So I was made acquainted with her husband’s habits and defects, all his little manias, and his most secret tastes.
She would say, asking for approbation: “Isn’t he a bore? Say—isn’t he a bore? You know how he has bored me to death—eh? So the very first time I saw you I said to myself: ‘Halloa, I like that man. I’ll have him as my lover.’ After that you began to make love to me.”
I must have looked rather queer, for she noticed my expression in spite of her drunkenness, and said, bursting with laughter: “Ah! booby, what precautions you did take—but when men make love to us, you dear old stupid, it is because we are willing—and then you must do it quickly or else you make us wait—you must be an idiot not to understand, not to see by our looks, that we are saying ‘yes.’ Ah! I had to wait for you, you softy! I didn’t know how to make you understand that I was in a hurry—ah! yes, all right—flowers—poems—compliments—still more flowers—and then nothing more—I nearly gave you up, old man, you took so long to decide. And only to think that half the men in the world are like you, but the other half—ah!—ah!—ah!”
Her laugh made me shiver. I stammered: “The other half—well, the other half?”
She was still drinking, her eyes clouded by the wine, and her mind driven by the imperious desire to speak the truth peculiar to some drunkards.
She continued: “Ah! the other half move quickly—but all the same they’re right, they are. There are days when they are unsuccessful, but there are others when they get what they want, in spite of everything. Dear old chap—if you only knew—how funny they are—the two kinds of men! You know, the shy ones like you can’t imagine what the others are like—what they do—directly—when they are alone with us. They take risks. They get their faces slapped, it is true—but that makes no difference—they know quite well that we’ll never tell. They know us, they do.”
I was looking at her with the eyes of an inquisitor and with a wild desire to make her talk, to learn everything. How many times had I not asked myself the question: “How do other men behave to women, to our women?” I recognised, only by seeing in a drawing room, anywhere in public, two men speaking to the same woman, that if they, one after the other, were to be alone with her, they would approach her quite differently, even though they were on exactly the same footing with her. At the first glance one feels that certain men—endowed by nature with the gift of pleasing, or even only more disillusioned, bolder, than we are—will arrive in an hour’s conversation with a woman they admire at a degree of intimacy which we could not reach in a year. Very well—these men, these professional, enterprising lovers, when the occasion presents itself, do they push the boldness of hands and lips to a point which would appear to us, the bashful sort, an odious outrage, but which women perhaps only consider a pardonable forwardness, a rather unbecoming homage to their irresistible charms?
She threw herself back in her chair and burst into a fit of nervous, unnatural laughter, the laughter that leads to hysterics, and when she had calmed down a little, she said: “Ah! ah! old chap, improper?—that is to say, they stick at nothing—right away—at nothing—you understand—and still more—”
I felt as indignant as if she had unmasked some monstrous evil. “And you allow this, you women?”
“No—we don’t allow it—we hit out—but we are amused, all the same. They are much more amusing than you others! Besides, one is always afraid, one is never sure—and it’s delightful to be afraid—especially to be afraid of that. You have to watch them all the time—it is like fighting a duel. You look into their eyes to learn their thoughts, to see what they are going to do with their hands. You may say they are cads, but they love us better than you do!”
A curious unexpected sensation came over me. Although I was a bachelor and determined to remain one, these impudent confidences suddenly made me feel like a husband. I felt I was the friend, the ally, the brother of all the trustful husbands who, if not actually robbed, are at least defrauded by these ready-fingered lovers of feminine underclothing. In obedience to that strange emotion—which still persists—I am writing to beg you to send a cry of alarm out to the army of unsuspecting husbands.
Nevertheless I had doubts, the woman was drunk and must be telling lies. I returned to the subject, saying: “How is it that you never tell anybody, you women?”
She looked at me with such profound, sincere pity that, for a moment, I thought astonishment had made her sober.
“My dear fellow, how stupid you are! Does one ever talk about such things—ah! ah! ah! Does a servant tell about his little perquisites, his discount on the bills, etc.? Well, that, that’s our discount. So long as we go no further, husbands should not complain.
