r kissing him to an indefinite extent, the duel having
stimulated her affection.

Duroy thought, as he made his way to the office, "What a strange being.
What a feather brain. Can one tell what she wants and what she cares
for? And what a strange household. What fanciful being arranged the
union of that old man and this madcap? What made the inspector marry
this giddy girl? A mystery. Who knows? Love, perhaps." And he concluded:
"After all, she is a very nice little mistress, and I should be a very
big fool to let her slip away from me."

VIII

His duel had given Duroy a position among the leader-writers of the _Vie
Francaise_, but as he had great difficulty in finding ideas, he made a
specialty of declamatory articles on the decadence of morality, the
lowering of the standard of character, the weakening of the patriotic
fiber and the anemia of French honor. He had discovered the word anemia,
and was very proud of it. And when Madame de Marelle, filled with that
skeptical, mocking, and incredulous spirit characteristic of the
Parisian, laughed at his tirades, which she demolished with an epigram,
he replied with a smile: "Bah! this sort of thing will give me a good
reputation later on."

He now resided in the Rue de Constantinople, whither he had shifted his
portmanteau, his hair-brush, his razor, and his soap, which was what his
moving amounted to. Twice or thrice a week she would call before he was
up, undress in a twinkling, and slip into bed, shivering from the cold
prevailing out of doors. As a set off, Duroy dined every Thursday at her
residence, and paid court to her husband by talking agriculture with
him. As he was himself fond of everything relating to the cultivation of
the soil, they sometimes both grew so interested in the subject of their
conversation that they quite forgot the wife dozing on the sofa. Laurine
would also go to sleep, now on the knee of her father and now on that of
Pretty-boy. And when the journalist had left, Monsieur de Marelle never
failed to assert, in that doctrinal tone in which he said the least
thing: "That young fellow is really very pleasant company, he has a
well-informed mind."

February was drawing to a close. One began to smell the violets in the
street, as one passed the barrows of the flower-sellers of a morning.
Duroy was living beneath a sky without a cloud.

One night, on returning home, he found a letter that had been slipped
under his door. He glanced at