his dispatches, groping for appropriate answers? He is playing around with his servants, his monkeys and his dogs. He cuts silhouettes out of newspapers, warbles little songs, plays the flute, falls back into an easy chair, stretches his legs and goes to sleep. I do not want you to think that all of our Ministers cut such a miserable figure. There are some whose services are far greater than all the praises which could be heaped upon them. I knew many of the latter who combined their professional capacities with those that brought them respect and general esteem. Quite contrary to those farcical colleagues who cannot keep up with what is going on in the King's cabinet, but who are kept in high esteem by society because of their craze for amusement. In this respect they are better politicians, since the air of confidence and candor which they seem to ooze causes people to underestimate them and to forget keeping their lips buttoned.”
The secretary told me quite a few other excellent things which I am not at liberty to repeat. But since there is nothing which ultimately does not become boring, I would like to try and make my reader's mouth water. The admiration and respect which I had hitherto felt for His Excellency turned soon into disdain. Despite his generosity and his many costly presents, I would have been capable of playing any trick on him in order to regain my freedom, if it had not been for a sudden collapse of my health that gave both of us a perfect reason for a separation.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. I RETIRE
I fell into fits of melancholy and tiredness which became dangerous stumbling blocks for the knowledge of all the Aesculapians I consulted. Every single one of them was equally as ignorant about the true suffering which had taken hold of me. Everyone had his own ideas and convinced me with his, alas so forceful, rhetoric, that I firmly believed myself to be suffering from all the ills of the world rolled into one. I eagerly accepted the pills and potions they offered me, and in a very short time my body had become a veritable apothecary. Nevertheless I kept losing weight under their very eyes and soon I was a mere shadow of my former self. I tried in vain to replace the natural freshness of my complexion, my healthy color and my normally voluptuous figure with deceiving secret cosmetics. But the rouge for my cheeks, the salves for my skin, the white powder make-up and the beauty plasters, all of them were incapable of reflecting the pretty face of Margot in my mirror. Despite thorough searching and painfully accurate studies in my looking glass-which sometimes lasted for more than two hours — I could barely find a single familiar line to remind me of the beauty I used to possess. I looked as if I had been prepared for the stage where the magic of distance makes one look desirable but where one cannot bear to be looked at from close by. The various layers of make-up which I had applied to my face gave me at a distance a certain dignity and caused my
