Du Rozan came from a respectable provincial family. He had come to the capital like a moth attracted by the flame and had mixed in the world of Letters and Theatre. He had even written a few poems which he had succeeded in selling, and, on the stage, he had had at first a few minor jobs which had gradually developed into better roles, and now that he was a handsome actor, he believed the world was his oyster.
He deceived himself into thinking that Rosalie would follow in the footsteps of so many other well-known actresses who had fallen for his charms. He used to boast, that he had been the cause of so many deceived husbands that he had lost the count, although he did not give specific names.
But the mocking Rosalie was not keen on being just another of his feminine victories. When he complimented her on the agreeable curves of her body, she replied tartly:
— Why, don't you see anything else in a woman but these superficial qualities?
— Well, I… I see what you show me, he answered lamely.
— But I am not showing anything.
— You make one guess.
— I also have less apparent merits, and that's why I am such an admired woman.
— You have the complexion of a rose and a heart as pure as crystal.
— Mind! Crystal is eminently breakable.
— But yours does not run the risk of being hit.
— Du Rozan, you speaking as at the Hotel de Rambouillet.
— Or as in a scene from Moliere's plays.
— Well, that is surely not the way to get me, she said drily.
Du Rozan was getting desperate. Vainly did he dress and perfume himself as best he could, vainly did he try to be as witty as he could be-Rosalie remained insensible to his charms and to all his advances.
Besides, he frowned up on the too demonstrative friendship between his beloved and Mrs. de Sancy, a friendship that bordered a little too much on tenderness. He tackled her once on that ticklish point.
— Are you by any chance hoping to find in the salon of Mrs. de Sancy the rare bird that will move you?
— Who knows? she answered tauntingly.
And she laughed gaily, thinking of the rare bird that was hidden in the skirt of Mrs. de Sancy, that rare bird which knew so well how to give her a pleasure which du Rozan himself would probably never be able to equal.
Du Rozan's jealousy, as it growed and growed, needed fixing itself on somebody in particular. D'Haucourt was his victim.
— You should be careful, Rosalie, he said, d'Haucourt is looking at you with amorous eyes.
— He doesn't care a whit about me, Rosalie assured him.
— I am well informed, du Rozan insisted.
— But, my dear, he's after Mrs. de Sancy, not me. She's very attractive and well-off and — Well, let him marry her then!
Whereupon Rosalie, who knew the truth about Mrs. de Sancy, laughed at the very idea.
— If d'Haucourt got what he's after, it would be all over with your intimacy with Mrs. de Sancy, du Rozan said, oh, you can laugh. I'm gifted with foresight.
Rosalie became less ironical when she became certain she was pregnant. Choisy gave her some ingenious advice which she followed. She announced to du Rozan that Mrs. de Sancy had accepted to marry d'Haucourt. The comedian triumphantly exclaimed:
— What did I tell you? I knew the knight was playing a double game.
— Alas! sighed Rosalie.
And she played the best scene of her career, this time on the real stage of live.
— Give him a good lesson, du Rozan suggested, jumping at this unforeseen heaven-sent opportunity (or rather “Choisy-sent"), get married, you too: so, the knight won't have the satisfaction of seeing you disconsolate.
He took one of her hands, held it and kissed it with more effusion than he had ever done on the stage.
— I've been looking forward so long to this happiness, he whispered.
Rosalie did not answer but opposed no resistance. And she even gave du Rozan a kiss, which was the first he ever got from her. Secretly she thanked Choisy for the success of his stratagem. She had at last found a father for her child to come. She soon spread the news of her forthcoming marriage with du Rozan. But matters became complicated when du Rozan started bruiting about that Mrs. de Sancy was giving way to d'Haucourt. The latter, joyous with this piece of news, divulged it still more so that it was soon all over the salons. Then he brought an engagement-ring and gave it to Mrs. de Sancy, saying:
— I knew you would give way one day or the other, but I never imagined I would have won your heart with a sword.
— You still have to make your conquest concrete, Choisy said.
— I'll do your bidding, my love, he said, then, falling on his knees before Mrs. de Sancy, he added:
— But not as at Meudon? It's a dangerous game.
— Would you be afraid?
— Yes-to hurt you.
— Or to be hurt by me?
D'Haucourt laid a nervous hand on his beloved's knee and looked at her with burning eyes.
— Will you renounce fencing after we're married? he asked timidly.
— It would make a widow or a widower of one of us, remarked Choisy, and, in this non-committal remark, d'Haucourt read a glimpse of hope.
Nevertheless, he could not help recalling how Mrs. de Sancy, disguised as a knight, had put his life in peril at Meudon, and he wondered if by any chance she was not intending to marry him and then kill him in a duel in order to inherit his riches. That tigress was capable of everything!
Those thoughts made him hesitate to marry. Better, he reflected, become her lover. After all, to make love with her, they did not have to be married. So he continued to court her, but, at the back of his mind, he was seeking the means of springing a new trap on her at the earliest opportunity.
He was far from imagining that Choisy and Lisette were going to spring a trap on him into which he was about to fall as easily as a naive youngster.
