ng about it?"

Bondel did not grow angry; he was reasoning clearly: "Excuse me. This
gentleman is no fool. He seemed to me, on the contrary, to be very
intelligent and shrewd; and you can't make me believe that a man with
brains doesn't notice such a thing in his own house, when the neighbors,
who are not there, are ignorant of no detail of this liaison--for I'll
warrant that they know everything."

Madame Bondel had a fit of angry mirth, which irritated her husband's
nerves. She laughed: "Ha! ha! ha! they're all the same! There's not a
man alive who could discover a thing like that unless his nose was stuck
into it!"

The discussion was wandering to other topics now. She was exclaiming
over the blindness of deceived husbands, a thing which he doubted and
which she affirmed with such airs of personal contempt that he finally
grew angry. Then the discussion became an angry quarrel, where she took
the side of the women and he defended the men. He had the conceit to
declare: "Well, I swear that if I had ever been deceived, I should have
noticed it, and immediately, too. And I should have taken away your
desire for such things in such a manner that it would have taken more
than one doctor to set you on foot again!"

Boiling with anger, she cried out to him: "You! you! why, you're as big
a fool as the others, do you hear!"

He still maintained: "I can swear to you that I am not!"

She laughed so impertinently that he felt his heart beat and a chill run
down his back. For the third time he said:

"I should have seen it!"

She rose, still laughing in the same manner. She slammed the door and
left the room, saying: "Well! if that isn't too much!"

Bondel remained alone, ill at ease. That insolent, provoking laugh
had touched him to the quick. He went outside, walked, dreamed. The
realization of the loneliness of his new life made him sad and
morbid. The neighbor, whom he had met that morning, came to him with
outstretched hands. They continued their walk together. After touching
on various subjects they came to talk of their wives. Both seemed to
have something to confide, something inexpressible, vague, about these
beings associated with their lives; their wives. The neighbor was
saying:

"Really, at times, one might think that they bear some particular
ill-will toward their husband, just because he is a husband. I love my
wife--I love her very much; I appreciate and respect her; well! there
are times when she see