the clearest water, sometimes even in platonic love. And thus I fell in love, like the rest.
Everything was in evidence: the transports, the tender moods, and the poetry. In reality this love of mine was the result, on the one hand, of the activity of her mamma and of the tailors, and, on the other, of a surplus of food swallowed by me, combined with an inactive life. If, on the one hand, there had been no rowing and no tailors with their finely made waists, etc., and my wife had worn an unsightly capote and remained at home, and if I, on the other, had been under normal conditions, a man devouring no more food than was necessary to do work, and my safety-valve had been open,—for the time being it happened to be closed,—I should not have fallen in love, and nothing would have happened.
