proportioned it is. For three years I was conscious of no one but her. How I suffered! For she deceived me with everyone. Why? For no reason, for the mere sake of deceiving. And when I discovered it, when I abused her as a light-o’-love and a loose woman, she admitted it calmly. ‘We’re not married, are we?’ she said.
“Since I have been here, I have thought of her so much that I have ended by understanding her: that woman is Manon Lescaut come again. Manon could not love without betraying; for Manon, love, pleasure, and money were all one.”
He was silent. Then, some minutes later:
“When I had squandered my last sou for her, she said to me quite simply: ‘You realise, my dear, that I cannot live on air and sunshine. I love you madly, I love you more than anyone in the world, but one must live. Poverty and I would never make good bedfellows.’
“And if I did but tell you what an agonising life I had lead with her! When I looked at her, I wanted to kill her as sharply as I wanted to embrace her. When I looked at her … I felt a mad impulse to open my arms, to take her to me and strangle her. There lurked in her, behind her eyes, something treacherous and forever unattainable that made me execrate her; and it is perhaps because of that that I loved her so. In her, the Feminine, the detestable and distracting Feminine, was more puissant than in any other woman. She was charged with it, surcharged as with an intoxicating and venomous fluid. She was Woman, more essentially than any one woman has ever been.
“And look you, when I went out with her, she fixed her glance on every man, in such a way that she seemed to be giving each one of them her undivided interest. That maddened me and yet held me to her the closer. This woman, in the mere act of walking down the street, was owned by every man in it, in spite of me, in spite of herself, by virtue of her very nature, although she bore herself with a quiet and modest air. Do you understand?
“And what torture! At the theatre, in the restaurant, it seemed to me that men possessed her under my very eyes. And as soon as I left her company, other men did indeed possess her.
“It is ten years since I have seen her, and I love her more than ever.”
Night had spread its wings upon the earth. The powerful scent of orange-trees hung in the air.
I said to him:
“You will see her again?”
He answered:
“By God, yes. I have here, in land and money, from seven to eight hundred thousand francs. When the million is complete, I shall sell all and depart. I shall have enough for one year with her—one entire marvellous year. And then goodbye, my life will be over.”
I asked:
“But afterwards?”
“Afterwards, I don’t know. It will be the end. Perhaps I shall ask her to keep me on as her body-servant.”
The Secret
The little Baroness de Grangerie was drowsing on her couch, when the little Marquise of Rennedon entered abruptly, looking very disturbed, her bodice a little rumpled, her hat a little on one side, and dropped into a chair, exclaiming:
“Ouf, I’ve done it!”
Her friend, who had never seen her anything but placid and gentle, sat bolt upright in amazement. She demanded:
“What is it? What have you done?”
The Marchioness, who did not seem able to remain in one place, got to her feet, and began to walk about the room; then she flung herself on the foot of the couch where her friend was resting and, taking her hands, said:
“Listen, darling, promise me never to repeat what I am going to tell you.”
“I promise.”
“On your immortal soul.”
“On my immortal soul.”
“Well, I have just revenged myself on Simon.”
The other woman exclaimed:
“Oh, you’ve done right!”
“Yes, haven’t I? Just think, during the past six months he has become more intolerable than ever, beyond words intolerable. When I married him, I knew well enough how ugly he was, but I thought that he was a kindly man. What a mistake I made! He must certainly have thought that I loved him for himself, with his fat paunch and his red nose, for he began to coo like a turtledove. You can imagine that it made me laugh, I nicknamed him ‘Pigeon’ for it. Men really do have the oddest notions about themselves. When he realised that I felt no more than friendship for him, he became suspicious, he began to speak bitterly to me, to treat me as if I were a coquette or a fast woman, or I don’t know what. And then it became more serious because of … of … it’s not very easy to put it into words. … In short, he was very much in love with me, very much in love … and he proved it to me often, far too often. Oh, my dearest, what torture it is to be … made love to by a clown of a man! … No, really, I couldn’t bear it any longer … not any longer at all … it is just like having a tooth pulled every evening … much worse than that, much worse. Well, imagine among your acquaintances someone very ugly, very ridiculous, very repellent, with a fat paunch—that’s the frightful part—and great hairy calves. You can just imagine him, can’t you? Now imagine that this someone is your husband … and that … every evening … you understand. No, its loathsome! … loathsome! It made me sick, positively sick … sick in my basin. Really, I can’t bear it any longer. There ought to be a law to protect wives in such cases. Just imagine it yourself, every evening! … Pah, it’s beastly!
“It’s not that I have been dreaming of romantic love-affairs—not ever. There aren’t any nowadays. All the men in our world are like stable-boys or bankers; they care for nothing but horses or
