t see how that affects the honor of
a man."

She seemed dumfounded: "What! you don't see?--you don't
see?--well, that's too much! You don't see!--why, it's a public
scandal! he is disgraced!"

He answered: "Ah! by no means! Should a man be considered disgraced
because he is deceived, because he is betrayed, robbed? No, indeed! I'll
grant you that that may be the case for the wife, but as for him--"

She became furious, exclaiming: "For him as well as for her. They are
both in disgrace; it's a public shame."

Bondel, very calm, asked: "First of all, is it true? Who can assert such
a thing as long as no one has been caught in the act?"

Madame Bondel was growing uneasy; she snapped: "What? Who can assert it?
Why, everybody! everybody! it's as clear as the nose on your face.
Everybody knows it and is talking about it. There is not the slightest
doubt."

He was grinning: "For a long time people thought that the sun revolved
around the earth. This man loves his wife and speaks of her tenderly and
reverently. This whole business is nothing but lies!"

Stamping her foot, she stammered: "Do you think that that fool, that
idiot, knows anything about it?"

Bondel did not grow angry; he was reasoning clearly: "Excuse me. This
gentleman is no fool. He seemed to me, on the contrary, to be very
intelligent and shrewd; and you can't make me believe that a man with
brains doesn't notice such a thing in his own house, when the neighbors,
who are not there, are ignorant of no detail of this liaison--for
I'll warrant that they know everything."

Madame Bondel had a fit of angry mirth, which irritated her husband's
nerves. She laughed: "Ha! ha! ha! they're all the same! There's not a man
alive who could discover a thing like that unless his nose was stuck into
it!"

The discussion was wandering to other topics now. She was exclaiming over
the blindness of deceived husbands, a thing which he doubted and which
she affirmed with such airs of personal contempt that he finally grew
angry. Then the discussion became an angry quarrel, where she took the
side of the women and he defended the men. He had the conceit to declare:
"Well, I swear that if I had ever been deceived, I should have noticed
it, and immediately, too. And I should have taken away your desire for
such things in such a manner that it would have taken more than one
doctor to set you on foot again!"

Boiling with anger, she cried out to him: "You! you! why, you're as