[FN#374] This is the far-famed balcony-scene in “Fanny” (of Ernest Feydeau translated into English and printed by Vizetelly and Co.) that phenomenal specimen of morbid and unmasculine French (or rather Parisian) sentiment, which contrasts so powerfully with the healthy and manly tone of The Nights.  Here also the story conveys a moral lesson and, contrary to custom, the husband has the best of the affair.  To prove that my judgment is not too severe, let me quote the following passages from a well-known and popular French novelist, translated by an English litt‚rateur and published by a respectable London firm.

In “A Ladies’ Man:”  by Guy de Maupassant, we read:—­

Page 62.—­And the conversation, descending from elevated theories concerning love, strayed into the flowery garden of polished blackguardism.  It was the moment of clever, double meanings; veils raised by words, as petticoats are lifted by the wind; tricks of language, cleverly disguised audacities; sentences which reveal nude images in covered phrases, which cause the vision of all that may not be said to flit rapidly before the eyes of the mind, and allow well-bred people the enjoyment of a kind of subtle and mysterious love, a species of impure mental contact, due to the simultaneous evocations of secret, shameful and longed-for pleasures.

Page 166.—­George and Madeleine amused themselves with watching all these couples, the woman in summer toilette and the man darkly outlined beside her.  It was a huge flood of lovers flowing towards the Bois, beneath the starry and heated sky.  No sound was heard save the dull rumble of wheels.  They kept passing by, two by two in each vehicle, leaning back on the seat, clasped one against the other, lost in dreams of desire, quivering with the anticipation of coming caresses.  The warm shadow seemed full of kisses.  A sense of spreading lust rendered the air heavier and more suffocating.  All the couples, intoxicated with the same idea, the same ardour, shed a fever about them.

Page 187—­As soon as she was alone with George, she clasped him in her arms, exclaiming:  “Oh! my darling Pretty-boy, I love you more and more every day.”

The cab conveying them rocked like a ship.

“It is not so nice as our own room,” said she.

He answered; “Oh, no.”  But he was thinking of Madame Waller.

Page 198.—­He kissed her neck, her eyes, her lips with eagerness, without her being able to avoid his furious caresses, and whilst repulsing him, whilst shrinking from his mouth, she, despite herself, returned his kisses.  All at once she ceased to struggle, and, vanquished, resigned, allowed him to undress her.  One by one he neatly and rapidly stripped off the different articles of clothing with the light fingers of a lady’s maid.  She had snatched her bodice from his hands to hide her face in it, and remained standing amidst the garments fallen at her feet.  He seized her in his arms and bore her towards the couch.  Then she murmured in his ear in a broken voice, “I swear to you, I swear to you, that I have never had a lover.”