ed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity and in his
gestures there was something marvelous as well as infantile. At last he
undertook with grotesque gestures to place the violin under his chin,
while in one hand he held the neck; but like a spoiled child he soon
wearied of a study which required skill not to be obtained in a moment
and he twitched the strings without being able to draw forth anything
but discordant sounds. He seemed annoyed, laid the violin on the
window-sill and snatching up the bow he began to push it to and fro
with violence, like a mason sawing a block of stone. This effort only
succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, and he took the bow with
both hands and snapped it in two on the innocent instrument, source of
harmony and delight. It seemed as if I saw before me a schoolboy holding
under him a companion lying face downwards, while he pommeled him with a
shower of blows from his fist, as if to punish him for some delinquency.
The violin being now tried and condemned, the monkey sat down upon the
fragments of it and amused himself with stupid joy in mixing up the
yellow strings of the broken bow.

Never since that day have I been able to look upon the home of
the predestined without comparing the majority of husbands to this
orang-outang trying to play the violin.

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love
is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is
necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them,
the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which
befits it. How many monkeys--men, I mean--marry without knowing what a
woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the
ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart which
they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain the amulet whose
secret was unknown to them. They are children their whole life through,
who leave life with empty hands after having talked about love, about
pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slaves talk about liberty.
Almost all of them married with the most profound ignorance of women and
of love. They commenced by breaking in the door of a strange house and
expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room. But the rudest artist
knows that between him and his instrument, of wood, or of ivory, there
exists a mysterious sort of friendship. He knows by experience that it
takes years to