The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet

locked door. I was aware how culpable my behaviour was for the moral climate of the time. It was probably the circumstances that had made Svea seem so special. Would I have found her desirable anywhere else apart from in Marthe’s room?
    Yet I felt no regrets. It wasn’t thinking about Marthe that made me abandon the young Swedish girl, it was because I had had all the sweetness out of her.
    A few days later I got a letter from Marthe. With it was one from her landlord, telling her that his house wasn’t a lovers’ meeting place, and about the use I was making of having access to her apartment, where I had taken a woman. So I have evidence of you being unfaithful, said Marthe. She wasn’t going to see me again. No doubt she would suffer, but she preferred that to being made a fool of.
    I was familiar with empty threats, all it would take to quash them was a lie, even the truth, if necessary. But I was offended that in a letter breaking off our relationship, Marthe hadn’t mentioned suicide. I accused her of being cold-hearted. I considered her letter undeserving of any explanations. Because in a similar situation, rather than contemplating killing myself, I would have felt it more fitting to threaten Marthe. It was an ineradicable sign of my age and schooling—I thought that certain lies are dictated by the laws of passion.
    A new task arose as part of my amorous initiation—to justify myself to Marthe, accuse her of trusting me less than she did her landlord. I pointed out that it was just a stratagem on the Marins’ part. Svea had come to see her one day when I was writing in her apartment, and if Iinvited her in it was because, seeing the girl from the window, and knowing she had been forbidden to see Marthe, I didn’t want her to think that Marthe held her personally responsible for this unpleasant estrangement. She had probably come in secret, at the cost of countless problems for herself.
    Hence I was able to tell Marthe that Svea was just as fond of her as ever. I finished by saying how much of a consolation it had been to be able to talk about Marthe in her own home with her closest friend.
    This scare caused me to curse a love that compels us to explain our actions, when I would have preferred not to have to explain anything, to myself or anyone else.
    And yet love must afford many advantages, I reflected, because men put their freedom in its hands. I was in a hurry to be strong enough to dispense with love, and thus not have to give up any of my desires. I didn’t realize that on the scale of subjugation, it is far better to be a slave to your heart than to your senses.
    Just as a bee gathers nectar and enriches the hive, a lover enriches his love with every desire that seizes hold of him in the street. He lets his mistress have the benefit of them. I had still to discover that self-restraint which makes the unfaithful faithful. If a man were to lust after a girl and transfer this fervour to the woman he loves, his desire—all the more intense because unsatisfied—will make this woman believe that she has never been loved so much. She is being deceived, but in the eyes of society her honour is intact. From conclusions such as this comes promiscuity.So we shouldn’t be too hasty to condemn men who, in a sudden access of passion, are capable of cheating on their mistress; we shouldn’t accuse them of being superficial. They find their duplicity distasteful, and wouldn’t dream of confusing happiness with pleasure.
    Marthe was waiting for me to exonerate myself. She begged me to forgive her for being so critical. I did so, with bad grace. She wrote to her landlord and, not without irony, asked him to be kind enough to allow me to invite one of her friends to her apartment while she was away.

XXIV
    WHEN MARTHE CAME BACK TOWARDS THE END of August, she didn’t go to J …, but went to live at her parents’ house, which meant they could extend their summer holiday. These new surroundings, where Marthe