La femme, enfant malade et douze fois impure.[11]
So that by dint of despising women they lived only for them, while all their efforts and all their desires were directed towards them.
Those of them who had married called them old fops, made fun of them, and—feared them.
When they began to feel the exhilarating effects of the champagne, this was the moment that their old bachelor experiences began.
On the day in question, these old fellows, for they were old by this time, and the older they got the more extraordinary good fortune in the way of love affairs they had to relate, were quite inexhaustible. For the last month, to hear them, each of them had played the gallant with at least one woman a day; and what women! the youngest, the noblest, the richest, and the most beautiful!
After they had finished their tales, one of them, he who having spoken first had been obliged to listen to all the others, rose and said:
"Now that we have finished drawing the long-bow, I should like to tell you, not my last, but my first adventure,—I mean the first adventure of my life, my first fall,—for it is a moral fall after all, in the arms of Venus. Oh! I am not going to tell you my first—what shall I call it?—my first appearance; certainly not. The leap over the first hedge (I am speaking figuratively) has nothing interesting about it. It is generally rather a disagreeable one, and one picks oneself up rather abashed, with one charming illusion the less, with a vague feeling of disappointment and sadness. That realization of love the first time one experiences it is rather repugnant; we had dreamt of it as being so different, so delicate, so refined. It leaves a physical and moral sense of disgust behind it, just like as when one has happened to have put one's hand into some clammy matter and feels in a hurry to wash it off. You may rub it as hard as you like, but the moral feeling remains.
"Yes! but one very soon gets quite used to it; there is no doubt about that. For my part, however, I am very sorry it was not in my power to give the Creator the benefit of my advice when He was arranging these little matters. I wonder what I should have done? I am not quite sure, but I think with the English savant, John Stuart Mill, I should have managed differently; I should have found some more convenient and more poetical combination; yes—more poetical.
"I really think that the Creator showed Himself to be too much of a naturalist ... too ... what shall I say? His invention lacks poetry.
"However, what I am going to tell you is about my first woman of the world, the first woman in society I ever made love to;—I beg your pardon, I ought to say the first woman of the world that ever triumphed over me. For at first it is we who allow ourselves to be taken, while, later on—well, then it is quite another matter.