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81 xlii Mistresses Portrayed In a men’s boudoir, that is to say, in a smoker adjoining a fashionable whorehouse, four men sat smoking and drinking. They were not particularly young or old, neither handsome nor ugly; but old or young they carried that unmistakable distinction of veterans of pleasure, that indescribable quality, the cold and sardonic sadness that clearly declared , “We have lived greatly and we are looking for what we may love and prize.” One of them led the discussion onto the subject of women. Not talking at all would have been more philosophical, but there are these wits who, after drink, do not shirk banal conversation. They attend to talk then as they might listen to dance music. “All men,” the one said, “have once been Cherubino’s age; that’s theperiodwhen,lackingdryads,weembrace—withoutdisgust—the trunks of oak trees. That is love’s first degree. In the second degree, we begin to choose. Being able to think about it is already decadence. At that stage we insist on looking for beauty. Myself, gentlemen, I am proud to have, long ago, arrived at the climacteric, the third degree, when beauty as such no longer suffices unless seasoned with perfume, jewelry, that sort of thing. I must admit I sometimes aspire, as to an unknown felicity, to a possible fourth degree, amounting to absolute calm. But for my whole life, except at the age of Cherubino, I have been more acutely sensitive than any to the enervating stupidity, to the irritating mediocrity, of women. What I love more than all else in animals is their candor. Judge then how much I must have suffered from my last mistress. “She was a prince’s bastard. Beautiful, that goes without saying; why else would I have taken her on? But that great quality she spoiled by a sick and unseemly ambition. She was a woman who wanted to be the man. ‘You are not a man! Ah, if only I were a man! Of us two, it’s 82 I who am the man.’ Such were the unbearable refrains from a mouth I only wanted to hear sing. If I mentioned liking a book or a poem or an opera, ‘You really think that’s good!’ she put in immediately, ‘what do you know about it?’ and on she’d go. “Well, one day she went into chemistry; from then on I found a glass mask between her lips and mine. And with that, a regular Mrs. Grundy. Any gesture a little too amorous and she was into convulsions like a sensitive plant violated . . .” “How did that come out?” said one of the other three. “I never reckoned you so patient.” “God,” he replied, “with every evil includes the remedy. One day I discovered this Minerva, hungry for ideal power, in a clinch with my man-servant, a situation that obliged me to step back discreetly to avoid making them blush. That same evening I discharged them both, careful to pay them their back wages.” “For my part,” said the one who had barged in, “I can only complain of my own self. Happiness came to me, and I didn’t recognize it. Fate had lately granted me the enjoyment of a woman the sweetest, most submissive, most devoted of creatures, always ready but never with enthusiasm! ‘If you want it, then I do.’ That was her usual response . You could beat the wall or this divan and get more sighs than could be pulled from my mistress’s bosom during the most arduous love-making. After a year of living together, she admitted she had never experienced climax. I was disgusted with such an unequal duel. And then this incomparable woman married. Later I had a fancy to see her again, and she told me, while exhibiting six beaming children, ‘Well, dear friend, the wife is still as much virgin as was your mistress .’ She had not changed in the slightest. Sometimes I have regrets: I should have married her.” The others laughed complacently and a third said in turn: “Gentlemen, I have known pleasures you have, perhaps, neglected. I’m speaking of the comedy in love—and of a comedy that does not exclude admiration. I admired my last mistress more, I believe, than you can possibly have hated or loved yours. And all others admired her as much as I. If we went into a restaurant, after a few minutes [3.144.202.167] Project MUSE (2024...

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