"Why? why?" repeated Martha, indignantly—and pointing towards her husband with a gesture of sovereign contempt—"he asks me why! That is the question of a soul shamefully abandoned to gluttony! Why? Why is the warrior who basely flees before his enemy dishonored? Why is gold tried by fire? Why is the just man who has valiantly fought, who has resisted, superior to him who has never struggled? Why does the Scripture"—and Martha pointed to her Bible, opened at the Book of Judges—"why does the Scripture say: 'Ye who offered yourselves willingly to bless the Lord. Speak ye that ride on white she-asses, ye that sit in judgment, and walk without fear—'"
"But," cried the councillor, interrupting his wife impatiently, "I tell you again, you are a fool! Who thinks of fighting you on your she-ass? of attacking you? of wrestling with you? of proving you by fire? At your age, you . . . ah, bah! . . . be quiet, then. . . . You will make me say something foolish, Martha!"
"Now add insult to vulgarity; nothing from you will astonish me."
"Well, once more, do not receive this Marquis,—do not receive him!" cried the councillor, exasperated; "my mind is made up to sustain the rights of the German princes, since you desire it! so whatever you may say to this Nebuchadnezzar, this Pharaoh, this Tarquin, will change nothing. Be quiet! I have no wish that he should attack you, as you say, or that you should resist him in order to prove yourself the most virtuous woman in all Germany. So don't think of it any more; close your door, and let me go to peep into Lipper's ovens; my stomach warns me that it is almost noon, and I depend so much on a certain baked pike, with gooseberry jelly sauce, that I have dreamt of it all night."
Having suffered her husband to speak, Madame Flachsinfingen replied with an air of calm and concentrated contempt: "I know, sir, that you think of nothing but your beastly gormandizing, when the virtue of your wife is in peril. . . . So it devolves on me to defend your honor and my own. A new Judith, I will brave this Holofernes, and like her, I will say:"
'Give me, oh Lord, courage to scorn him and strength to destroy him.'
"But notwithstanding my resolution," continued Martha, "as I am, after all, but a weak woman, as this miscreant is capable of going to the most frightful lengths . . . all that I ask of you is, to hold yourself well armed, and ready to succor me, if my own efforts are unhappily vain!"
"But, Martha, reassure yourself . . . reassure yourself; one cannot always judge one's self aright; and I swear to you that there is something in you . . . a certain air . . . a certain 'I know not what' . . . which would deter any impertinent fellow from showing a want of respect to you. . . . So I shall have no need to arm myself in order to . . ."
"Do you not know that if I set out to do a thing, I will do it?" said the conseillère, interrupting her husband, and fixing on him a look which seemed to fascinate him. "Although I am sorry to delay your dinner-hour, you will nevertheless take a blunderbuss, and, concealed under this table, will be present at this interview . . . ready to come to my aid, if need be, when I cry, 'To me, Flachsinfingen!'"
"I hide myself under this table with a blunderbuss! And what for? Heavens!"