“Oh! My dear friend, I can tell you that
I did not feel at all happy! What! deceive Julien?
become the lover of this little, silly, wrong-headed,
deceitful woman, who was, no doubt, terribly sensual,
and whom her husband no longer satisfied.
“To betray him continually, to deceive him,
to play at being in love merely because I was attracted
by forbidden fruit, by the danger incurred and the
friendship betrayed! No, that did not suit me,
but what was I to do? To imitate Joseph would
be acting a very stupid and, moreover, difficult part,
for this woman was enchanting in her perfidy, inflamed
by audacity, palpitating and excited. Let the
man who has never felt on his lips the warm kiss of
a woman who is ready to give herself to him throw
the first stone at me.
“Well, a minute more—you understand
what I mean? A minute more, and—I
should have been—no, she would have been!—I
beg your pardon, he would have been—when
a loud noise made us both jump up. The log had
fallen into the room, knocking over the fire irons
and the fender, and on to the carpet, which it had
scorched, and had rolled under an armchair, which
it would certainly set alight.
“I jumped up like a madman, and, as I was replacing
on the fire that log which had saved me, the door
opened hastily, and Julien came in.
“‘I am free,’ he said, with evident
pleasure. ’The business was over two hours
sooner than I expected!’
“Yes, my dear friend, without that log, I should
have been caught in the very act, and you know what
the consequences would have been!
“You may be sure that I took good care never
to be found in a similar situation again, never, never.
Soon afterward I saw that Julien was giving me the
‘cold shoulder,’ as they say. His
wife was evidently undermining our friendship.
By degrees he got rid of me, and we have altogether
ceased to meet.
“I never married, which ought not to surprise
you, I think.”
Two years ago this spring I was making a walking tour
along the shore of the Mediterranean. Is there
anything more pleasant than to meditate while walking
at a good pace along a highway? One walks in the
sunlight, through the caressing breeze, at the foot
of the mountains, along the coast of the sea.
And one dreams! What a flood of illusions, loves,
adventures pass through a pedestrian’s mind during
a two hours’ march! What a crowd of confused
and joyous hopes enter into you with the mild, light
air! You drink them in with the breeze, and they
awaken in your heart a longing for happiness which
increases with the hun ger induced by walking.
The fleeting, charming ideas fly and sing like birds.
I was following that long road which goes from Saint
Raphael to Italy, or, rather, that long, splendid
panoramic highway which seems made for the representation
of all the love-poems of earth. And I thought
that from Cannes, where one poses, to Monaco, where
one gambles, people come to this spot of the earth
for hardly any other purpose than to get embroiled
or to throw away money on chance games, displaying
under this delicious sky and in this garden of roses
and oranges all base vanities and foolish pretensions
and vile lusts, showing up the human mind such as
it is, servile, ignorant, arrogant and full of cupidity.
