A Parisian Affair

Is there any keener sense known to man than woman’s curiosity? There is nothing in the world she would not do in order to satisfy it, to know for certain, to grasp and possess what has hitherto remained in her imagination. What would she not do to achieve that? When her impatient curiosity is at its height, she will shrink from nothing, and there is no folly to which she will not stoop, no obstacle she will not overcome. I refer, of course, to the really feminine woman, the sort who on the surface may appear quite reasonable and objective, but whose three secret weapons are always in a high state of readiness. The first is a kind of watchful, womanly concern for what is happening around her; the second, even more deadly in its effect, is guile disguised as common decency; and the third is the exquisite capacity for deception and infinite variety which drives some men to throw themselves at her feet, and others off the parapets of bridges.

The one whose story I want to tell you about was a little provincial woman who had led until then a boringly blameless life. Her outwardly calm existence was spent looking after her family, a very busy husband and two children whose upbringing, in her hands, was exemplary in every way. But her heart was ravaged by an all-consuming, indefinable desire. She thought constantly about Paris and avidly read all the society pages in the papers. Their accounts of receptions, celebrations, the clothes worn, and all the accompanying delights enjoyed, whetted her appetite still further. Above all, however, she was fascinated by what these reports merely hinted at. The cleverly phrased allusions half-lifted a veil beyond which could be glimpsed devastatingly attractive horizons promising a whole new world of wicked pleasure.

From where she lived, she looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness. Throughout the long, dream-filled night, lulled by the regular snoring of her husband sleeping next to her on his back with a scarf wrapped round his head, she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness of her sombre sky. She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies, and practising such complex and sophisticated sex as to defy the imagination. It seemed to her that hidden behind the façades of the houses lining the canyon-like boulevards of the city, some amazing erotic secret must lie.