n us outright?"

He turned round, and felt that he was growing pale.

"What are you talking about?"

"I say that you have burnt your umbrella. Just look here--"

And rushing at him as if she were going to beat him, she violently
thrust the little circular burnt hole under his nose.

He was so utterly struck dumb at the sight of it that he could only
stammer out:

"What--what is it? How should I know? I have done nothing, I will swear.
I don't know what is the matter with the umbrella."

"You have been playing tricks with it at the office; you have been
playing the fool and opening it, to show it off," she screamed.

"I only opened it once, to let them see what a nice one it was, that is
all, I declare."

But she shook with rage, and got up one of those conjugal scenes which
make a peaceable man dread the domestic hearth more than a battlefield
where bullets are raining.

She mended it with a piece of silk cut out of the old umbrella, which
was of a different color, and the next day Oreille went off very humbly
with the mended article in his hand. He put it into a cupboard, and
thought no more about it than one thinks of some unpleasant
recollection.

But he had scarcely got home that evening when his wife took the
umbrella from him, opened it, and nearly had a fit when she saw what had
befallen it, for the disaster was irreparable. It was covered with small
holes, which, evidently, proceeded from burns, just as if someone had
emptied the ashes from a lighted pipe on to it. It was done for utterly,
irreparably.

She looked at it without a word, in too great a passion to be able to
say anything. He also, when he saw the damage, remained almost struck
stupid, in a state of frightened consternation.

They looked at each other, then he looked on to the floor; and the next
moment she threw the useless article at his head, screaming out in a
transport of the most violent rage, for she had recovered her voice by
that time:

"Oh! you brute! you brute! You did it on purpose, but I will pay you out
for it. You shall not have another."

And then the scene began again, and after the storm had raged for an
hour, he, at last, was enabled to explain himself. He declared that he
could not understand it at all, and that it could only proceed from
malice or from vengeance.

A ring at the bell saved him; it was a friend whom they were expecting
for dinner.

Mme. Oreille submitted the case to him. As for buying a new