Gontran, who had said nothing, was appealed to.
“Paris is still the happiest hunting-ground of all,” said he. “With a woman, as with a book, we appreciate one more highly in a place where we never expected to find one; but the finest specimens are found only in Paris.”
He was silent for some moments, then added:
“God, how adorable they are! Go out into our streets on any spring morning. They look as if they had come up like flowers, the little darlings pattering along beside the houses. What a charming, charming, charming sight! The scent of violets reaches us from the pavement; the bunches of violets that pass us in the slow-moving carts pushed on by the hawkers. The town is alive with spring, and we look at the women. Christ, how tempting they are in their light frocks, thin frocks through which their skin gleams! One strolls along, nose down to the scent and senses on fire; one strolls along and one sniffs them out and waylays them. Such mornings are utterly divine.
“You notice her approaching in the distance, a hundred paces away you can find out and recognise the woman who will be delightful at close range. By a flower in her hat, a movement of her head, the swing of her body, you know her. She comes. You say to yourself: ‘Attention, eyes front!’ and walk past her with your eyes devouring her.
“Is she a slip of a girl running errands for a shop, a young woman coming from church or going to visit her lover? What’s the odds! Her breast shows rounded under her transparent bodice. Oh, if only one might thrust a finger down beneath it—a finger, or one’s lips! Does she look shy or bold, is her head dark or fair? What’s the odds! The swift passage of this woman, as she flits past, sends a thrill down your spine. And how desire haunts us until evening for the woman we have met in such fashion! I’ll swear I’ve treasured the memory of a round twenty, of the dear creatures seen once or ten times like this, and I would have fallen madly in love with them if I had known them more intimately.
“But there you are, the women we cherish most fiercely are the ones we never know. Have you noticed it? It’s very odd. Every now and then one catches a glimpse of women the mere sight of whom rouses in us the wildest desire. But one never more than glimpses them. For my part, when I think of all the adorable creatures whom I have jostled in the streets of Paris, I could hang myself for rage. Where are they? Who are they? Where could I find them again, see them again? There is a proverb which says that we are always rubbing elbows with happiness, and I’ll take my oath that I’ve more than once walked past the woman who could have snared me like a linnet with the allure of her fragrant body.”
Roger des Annettes had been listening with a smile, and answered:
“I know all that as well as you. Listen what happened to me, yes, to me. About five years ago I met for the first time, on the Pont de la Concorde, a tall and rather sturdy young woman who made on me an impression … oh, an altogether amazing impression! She was a brunette, a plump brunette, with gleaming hair growing low on her forehead and eyebrows that bracketed both eyes, under their high arch that stretched from temple to temple. The shadow of a moustache on her lip set one dreaming … dreaming … as the sight of a bunch of flowers on a table stirs dreams of a beloved wood. She had a shapely figure, firm rounded breasts held proudly like a challenge, offering themselves as a temptation. Her eyes were like inkstains on the gleaming white of her skin. This girl’s eyes were not eyes, but shadowed caverns, deep open caverns in her head, through which one saw right into her, entered into her. What a veiled empty gaze, untroubled by thought and utterly as lovely!
“I imagined her to be a Jewess. I followed her. More than one man turned to look after her. She walked with a slightly swaggering gait, a little graceless but very disturbing. She took a cab in the Place de la Concorde. And I stood there like a stuck pig, beside the Obelisk; I stood transfixed by the fiercest passion of longing that had ever assailed me in my life.
“I remembered her for at least three weeks, then I forgot her.
“Six months later I saw her again in the Rue de la Paix, and at sight of her my heart leaped as if I had caught sight of some mistress whom I had loved to distraction. I halted the better to watch her approach. As she passed me, almost touching me, I seemed to be standing in the mouth of a furnace. Then, as she drew away, I felt as if a cool wind were blowing across my face. I did not follow her. I was afraid of committing some folly, afraid of myself.
“Again and again I saw her in my dreams. You know what such obsessions are.
“It was a year before I found her again; then, one evening at sunset, about the month of May, I recognised her in a woman who was walking in front of me up the Champs-Élysées.
“The Arc de l’Étoile lifted its sombre outline against the flaming curtain of the sky. A golden dust, a mist of rosy light hung in the air, it was one of those glorious evenings which are the immortal glory of Paris.
“I followed her, wild with the longing to speak to her, to kneel at her feet, to tell her of the emotion which was choking me.
“Twice I
