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out and place on my mouth, or my eyelid, five unsheathed claws which would prick my eyelids, and then be immediately withdrawn.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 her house or at mine, in making the round of the cheap cafes, like students out for a lark.

We would go into the common drinking places and take our seats at the end of the smoky den on two rickety chairs, at an old wooden table.  A cloud of pungent smoke, with which blended an odor of fried fish from dinner, filled the room.  Men in smocks were talking in loud tones as they drank their petits verres, and the astonished waiter placed before us two cherry brandies.

She, trembling, charmingly afraid, would raise her double black veil as far as her nose, and then take up her glass with the enjoyment that one feels at doing something delightfully naughty.  Each cherry she swallowed made her feel as if she had done something wrong, each swallow of the burning liquor had on her the affect of a delicate and forbidden enjoyment.