Le Cocu (Novels of Paul de Kock Volume XVIII)

Copyright 1904 by G. Barrie & Sons
A RECONCILIATION
We had drawn near to each other, having both left the table to go to the window. I do not know how it happened, but I soon found Eugénie in my arms; then we kissed, we walked away from the window, and——
THE JEFFERSON PRESS BOSTON NEW YORK
Copyrighted, 1903-1904, by G. B. & Sons.
I have never written prefaces to my novels; I have always considered what an author says in a preface, what he therein explains beforehand to the reader, as utterly useless. The reader would be entitled to reply, as Alceste replies to Orontes: “We shall see.”
Nor have I ever supposed that the public read a novel in order to talk with its author. It matters little to my readers, I presume, whether I am young or old, short or tall, whether I write in the morning or at night; what they want is a work that pleases them, in which there is enough of truth to enable them to identify themselves with the characters; and if the author constantly talks of himself and stations himself between his heroes and his reader, it seems to me that he destroys the illusion and injures his own work.
My reason for placing a preface at the head of this book has to do with the title—that title which has caused persons to recoil in dismay who do not balk at executioners , damned , tortured , guillotined , and other pleasant conceits in which authors indulge without objection. I propose, not to justify myself, for I do not think myself guilty, but to reassure some of my readers of the gentler sex, whom my title might alarm beyond measure.
Le Cocu! What is there so indecent in the word, pray? In the first place, what does it mean? A married man who is deceived by his wife, a husband whose wife is unfaithful. Would you like me to give my book such a title as The Husband whose Wife was False to Her Vows ? That would resemble a Pontoise poster. Was it not clearer and simpler to take the one word which, alone, means all that?