“Three times every week at least, and, very often, oftener than that; always about this time of the evening,” he answered.
“Very well,” said Firmian, in a kindly and playful fashion. “I’m not going to be jealous, but be good enough to remark—and my Lenette will please to do so too—that I was with Nathalie, along with Leibgeber, twice in all; once in the afternoon, once in the evening, walking about the grounds of Fantaisie.
“Well, Lenette?”
She parted her cherry lips, and her eyes were like Volta’s electric condensers.
Stiefel went away, and Lenette (from a countenance on which there seemed two fires burning, the fire of anger and a lovelier fire) flashed after him a spark of eye love, calculated to blow up the whole powder-mill of a jealous husband. The married pair were scarce alone, when, by way of propitiating her, he asked her if that confounded Venner had been plaguing her again; and then the firework which had been fixed ready on the scaffold of her face, went hissing off.
“Oh! of course you can’t endure him. You are jealous of him, on account of this beautiful, learned, INTELLECTUAL, Nathalie of yours. Do you suppose I don’t know quite well about you and her going about a whole night among the trees—and hugging and kissing! A pretty story! Ah fie! I never would have believed it of you. No wonder Mr. Meyern said ‘Good morning’ to her, learning and all. Oh yes! you’ll excuse yourself, no doubt.”
“I should have talked to you about all that most innocent affair,” answered Firmian, tranquilly, “while Stiefel was here, if I had not seen quite well that you knew of it. Am I annoyed because he kissed you while I was away?”
This irritated her still more; firstly, because it was impossible that Firmian could know of a certainty that it was true—(and it was!),—and secondly, because she thought “You can forgive it very easily now that you care more for another woman than you do for me.” But then, for the self-same reason (inasmuch as she cared more for another man than she did for him), she, of course, ought to have found no difficulty in forgiving him too. But, as usual, instead of answering his question, she put one herself: “Did I ever give anybody silk forget-me-nots, as somebody did to somebody? Thank goodness! mine are still in my drawer.”
Here two hearts contended within him—a tender heart which was pierced by this unintentional association of forget-me-nots so dissimilar—and a man’s heart, which was powerfully stirred and stung by this detestable defensive and offensive alliance with the fellow who, as was evident now, had sent the innocent child, whom Nathalie had rescued, to Fantaisie by way of a stalking-horse, behind which to conceal and mask himself, and the toils he had spun. As Siebenkæs now, with an outburst of anger, converted his judgment-seat into a stool of repentance for the Venner, whom he stigmatised as a canker-worm of feminine buds, a sparrowhawk, a housebreaker as regarded matrimonial treasures, and a crimp, trepanner, and soul-stealer of mated souls—vowing with the utmost warmth that it was Nathalie who had scornfully sent Rosa to the right-about, not Rosa who had rejected her: and as, of course, he interdicted her in the most peremptory terms from everything in the nature of dissemination or repetition of the Venner’s lying demi-romance, he turned his unfortunate wife into a sour, pungent, Erfurt radish, from head to foot.
Let us not fix our eyes too long, or too magisterially, upon this heat-rash or purulent fever of poor Lenette’s. For my part, I am going to leave her alone, but make an onslaught on her entire sex at once. I shall be doing so, I trust, when I assert that women never paint with more caustic colours (Swift’s black art is but weak water-colour in comparison) than when they have to portray the bodily unlovelinesses of other women. Further, that the prettiest of faces roughens and bristles into an ugly one, when it expresses anger with the feminine recruiting officer more than pity for the deserter. To speak accurately: Every woman is jealous of all other women, because—not, perhaps, her own husband (or lover, as the case may be), but—all other men are attracted by them, and are consequently not true to her. Therefore every woman takes the same vow concerning these vice-queens of this earth that Hannibal took concerning the Romans, and keeps it just as religiously. For which reason every woman has the power which Fordyce says all animal bodies possess—that of making all others cold; and, indeed, every woman must of necessity be an enemy and persecutor of a sex which consists entirely of rivals. And it is probable that many—for instance, nuns in their convents, and Moravians—call each other sisters, or sister-souls, with the view of giving some sort of expression to the nature of their sentiments for each other; since sisters are just the very people who quarrel the most. This is why Madame Bouillon’s parties quarrées consisted of three men and only one woman. It may be that it led St. Athanasius, Basilius, Scotus, and other teachers of the Church to entertain the belief that, with the single exception of the Virgin Mary, all women would rise as men at the Day of Judgment, in order that there may be no anger, or envy, or bickerings in heaven. There is but one queen who is beloved, nourished and cherished by many thousands of her own sex—the queen-bee of the workers (who are of the feminine gender, according to the most recent observations).