t
fool, Champdelin, had never cared much about her, but had left that
charming garden lying waste, and almost immediately after their
honeymoon, he had resumed is usual bachelor habits, and had begun to
lead the same fast life that he had done of old.

It was stronger than he, for his was one of those libertine natures
which are constant targets for love, and which never resign themselves
to domestic peace and happiness. The last woman who came across him, in
a love adventure, was always the one whom he loved best, and the mere
contact with a petticoat inflamed him, and made him commit the most
imprudent actions.

As he was not hard to please, he fished, as it were, in troubled waters,
went after the ugly ones and the pretty ones alike, was bold even to
impudence, was not to be kept off by mistakes, nor anger, nor modesty,
nor threats, though he sometimes fell into a trap and got a thrashing
from some relative or jealous lover; he withstood all attempts to get
hush-money out of him, and became only all the more enamored of vice and
more ardent in his lures and pursuit of love affairs on that account.

But the work-girls and the shop-girls and all the tradesmen's wives in
Saint Martejoux knew him, and made him pay for their whims and their
coquetry, and had to put up with his love-making. Many of them smiled or
blushed when they saw him under the tall plane-trees in the public
garden, or met him in the unfrequented, narrow streets near the
Cathedral, with his thin, sensual face, whose looks had something
satyr-like about them, and some of them used to laugh at him and make
fun of him, though they ran away when he went up to them. And when some
friend or other, who was sorry that he could forget himself so far, used
to say to him, when he was at a loss for any other argument: "And your
wife, Champdelin? Are you not afraid that she will have her revenge and
pay you out in your own coin?" his only reply was a contemptuous and
incredulous shrug of the shoulders.

She deceive him, indeed; she, who was as devout, as virtuous, and as
ignorant of forbidden things as a nun, who cared no more for love than
she did for an old slipper! She, who did not even venture on any veiled
allusions, who was always laughing, who took life as it came, who
performed her religious duties with edifying assiduity, she to pay him
back, so as to make him look ridiculous, and to gad about at night?
Never! Anyone who could think such a thing must h