ther, you judge superior people too severely. If their ideas
were the same as other folks', they would not be men of genius."

"Very well, then let men of genius stop at home and not get married.
What! A man of genius is to make his wife miserable? And because he is a
genius it is all right! Genius, genius! It is not so very clever to
say black one minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other
people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know which foot you
are to stand on, to compel his wife never to be amused unless my lord is
in gay spirits, and to be dull when he is dull."

"But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations----"

"What are such 'imaginations'?" Madame Guillaume went on, interrupting
her daughter again. "Fine ones his are, my word! What possesses a man
that all on a sudden, without consulting a doctor, he takes it into his
head to eat nothing but vegetables? If indeed it were from religious
motives, it might do him some good--but he has no more religion than a
Huguenot. Was there ever a man known who, like him, loved horses better
than his fellow-creatures, had his hair curled like a heathen, laid
statues under muslin coverlets, shut his shutters in broad day to work
by lamp-light? There, get along; if he were not so grossly immoral, he
would be fit to shut up in a lunatic asylum. Consult Monsieur Loraux,
the priest at Saint Sulpice, ask his opinion about it all, and he will
tell you that your husband, does not behave like a Christian."

"Oh, mother, can you believe----?"

"Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and you can see none of these things.
But I can remember in the early days after your marriage. I met him
in the Champs-Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was
galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said
to myself at that moment, 'There is a man devoid of judgement.'"

"Ah, ha!" cried Monsieur Guillaume, "how wise I was to have your money
settled on yourself with such a queer fellow for a husband!"

When Augustine was so imprudent as to set forth her serious grievances
against her husband, the two old people were speechless with
indignation. But the word "divorce" was ere long spoken by Madame
Guillaume. At the sound of the word divorce the apathetic old draper
seemed to wake up. Prompted by his love for his daughter, and also by
the excitement which the proceedings would bring into his uneventful
life, father Guillaume took u