Climates by André Maurois

that Odile called her Minerva, told me, “He’s very attractive, I can assure you.”
    “But how? I try in vain to be interested in what he’s saying; it strikes me it’s always the same oldthings. He talks about Indochina, nations conquering other nations, Gaugin’s ‘intense’ life … I thought it quite remarkable the first time I heard it. Then I realized it was a star turn; watching it once is enough.”
    “Yes, perhaps. You’re partly right. But he tells such incredible stories! Women are like big children, Marcenat. They still have a sense of wonder. And, anyway, the scope of their real lives is so limited that they’re always longing to escape it. If you only knew how boring it is looking after a household, meals, guests, and children every day! Married men and bachelors in Paris are all part of the same social and domestic machinery, and they have nothing new, nothing fresh to offer us, whereas a naval man like Crozant is like a breath of fresh air, and that’s why we find him attractive.”
    “But really, don’t you think Crozant’s whole stance smacks of unbearable false romanticism? You mentioned his stories … I can’t stand all those adventures … that he’s clearly invented.”
    “Which ones?”
    “Oh, you know perfectly well: the one about the Englishwoman in Honolulu who threw herself in the water after he’d left; the one about the Russianwoman who sends him her photograph framed by a coil of hair. I think it’s all such bad taste …”
    “I hadn’t heard those stories … who told them to you? Odile?”
    “No, no, everyone did, why would you think it was Odile? … Tell me honestly, don’t you think that’s unpleasant, shocking, even?”
    “If you like, yes … All the same, he has unforgettable eyes. And not everything you’re saying is accurate. You’re seeing him through the prism of myth. You should talk to him in person, you’ll see he’s very straightforward.”
    We often saw Admiral Garnier at avenue Marceau. One evening I maneuvered so that I was alone with him and asked him about Crozant.
    “Ah!” he said. “A true sailor … One of our great leaders of the future.”
    I resolved to stifle the feelings of disgust that François de Crozant aroused in me, to see more of him and to try to judge him impartially. It was very difficult. When I had met him with Halff, he had been rather disdainful toward me, and I had had the same uncomfortable impression the first time we met again. For a few days now he seemed to have been making an effort to overcome the boredomthat my surly, hostile silence inspired in him. But I thought, perhaps correctly, that he was now interested in me because of Odile, and this did nothing to endear him to me. Far from it.
    I invited him to dine with us. I wanted to find him interesting, but did not succeed. He was intelligent but, deep down, fairly shy, and he overcame his shyness by affecting a brusque assertiveness that I found exasperating. I thought him far less remarkable than my former friends, André and Bertrand, and could not understand why Odile, who had swept them aside so contemptuously, showed such sustained interest in what François de Crozant had to say. The moment he was there, she was quite transformed and even prettier than usual. One time François and I had a conversation about love in front of her. I had said, I think, that the only thing that makes love a truly beautiful sentiment is faithfulness, in spite of everything and until death. Odile gave François a quick glance that I thought peculiar.
    “I really don’t understand the importance of faithfulness,” he said with the staccato diction that always gave his ideas an abstract, metallic feel. “You have to live in the present. What matters is getting all the intensity out of every moment. Thereare only three ways of achieving this: with power, with danger, or with desire. But why would you use faithfulness to keep up a pretence of desire when it