“We should show ourselves merely as matter-of-fact and unemotional women. Intercourse is now no more than meetings at stated times, at which the same thing is always repeated. Besides, for whom could one feel any affection or tenderness? Men, our men, are generally speaking only correct tailor’s dummies altogether wanting in intelligence and sensibility. If we look for any intellectual graces, like a person looking for water in a desert, we call the artists to our side; and we behold the arrival of intolerable poseurs or underbred Bohemians. As for me, like Diogenes I have been looking for a man, one real man in the whole of Parisian society; but I am already quite convinced that I shall not find him, and it will not be long before I blow out my lantern. To return to my husband, since it fairly turned my stomach to see him coming into my room in his shirt and drawers, I used all means, all, you understand me, to alienate him and to … disgust him with me. At first he was furious, and then he became jealous, he imagined that I was deceiving him. In the early days he contented himself with watching me. He glared like a tiger at all the men who came to the house, and then the persecution began. He followed me everywhere. He used abominable means to take me off guard. Then he never left me alone to talk with anyone. At all the balls, he remained planted behind me, poking out his clumsy hound’s head as soon as I said a word. He followed me to the buffet, forbidding me to dance with this man and that man, taking me away in the very middle of the cotillion, making me look foolish and ridiculous, and appear I don’t know what sort of a person. It was after this that I ceased to go anywhere.
“In this intimacy, he became worse still. Would you believe that the wretch treated me as … as I daren’t say it … as a harlot.
“My dear! … he said to me one evening: ‘Whose bed have you been sharing today?’ I wept and he was delighted.
“And then he became worse still. The other week he took me to dine in the Champs-Élysées. Fate ordained that Baubiguac should be at the neighbouring table. Then, if you please, Simon began to tread furiously on my feet and growl at me over the melon: ‘You have given him a rendezvous, you slut! Just you wait!’ Then—you could never guess what he did, my dear—he had the audacity to pull my hatpin gently out and he drove it into my arm. I uttered a loud cry. Everybody came running up. Then he staged a detestable comedy of mortification. You can imagine it.
“At that very moment I said to myself: ‘I’ll have my revenge, and before very long, too.’ What would you have done?”
“Oh, I would have revenged myself!”
“Very well, that’s what I’ve done to him.”
“How?”
“What! Don’t you understand?”
“But, my dear … still … well, yes.”
“Yes, what? Gracious, just think of his head! Can’t you just see him, with his fat face, his red nose, and his side-whiskers hanging down like dog’s ears.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I said to myself: ‘I shall revenge myself for my own pleasure and Marie’s,’ for I always intended to tell you, but never anyone but you, mind. Just think of his face and then remember that he … that he … he is …”
“What … you’ve …”
“Oh, darling, never, never tell a soul, promise me again! But think how funny it is … think. … He has looked quite different to me since that very moment … and I burst out laughing all alone … all alone. … Just think of his head.”
The Baroness looked at her friend, and the wild laughter that welled up in her breast burst between her lips; she began to laugh, but she laughed as if she were hysterical, and with both hands pressed to her breast, her face puckered up, her breath strangled in her throat, she leaned forward as if she would fall over on her face.
Then the little Marquise herself gave way to a stifling outburst of mirth. Between two cascades of little cries she repeated:
“Think … do think … isn’t it funny? Tell me … think of his head … think of his side-whiskers! … of his nose … just think … isn’t it funny? but whatever you do, don’t tell anyone … don’t … tell … about it … ever!”
They continued for some minutes very nearly suffocated, unable to speak, weeping real tears in their ecstasy of amusement.
The Baroness was the first to recover her self-control, and still shaking:
“Oh! … tell me how you did it … tell me … it’s so funny … so funny!”
But the other woman could not speak … she stammered:
“When I had made up my mind … I said to myself: … ‘Now … hurry up … you must make it happen at once.’ … And I … did it … today …”
“Today!”
“Yes … right at once … and I told Simon to come and look for me at your house for our especial amusement. … He’s coming … at once … he’s coming. … Just think … think … think of his head when you see him. …”
The Baroness, a little sobered, panted as if she had just finished running a race. She answered:
“Oh, tell me how you did it … tell me.”
“It was quite easy. I said to myself: ‘He is jealous of Baubiguac; very well, Baubiguac it shall be. He is as clumsy as his feet, but quite honourable; incapable of gossiping.’ Then I went to his house, after breakfast.”
“You went to his house. On what excuse?”
“A collection … for orphans …”
“Tell me the whole tale me … quickly … tell me the whole tale. …”
“He was so astounded to see me that he could not speak. And then he gave me two louis for my collection, and then as I got up to go away, he
