It was there I had a new emotion to deal with: Marceline announced she was pregnant.

How risqué was that! After a few days in Paris spent in companionable silence, Marceline and I moved to Normandy to visit my family's estate. To demonstrate the courage of my convictions - how I had cast off the shackles of my past - I even declined to visit Agrigentum. Having come so close to death, I felt a need to experience unconstrained joy by doing whatever I liked. Her gratitude was touching, but the sense she was but an impediment to my inflated ego was growing daily. Marceline passively accepted her role as a patsy in a thinly disguised Nietzschean treatise and as her reward, after wasting several more months ogling boys, I consummated our marriage in Sorrento. I don't need God's help it creates obligations.' 'I've been praying for you,' she said one day.

I passed my convalescence observing the nakedness of young Arab boys beneath their thin white gandourah and ignoring Marceline. We were taken to Biskra, where Marceline slowly nursed me back to health. Was it not enough that one of us was ill? Thrilled with the daring selfishness of my thoughts, I summoned a doctor before losing consciousness myself. When we reached Sousse, I felt unwell and casually told Marceline I had spat blood in the night. We travelled south, sleeping apart in separate rooms, naturally, and it was only after several months that I momentarily slipped out of my self-absorption and realised Marceline was actually quite pretty.

André gide the immoralist