So that class of women known as
easy is unknown to me, or if I allow myself to be taken with them, it is
without knowing it, and through simplicity.
I can understand that one's soul can be put aside but not that it should
be handled. That there is some pride in this, I confess, but I do not
intend either to boast or to lower myself. Above all things I hate those
women who laugh at love and I permit them to reciprocate the sentiment;
there will never be any dispute between us.
Such women are beneath the courtesans, for courtesans may lie as well as
they; but courtesans are capable of love and those women are not. I
remember a woman who loved me and who said to a man many times richer
than I with whom she was living: "I am weary of you, I am going to my
lover." That woman is worth more than many others who are not despised by
society.
I passed the entire season with Desgenais, and learned that my mistress
had left France; that news left in my heart a feeling of languor which I
could not overcome.
At the sight of that world which surrounded me, so new to me, I
experienced at first a kind of bizarre curiosity, at once sad and
profound, that caused me to look at things as does a restless horse. An
incident occurred which made a deep impression on me.
Desgenais had with him a very beautiful mistress who loved him much. One
evening as I was walking with him I told him that I considered her such
as she was, that is to say, admirable, as much on account of her
attachment for him as because of her beauty.
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