Coucou Peter immediately appeared in better spirits.
“Doctor,” he said, “we were wrong to worry ourselves. The first thing we will do on reaching Saverne is to go to my wife; she must have saved something during five months.”
“Your wife!”
“Eh!—yes; my wife, Gredel Baltzen, married to Coucou Peter before the mayor and pastor of the town.”
“You never told me that.”
“Because you never asked me about it.”
“And you don’t live together?”
“No; she’s too thin—I like fat women—I can’t help it—it was born in me.”
“But then, why did you marry her?”
“I hadn’t then come to know my own taste; I was at the age of innocence, and this girl wheedled me. At last—this is how it was; seeing her every day growing thinner and thinner, I said to myself, Coucou Peter, you’re not of the same race, you’ll make a bad mixture; you’ll do better to take yourself off. So I took what there was in the cupboard and went off. Conscience before everything; it would have been too painful to have become the parent of skinny children; I sacrificed myself.”