ed. "You have eaten too
much. While you were away, I said to myself, 'It is Mme. Vernet's
birthday. They will urge him at table and he will come back sick.'
Well, go to bed. I will make camomile tea for you."

VII

DESSERT

The professor walked through the garden into a pavilion at one of its
corners, where he lived alone in order not to be disturbed by his
wife.

He went up the stairway leading to his little room, and complained so
much of his pains in the stomach that Madame Adolphe filled him with
camomile tea.

"Ah, here is a carriage! It is Madame returning in great anxiety, I am
sure," said Madame Adolphe, giving to the professor his sixth cup of
camomile tea. "Now, sir, I hope that you will be able to drink it
without me. Do not let it fall all over your bed. You know how Madame
would laugh. You are very happy to have a little wife who is so
amiable and so joyful."

"Say nothing to her, my child," exclaimed the professor, whose
features expressed a sort of childish fear.

The truly great man is always more or less a child.

VIII

THIS SHOWS THAT THE WIFE OF A MAN OF SCIENCE IS VERY UNHAPPY

"Well, good-bye. Return in the cab, it is paid for," Madame Marmus was
saying when Madame Adolphe arrived at the door.

The cab had already turned the corner. Madame Adolphe, not having seen
Madame Marmus's escort, said to herself:

"Poor Madame! He must be her nephew."

Madame Marmus, a little woman, lithe, graceful, mirthful, was
divinely dressed and in a fashion too young for her age, counting her
twenty-five years as a wife. Nevertheless, she wore well a gown with
small pink stripes, a cape embroidered and edged with lace, boots pretty
as the wings of a butterfly. She carried in her hand a pink hat with
peach flowers.

"You see, Madame Adolphe," she said, "my hair is all uncurled. I told
you that in this hot weather it should be dressed in bandeaux."

"Madame," the servant replied, "Monsieur is very sick. You let him eat
too much."

"What could I do?" Madame Marmus replied. "He was at one end of the
table and I at the other. He returned without me, as his habit is!
Poor little man! I will go to him as soon as I change my dress."

Madame Adolphe returns to the pavilion to propose an emetic, and
scolds the professor for not having returned with Madame Marmus.

"Since you wished to come in a ca