Sister Saint-Benedict left the dead man, ran up to her infirm old women, and without a word or a look for me, wrapped their shawls round them, gave them their crutches, pushed them to the door, made them go out, and disappeared with them into the dark night.

I saw that I could not even let a hussar accompany them, for the mere rattle of a sword would have sent them mad with fear.

The cure was still looking at the dead man; but at last he turned round to me and said: 

“Oh!  What a horrible thing!”

THE MUSTACHE

Chateau de SOLLES,
July 30, 1883.

My Dear Lucy: 

I have no news.  We live in the drawing-room, looking out at the rain.  We cannot go out in this frightful weather, so we have theatricals.  How stupid they are, my dear, these drawing entertainments in the repertory of real life!  All is forced, coarse, heavy.  The jokes are like cannon balls, smashing everything in their passage.  No wit, nothing natural, no sprightliness, no elegance.  These literary men, in truth, know nothing of society.  They are perfectly ignorant of how people think and talk in our set.  I do not mind if they despise our customs, our conventionalities, but I do not forgive them for not knowing them.  When they want to be humorous they make puns that would do for a barrack; when they try to be jolly, they give us jokes that they must have picked up on the outer boulevard in those beer houses artists are supposed to frequent, where one has heard the same students’ jokes for fifty years.

So we have taken to Theatricals.  As we are only two women, my husband takes the part of a soubrette, and, in order to do that, he has shaved off his mustache.  You cannot imagine, my dear Lucy, how it changes him!  I no longer recognize him-by day or at night.  If he did not let it grow again I think I should no longer love him; he looks so horrid like this.

In fact, a man without a mustache is no longer a man.  I do not care much for a beard; it almost always makes a man look untidy.  But a mustache, oh, a mustache is indispensable to a manly face.  No, you would never believe how these little hair bristles on the upper lip are a relief to the eye and good in other ways.  I have thought over the matter a great deal but hardly dare to write my thoughts.  Words look so different on paper and the subject is so difficult, so delicate, so dangerous that it requires infinite skill to tackle it.

Well, when my husband appeared, shaven, I understood at once that I never could fall in love with a strolling actor nor a preacher, even if it were Father Didon, the most charming of all!  Later when I was alone with him (my husband) it was worse still.  Oh, my dear Lucy, never let yourself be kissed by a man without a mustache; their kisses have no flavor, none whatever!  They no longer have the charm, the mellowness and the snap —­yes, the snap—­of a real kiss.  The mustache is the spice.