ow-minded, timid, unsympathetic; and she acquired, insensibly, a
wholly false opinion of the companion of her life. In the first place,
she often extinguished him by the brilliancy of her arguments. Her ideas
came to her in flashes, and she sometimes stopped him short when he
began an explanation, because she did not choose to lose the slightest
sparkle of her own mind. From the earliest days of their marriage
Celestine, feeling herself beloved and admired by her husband, treated
him without ceremony; she put herself above conjugal laws and the
rules of private courtesy by expecting love to pardon all her little
wrong-doings; and, as she never in any way corrected herself, she was
always in the ascendant. In such a situation the man holds to the wife
very much the position of a child to a teacher when the latter cannot or
will not recognize that the mind he has ruled in childhood is becoming
mature. Like Madame de Stael, who exclaimed in a room full of people,
addressing, as we may say, a greater man than herself, "Do you know you
have really said something very profound!" Madame Rabourdin said of
her husband: "He certainly has a good deal of sense at times." Her
disparaging opinion of him gradually appeared in her behavior through
almost imperceptible motions. Her attitude and manners expressed a want
of respect. Without being aware of it she injured her husband in the
eyes of others; for in all countries society, before making up its mind
about a man, listens for what his wife thinks of him, and obtains from
her what the Genevese term "pre-advice."

When Rabourdin became aware of the mistakes which love had led him to
commit it was too late,--the groove had been cut; he suffered and
was silent. Like other men in whom sentiments and ideas are of equal
strength, whose souls are noble and their brains well balanced, he was
the defender of his wife before the tribunal of his own judgment; he
told himself that nature doomed her to a disappointed life through his
fault; HIS; she was like a thoroughbred English horse, a racer harnessed
to a cart full of stones; she it was who suffered; and he blamed
himself. His wife, by dint of constant repetition, had inoculated him
with her own belief in herself. Ideas are contagious in a household; the
ninth thermidor, like so many other portentous events, was the result
of female influence. Thus, goaded by Celestine's ambition, Rabourdin had
long considered the means of satisfying it, th