, and also of some
enlightened young lady, who already knew the how and the why of
everything, who is exuberant with youth and life, and who is eagerly
waiting for the moment when marriage will at length allow her to say and
to do everything that comes into her head, and to amuse herself to
satiety.

Then she had such small feet that they would have gone into a woman's
hand, a waist that could have been clasped by a bracelet, turned up
eyelashes, which fluttered like the wings of a butterfly, close on an
impudent and sensual nose, and a vague, mocking smile that made folds in
her lips, like the petals of a rose.

Her father was a member of the Jockey Club, who was generally _cleared
out_, as they call it, in the great races, but who yet defended his
position bravely, and continued that, and who kept himself afloat by
prodigies of coolness and skill. He belonged to a race which could prove
that his ancestors had been at the court of Charlemagne, and not as
musicians or cooks, as some people declared.

Her youth and beauty and her father's pedigree dazzled Dupontel, upset
his brain, and altogether turned him upside down, and combined they
seemed to him to be a mirage of happiness and of pride of family.

He got introduced to her father, at the end of a game of baccarat,
invited him to shoot with him, and a month later, as if it were an
affair to be hurried over, he asked for and obtained the hand of
Mademoiselle Therese de Montsaigne, and felt as happy as a miner who has
discovered a vein of precious metal.

The young woman did not require more than twenty-four hours to discover
that her husband was nothing but a ridiculous puppet, and immediately
set about to consider how she might best escape from her cage, and
befool the poor fellow, who loved her with all his heart.

And she deceived him without the least pity or the slightest scruple;
she did it as if it were from instinctive hatred, as if it were a
necessity for her not only to make him ridiculous, but also to forget
that she ought to sacrifice her virgin dreams to him, to belong to him,
and to submit to his hateful caresses without being able to defend
himself and to repel him.

She was cruel, as all women are when they do not love, delighted in
doing audacious and absurd things, and in visiting everything, and in
braving danger. She seemed like a young colt, that is intoxicated with
the sun, the air and its liberty, and which gallops wildly across the
mea