"Ah! wretched dog, if I had offered you a mass of excrement, you would have smelled it with delight, and probably have devoured it. So even you, unworthy companion of my unhappy life, resemble the public, to whom one must never offer delicate perfumes, which exasperate, but carefully raked-up mire."
THE WILD WOMAN AND THE COQUETTE
"Really, my dear, you tire me immeasurably and unpityingly; one would say, to hear you sigh, that you suffered more than the sexagenarian gleaners or the old beggar hags who pick up crusts at the doors of restaurants.
"If at least your sighs expressed remorse, they would do you some honor; but they convey merely the surfeit of well-being and the languor of repose. And, too, you will not stop your constant flow of needless words: 'Love me well! I have so much need! Comfort me thus, caress me so!'
"Come! I shall try to cure you; perhaps we shall find a means, for two cents, in the midst of a fair, not far away.
"Take a good look, I pray you, at this strong iron cage, within which moves, howling like a damned soul, shaking the bars like an ourang-outang enraged by exile, imitating to perfection, now the circular bounds of the tiger, now the clumsy waddling of the polar bear, that hairy monster whose form vaguely resembles your own.
"That monster is one of those beasts one usually calls 'my angel'—that is, a woman. The other monster, he who bawls at the top of his voice, club in his hand, is a husband. He has chained his lawful wife like a beast, and he exhibits her in the suburbs on fair days—with the magistrates' permission, of course.
"Pay close attention. See with what voracity (perhaps not feigned) she tears apart the living rabbits and the cackling fowl her keeper throws her. 'Come,' he says, 'one must not eat one's whole store in a day'; and, with that wise word, he cruelly snatches the prey, the winding entrails of which remain a moment caught on the teeth of the ferocious beast—I mean, the woman.
"Come! A good blow to calm her! for she darts terrible glances of lust at the stolen food. Good God! The club is not a jester's slap stick! Did you hear the flesh resound, right through the artificial hair? Her eyes leap from her head now; she howls more naturally. In her rage she sparkles all over, like smitten iron.