B989 <=> B991 (BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 990)

“’Just look around and see what is going on everywhere here.

“’Glance around merely at these rooms of the Grand Cafe, where besides the ordinary professional prostitutes and “gigolos” who are constantly here, hundreds of men and women are always sitting at the little tables gaily conversing.

“’Looking at these men and women now, you would say they were married couples who have come here together, either to see Paris or on some family business.

“’But as a matter of fact it is practically certain that in all the halls of this Grand Cafe there is not a single couple among these men and women so gaily chatting and about to go to some hotel together, who are legal man and wife, even though, at the same time, every one of them may be, on paper, a legal husband or wife.

“’The other “legal halves” of the men and women sitting here, who have remained at home in the provinces are probably now thinking and telling their acquaintances positively, that their “legal wife” or “legal husband” has gone to the world capital Paris to make some very “important” purchases for the family or to meet somebody there very important for the family, or something else of the same sort.

“’But in reality, in order to get here, these birds of passage have had to intrigue for a whole year and cook up every kind of story to convince their legal halves of the necessity of their trip; and now here, in the company of deceivers and intriguers like themselves, in the name of and to the glory of the significance of the “epithalamium,” aided by that fine art which this great contemporary civilization has attained, they decorate their stay-at-home “legal halves” with the largest possible “fine art horns.”

“’In Europe, thanks to the established order of family life, it has now already come about that if you meet a man and a woman together and notice that while conversing, gay tones are heard in their voices and smiles appear on their faces, you can then be quite sure that very soon, if they have not already done so, they will very effectively and without fail put on some legal half a pair of the largest and most beautiful horns.