Apparently, the other day, a horse-dealer took his client for a ride and sold him a horse with a gutta-percha hoof. The horse-dealer is famous for his trickery. There is no horse-sickness he does not know how to disguise, no coat he cannot imitate, no gait he cannot force on a beast. Like woman, the horse is generally a counterfeit animal. We force him into the hypocrisy that woman forces herself into in order to trick man, her perpetual desire and perpetual enemy. So, somewhere or other, there is sure to be a saying of this sort: ‘Trust in neither horse nor woman.’ The horse no longer interests us much, having fallen out of fashion; but woman is always in fashion. The dexterity of horse-dealers notwithstanding, a horse is sold naked: there is a limit to his trickery; but to the trickery of woman, who sells herself clothed, there is no limit. An almost entirely artificial woman can inflame the covetousness of the connoisseur, not least because a woman made up by dressmakers and hairdressers, dentists and corset-makers almost always offers a fairer prospect than a natural woman. Artificiality goes deeper than the skin: wigs are not only for the head! How many lovers have caressed magnificent blonde tresses not long dead on the head of a hospitalized phthisic? How many lovers have been troubled by the finely-wrought rhythm of a breast they have seen before, but mute, then, in the rubber-merchant’s window? Her modesty, her ferocious modesty, compounds an artificial woman’s charm. Undressing, she defends herself despairingly. She is not one to let her gutta-percha slip like the poor, innocent horse!
Note
Gutta-percha is an early sort of plastic got from a tree of Malaya.
Rough translation of Remy de Gourmont, ‘Chevaux et femmes,’ from Petits crayons (Paris: Crès, 1921), pp. 72–4.
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