I'm now a respectable old man, and Mrs Regnault, God bless her, has long been dead. It is time I tell this story.

I left home to go to college and study law in 1965. My overprotective mother (I was an only child…) did not want me to go to a dorm; she had heard of partying and was worried about bad company. Furthermore, even though the dorms were all-male and it was not allowed to receive members of the opposite sex in one's room, she feared I would risk getting entangled with girls, as her uncle had been. Her solution had been to search for a room to rent. She had found a landlady who would provide me with half-board (I'd eat lunch at the university), and even full-board during the weekends if I did not come back home. My parents had the means to pay for it.

Mrs Regnault was in her early sixties. She was grey-haired and somewhat plumpish; her eyes were kind behind her glasses. She was the widow of a professor of medicine. When young, she had been a nurse, and then had married the professor. She had borne 4 children, the last of whom was studying in Paris and would come back during holidays. The three other ones had their own homes, and would visit her sometimes. The nest was now almost empty.

Why was Mrs Regnault taking a lodger? Probably she was seeking company, a replacement for her son in Paris. She may also have been looking for a bit of additional income, in addition to her husband's pension. She may have been a bit bored. Whatever her reasons, she gave me a warm welcome.

The first weeks I stayed at her home were uneventful. I was nourri, logé, blanchi (fed, housed, laundered), as in the saying. Things were going well in college.

I did not pay attention at the time to one little incident that occurred in the first couple days. I had declined something in an awkward, exaggeratedly polite way, and Mrs Regnault jokingly answered that I'd better stop fussing or she would spank me. She was smiling, but I still blushed.

One evening, there was another incident. I entered the bathroom, and was astonished to see Mrs Regnault naked. She had not properly locked the door, it seemed. I stood astonished, staring, for maybe two seconds, as she turned towards me, and then slammed the door shut.

I honestly did not know how to act when I met her later. I felt awkward, and I must have been blushing. I apologized for walking on her.

"Oh, well, it was not your fault, I had just improperly locked the door. It's not like you were a Peeping Tom, were you?"

I did not know what to answer, or even if an answer was expected.

"My! You look like you think you did something terrible."

I definitely did not know what to say.

"Oh dear oh dear. Well, it seems like you feel awfully guilty. You know what? I have an idea."

I must have looked very surprised.

"You feel guilty because you have seen me naked. Well, to even the score, I could see you naked. We'll then have seen each other naked and there won't be any guilt."

My eyes must have looked like they would pop out of their sockets.

"My, am I saying something too complicated? I'm just proposing that you get undressed, I have a look at you, and then you will not feel guilty about seeing me naked."

As you, dear reader, may have surmised, I had at that point not had any nude experience with women, if we do not count being naked in childhood in front of my mother, aunts, grandmother, nurses, or other adult women with a valid reason to see me undressed. I did not know what to say. Mrs Regnault smiled at my embarrassment, and left with these words:

"If you consider my proposal positively, come knock at my door."

Nothing in my life so far had prepared me for such a situation. I was totally at a loss. Was she making fun of me? Yet, somehow, the idea of showing her my naked body was enticing.

I knocked at her door.