a chair. 'Confound the nasty piano!'

"It may be useless to add, that the marchioness has quite renounced
_trifles_, as our forefathers used to say, and would deserve a prize for
virtue, if the Academy would only show itself rather more gallant
towards pretty women, who take crossroads in order to become virtuous.

"Emotions like that cure people of running risks of that kind!"

WIFE AND MISTRESS

It was not only her long, silky curls, which covered her small,
fairy-like head, like a golden halo, nor her beautiful complexion, nor
her mouth, which was like some delicate shell, nor was it her supreme
innocence, which was shown by her sudden blushes, and by her somewhat
awkward movements, nor was it her ingenious questions which had assailed
and conquered George d'Harderme's heart. He had a peculiar temper, and
any appearance of a yoke frightened him and put him to flight
immediately, and his unstable heart was ready to yield to any
temptation, and he was incapable of any lasting attachment, while a
succession of women had left no more traces on it than on the seashore,
which is constantly being swept by the waves.

It was not the dream of a life of affection, of peace, the want of
loving and of being loved, which a fast man so often feels between
thirty and forty. His insurmountable lassitude of that circle of
pleasure in which he has turned, like a horse in a circus, the voids in
his existence which the marriage of his bachelor friends cause, and
which in his selfishness he looks upon as desertion, and whom he,
nevertheless, envies, which had at last induced him to listen to the
prayers and advice of his old mother, and to marry Mademoiselle Suzanne
de Gouvres; but the vision that he had had when he saw her playing with
quite little children, covering them with kisses, and looking at them
with ecstacy in her limpid eyes, and in hearing her talk of the
pleasures and the anguish that they must feel who are mothers in the
fullest sense of the word-the vision of a happy home where a man feels
that he is living again in others of that house, which is full of
laughter and of song, and seems as if it were full of birds.

As a matter of fact, he loved children, like some men love animals, and
he was interested in them, as in some delightful spectacle, and they
attracted him.

He was very gentle, kind and thoughtful with them, invented games for
them, took them on his knees, was never tired of listening to their
c