"See how far I would go! What proof have you that the relationship between me and my friends is such as you suspect?"
"What proof! None! But I have your admissions, your slippery tales. And didn't one of your friends admit that in her own country she would fall into the hands of the law?"
"I thought you denied the existence of vice!"
"I don't care how your friends amuse themselves so long as their amusements do not interfere with the welfare of my family. From the moment, however, that their 'peculiarities,' if you prefer this word, threaten to injure us, they are, as far as we are concerned, criminal acts. True, as a philosopher, I don't admit the existence of vice, but only of physical or moral defects. And, quite recently, when this unnatural tendency was discussed in the French parliament, all the French physicians of note were of opinion that it was not the province of the law to interfere in these matters, except in cases where the interests of individual citizens were violated."
I might as well have preached to stone walls. How could I hope to make this woman, who acknowledged no other law but her animal instincts, grasp a philosophical distinction!
To be quite sure of the facts, I wrote to a friend in Paris and asked him to tell me the plain truth.
In his reply, which was very candid, he told me that my wife's perverse tendencies were no secret in Scandinavia, and that the two Danes were well-known Lesbians in Paris.
We were in debt at our hotel, and had no money; therefore we were unable to move. But the two Danish ladies got into trouble with the peasants, and were compelled to leave.
We had known them for eight months, and an abrupt termination of our friendship was impossible; moreover, they belonged to good families, and were well educated; they had been comrades in trouble, and I resolved to grant them a retreat with honours. A farewell banquet was therefore arranged in the studio of one of the young artists.
At dessert, when every one was more or less gay with the wine which had been drunk, Marie, overcome by her feelings, rose to sing a song of her own composition. It was an imitation of the well-known song in Mignon, and in it she bade farewell to her friend. She sang with fire and genuine feeling, her almond-shaped eyes were full of tears and glowed softly in the reflection of the candle-light; she opened her heart so wide that even I was touched and charmed. There was a candour, an ingenuousness in this woman's love-song to a woman, so pathetic that it kept all unchaste thoughts at bay. And how strange it was! She had neither the appearance nor the manners of the hermaphrodite; she was essentially woman; loving, tender, mysterious, unfathomable woman.