A Cry of Alarm
I have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be of help to many of my readers, I hasten to make it known to them.
Paris, .
Sir:
In short stories or newspaper articles you often write about subjects connected with what I shall call “current morality.” I wish to submit some ideas which I think you could use for one of your articles.
I am not married. I am a bachelor, and apparently rather naive, but I think most men are naive in the same way. Being very trustful, it is difficult for me to recognise the natural astuteness of my neighbours. I go straight ahead, open-eyed, and don’t look keenly enough behind either things or motives.
Most of us are in the habit of taking appearance for reality—of accepting people at their own valuation; very few possess the intelligence that enables them to detect the real secret character of others. The consequence of this particular and conventional way of looking at life is that we go through the world like moles; that we never believe what really is, but only what seems to be; that we exclaim: “How incredible!” when the truth is exposed, and that everything displeasing to our idealistic code of morality is classified as an exception without realising that nearly all the cases in point are due to these exceptions. A further consequence is that credulous fools, like myself, are the dupes of everybody—more especially of women who are clever at the game.
I have gone far afield before reaching the particular fact that is of interest to me.
I have a mistress, a married woman. Like many other men, I thought I had found the exception—a poor unhappy woman who was deceiving her husband for the first time. I had been—or rather I thought I had been—courting her for some time; I thought I had won her by my love and consideration, had triumphed by dint of my perseverance. I had indeed taken thousands of precautions, used thousands of tricks, and thousands of exquisite hesitations in order to overcome her resistance.
Well, this is what happened last week:
Her husband being away for some days, she asked if she could come and dine with me alone, asking me to wait upon her so that we could dispense with the servant. She had been obsessed for the last four or five months by the idea that she wanted to get drunk, completely drunk, without any cause for fear—without having to go home, speak to her maid, or walk in the presence of witnesses. She had often been what she called “cheerfully confused” without going any further, and had found it extremely pleasant, therefore she had promised herself to get thoroughly drunk, once, and only once. She told them at home that she was going to spend the night and following day with some friends near Paris, and arrived at my flat at dinnertime. Of course a woman can only get drunk on iced champagne! She drank a large glassful fasting, and had begun to ramble on before the oysters were served. I could reach the plates and dishes by stretching out my arm and I did the waiting with more or less success while listening to her chatter.
She drank glass after glass, obsessed by her one idea. She
