ightest
incompatibility of temper, and as there is always a risk of not
softening the heart of even the most indulgent judge when he is told
that the parties have agreed to drag their load separately, each for
themselves, that they are too frisky, too fond of pleasure and of
wandering about from place to place to continue the conjugal experiment,
we between us got up the ingenious stage arrangement of, 'a serious
wrong...'

"This was funnier than all the rest, and under any other circumstances
it would have been repugnant to me to mix up our servants in the affair
like so many others do, or to distress that pretty little, fair and
delicate Parisian woman, even though it were only in appearance and to
pass as a common _Sganarelle_ with the manners of a carter, in the eyes
of some scoundrel of a footman, or of some lady's maid. And so when
Maitre Le Chevrier, that kind lawyer who certainly knows more female
secrets than the most fashionable confessor, gave a startled exclamation
on seeing me still in my dressing-gown, and slowly smoking a cigar like
an idler who has no engagements down on his tablets, and who is quietly
waiting for the usual time for dressing and going to dine at his club,
he exclaimed:

"'Have you forgotten that this is the day, at the _Hotel de Bade_,
between five and six o'clock? In an hour, Madame de Lauriere will be at
the office of the Police Commissary in the Rue de Provence, with her
uncle and Maitre Cantenac ...'

"An hour; I only had an hour, sixty short minutes to dress in, to take a
room, find a woman and persuade her to go with me immediately, and to
excite her feelings, so that this extravagant adventure might not appear
too equivocal to the Commissary of Police. One hour in which to carry
out such a program was enough to make a man lose his head. And there
were no possible means of putting off that obligatory entertainment, to
let Madame Le Lauriere know in time, and to gain a few minutes more.

"'Have you found a woman, at any rate?' Maitre de Chevrier continued
anxiously.

"'No, my dear sir!'

"I immediately began to think of the whole string of my dear female
friends. Should I choose Liline Ablette, who could refuse me nothing,
Blanch Rebus, who was the best comrade a man ever had, or Lalie Spring,
that luxurious creature, who was constantly in search of something new?
Neither one nor the other of them, for it was ninety-nine chances to one
that all these confounded girls were in