“Oh!  My dear friend, I can tell you that I did not feel at all happy!  What! deceive Julien? become the lover of this little, silly, wrong-headed, deceitful woman, who was, no doubt, terribly sensual, and whom her husband no longer satisfied.

“To betray him continually, to deceive him, to play at being in love merely because I was attracted by forbidden fruit, by the danger incurred and the friendship betrayed!  No, that did not suit me, but what was I to do?  To imitate Joseph would be acting a very stupid and, moreover, difficult part, for this woman was enchanting in her perfidy, inflamed by audacity, palpitating and excited.  Let the man who has never felt on his lips the warm kiss of a woman who is ready to give herself to him throw the first stone at me.

“Well, a minute more—­you understand what I mean?  A minute more, and—­I should have been—­no, she would have been!—­I beg your pardon, he would have been—­when a loud noise made us both jump up.  The log had fallen into the room, knocking over the fire irons and the fender, and on to the carpet, which it had scorched, and had rolled under an armchair, which it would certainly set alight.

“I jumped up like a madman, and, as I was replacing on the fire that log which had saved me, the door opened hastily, and Julien came in.

“‘I am free,’ he said, with evident pleasure.  ’The business was over two hours sooner than I expected!’

“Yes, my dear friend, without that log, I should have been caught in the very act, and you know what the consequences would have been!

“You may be sure that I took good care never to be found in a similar situation again, never, never.  Soon afterward I saw that Julien was giving me the ‘cold shoulder,’ as they say.  His wife was evidently undermining our friendship.  By degrees he got rid of me, and we have altogether ceased to meet.

“I never married, which ought not to surprise you, I think.”

JULIE ROMAIN

Two years ago this spring I was making a walking tour along the shore of the Mediterranean.  Is there anything more pleasant than to meditate while walking at a good pace along a highway?  One walks in the sunlight, through the caressing breeze, at the foot of the mountains, along the coast of the sea.  And one dreams!  What a flood of illusions, loves, adventures pass through a pedestrian’s mind during a two hours’ march!  What a crowd of confused and joyous hopes enter into you with the mild, light air!  You drink them in with the breeze, and they awaken in your heart a longing for happiness which increases with the hun ger induced by walking.  The fleeting, charming ideas fly and sing like birds.

I was following that long road which goes from Saint Raphael to Italy, or, rather, that long, splendid panoramic highway which seems made for the representation of all the love-poems of earth.  And I thought that from Cannes, where one poses, to Monaco, where one gambles, people come to this spot of the earth for hardly any other purpose than to get embroiled or to throw away money on chance games, displaying under this delicious sky and in this garden of roses and oranges all base vanities and foolish pretensions and vile lusts, showing up the human mind such as it is, servile, ignorant, arrogant and full of cupidity.