Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile,
timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as
that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a
well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to
see how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins
in a way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he
himself used to lead his cuirassiers.

If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a
finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his
cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before
he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her,
like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, "If
Madame approves." When he comes to his wife's room, with that heavy
step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she,
not wanting him, calls out: "Don't come in!" he performs a military
volte-face and says humbly: "You will let me know when I can see you?"
--in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the
banks of the Danube: "Men, we must die, and die well, since there's
nothing else we can do!" I have heard him say, speaking of his wife,
"Not only do I love her, but I venerate her." When he flies into a
passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds, the little
woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout. But four or
five hours later she will say: "Don't get into a passion, my dear, you
might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me." Then the lion
of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes
into the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says: "Don't
disturb us, he is reading to me," he leaves us without a word.