AT five in the morning, when daylight began to appear through the curtains, Marguerite said to me:

'Forgive me if I shoo you away now, but I must. The Duke comes every morning; when he arrives, he'll be told I'm asleep, and he may wait for me to wake.'

I took Marguerite's head in both my two hands, her loosened hair cascading on to her shoulders, and I gave her one last kiss, saying:

'When will I see you again?'

'Listen, ' she went on, 'take the little gold key on the mantelpiece there and unlock the door. Then bring me back the key and go. Sometime during the day, you'll receive a letter with my instructions, for you know that you must obey blindly.'

'Yes ?but what if I were already to ask you something?'

'What is it?'

'That you leave the key in my keeping.'

'I've never done for anyone what you're asking me to do now.'

'Well, do it for me, for I swear that I do not love you as the others loved you.'

'Very well, keep it. But I warn you that I could at any time see to it that your key served no useful purpose.'

'How?'

'There are bolts on this side of my door.'

'You wicked creature!'

'I'll have them removed.'

'So you do love me a little?'

'I don't know how it is, but it seems I do. And now, go: I'm almost asleep.'

We remained a few moments in each others' arms and then I left.

The streets were deserted, the great city was sleeping still, and a pleasant coolness ran through the neighbourhood which, a few hours later, would be overrun by the noise of men.

I felt as though the sleeping city belonged to me. I ransacked my memory for the names of men whose happiness, up to that moment, I had envied; and I could not recall one without finding that I was happier than he.

To be loved by a chaste young girl, to be the first to show her the strange mystery of love, is a great joy ?but it is the easiest thing in the world. To capture a heart unused to attack is like walking into an open, undefended city. Upbringing, the awareness of duty, and the family, are watchful sentries of course, but there are no sentries, however vigilant, that cannot be eluded by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, through the voice of the man she adores, whispers those first counsels of love which are all the more passionate because they seem so pure.

The more sincere a young girl's belief in goodness, the more easily she gives herself, if not to her lover, then at least to love. Because she is unsuspecting, she is powerless, and to be loved by her is a prize which any young man of twenty-five may have whenever he likes. And to see how true this is, simply consider how much supervision and how many ramparts surround young girls! Convents cannot have walls too high, nor mothers locks too strong, nor religion duties too unrelenting to deep all these charming birds safe in cages which no one even tries to disguise with flowers. And so, how keenly must they want that world which is kept hidden from them! How tempting must they believe it to be! How eagerly must they listen to the first voice which, through the bars of their cage, tells of its secrets! And how gratefully to they bless the first hand which lifts a corner of its mysterious veil!

But to be truly loved by a courtesan is a much more difficult victory to achieve. In such women, the body has consumed the soul, the senses have burnt out the heart, debauchery has buckled stout armour on to feeling. The words you say to them, they first heard long ago; the tactics you use, they have seen before; the very love they inspire in you, they have sold to others. They love because love is their trade, not because they are swept off their feet. They are better guarded by their calculations than a virgin by her mother and her convent. Which is why they have coined the word ' caprice' to describe those non- commercial affairs in which they indulge from time to time as a relief, an excuse or as a consolation. Such women are like money-lenders who fleece large numbers of people, and think they can make amends by lending twenty francs one day to some poor devil who is starving to death, without asking him to pay interest or requiring him to sign a receipt.

But when God allows a courtesan to fall in love, her love, which at first looks like a pardon for her sins, proves almost invariably to be a punishment on her. There is no absolution without penance. When such a creature, who has all the guilt of her past on her conscience, suddenly feels herself gripped by a deep, sincere, irresistible love such as she had never dreamed herself capable of experiencing; when she finally declares her love ?how complete the power of the man she loves! How strong he feels once he has the cruel right to say: 'What you do now for love is no more than you have done for money.'

When this happens, they are at a loss for ways of proving what they feel. A boy in a field who, so the fable goes, persisted in finding it amusing to shout 'Help!' to disturb some workmen, was eaten one fine day by a bear, without it occurring to those he had so often deceived that this time his shouts were real. And so it is with these wretched girls when they genuinely fall in love. They have lied so often that no one believes them any more and, beset by remorse, they are eaten by their love.

Which explains the great self- sacrifices, the austere self-seclusions of which a few such women have afforded examples.

But if a man who inspires such saving love is sufficiently generous of soul to accept it without thought for the past, if he commits himself totally to her, if he really loves as he is loved, then such a man drains in one draught all terrestrial emotions and, after a love like this, his heart is thereafter closed to any other.

It was not then, as I returned home that morning, that these thoughts came to me. They could not in any case have been much more at that point than a presentiment of what was to befall me and, in spite of my love for Marguerite, I did not anticipate any such outcome. But I think these thoughts today: now that it is all irrevocably ended, they emerge naturally from what has been.

But let us return to that first day of our affair. When I reached home, I was wildly exhilarated. Feeling that the barriers which my imagination had erected between Marguerite and me had disappeared, and believing that she was mine, that I had a small place in her thoughts, that I had the key to her apartment in my pocket and permission to use it, I felt pleased with life and pleased with myself, and I praised God who had let it all happen.

One day, a young man walks along a street, comes across a woman, looks at her, turns and looks again, then walks on. This woman, whom he does not know, has pleasures, sorrows, loves in which he has no part. He does not exist for her, and perhaps, if he spoke to her, she would laugh at him just as Marguerite had laughed at me. Weeks, months, years pass by and then, quite unexpectedly, when both have followed their destiny in their separate ways, the logic of chance brings them face to face. The woman becomes the man's mistres............