“Ah, December 1919, how well I remember that a reception was held at the Sélys’ in honour of the publication of a small volume bringing together a few of my poems. It was on this occasion that I first met the pianist Catherine de Sélys. I was immediately struck by the extraordinary beauty of this woman. Whilst we were getting to know each other I was bitten on the wrist by a mosquito. This caused a great excitement within me. I have to admit, I have always felt protective towards and, indeed, admiration for every mosquito that has come to carry my blood. It was as if each of them became by this fact somehow part of me, as if I expected from them to adopt my attitudes, my character. Thus, as I had completely fallen under the charm of this Catherine de Sélys, I spied my mosquito surrounding her and a voice within me said “Go on , sting; her, sting her”. I was already picturing the nape of her neck as the ideal place for the sting. I hoped for nothing more to be happy than to see this beast fly over our heads, its stomach swollen with our mixed bloods, like the sudden fruit of our meeting, a fruit uniting us not in sin, but in the innocence of pain shared by victims. But the animal could not make up its mind to sting her. Then, all of a sudden, as if afraid of something, it prepared to land on one of the walls of the room. At that very moment I saw a fat man dive upon it and squash it impetuously against the wall with my small volume of poems (which must have been given to him) and which he had folded in two in order to strike better. It was Monsieur de Selys. As Catherine introduced him to me, I noticed the flattened body of my poor mosquito, squashed against the “T” of my name printed on the brochure. But I didn’t have the heart to look for that tiny red spot on the wall which must have splattered there a few seconds before.”