more closely from the fact that she herself has, it
is said, some little things to reproach herself with during the career
of her two former lords. At her house, no one dares risk a jest.
Everything there is white and pink and perfumed with sanctity, as at
the houses of widows who are approaching the confines of their third
youth. It seems as if every day were Sunday there.

You, a young husband, join the juvenile society of young women and
girls, misses and young people, in the chamber of Madame Deschars. The
serious people, politicians, whist-players, and tea-drinkers, are in
the parlor.

In Madame Deschars' room they are playing a game which consists in
hitting upon words with several meanings, to fit the answers that each
player is to make to the following questions:

How do you like it?

What do you do with it?

Where do you put it?

Your turn comes to guess the word, you go into the parlor, take part
in a discussion, and return at the call of a smiling young lady. They
have selected a word that may be applied to the most enigmatical
replies. Everybody knows that, in order to puzzle the strongest heads,
the best way is to choose a very ordinary word, and to invent phrases
that will send the parlor Oedipus a thousand leagues from each of his
previous thoughts.

This game is a poor substitute for lansquenet or dice, but it is not
very expensive.

The word MAL has been made the Sphinx of this particular occasion.
Every one has determined to put you off the scent. The word, among
other acceptations, has that of _mal_ [evil], a substantive that
signifies, in aesthetics, the opposite of good; of _mal_ [pain,
disease, complaint], a substantive that enters into a thousand
pathological expressions; then _malle_ [a mail-bag], and finally
_malle_ [a trunk], that box of various forms, covered with all kinds
of skin, made of every sort of leather, with handles, that journeys
rapidly, for it serves to carry travelling effects in, as a man of
Delille's school would say.

For you, a man of some sharpness, the Sphinx displays his wiles; he
spreads his wings and folds them up again; he shows you his lion's
paws, his woman's neck, his horse's loins, and his intellectual head;
he shakes his sacred fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs away, he
comes and goes, and sweeps the place with his terrible equine tail; he
shows his shining claws, and draws them in; he smiles, frisks, and
murmurs. He puts on the looks of a joyou