I have always loved the stronger sex, the one I consider it legitimate to call the fairer sex. The misfortunes I have had at the hands of a society which views the unusual as the fit object of condemnation and obliges us, if they be rare, to rectify our inclinations. I recall three critical, three decisive incidents. My father lived in a little chateau near S***. Attached to that chateau was a park. At the further limit of the park, beyond where the chateau property stopped, were a farm and a watering-place. In return for some daily milk and butter and eggs, my father enabled the farmer to avoid the cost of fencing his animals off our land. One August morning, I was prowling about the park with a toy rifle that fired caps and, playing at hunting, using a hedge for a blind, I was waiting for some animal to pass, when from my hiding-place I spied a young farm-boy leading a draft horse down to water. Wishing to ride out into the pond and knowing that people never ventured to the far end of the park, he peeled off his clothes, sprang upon the horse and guided it into the water a few yards from where, concealed, I was watching.
