Marks Of Identity - pg. 206

The new arrivals of the first layer came dazzled by the completely fabricated myth of Paris and the gaudy varnish of the anemic French culture, avid for love affairs, experiences, and readings and, like Alvaro himself when he first met Dolores, they divided their free time among revivals at the Cinematheque, plays put on by students of the TNP, and lectures on art and literature at the Sorbonne, falling in love with all the blond girls in the Quartier Latin and the Cite Universitaire, happy to be living in a place where love was a possibility, astounded at the wide freedom and independence of French (or German or Scandinavian) women, making an effort to pronounce correctly a language whose classics they devoured in whole series in their desire to fill rapidly the gaps in a narrow, ultra-Catholic upbringing, until the fatal day when they discovered at their own expense the inborn virile pride of the Spanish male, suddenly frightened at the scandalous infidelity of French (or German or Scandinavian) women, who would forget overnight their glowing promises of love and their eternal vows, to fall -- something inconceivable -- into the arms of an Italian student with a touch of fairy about him or those of a solid and exceedingly black scholarship student from Togo or Cameroons, leaving them sunken in the depths of jealousy, wounded self-esteem, and spiteful bitterness, and quickly opening their eyes to the true measure of a French (or German or Scandinavian) woman, so different from the gravity and strength characteristic of the Spanish female, a discovery that dragged along with it the demystification of all remaining values and put French society as a whole in the prisoner's dock.