act of the utmost
importance. A man may have a wife without possessing her. Like most
husbands you had hitherto received nothing from yours, and the powerful
intervention of the celibate was needed to make your union complete. How
shall we give a name to this miracle, perhaps the only one wrought upon
a patient during his absence? Alas, my brothers, we did not make Nature!

But how many other compensations, not less precious, are there, by
which the noble and generous soul of the young celibate may many a time
purchase his pardon! I recollect witnessing one of the most magnificent
acts of reparation which a lover should perform toward the husband he is
minotaurizing.

One warm evening in the summer of 1817, I saw entering one of the rooms
of Tortoni one of the two hundred young men whom we confidently style
our friends; he was in the full bloom of his modesty. A lovely woman,
dressed in perfect taste, and who had consented to enter one of the
cool parlors devoted to people of fashion, had stepped from an elegant
carriage which had stopped on the boulevard, and was approaching on foot
along the sidewalk. My young friend, the celibate, then appeared and
offered his arm to his queen, while the husband followed holding by the
hand two little boys, beautiful as cupids. The two lovers, more nimble
than the father of the family, reached in advance of him one of the
small rooms pointed out by the attendant. In crossing the vestibule
the husband knocked up against some dandy, who claimed that he had been
jostled. Then arose a quarrel, whose seriousness was betrayed by the
sharp tones of the altercation. The moment the dandy was about to make
a gesture unworthy of a self-respecting man, the celibate intervened,
seized the dandy by the arm, caught him off his guard, overcame and
threw him to the ground; it was magnificent. He had done the very thing
the aggressor was meditating, as he exclaimed:

"Monsieur!"

This "Monsieur" was one of the finest things I have ever heard. It was
as if the young celibate had said: "This father of a family belongs to
me; as I have carried off his honor, it is mine to defend him. I know
my duty, I am his substitute and will fight for him." The young woman
behaved superbly! Pale, and bewildered, she took the arm of her husband,
who continued his objurgations; without a word she led him away to the
carriage, together with her children. She was one of those women of the
aristocracy, who also know ho