y shut up their
public-houses by force, and their dancing-places. Perhaps they would
shut up me. In England they have a great belief in creating virtue by
Act of Parliament. In myself this enforced virtue creates such a revolt
that I shall _tirer sur le mors_, and fly before very long. The admired
excellence of this beautiful estate is that it lies in a ring-fence. I
feel that I shall take a leap over that ring-fence. Do not mistake me,
_cara mia Teresina_, I am exceedingly fond of my wife. I think her quite
lovely, simple, saintly, and truly woman-like. She is exquisitely
pretty, and entirely without vanity, and I am certain she is
immeasurably my superior morally, and possibly mentally too. But--there
is always such a long and melancholy "but" attached to marriage--she
does not amuse me in the least. She is always the same. She is shocked
at nearly everything that is natural or diverting. She thinks me unmanly
because I dislike rain. She buttons about her a hideous, straight,
water-proof garment, and walks out in a deluge. She blushes if I try to
make her laugh at "Figaro," and she goes out of the room when I mention
Trouville. What am I to do with a woman like this? It is an admirable
type, no doubt. Possibly, if she had not shut me up in a country house
in a wet June, with the thermometer at 10 deg. R., and the barometer fixedly
at the word _Rainy_, I might have been always charmed with this St.
Dorothea-like attitude and never have found out the monotony of it. But,
as it is, I yawn till I dislocate my neck. She thinks me a heathen
already. I am convinced that very soon she will think me a brute. And I
am neither. I only want to get out, like the bird in the cage. It is a
worn simile, but it is such a true one.

* * * * *

_From the Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Roches Noires, Trouville, to the
Prince di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset._

_Piero mio_,--

In marriage, the male bird is always wanting to get out when the female
bird does not want him to get out; also, she is forever tightening the
wires over his head, and declaring that nothing can be more delightful
than the perch which she sits on herself. Come to us here. There are any
quantities of birds here who ought to be in their cages, but are not,
and manage to enjoy themselves _quand meme_. If only you had married
Nicoletta! She might have torn your hair occasionally, but she would
never have bored you. There is only one supreme a