delicious of sweets with the tip of her tongue, and acting in concert,
and giving each other the word, so that there might be no awkward
mistake, they managed to make the husband their unwitting accomplice,
without his having the least idea of what was going on.

Courtade was an excellent fellow, who saw no further than the tip of his
nose, incapable of rebelling, flabby, fat, steeped in devotion, and
thinking too much about heaven to see what a plot was being hatched
against him, in our unhappy vale of tears, as the psalters say.

In the good old days of confederacies, he would have made an excellent
chief of a corporation; he loved his wife more like a father than a
husband, considering that at his age a man ought no longer to think of
such trifles, and that, after all, the only real happiness in life was
to keep a good table and to have a good digestion, and so he ate like
four canons, and drank in proportion.

Only once during his whole life had he shown anything like energy--but
he used to relate that occurrence with all the pride of a conqueror,
recalling his most heroic battle--and that was on the evening when
he refused to allow the bishop to take his cook away, quite regardless
of any of the consequences of such a daring deed.

In a few weeks, the Captain became his regular table companion, and his
best friend. He had begun by telling him in a boastful manner that, in
order to keep a vow that he had made to St. George, during the charge
up the slope at Yron, during the battle of Gravelotte, he wished to send
two censers and a sanctuary lamp to his village church.

Courtade did his utmost, and all the more readily as this unexpected