"God," he replied, "found the remedy in the ill. One day I found this Minerva, craving for ideal force, alone with my servant, and in a situation which forced me to retire discreetly, so as not to make them blush. That evening, I dismissed them both, giving them the arrears of their wages."
"As for me," continued the interrupter, "I have only myself to complain of. Happiness came to dwell with me, and I did not know her. Fate once granted me the enjoyment of a woman who was indeed the sweetest, the most submissive, the most devoted of creatures, and always ready, and without enthusiasm. 'I am quite willing, since it's agreeable to you.' That was her usual response. You might give a bastinado to this wall or this couch and draw from it as many sighs as the most infuriate transports of love would draw from the breast of my mistress. After a year of life together, she confessed to me that she had never known pleasure. I lost taste in the unequal duel, and that incomparable girl got married. Later I had a fancy to see her, and she said, showing me six fine children: 'Well, my dear friend, the wife is still as much a virgin as was your mistress.' Nothing had changed. Sometimes I regret her; I should have married her."
The others burst into laughter, and a third spoke in turn:
"Gentlemen, I have known joys which you have perhaps neglected. I mean the comical in love, and a comical which does not bar admiration. I admired my last mistress, I think, more than you could have loved or hated yours. And every one admired her as much as I. When we entered a restaurant, after a few minutes every one forgot to eat in watching her. The barmaid and the waiters themselves felt the contagious ecstasy so far as to neglect their duties. In short, I lived for some time face to face with a living phenomenon. She ate, chewed, ground, devoured, swallowed up, but with the lightest and most careless air imaginable. In this way she kept me for a long time in ecstasy. She had a soft, dreamy, English and romantic way of saying: 'I am hungry.' And she repeated these words day and night, revealing the prettiest teeth in the world, which would soften and enliven you together.—I could have made my fortune exhibiting her at fairs, as a polyphagous monster. I nourished her well, but none the less she left me...."
"For a purveyor of provisions, undoubtedly?"
"Something of the sort, a kind of employee in the commissariat who, by some by-profit unknown to her, perhaps furnished the poor child with the rations of several soldiers. At least, so I imagine."
"As for me," said the fourth, "I have endured grievous, sufferings through the opposite of that with which we usually reproach the female egoist. You are quite unjustified, too happy mortals, in complaining of the imperfections of your mistresses!"
This was said in a very serious tone, by a man of pleasant and sedate appearance, of an almost clerical countenance, unhappily lighted by clear grey eyes, those eyes whose glances spoke: "I wish it!" or "It is necessary!" or indeed "I never forgive!"
"If, nervous as I know you to be, you, G——, slothful and trifling as you are, you two, K—— and J——, if you had been matched with a certain woman I know, either you would have fled, or you would have died. I survived, as you see. Imagine a person incapable of making an error, from feeling or from design; imagine a provoking serenity of mind, a devotion without sham and without parade, a softness without weakness, an energy without violence. The story of my love is like an endless voyage on a surface as pure and polished as a mirror, dizzily monotonous, reflecting all my feelings and my movements with the ironic exactness of my own conscience, so that I could not allow myself an unreasonable move or emotion without immediately beholding the dumb reproach of my inseparable spectre. Love seemed to me like a protectorate. How much nonsense she stopped me from committing, which I regret not having done! How many debts I paid despite myself! She deprived me of all the benefits I could have reaped from my personal folly. With a cold and impassable rule, she barred all my caprices. To crown the horror, she demanded no gratitude when the danger was passed. How many times have I not held myself from leaping at her throat, crying: 'Be imperfect, wretch! so that I can love you without uneasiness and wrath!' For several years I wondered at her, my heart full of hate. Finally, it was not I that died of it!"
"Ah!" said the others, "then she is dead?"