Lisette had been busy trying to find a replacement for Choisy, one who would not suffer unduly from the gigantic size of d'Haucourt's limb. She had noticed in the neighborhood a laundress whose mouth looked like a sabre gash, which was a promising sign. Besides, her body was rough-hewn and course, Lisette hired her as a laundress, and, after a few days work, she deemed the moment ripe to ask her the burning question. Zoe (that was the laundress's name) laughed lasciviously and said:
— I nearly married the valet of a curator once, but I had to give him up for he was… sort of lost inside, if you see what I mean.
— Quite, said Lisette.
And a bargain was concluded there and then. And d'Haucourt fell into the trap with the ingenuousness of a man who thinks that because he has a sword dangling from his side, he is invulnerable.
Choisy, having invited d'Haucourt to supper, showed herself so coquettish with him, and “she” was so attractively dressed and perfumed that evening, that d'Haucourt became pressing, which is what Choisy wanted. He gave a successful parody of carnal emotion and, as soon as the other guests had left, he kept d'Haucourt aside and told him:
— They're talking a lot about ourselves. I think we should have at last a frank explanation, don't you?
— What kind of a trap are you preparing for me this time? asked d'Haucourt.
— I wanted to see what stuff you were made of, Choisy replied with an incendiary look, you see, you had drawn me to that village — Meudon?
— I'm prepared to forget it, but my pride made me fix up myself the moment when-need I say more?
Choisy lowered her head (I mean his head. Oh dear, it's confusing!) looking troubled, which made the knight blush and become all agog.
— My dear, please forgive me. All I did was dictated by the interest I have in you, you see-He was getting more and more muddled in his unnecessary explanations, nervous as he was with his sexual desire. At last he exclaimed:
— Please don't keep me waiting any longer!
Choisy got up from his chair and, pressing a handkerchief to his lips to hide his incipient laughter, whispered:
— This will be our Eden.
And he indicated his room to his suitor. As d'Haucourt went in he saw a bed with the curtains drawn and the sheets open.
— At last! he sighed.
D'Haucourt quickly undressed and slipped into the tempting bed and waited patiently, but not for long. A feminine silhouette appeared, wrapped in a dressing gown, her face concealed behind a timid hand, the candles were extinguished and d'Haucourt received in his arms a body dressed only in a thin night-gown. A greedy mouth met his.
He wondered a bit that his hands should encircle a plumper shape than he would have imagined, but he soon stopped thinking when he felt a hand seizing his sex and caressing it boldly. Then he thought that the way women dressed was deceptive and they were often quite different when they were naked. Nevertheless he ventured:
— You don't seem to be the same…
But Zoe did not answer. Instead she caressed him into oblivion of anything else but the matter in hand (and a very big matter it was, too!). She rolled on to her back and drew him to her. He carefully approached, knowing that his beloved would suffer from the forceful entry of his ugly rod. But Zoe was drawing him to her so insistently that he went in and was surprised to see that he needn't have worried-she seemed to like it, and it wasn't unduly narrow inside. Then he stopped thinking, for, after only a few thrusts, he came in gigantic spurts.
He remained a moment too dazed to think or move, then, when he had gradually recovered, he whispered with gratitude:
— Really, darling, I was far from imagining that we were so suited to each other.
Zoe, well-rehearsed, contented by herself with murmuring in a voice that was low enough not to betray her:
— Hush, you're making me blush.
And immediately she started exciting d'Haucourt again in such a way that he gave up solving the mystery. This Mrs. de Sancy, who knew so expertly how to handle a sword, and who had kept him waiting so long, was now revealed as a very hot female indeed, and so expert-all that was too complicated for him. Wasn't it better to give up trying to understand and concentrate on the singularly good fortune that had suddenly befallen him?
And he did just that. He continued making love with that hot woman until she had drawn from him every ounce of his virility. After which, he slept like a log and Zoe left him in bed, while she went to get the monetary reward which she had well earned.
The same joke was played on d'Haucourt several times, but with variations. For instance, Lisette would wait for him at the door and lead him mysteriously to the room where Zoe, in complete darkness, was waiting for him in bed.
The readers (if they are still with us, that is), may wonder indeed how foolish men are to pursue and worry about some woman, when, to satisfy their passion, any other woman would do, provided they didn't see her in the dark and imagined she was the woman they loved. It's a bit like butter and margarine. We all say that there is so much difference between the two that it is impossible to take one for the other, and yet, in all experiments conducted on that subject, it is found that less than ten percent can distinguish between one and the other. Another experiment is to blindfold a man and make him smoke a lighted cigarette for a few seconds, then an unlighted one, then alternate one and the other and tell him to name which is lit and which is not: believe it or not-he's fooled most of the time.
For a woman, though, we should imagine it would be more difficult to fool a man into taking a woman for another in bed in complete darkness. But perhaps not after all, particularly if the other woman resembles the genuine one in size and if the man has never before made love to her, and provided she wears the same perfume and doesn't speak. I wonder, have any of you readers tried it with a friend? And was he fooled?
Farces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are full of these deceptions of a man or a woman taking the place of another in bed with the other party getting wise to the substitution.