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The Kiss
Guy de Maupassant
My Little Darling: So you are crying from morning until night and from night
until morning, because your husband leaves you; you do not know what to do
and so you ask your old aunt for advice; you must consider her quite an expert. I
don't know as much as you think I do, and yet I am not entirely ignorant of the
art of loving, or, rather, of making one's self loved, in which you are a little
lacking. I can admit that at my age.
You say that you are all attention, love, kisses and caresses for him. Perhaps that is the very
trouble; I think you kiss him too much.
My dear, we have in our hands the most terrible power in the world: LOVE.
Man is gifted with physical strength, and he exercises force. Woman is gifted with charm,
and she rules with caresses. It is our weapon, formidable and invincible, but we should
know how to use it.
Know well that we are the mistresses of the world! To tell the history of Love from the
beginning of the world would be to tell the history of man himself: Everything springs from
it, the arts, great events, customs, wars, the overthrow of empires.
In the Bible you find Delila, Judith; in fables we find Omphale, Helen; in history the
Sabines, Cleopatra and many others.
Therefore we reign supreme, all-powerful. But, like kings, we must make use of delicate
diplomacy.
Love, my dear, is made up of imperceptible sensations. We know that it is as strong as
death, but also as frail as glass. The slightest shock breaks it, and our power crumbles, and
we are never able to raise it again.
We have the power of making ourselves adored, but we lack one tiny thing, the
understanding of the various kinds of caresses. In embraces we lose the sentiment of
delicacy, while the man over whom we rule remains master of himself, capable of judging
the foolishness of certain words. Take care, my dear; that is the defect in our armor. It is our
Achilles' heel.
Do you know whence comes our real power? From the kiss, the kiss alone! When we know
how to hold out and give up our lips we can become queens.
The kiss is only a preface, however, but a charming preface. More charming than the
realization itself. A preface which can always be read over again, whereas one cannot
always read over the book.
Yes, the meeting of lips is the most perfect, the most divine sensation given to human
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beings, the supreme limit of happiness: It is in the kiss alone that one sometimes seems to
feel this union of souls after which we strive, the intermingling of hearts, as it were.
Do you remember the verses of Sully-Prudhomme:
Caresses are nothing but anxious bliss,
Vain attempts of love to unite souls through a kiss.
One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one --it is the kiss. No
violent delirium of complete possession is worth this trembling approach of the lips, this
first moist and fresh contact, and then the long, lingering, motionless rapture.
Therefore, my dear, the kiss is our strongest weapon, but we must take care not to dull it.
Do not forget that its value is only relative, purely conventional. It continually changes
according to circumstances, the state of expectancy and the ecstasy of the mind. I will call
attention to one example.
Another poet, Francois Coppee, has written a line which we all remember, a line which we
find delightful, which moves our very hearts.
After describing the expectancy of a lover, waiting in a room one winter's evening, his
anxiety, his nervous impatience, the terrible fear of not seeing her, he describes the arrival
of the beloved woman, who at last enters hurriedly, out of breath, bringing with her part of
the winter breeze, and he exclaims:
Oh! the taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil.
Is that not a line of exquisite sentiment, a delicate and charming observation, a perfect
truth? All those who have hastened to a clandestine meeting, whom passion has thrown into
the arms of a man, well do they know these first delicious kisses through the veil; and they
tremble at the memory of them. And yet their sole charm lies in the circumstances, from
being late, from the anxious expectancy, but from the purely--or, rather, impurely, if you
prefer--sensual point of view, they are detestable.
Think! Outside it is cold. The young woman has walked quickly; the veil is moist from her
cold breath. Little drops of water shine in the lace. The lover seizes her and presses his
burning lips to her liquid breath. The moist veil, which discolors and carries the dreadful
odor of chemical dye, penetrates into the young man's mouth, moistens his mustache. He
does not taste the lips of his beloved, he tastes the dye of this lace moistened with cold
breath. And yet, like the poet, we would all exclaim:
Oh! the taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil.
Therefore, the value of this caress being entirely a matter of convention, we must be careful
not to abuse it.
Well, my dear, I have several times noticed that you are very clumsy. However, you were
not alone in that fault; the majority of women lose their authority by abusing the kiss with
untimely kisses. When they feel that their husband or their lover is a little tired, at those
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times when the heart as well as the body needs rest, instead of understanding what is going
on within him, they persist in giving inopportune caresses, tire him by the obstinacy of
begging lips and give caresses lavished with neither rhyme nor reason.
Trust in the advice of my experience. First, never kiss your husband in public, in the train,
at the restaurant. It is bad taste; do not give in to your desires. He would feel ridiculous and
would never forgive you.
Beware of useless kisses lavished in intimacy. I am sure that you abuse them. For instance, I
remember one day that you did something quite shocking. Probably you do not remember
it.
All three of us were together in the drawing-room, and, as you did not stand on ceremony
before me, your husband was holding you on his knees and kissing you at great length on
the neck, the lips and throat. Suddenly you exclaimed: "Oh! the fire!" You had been paying
no attention to it, and it was almost out. A few lingering embers were glowing on the
hearth. Then he rose, ran to the woodbox, from which he dragged two enormous logs with
great difficulty, when you came to him with begging lips, murmuring:
"Kiss me!" He turned his head with difficulty and tried to hold up the logs at the same time.
Then you gently and slowly placed your mouth on that of the poor fellow, who remained
with his neck out of joint, his sides twisted, his arms almost dropping off, trembling with
fatigue and tired from his desperate effort. And you kept drawing out this torturing kiss,
without seeing or understanding. Then when you freed him, you began to grumble: "How
badly you kiss!" No wonder!
Oh, take care of that! We all have this foolish habit, this unconscious need of choosing the
most inconvenient moments. When he is carrying a glass of water, when he is putting on his
shoes, when he is tying his scarf--in short, when he finds himself in any uncomfortable
position-- then is the time which we choose for a caress which makes him stop for a whole
minute in the middle of a gesture with the sole desire of getting rid of us!
Do not think that this criticism is insignificant. Love, my dear, is a delicate thing. The least
little thing offends it; know that everything depends on the tact of our caresses. An ill-
placed kiss may do any amount of harm.
Try following my advice.
Your old aunt,
COLLETTE.
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