he happened to dance,
at the fair of Guillettes, with Jeanne de La Cloche, daughter of the
Police Lieutenant of Compiegne, who inspired him with love. He asked her
in marriage, and obtained her forthwith. She loved wine, and drank it
to excess. So much did this taste increase that after a few months she
looked like a leather bottle with a round red face atop of it. The worst
of it was that this leather bottle would run mad, incessantly rolling
about the reception-rooms and the staircases, crying, swearing, and
hiccoughing; vomiting wine and insults at everything that got in her
way. Monsieur de Montragoux was dazed with disgust and horror. But he
quite suddenly recovered his courage, and set himself, with as much
firmness as patience, to cure his wife of so disgusting a vice, Prayers,
remonstrances, supplications, and threats: he employed every possible
means. All was useless. He forbade her wine from his cellar: she got it
from outside, and was more abominably drunk than ever.

To deprive her of her taste for a beverage that she loved too well, he
put valerian in the bottles. She thought he was trying to poison her,
sprang upon him, and drove three inches of kitchen knife into his belly.
He expected to die of it, but he did not abandon his habitual kindness.

"She is more to be pitied than blamed," he said.

One day, when he had forgotten to close the door of the Cabinet of the
Unfortunate Princesses, Jeanne de La Cloche entered by it, quite out of
her mind, as usual, and seeing the figures on the walls in postures
of affliction, ready to give up the ghost, she mistook them for living
women, and fled terror-stricken into the country, screaming murder.
Hearing Bluebeard calling her and running after her, she threw herself,
mad with terror, into a pond, and was there drowned. It is difficult to
believe, yet certain, that her husband, so compassionate was his soul,
was much afflicted by her death.

Six weeks after the accident he quietly married Gigonne, the daughter of
his steward, Traignel. She wore wooden shoes, and smelt of onions. She
was a fine-looking girl enough, except that she squinted with one eye,
and limped with one foot. As soon as she was married, this goose-girl,
bitten by foolish ambition, dreamed of nothing but further greatness
and splendour. She was not satisfied that her brocade dresses were rich
enough, her pearl necklaces beautiful enough, her rubies big enough, her
coaches sufficiently gilded,