s as if they
were speaking to equals, yet in their tone there was something of fear.
I am sure my husband was their superior, or captain, or somewhat. He
replied to them almost as if he were scoffing at them, saying it was
such an expenditure of labour having to do with fools; that, ten to
one, the woman was only telling the simple truth, and that she was
frightened enough by discovering her master in his room to be thankful
to escape and return to her mistress, to whom he could easily explain
on the morrow how he happened to return in the dead of night. But his
companions fell to cursing me, and saying that since M. de la Tourelle
had been married he was fit for nothing but to dress himself fine and
scent himself with perfume; that, as for me, they could have got him
twenty girls prettier, and with far more spirit in them. He quietly
answered that I suited him, and that was enough. All this time they
were doing something--I could not see what--to the corpse; sometimes
they were too busy rifling the dead body, I believe, to talk; again
they let it fall with a heavy, resistless thud, and took to
quarrelling. They taunted my husband with angry vehemence, enraged at
his scoffing and scornful replies, his mocking laughter. Yes, holding
up his poor dead victim, the better to strip him of whatever he wore
that was valuable, I heard my husband laugh just as he had done when
exchanging repartees in the little salon of the Rupprechts at
Carlsruhe. I hated and dreaded him from that moment. At length, as if
to make an end of the subject, he said, with cool determination in his
voice:

'Now, my good friends, what is the use of all this talking, when you
know in your hearts that, if I suspected my wife of knowing more than I
chose of my affairs, she would not outlive the day? Remember Victorine.
Because she merely joked about my affairs in an imprudent manner, and
rejected my advice to keep a prudent tongue--to see what she liked, but
ask nothing and say nothing--she has gone a long journey--longer than
to Paris.'

'But this one is different to her; we knew all that Madame Victorine
knew, she was such a chatterbox; but this one may find out a vast deal,
and never breathe a word about it, she is so sly. Some fine day we may
have the country raised, and the gendarmes down upon us from Strasburg,
and all owing to your pretty doll, with her cunning ways of coming over
you.'

I think this roused M. de la Tourelle a little from his co