have the audacity to set myself up as
a legislator on marriage, I was going to take lunch at the house of a
college friend, who was perhaps too early in life afflicted with a wife
and two children. My former professor of mathematics lived at a short
distance from the house of my college friend, and I promised myself the
pleasure of a visit to this worthy mathematician before indulging my
appetite for the dainties of friendship. I accordingly made my way to
the heart of a study, where everything was covered with a dust which
bore witness to the lofty abstraction of the scholar. But a surprise was
in store for me there. I perceived a pretty woman seated on the arm of
an easy chair, as if mounted on an English horse; her face took on the
look of conventional surprise worn by mistresses of the house towards
those they do not know, but she did not disguise the expression of
annoyance which, at my appearance, clouded her countenance with the
thought that I was aware how ill-timed was my presence. My master,
doubtless absorbed in an equation, had not yet raised his head; I
therefore waved my right hand towards the young lady, like a fish moving
his fin, and on tiptoe I retired with a mysterious smile which might be
translated "I will not be the one to prevent him committing an act of
infidelity to Urania." She nodded her head with one of those sudden
gestures whose graceful vivacity is not to be translated into words.

"My good friend, don't go away," cried the geometrician. "This is my
wife!"

I bowed for the second time!--Oh, Coulon! Why wert thou not present to
applaud the only one of thy pupils who understood from that moment the
expression, "anacreontic," as applied to a bow?--The effect must have
been very overwhelming; for Madame the Professoress, as the Germans say,
rose hurriedly as if to go, making me a slight bow which seemed to say:
"Adorable!----" Her husband stopped her, saying:

"Don't go, my child, this is one of my pupils."

The young woman bent her head towards the scholar as a bird perched on a
bough stretches its neck to pick up a seed.

"It is not possible," said the husband, heaving a sigh, "and I am going
to prove it to you by A plus B."

"Let us drop that, sir, I beg you," she answered, pointing with a wink
to me.

If it had been a problem in algebra, my master would have understood
this look, but it was Chinese to him, and so he went on.

"Look here, child, I constitute you judge in the matte