Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part IV - III
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THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL 269
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 ^\as 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 com-
pelled 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 ;
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