ite attitude. Most men have some habitual position
by which they fancy that they show to the best advantage the good
points bestowed on them by nature. This attitude in Crevel consisted in
crossing his arms like Napoleon, his head showing three-quarters face,
and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as the painter has shown the Emperor
in his portrait.

"To be faithful," he began, with well-acted indignation, "so faithful to
a liber----"

"To a husband who is worthy of such fidelity," Madame Hulot put in, to
hinder Crevel from saying a word she did not choose to hear.

"Come, madame; you wrote to bid me here, you ask the reasons for my
conduct, you drive me to extremities with your imperial airs, your
scorn, and your contempt! Any one might think I was a Negro. But I
repeat it, and you may believe me, I have a right to--to make love to
you, for---- But no; I love you well enough to hold my tongue."

"You may speak, monsieur. In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I am
no prude; I can hear whatever you can say."

"Then will you give me your word of honor as an honest woman--for you
are, alas for me! an honest woman--never to mention my name or to say
that it was I who betrayed the secret?"

"If that is the condition on which you speak, I will swear never to tell
any one from whom I heard the horrors you propose to tell me, not even
my husband."

"I should think not indeed, for only you and he are concerned."

Madame Hulot turned pale.

"Oh, if you still really love Hulot, it will distress you. Shall I say
no more?"

"Speak, monsieur; for by your account you wish to justify in my eyes
the extraordinary declarations you have chosen to make me, and your
persistency in tormenting a woman of my age, whose only wish is to see
her daughter married, and then--to die in peace----"

"You see; you are unhappy."

"I, monsieur?"

"Yes, beautiful, noble creature!" cried Crevel. "You have indeed been
too wretched!"

"Monsieur, be silent and go--or speak to me as you ought."

"Do you know, madame, how Master Hulot and I first made
acquaintance?--At our mistresses', madame."

"Oh, monsieur!"

"Yes, madame, at our mistresses'," Crevel repeated in a melodramatic
tone, and leaving his position to wave his right hand.

"Well, and what then?" said the Baroness coolly, to Crevel's great
amazement.

Such mean seducers cannot understand a great soul.

"I, a widower five years since," Crevel began, in the tone of a man who