were speaking
to equals, yet in their tone there was something of fear. I am sure my
husband was their superior, or captain, or somewhat. He replied to them
almost as if he were scoffing at them, saying it was such an expenditure
of labour having to do with fools; that, ten to one, the woman was
only telling the simple truth, and that she was frightened enough by
discovering her master in his room to be thankful to escape and return
to her mistress, to whom he could easily explain on the morrow how he
happened to return in the dead of night. But his companions fell to
cursing me, and saying that since M. de la Tourelle had been married he
was fit for nothing but to dress himself fine and scent himself with
perfume; that, as for me, they could have got him twenty girls prettier,
and with far more spirit in them. He quietly answered that I suited him,
and that was enough. All this time they were doing something--I could
not see what--to the corpse; sometimes they were too busy rifling the
dead body, I believe, to talk; again they let it fall with a heavy,
resistless thud, and took to quarrelling. They taunted my husband with
angry vehemence, enraged at his scoffing and scornful replies, his
mocking laughter. Yes, holding up his poor dead victim, the better to
strip him of whatever he wore that was valuable, I heard my husband
laugh just as he had done when exchanging repartees in the little salon
of the Rupprechts at Carlsruhe. I hated and dreaded him from that moment.
At length, as if to make an end of the subject, he said, with cool
determination in his voice,--

"Now, my good friends, what is the use of all this talking, when you
know in your hearts that, if I suspected my wife of knowing more than I
chose of my affairs, she would not outlive the day? Remember Victorine.
Because she merely joked about my affairs in an imprudent manner, and
rejected my advice to keep a prudent tongue--to see what she liked, but
ask nothing and say nothing--she has gone a long journey--longer than to
Paris."

"But this one is different to her; we knew all that Madame Victorine
knew, she was such a chatterbox; but this one may find out a vast deal,
and never breathe a word about it, she is so sly. Some fine day we may
have the country raised, and the gendarmes down upon us from Strasburg,
and all owing to your pretty doll, with her cunning ways of coming over
you."

I think this roused M. de la Tourelle a little from his contemptuous