Blumenthal. He's a major in the Prussian artillery--grizzled, grave, a
trifle severe, a man every way firm in the faith of his fathers. It's a
proof of Anastasia's charm that such a man should have got into the habit
of going to see her every day of his life. But the major was in love, or
next door to it! Every day that he called he found her scribbling away
at a little ormolu table on a lot of half-sheets of note-paper. She used
to bid him sit down and hold his tongue for a quarter of an hour, till
she had finished her chapter; she was writing a novel, and it was
promised to a publisher. Clorinda, she confided to him, was the name of
the injured heroine. The major, I imagine, had never read a work of
fiction in his life, but he knew by hearsay that Madame Blumenthal's
literature, when put forth in pink covers, was subversive of several
respectable institutions. Besides, he didn't believe in women knowing
how to write at all, and it irritated him to see this inky goddess
correcting proof-sheets under his nose--irritated him the more that, as I
say, he was in love with her and that he ventured to believe she had a
kindness for his years and his honours. And yet she was not such a woman
as he could easily ask to marry him. The result of all this was that he
fell into the way of railing at her intellectual pursuits and saying he
should like to run his sword through her pile of papers. A woman was
clever enough when she could guess her husband's wishes, and learned
enough when she could read him the newspapers. At last, one day, Madame
Blumenthal flung down her pen and announced in triumph that she had
finished her novel. Clorinda had expired in the arms of--some one else
than her husband. The major, by way of congratulating her, declared that
her novel was immoral rubbish, and that her love of vicious paradoxes was
only a peculiarly depraved form of coquetry. He added, however, that he
loved her in spite of her follies, and that if she would formally abjure
them he would as formally offer her his hand. They say that women like
to be snubbed by military men. I don't know, I'm sure; I don't know how