is friend.

"The captain on the staff? Of course I do. Sanguine habit, short neck,
more shoulders than brains, organisation of a bull! I have always
predicted he would die of apoplexy."

"Heaven fulfil your prophecy!"

"You astonish me! I thought you friends."

"Friends!" repeated Bouchereau, with mingled irony, and indignation.

"_Que diantre!_ Speak out, or hold your tongue. I am no Oedipus to
guess your riddle."

The impatience that sparkled in the doctor's eyes brought his doleful
friend to the substance of his intended confession.

"Well, my dear Magnian," said he, in an agitated voice, "in two words,
here is the case: Pelletier makes love to my wife."

To conceal a smile, the doctor protruded his under-lip, and nodded his
head several times with affected gravity.

"Who would have thought it?" he at last exclaimed. "I never suspected
the great dragoon of such good taste. But are you quite sure? Husbands
are usually the last persons to discover those things."

"I am only too sure; and you shall hear how. My wife is at Fontainbleau,
passing a few days with her mother. The day before yesterday I happened
to remark that the key of my desk fitted her drawers. Mechanically, I
opened one of them, and in a sort of mysterious pigeon-hole I found
several letters from Pelletier."

"The deuce you did! But why open drawers belonging to your wife?"

"It is my right. Besides, do not judge hastily. From the tenor of the
correspondence, I am convinced Virginia's only fault is to have received
the letters and concealed the fact from me. I am pretty sure she has
given the writer no encouragement, and I am therefore much less angry
with her than with Pelletier. Him I will never pardon. A man to whom I
have thrown open my house! an old comrade at Sainte Barbe! A friend, in
short; at least I thought him so!"

"You forget that one is never betrayed but by one's friends."

"I called upon him yesterday."

"Ah!"

"I reproached him with his shameful conduct. Can you guess his answer?"

"He denied the fact."

"At first. But when I showed him his letters he saw it was useless to
lie. 'My dear Bouchereau,' he said, in his impertinent manner, 'since
you know all about it, I will not take the trouble to contradict you. It
is perfectly true that I am in love with your wife; I have told her so
already, and I cannot promise you that I will not tell her so again, for
very likely I should not keep my promise. I perfectly understa