A man agrees to meet the daughter of an old friend at the bar of the Hôtel Crillon. He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t go to the Crillon—which is not to say he doesn’t know Paris inside and out, its bars, restaurants, hotels. She’s a pretty blonde American of eighteen. At first reticent, with no expectations for the encounter requested by the young woman, Simon gradually surrenders himself to the pleasures of divulgence. As he ranges over a lifetime of sexual conquests, the novel comes to resemble a little black book fondly leafed through, each adventure lovingly annotated for the sake of a curious audience. What emerges from the pages is the portrait of a man: frank, yet unconfrontational; opinionated, yet rarely arrogant; educated, yet worldly; an honest seducer asserting his liberty to let desire be the guiding principle of his life.

Here are a wife, a grandchild, innumerable friends and mistresses. In the seductive tones of civility are confidences passed on, satisfactions remembered, opinions held to, and conclusions drawn. Regrets, mature reflection, candid portraiture—these come to make an apologia for a way of life that has left him with a certain modest wisdom. What rapport will have grown between the strangers by the time, on the eve of her departing flight, they reach the Bar Cosmos at Orly?