Man and Maid

"Women"--he said to me last night--"are the only pleasure in life--men

and hunting bring content and happiness, work brings satisfaction, but

women and their ways are the only pleasure."

"Even when you know it is all for some personal gain?"

"Even so, once you have realized that, it does not matter, you take the

joy from another point of view, you have to eliminate vanity out of the

affair, your personal vanity is hurt, my dear boy, when you feel it is

your possessions, not yourself, they crave, but if you analyse that, it

does not take away from the pleasure their beauty gives you--the

tangible things are there just as if they loved you--I am now altogether

indifferent as to their feelings for me, as long as their table manners

are good, and they make a semblance of adoring me. If one had to depend

upon their real disinterested love for their kindness to one, then it

would be a different matter, and very distressing, but since they can

always be caught by a bauble--you and I are fortunately placed,

Nicholas."

We laughed our vile laughs together.--It is true--I hate to hear my own

laugh. I agree with Chesterfield, who said that no gentleman should make

that noise!

* * * * *

As I said before, all sorts of people come to see me, but I seem to be

stripping them of externals all the time. What is the good in them? What

is the truth in them? Strip me--if I were not rich what would anyone

bother with me for? Is anyone worth while underneath?

One or other of the fluffies come almost daily to play bridge with me,

and any fellow who is on leave, and the neutrals who have no anxieties,

what a crew! It amuses me to "strip" them. The married one, Coralie, has

absolutely nothing to charm with if one removes the ambience of success,

the entourage of beautiful things, the manicurist and the complexion

specialist, the Reboux hats, and the Chanel clothes. She would be a

plain little creature, with not too fine ankles,--but that

self-confidence which material possessions bring, casts a spell over

people.--Coralie is attractive. Odette, the widow, is beautiful. She

has the brain of a turkey, but she, too, is exquisitely dressed and

surrounded with everything to enhance her loveliness, and the serenity

of success has given her magnetism. She announces platitudes as

discoveries, she sparkles, and is so ravishing that one finds her trash

wit. She thinks she is witty, and you begin to believe it!

Odette can be best stripped, people could like her just for her looks.

Alice, the divorcée, appeals to one.--She is gentle and feminine and

clinging--she is the cruelest and most merciless of the three, Maurice

tells me, and the most difficult to analyse: But most of one's friends

would find it hard to stand the test of denuding them of their worldly

possessions and outside allurements, it is not only the fluffies, who

would come out of not much value!