The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet Page A

an offended lover gave my response more weight. It was the first time she had heard me use the word ‘moral’. It came at just the right moment, for, not being malicious, she certainly must have been having serious doubts about the morality of our affair, as I was. Without this one word she might have thought me amoral, because despite rebelling against all those fine bourgeois prejudices she was still very much the bourgeoise. But quite the reverse, however; since this was the first time I had warned her, it proved that up till then I felt we hadn’t done anything wrong.
    Marthe took exception to this journey, a distasteful form of honeymoon. She saw now just how impossible it was.
    “At least allow me not to go,” she said.
    The word ‘moral’, used so rashly, established me as her spiritual adviser. I used it like a tyrant, intoxicated by his newly acquired power. Power only mainfests itself when used unjustly. So I replied that I saw no crime in her not going to Bourges. I came up with reasons that convinced her: the tiring journey, Jacques’s imminent recovery. These reasons excused her, if not in Jacques’s eyes then at least in those of her parents-in-law.
    By steering Marthe in a direction that suited me, I gradually shaped her in my own image. This is what I blamed myself for, and for knowingly destroying our happiness. For her to be like me, and for this to be my creation, both delighted and annoyed me. In it I saw a reason for the understanding between us; I also detected the cause of future tragedies. Because it was true that I had gradually passed on my lack of certainty to her, which, come the moment for decisions, prevented her from taking one. Likeme I sensed her hands were weak, and was hoping that the rising tide would spare our house of sand, while other children were busy building theirs further away.
    Occasionally an inner likeness extends into the external. Our eyes, our walk—several times strangers took us for brother and sister. This is because the seeds of resemblance lie within us, where love helps them grow. Sooner or later a gesture, an inflection in the voice, gives away even the most discreet of lovers.
    It has to be said that if the heart has reasons that reason isn’t familiar with, this is because the latter is less open to reason than our heart. No doubt we are all like Narcissus, we both love and loathe our own image, while being indifferent to any others. This instinct for similarity is what leads us through life, calling out “stop!” in front of a landscape, a woman, a piece of poetry. We are still able to admire others, although without experiencing the same bolt out of the blue. The instinct for similarity is the only type of behaviour that isn’t a pretence. But in everyday society it is only the uncouth who never offend public morality and always go after the same type. Hence some men relentlessly chase ‘blondes’, totally unaware that the deepest resemblances are often the most secret.

XX
    FOR SEVERAL DAYS MARTHE HAD SEEMED DISTANT, although not unhappy. Distant and unhappy I could have attributed to anxiousness about the coming fifteenth of July, when she would have to join Jacques’s family, as well as the convalescing Jacques, on a beach by the Channel. It was now her turn to keep quiet, to start at the sound of my voice. She suffered the insufferable—family visits, affronts, sharp insinuations from her mother, good-natured remarks from her father, who assumed she had a lover without really believing it.
    Why did she endure it? Was it the result of my lectures, criticising her for setting too great store by material things, for letting herself be upset by the least of them? She seemed happy, yet it was a strange kind of happiness, one which embarrassed her, and which I didn’t like because I didn’t share it. Having thought it childish when Marthe took my silence as a sign of indifference, I now accused her of not loving me because she didn’t say