At the beginning of the century, a small pension on the Riviera

The guests of the establishment are in an uproar: the wife of one of the boarders, Mrs. Henriette, has left with a young man who had only been there one day. Only the narrator defends this morally bankrupt creature. And his only ally is a dry and distinguished old English lady. It is she who, in the course of a long conversation, will explain to him which badly extinguished fires this adventure has rekindled in her