"She is my wife, monsieur."
"Your wife?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Then--then--you do not live together--in Paris?"
"I beg your pardon, monsieur, but we are living together!"
"But in that case--you must be mad, altogether mad, my dear sir, to
get caught playing lovers in the country at ten o'clock in the
morning."
The haberdasher seemed ready to cry with shame, and he muttered: "It
was she who enticed me! I told her it was very stupid, but when a
woman once gets a thing into her head--you know--you cannot get it
out."
The mayor, who liked a joke, smiled and replied: "In your case, the
contrary ought to have happened. You would not be here, if she had had
the idea only in her head."
Then Monsieur Beaurain was seized with rage, and turning to his wife,
he said: "Do you see to what you have brought us with your poetry? And
now we shall have to go before the courts at our age, for a breach of
morals! And we shall have to shut up the shop, sell our good will, and
go to some other neighborhood! That's what it has come to."
Madame Beaurain got up, and without looking at her husband, she
explained herself without embarrassment, without useless modesty, and
almost without hesitation.