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THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL 115
*’
How ashamed I am of myself ! It was I who had to
speak the first word of love. My husband is here, he puts
his arms round me, and I let him kiss me. Am I sincere?
Yes ! Why did he not take care of me while there was
yet time?
’’The wl)ole is like a novel. What Avill be the end?
Will the heroine die? Will the hero marry another?
Will they be separated ? And will the end be satisfactory
from a inoral point of view ?
" If I were with you at this moment, I should kiss your
brow with the same devotion with which the devotee kisses
the crucifix, and I should put from me all baseness, all
artificiality. ..."
Was this hypocrisy, or did I deceive myself? Were
they nothing but passion, these semi-religious ecstasies?
No, not passion only. The desire of propagation has
become more complicated, and even with the lower animals
moral characteristics are transmitted through sexual love.
Therefore love affects both body and soul, and one is
nothing without the other. If it were but passion, why
should she prefer a delicate, nervous, sickly youth to a
giant like him ? If it were only the love of the soul,
why this longing to kiss me, why this admiration for my
small feet, my well-shaped hands and nails, my intellectual
forehead, my abundant hair ? Or were those hallucina-
tions caused by the intoxication of her senses, excited by
her husband’s excesses? Or did she feel instinctively that
an ardent youth like me would make her far more happy
than the inert mass which she called her husband? She
was no longer jealous of his body, therefore she had ceased
looking upon him in the light of a lover. But she was
jealous of my person, and therefore she w-as in love with
me !.. .
One day, when visiting my sister, the Baroness was
I 2
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