I was very much interested at that time in a droll little woman. She
was married, of course, as I have a horror of unmarried flirts. What
enjoyment is there in making love to a woman who belongs to nobody
and yet belongs to any one? And, besides, morality aside, I do not
understand love as a trade. That disgusts me somewhat.
The especial attraction in a married woman to a bachelor is that she
gives him a home, a sweet, pleasant home where every one takes care
of you and spoils you, from the husband to the servants. One finds
everything combined there, love, friendship, even fatherly interest, bed
and board, all, in fact, that constitutes the happiness of life, with
this incalculable advantage, that one can change one's family from time
to time, take up one's abode in all kinds of society in turn: in summer,
in the country with the workman who rents you a room in his house;
in winter with the townsfolk, or even with the nobility, if one is
ambitious.
I have another weakness; it is that I become attached to the husband
as well as the wife. I acknowledge even that some husbands, ordinary
or coarse as they may be, give me a feeling of disgust for their wives,
however charming they may be. But when the husband is intellectual or
charming I invariably become very much attached to him. I am careful if
I quarrel with the wife not to quarrel with the husband. In this way I
have made some of my best friends, and have also proved in many cases
the incontestable superiority of the male over the female in the human
species. The latter makes all sorts of trouble-scenes, reproaches, etc.;
while the former, who has just as good a right to complain, treats
you, on the contrary, as though you were the special Providence of his
hearth.
Well, my friend was a quaint little woman, a brunette, fanciful,
capricious, pious, superstitious, credulous as a monk, but charming. She
had a way of kissing one that I never saw in any one else--but that was
not the attraction--and such a soft skin! It gave me intense delight
merely to hold her hands. And an eye--her glance was like a slow caress,
delicious and unending. Sometimes I would lean my head on her knee
and we would remain motionless, she leaning over me with that subtle,
enigmatic, disturbing smile that women have, while my eyes would be
raised to hers, drinking sweetly and deliciously into my heart, like
a form of intoxication, the glance of her limpid blue eyes, limpid as
though they were full of thoughts of love, and blue as though they were
a heaven of delights.
Her husband, inspector of some large public works, was frequently away
from home and left us our evenings free. Sometimes I spent them with her
lounging on the divan with my forehead on one of her knees; while on
the other lay an enormous black cat called “Misti,” whom she adored. Our
fingers would meet on the cat's back and would intertwine in her soft
silky fur. I felt its warm body against my cheek, trembling with its
eternal purring, and occasionally a paw would reach out and place on my
mouth, or my eyelid, five unsheathed claws which would prick my eyelids,
and then be immediately withdrawn.
Sometimes we would go out on what we called our escapades. They were
very innocent, however. They consisted in taking supper at some inn in
the suburbs, or else, after dining at her house or at mine, in making
the round of the cheap cafes, like students out for a lark.
We would go into the common drinking places and take our seats at the
end of the smoky den on two rickety chairs, at an old wooden table. A
cloud of pungent smoke, with which blended an odor of fried fish from
dinner, filled the room. Men in smocks were talking in loud tones as
they drank their petits verres, and the astonished waiter placed before
us two cherry brandies.
She, trembling, charmingly afraid, would raise her double black veil as
far as her nose, and then take up her glass with the enjoyment that one
feels at doing something delightfully naughty. Each cherry she swallowed
made her feel as if she had done something wrong, each swallow of
the burning liquor had on her the affect of a delicate and forbidden
enjoyment.
Then she would say to me in a low tone: “Let us go.” And we would leave,
she walking quickly with lowered head between the drinkers who watched
her going by with a look of displeasure. And as soon as we got into the
street she would give a great sigh of relief, as if we had escaped some
terrible danger.
Sometimes she would ask me with a shudder:
“Suppose they, should say something rude to me in those places, what
would you do?” “Why, I would defend you, parbleu!” I would reply in a
resolute manner. And she would squeeze my arm for happiness, perhaps
with a vague wish that she might be insulted and protected, that she
might see men fight on her account, even those men, with me!
One evening as we sat at a table in a tavern at Montmartre, we saw an
old woman in tattered garments come in, holding in her hand a pack of
dirty cards. Perceiving a lady, the old woman at once approached us and
offered to tell my friend's fortune. Emma, who in her heart believed in
everything, was trembling with longing and anxiety, and she made a place
beside her for the old woman.
The latter, old, wrinkled, her eyes with red inflamed rings round them,
and her mouth without a single tooth in it, began to deal her dirty
cards on the table. She dealt them in piles, then gathered them up,
and then dealt them out again, murmuring indistinguishable words. Emma,
turning pale, listened with bated breath, gasping with anxiety and
curiosity.
The fortune-teller broke silence. She predicted vague happenings:
happiness and children, a fair young man, a voyage, money, a lawsuit, a
dark man, the return of some one, success, a death. The mention of this
death attracted the younger woman's attention. “Whose death? When? In
what manner?”
The old woman replied: “Oh, as to that, these cards are not certain
enough. You must come to my place to-morrow; I will tell you about it
with coffee grounds which never make a mistake.”
Emma turned anxiously to me:
“Say, let us go there to-morrow. Oh, please say yes. If not, you cannot
imagine how worried I shall be.”