confiding and good, who never interferes with us, who does not suspect
us for a moment, who leaves us quite free and undisturbed, whenever we
like, and you do all you can to put him into a rage and to spoil our
life."

She turned to him: "I say, you worry me. You are a coward, like all
other men are! You are frightened of that poor creature!" He immediately
jumped up and said, furiously: "I should like to know what he does, and
why you are so set against him? Does he make you unhappy? Does he beat
you? Does he deceive you and go with another woman? No, it is really too
bad to make him suffer, merely because he is too kind, and to hate him
merely because you are unfaithful to him." She went up to Limousin, and
looking him full in the face, she said: "And you reproach me with
deceiving him? You? You? What a filthy heart you must have?"

He felt rather ashamed, and tried to defend himself: "I am not
reproaching you, my dear; I am only asking you to treat your husband
gently, because we both of us require him to trust us. I think that you
ought to see that."

They were close together; he, tall, dark, with long whiskers, and the
rather vulgar manners of a good-looking man, who is very well satisfied
with himself; she, small, fair and pink, a little Parisian, half
shopkeeper, half one of those of easy virtue, born behind a shop,
brought up at its door to entice customers by her looks, and married,
accidentally, in consequence to a simple, unsophisticated man, who saw
her outside the door every morning when he went out, and every evening
when he came home.

"But do you not understand, you great booby," she said, "that I hate him