gs on a lounge, his bootjack lies before the
fireplace; and wrapping his head up in a red silk handkerchief,
without giving himself the trouble to tuck in the corners, he fires
off at his wife certain interjectory phrases, those little marital
endearments, which form almost the whole conversation at those
twilight hours, where drowsy reason is no longer shining in this
mechanism of ours. "What, in bed already! It was devilish cold this
evening! Why don't you speak, my pet? You've already rolled yourself
up in bed, then! Ah! you are in the dumps and pretend to be asleep!"
These exclamations are mingled with yawns; and after numberless little
incidents which according to the usage of each home vary this preface
of the night, our friend flings himself into his own bed with a heavy
thud.

Alas! before a woman who is cold, how mad a man must appear when
desire renders him alternately angry and tender, insolent and abject,
biting as an epigram and soothing as a madrigal; when he enacts with
more or less sprightliness the scene where, in _Venice Preserved_, the
genius of Orway has represented the senator Antonio, repeating a
hundred times over at the feet of Aquilina: "Aquilina, Quilina, Lina,
Aqui, Nacki!" without winning from her aught save the stroke of her
whip, inasmuch as he has undertaken to fawn upon her like a dog. In
the eyes of every woman, even of a lawful wife, the more a man shows
eager passion under these circumstances, the more silly he appears. He
is odious when he commands, he is minotaurized if he abuses his power.
On this point I would remind you of certain aphorisms in the marriage
catechism from which you will see that you are violating its most
sacred precepts. Whether a woman yields, or does not yield, this
institution of twin beds gives to marriage such an element of
roughness and nakedness that the most chaste wife and the most
intelligent husband are led to immodesty.

This scene, which is enacted in a thousand ways and which may
originate in a thousand different incidents, has a sequel in that
other situation which, while it is less pleasant, is far more
terrible.

One evening when I was talking about these serious matters with the
late Comte de Noce, of whom I have already had occasion to speak, a
tall white-haired old man, his intimate friend, whose name I will not
give, because he is still alive, looked at us with a somewhat
melancholy air. We guessed that he was about to relate some tale of