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and then be immediately withdrawn.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