l at once I perceived at the end of the path two persons, a man and a
woman, coming towards me. Annoyed at being disturbed in my quiet walk,
I was about to dive into the thicket, when I thought I heard someone
calling me. The woman was, in fact, shaking her parasol, and the man,
in his shirt sleeves, his coat over one arm, was waving the other as a
signal of distress.

I went towards them. They were walking hurriedly, their faces very red,
she with short, quick steps and he with long strides. They both looked
annoyed and fatigued.

The woman asked:

"Can you tell me, monsieur, where we are? My fool of a husband made us
lose our way, although he pretended he knew the country perfectly."

I replied confidently:

"Madame, you are going towards Saint-Cloud and turning your back on
Versailles."

With a look of annoyed pity for her husband, she exclaimed:

"What, we are turning our back on Versailles? Why, that is just where we
want to dine!"

"I am going there also, madame."

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she repeated, shrugging her shoulders,
and in that tone of sovereign contempt assumed by women to express their
exasperation.

She was quite young, pretty, a brunette with a slight shadow on her
upper lip.

As for him, he was perspiring and wiping his forehead. It was assuredly
a little Parisian bourgeois couple. The man seemed cast down, exhausted
and distressed.

"But, my dear friend, it was you--" he murmured.

She did not allow him to finish his sentence.

"It was I! Ah, it is my fault now! Was it I who wanted to go out without
getting any information, pretending that I knew how to find my way?
Was it I who wanted to take the road to the right on top of the hill,
insisting that I recognized the road? Was it I who undertook to take
charge of Cachou--"

She had not finished speaking when her husband, as if he had suddenly
gone crazy, gave a piercing scream, a long, wild cry that could not be
described in any language, but which sounded like 'tuituit'.

The young woman did not appear to be surprised or moved and resumed:

"No, really, some people are so stupid and they pretend they know
everything. Was it I who took the train to Dieppe last year instead
of the train to Havre--tell me, was it I? Was it I who bet that M.
Letourneur lived in Rue des Martyres? Was it I who would not believe
that Celeste was a thief?"

She went on, furious, with a surprising flow of language, accumulating
the most var