But how stupid you are! To talk about all that would be to give the alarm to every ninny! Besides, where’s the harm so long as you do not yield?”
Quite confused, I asked another question: “So you have often been kissed?”
She replied with sovereign contempt for the man who could have a doubt on the subject: “Of course. Every woman has been kissed again and again. Try any one of them to see, you big idiot. Here, kiss Madame de X … she is quite young and straight—kiss, my dear, kiss them and run your fingers over them, you’ll see, you’ll see. Ah! ah! ah!”
Suddenly she threw her full glass at the pendant cluster. The champagne, dripping down like drops of rain, put out three candles, stained the wallpaper, and wet the table, while the broken bits of crystal were scattered about the room. Then she tried to do the same thing with the bottle but I stopped her; then she began to shout at the top of her voice—the attack of hysterics had begun—just as I expected.
I had almost forgotten this drunken woman’s confession when, a few days later, I found myself by chance at the same reception as that Madame de X … whom my mistress had advised me to kiss. We lived in the same district, so I offered to take her home, as she was alone that evening. She accepted the offer.
As soon as we were in the carriage I said to myself: “Now then, go ahead,” but I dared not. I didn’t know how to start, how to begin the attack. Suddenly, filled with the desperate courage of cowardice, I said: “How beautiful you were this evening.”
Laughingly she replied: “So this evening was an exception, since you noticed it for the first time?”
I had no reply ready. It is quite clear that I am no good in the warfare of gallantry. However, after a few moments’ reflection I hit upon the following remark: “No, but I never dared to tell you.” She was astonished and said: “Why?” “Because it’s—it’s rather difficult.” “Difficult to tell a woman she’s pretty? Where do you come from? You must always say it—even if you don’t mean it—because it is always a pleasure to hear.”
Seized by a sudden fit of fantastic audacity, I caught her by the waist and tried to find her mouth with my lips. However, I must have been trembling and could not have appeared very terrible to her. I must also have made a mess of the attempt, for she only turned her head away and said:
“Oh! no! that’s too bad, too bad. You go too quickly—take care of my hair. You can’t kiss a woman who wears her hair as I do!”
Desperate and heartbroken at my failure, I had sunk back into my seat when the carriage stopped at her door. She got out, shook hands with me, and said most graciously: “Thanks for bringing me home, dear Monsieur, and don’t forget my advice.”
Three days after, I met her again. She had forgotten all about it.
As for me, I am always thinking about those other men who know how to treat a woman’s coiffure with consideration, and how to seize every opportunity.
I hand this letter, without any addition, over to the meditation of my men and women readers, married or single.
Love
Three Pages from a Hunter’s Diary
I have just read, in a news item, a Drama of Passion. He killed her, then he killed himself—therefore he loved her. What do they matter, He and She? Their love alone has value; and it interests me not so much because I am moved or astonished by it or because it irritates me or makes me think, but because it brings back to me a memory of my youth, a strange reminiscence of my hunting days when Love was made manifest to me, much as in the days of the Early Christians the Cross appeared in the sky.
I was born with all the instincts and feelings of a primitive man, tempered by the reasoning and spiritual growth of the civilised. I love hunting above all things: to see the beast bleeding, blood on its fur, or on my hands, makes my heart contract until it almost stops breathing.
That year, late in the autumn, the cold weather set in suddenly, and I was summoned by one of my cousins, Karl de Rauville, to go and shoot duck with him in the marshes at daybreak.
My cousin, a jolly fellow of about forty, red-faced, strong and heavily bearded, was a country gentleman. He was half like a good-tempered animal, a cheerful soul endowed with a native French wit that raised him above mediocrity. He lived in a sort of manor farm in a wide valley through which flowed a stream. Woods covered the slopes on the right and left side, lordly old woods full of superb trees, where one found the rarest game of all this part of France. They caught eagles there sometimes; and birds of passage (such as are seldom to be found in our overpopulated country) never failed to stop in those ancient branches as if they had seen in them or had recognised in them a little corner of the forests of the old days kept to serve them for a shelter in their short bivouac at night.
In the valley were large pasture lands, drained by ditches and separated by hedges. The river, which in that part was navigable, overflowed further on into a great marsh. This marsh, the best hunting-area that I have ever seen, was the great pride of my cousin, who kept it up like a park. Across the immense colony of rushes which, rustling and swelling like the waves of the sea, made it like a living thing, he had had dug narrow canals on which flat-bottomed boats, urged and directed by poles, passed silent over the stagnant water, fluttering the reeds, scattering the swiftly swimming fishes towards
