Casino Trouville Sur Mer

By Guy de Maupassant THE CHARM DISPELLED THE BOAT WAS FILLED with people. As the passage promised to be good, many people of Havre were making a trip to Trouville. They loosed the moorings; a last whistle announced the departure, and im- mediately the entire body of the vessel shook, while a sound of stirring water was heard all along the sides. The wheels turned for some seconds, stopped and then started gently. The captain upon his bridge having cried, "Go ahead!" through the tube which extends into the depths of the machinery, they now began to beat the waves with great rapidity. We passed along the pier covered with people. Some that were on the boat waved their handkerchiefs, as if they were setting out for America, and the friends who remained behind responded in the same fashion. The great July sun fell upon the red umbrellas, the bright costumes, the joy- ous faces and upon the ocean, scarcely moved by any undulations. As soon as they had left the port the little vessel made a sharp turn, pointing its nose directly for the far-off coast rising to meet the foam. On the left was the mouth of the Seine, more than twelve miles wide. Here and there great buoys pointed out banks of sand, and one could see at a distance the fresh, muddy water of the river, which had not yet mingled with the salt brine, outlined in broad, yellow stripes upon the immense, pure green sheet of the open sea. As soon as I boarded the boat I felt the need of walking up and down, like a sailor on his watch. Why? That I cannot say. But I began to circulate among the crowd of passengers on deck. Suddenly someone called my name. I turned around. It was Henry Sidonie, whom I had not seen for ten years. After we had shaken hands we resumed the walk of a bear in his cage, which I had been taking alone, while we talked of people and things. And we looked at the two lines of travelers seated on both sides of the boat, chatting all the while. All at once Sidonie exclaimed with a veritable expression of rage: "It is crowded with English in here! Nasty people!" The boat was full of English, in fact. Men standing about scanned the horizon with an important air which seemed to say: "It is the English who are masters of the sea! Boom! Boom! Here we are!" And the white veils upon their white hats had the air of flags in their sel- sufficiency. The thin young girls, whose boots recalled the naval construction of their country, wrapping their straight figures and thin arms in multicolored shawls, smiled vaguely at the radiant landscape. Their little heads, perched on the top of their long bodies, wearied by the peculiarly shaped English hat, were finished at the back of the neck by their thin hair, coiled around to resemble sleeping adders. And the old spinsters, still more lank, opening to the wind their national jaw, appeared to threaten space with their enormous yellow teeth. In passing near them one smells an odor of caoutchouc or some kind of dentifrice. Sidonie repeated with an increasing anger: "Nasty people! Why couldn't they be hindered from coming to France?" I inquired laughingly: "Why, what do you care? As for me, I am perfectly indifferent to them." He answered: "Yes, you are, indeed! But I—I married an Englishwoman. And there you have it!" I stopped and laughed in his face. "The devil!" I said; "tell me about it. Has she made you so unhappy?" He shrugged his shoulders as he replied: "No, not precisely." "Then she—she has—deceived you?" "Unfortunately, no. That would give me a cause for divorce, and I should be free." "But I do not understand." "You do not understand? That is astonishing. Well, she simply learned the French language, nothing more! Listen: "I had never had the least desire to marry when I went to pass the summer at Etretat two years ago. But there is nothing more dangerous than watering places. One cannot imagine to what an advantage young girls are seen there. Paris may be for women, but the country is for young girls. "The idiotic promenades, the morning baths, lunches upon the grass, all are so many snares for marriage. And truly, there is nothing prettier than a girl of eighteen running across a field or picking flowers along the road. "I made the acquaintance of an English family living at the same hotel as myself. The father resembled the men you see there, and the mother all other Englishwomen. They had two sons, boys all bones, who played at violent games with balls, sticks or rackets from morning until evening; then two girls, the elder a lean, well-preserved Englishwoman of maturity, the younger a wonder. She was a blonde, or rather a blondine, with a head that came from the skies. When they do undertake to be pretty, these wretches, they are divine. She had blue eyes, of the blue which seems to contain all the poetry, dreams, hopes and happiness of the world! "What horizon of infinite thought opens before you in the two eyes of a woman like that! How well she responds to the eternal, vague expectation of out hearts! "It is only necessary to remember that Frenchmen always adore foreigners. As soon as we meet a Russian, an Italian, a Swede, a Spanish or an English- woman at all pretty, we fall in love with her immediately. Everything that comes from abroad fills us with enthusiasm, whether it be trouser cloth, hats, gloves, guns or—women. We are wrong, nevertheless. "But I believe the most seductive thing about these exotics is their faulty pronunciation of our language. As soon as a woman speaks French badly she is charming. If she uses a wrong word she is exquisite, and if she jabbers in a manner quite unintelligible she becomes irresistible. "You cannot imagine how pretty it is to h ear a sweet, red mouth say: "j'aime beaucoup la gigotte' (I like mutton so much)! "My little English Kate spoke a most unlikely tongue. I could understand nothing of it in the first days; she invented so many unheard-of words. That was when I became absolutely in love with the comical, gay little monkey. All these crippled, strange, ridiculous terms took on a delicious charm upon her lips, and on the casino terrace in the evening, we had many long conversations, resembling spoken enigmas. "I married her! I loved her foolishly, as one can love a dream. For the true lover adores nought but a dream which takes the shape of a woman. You re- call Louis Bouilhet's admirable verse: "You only were, in those rarest days, A common instrument under my art; Like the bow, on the viol d'amour it plays, I dreamed my dream o'er your empty heart. "Well, my dear, the greatest mistake I made was to give my wife a teacher of French. As long as she made a martyr of the dictionary and punished the grammar, I was fond of her. Our talks were very simple. She showed a sur- prising grace of mind, an incomparable elegance in her actions. She seemed to be a marvelous speaking jewel, a doll of flesh made to kiss, knowing how to make known or at least indicate the things she desired, uttering at times the strangest exclamations and expressing rather complicated sensations and emo- tion in a coquettish fashion, with a force as incomprehensible as it was un- foreseen. She much resembled those pretty playthings which say 'papa' and 'mamma,' pronouncing them 'baba' and 'bamban.' "Could I have believed that—— "She speaks now—she speaks—badly—very badly. She makes just as many mistakes, but I can understand her. Yes, I understand—I know—and I know her. "I have opened my doll to see what was inside. I have seen. And one must talk, my dear! "Ah! You don't know, you could never imagine the theories, the ideas, the opinions of a young Englishwoman, well brought up, in whom there is noth- ing to reproach, who repeats to me morning and evening all the phrases in the dictionary of conversation in use at the schools for young people. "You have seen those favors for a cotillion, those pretty gilt-paper-covered execrable bonbons? I had one of them. I tore it open. I wished to taste what was inside and became so disgusted that now there is a rebellion in my feelings if I but see one of her compatriots. "I have married a parakeet to whom an old-time instructress had taught French. Do you understand?" The port of Trouville now showed its wooded piers covered with people. I said: "Where is your wife?" He answered: "I have just taken her back to Etretat." "And where are you going?" "I? I am going to try and divert myself at Trouville." Then after a silence he added: "You cannot imagine how irksome a wife can become sometimes." 

From SHORT STORIES OF DE MAUPASSANT. THE BOOK LEAGUE OF AMERICA, New York. Copyright, 1941, BLUE RIBBON BOOKS, 14 WEST 49TH STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. pp. 361—364.
Human cognition is not a virus. 9/11 was a big lie, and everybody knows it.