Free The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet Page A

doesn’t look very appetizing, but even so I think it’s very good!”
    Monsieur Marin used the event as an opportunity to lay the foundations for his ‘political comeback’.
    The surprise attraction, however, was Marthe and me. I found out about it as a result of a friendly slip of the tongue by someone I knew from the train, the son of one of the worthies. Imagine my amazement when I discovered that the entertainment the Marins were planning was to stand under our bedroom later in the afternoon and catch us in the act.
    They had probably acquired a taste for it, and wanted to broadcast their little pleasures. Being respectable people, the Marins naturally attributed this prurience of theirs to moral decency. They wished to share their indignation with all the other upright folk in the district.
    The guests were in position. Madame Marin knew that I was in Marthe’s apartment and had set up the table beneath her bedroom. She was champing at the bit. All she needed was the compère’s baton to introduce the performance. Thanks to the indiscretion of the young man, who had given the game away in order to dupe his parents as well as out of solidarity with people his own age, we didn’t make a sound. I hadn’t dared tell Marthe the reasonfor the picnic. I could imagine the contorted expression on Madame Marin’s face, her gaze fastened on the hands of the clock, her guests’ impatience. Eventually, at about seven o’clock, the couples went home empty-handed, saying to themselves that the Marins were frauds and that poor seventy-year-old Monsieur Marin was an upstart. This councillor-to-be promised you the earth and didn’t even wait until he was elected to go back on his word. As for Madame Marin, the ladies just saw the reception as a way for her to supply herself with desserts. The mayor had only put in an appearance for a few minutes, and the eight litres of milk got them whispering to each other that he was on intimate terms with the Marin’s daughter, who taught at a local school. Mademoiselle Marin had already caused an outcry by marrying a policeman, which people didn’t think fitting for a schoolmistress.
    Out of spite I let them hear what they had wanted the others to hear. Marthe was surprised at my belated passion. Unable to contain myself any longer, and at the risk of upsetting her, I told her the purpose of the reception. We both cried with laughter.
    Madame Marin, who might have felt benevolent had I served her purposes, never forgave us for this catastrophe. It filled her with hate. But she wasn’t able to indulge it, having now run out of ways of doing so, and didn’t dare write anonymous letters.

XVII
    IT WAS MAY. I WENT TO SEE MARTHE LESS OFTEN now, and only spent the night at her house if I was able to think of a lie to tell at home which would let me stay on into the morning. I managed it once or twice a week. The fact that my lies always worked surprised me. But my father didn’t really believe me. With wild indulgence he chose not to see, on condition that neither my brothers nor the servants found out. So all I needed to do was say that I was leaving at five in the morning, like on the day of my walk in the forest of Sénart. Except my mother didn’t pack any more hampers.
    My father would put up with everything, and then abruptly take a stand and rebuke me for my idleness. His outbursts blew up and subsided again quickly, like waves out to sea.
    Nothing is more absorbing than love. You don’t have time to be idle, because, being in love, you are idle. Love is vaguely aware that its only real distraction is work. So it regards it as a rival. And a rival is one thing it won’t tolerate. Yet love is a benign form of idleness, like soft refreshing rain.
    If youth is foolish, it is from want of idleness. What cripples our educational system is that it is designed for nonentities, who make up the majority. For the nimblemind there is no such thing as idleness. I never learnt as much as