ght. That was surely being late! I understand it
perfectly well ... I am not at all surprised ... even. But ... but ... I
can hardly use any other word." "But you pronounce them, as if I had
been out all night." "Oh! no, ... oh! no ..."

She saw that he would yield on every point, and she was going into her
own room, when at last she noticed that George was screaming, and then
she asked, with some feeling: "Whatever is the matter with the child?"
"I told you, that Julie had been rather unkind to him?" "What has the
wretch been doing to him?" "Oh! Nothing much. She gave him a push, and
he fell down."

She wanted to see her child, and ran into the dining-room but stopped
short at the sight of the table covered with spilt wine, with broken
decanters and glasses and overturned salt-cellars. "Who did all that
mischief?" she asked. "It was Julie who ..." But she interrupted him
furiously: "That is too much, really! Julie speaks of me as if I were a
shameless woman, beats my child, breaks my plates and dishes, turns my
house upside down, and it appears that you think it all quite natural."
"Certainly not, as I have got rid of her!" "Really ... you have got rid
of her! ... But you ought to have given her in charge. In such cases,
one ought to call in the Commissary of Police!" "But ... my dear ... I
really could not ... there was no reason ... It would have been very
difficult." She shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.

"There, you will never be anything but a poor, wretched fellow, a man
without a will, without any firmness or energy. Ah! she must have said
some nice things to you, your Julie, to make you turn her off like that.
I should like to have been here for a minute, only for a minute." Then
she opened the drawing-room door and ran to George, took him into her
arms and kissed him, and said: "Georgie, what is it, my darling, my
pretty one, my treasure?" But as she was fondling him he did not speak,
and she repeated: "What is the matter with you?" And he having seen,
with his child's eyes, that something was wrong, replied: "Julie beat
papa."

Henriette turned towards her husband, in stupefaction at first, but then
an irresistible desire to laugh shone in her eyes, passed like a slight
shiver over her delicate cheeks, made her upper lip curl and her
nostrils dilate, and at last a clear, bright burst of mirth came from
her lips, a torrent of gayety which was lively and sonorous as the song
of a bird. She repeated, with