The Reinvention of Love

satisfy it.
    The carriage rolls to a stop and Victor gets out without even a glance at me.

I LOSE ONE ADÈLE, and I gain another.
    After my mother’s death in 1850 I inherit the house on rue du Montparnasse. I hire a secretary to help with the research for my
Lundis
, and I hire a cook to keep house for me. The position of secretary has been rotated through a series of polite young men with literary aspirations. The position of cook belongs firmly to a new Adèle.
    My work life is ordered; my home life is chaos. And yet they both take place under the same roof.
    Once a week I dine out with my editor to discuss the subject of that week’s
Lundi
. The next day my secretary comes to my house in the morning to talk over my new idea. We work in my bedroom. I sit at my desk, which in reality is two tables placed side by side. My secretary sits in a chair by the fireplace. Sometimes he is required to take dictation but usually, in the early stages of an idea, he is sent out to borrow books from the library and verify references, or he is simply there to listen to my thoughts. My ideas formulate more quickly if I am able to speak them out loud. When the article is written, I have my secretary read it out to me so I can adjust the phrasing as necessary. I find that my ear is a better judge of my words than my eye.
    While we work, my cats prowl about the room. Only my favourite, Mignonne, is allowed to walk across my desk and disturb my papers. Sometimes she sits there, watching me write, her tail swishing from side to side rather angrily.

    Charles Sainte-Beuve

    My secretary leaves in the evenings, before my supper, and often I will walk out with him. We stroll through the Jardin du Luxembourg if the weather is good, tossing around ideas,detailing the tasks for the following day.
    On the days when my routine unrolls without disturbance, I rise at five in the morning, shave without a mirror (so I do not have to look at myself) and don a dressing gown. I have become bald in my later years and so I wear a black skull-cap whenever I leave the house, and a black bandana inside the house. I wrap it around my head like a turban and I must say that, in that and my silk dressing gown, I look exactly like my mother. The resemblance is so striking that others have remarked on it as well.
    I work from six to eight, and then I dress. If Adèle is awake, she will bring me a cup of chocolate and some bread. My secretary comes just after nine. At noon I have some tea and brioche, most of which I feed to the cats. In the evenings, after my secretary has gone home, I have a supper of bread and cheese, soup, meat and vegetables. I mix my wine with water. Once in a while I have a slice of almond cake that I buy from a baker on the rue de Fleurus.
    Like my father, I write in the margins of my books. But where he used that space to carry on a conversation with the authors, I make notes that offer a shorthand interpretation of the text so that when I am looking for references, I can see, at a glance, whether there is something I will be able to use on that page.
    As I have said, my work habits are orderly and comfortable. But that is not all that goes on in my house.
    My cook, Adèle, is a drunk. It took me a while to discover this, and when I did, instead of being outraged at her behaviour and casting her out, I felt sorry for her and despaired that she would ever be able to find another situation, so I have kept her on. Sometimes she is so drunk that she forgets to make my supper, and when I go down to the kitchen to enquire politely as to its progress, I find her passed out at the table, snoring noisily, her head laid down on the bare wood.
    She steals my wine. Once I caught her handing bottles of it through the kitchen window to one of her lovers, an omnibus conductor.
    I must admit that I admire her unrepentance. On her good days she fills my house with flowers from the market. She is nice to the cats. Sometimes she sings to them while she cooks. Whenever she returns from the market they run downstairs to see what little titbit she has brought for them.
    If it were only Adèle in my house, I could probably weather her thieving and her drunkenness. But often there are prostitutes living with me as well. Sometimes there is just one, and sometimes as many as three. Don’t misunderstand, they are in my house not because I want them to service me, but rather because they have fallen on hard times and I feel pity for them. I want to offer them