"And you deliberately took the poison?"
"As long as it was a joke, of course I did, your Honour."
The jury, which readily absolves husbands for a too prompt use of the revolver in the direction of their wives, always shows itself resolutely hostile to women who attempt to rid themselves of their legitimate master. Two years' imprisonment were considered by the representatives of social order a just retribution for Adèle, as well as a practical incentive to virtue in the home.
Morin returned to his shoes, grieving over his long separation from Adèle.
"All that was our own affair," he said. "What business was it of the judge's?"
And many shared his opinion. A lot of noise about a "joke!" Adèle was too good hearted a girl to have aroused any deep hatreds. As long as Morin defended her, why should others hurl obloquy? Husbands looking at their wives, and wives at their husbands, mostly refrained from comment. Morin, furthermore, sure, now, of his wife's fidelity for at least two years, poured himself out in eulogies of the great Adèle, and declared that he had often been in the wrong.
"To whom did she ever do any harm?" he would ask everyone that came along.
"Not to me!" "Not to me!" all would answer.
The man had received the gift of a lofty philosophy or rather, he had a dim feeling that from all this "fuss" a great good might result from his wife and for himself.
"When she comes back," he would say, "it will not be as it was before."