“It is very superb, I know,” she replied, but a shade came over her face. “Is it not trying, Babache, to have one’s lightest word taken seriously? Here is the story of this coach. I had a handsome one—fine enough for any one—but happening to say one day, in pure carelessness, that I should like to have a gilt coach, Gaston 414 orders this one for me, secretly, and it arrives this morning, to my astonishment. Moreover, in order to do it, Gaston, himself, went without some horses he needs. He is by no means so well mounted as he should be.”
“At least, Madame,” I replied, “few wives have your cause of complaint.”
I noticed then some dissatisfaction in Francezka’s face; the pursuit of pleasure, night and day, is bound to leave its marks on the strongest frame, and the best balanced nerves. I suspected Francezka was in the mood to find fault.
“Yes,” she replied to my last words, “few wives can complain of too great complaisance on the part of their husbands. But it is, surely, not a comfortable way to live, for a woman, to watch and weigh her words with her husband, lest he act upon the most lightly expressed wish. Depend upon it, Babache, a great passion is a great burden.”
Francezka said this to me—Francezka, less than a year after Gaston’s return. Oh, how strange a thing is a great passion after all!
In a minute or two more, I heard Gaston’s voice over my shoulder. He was standing on the coach step below me, and looked smiling and triumphant.
“I see you approve of this equipage,” said he to me. “It is not unworthy even of Francezka.”
I agreed with him; admired the horses—six superb roans—and then the time came to move on, and I sprang to the ground, while Gaston stepped into the coach.
As I walked away, I reflected that the money to pay 415 for the gilt coach and six came out of Francezka’s estate. But Gaston, I knew, had the management of it; and it is not the husband of every heiress who is satisfied to keep indifferent horses for himself, and provide his wife with six for her coach, and four for her outriders, to say nothing of the finest coach in Paris.
But was Francezka happy? Her air that day did not indicate it, but rather weariness, and disgust of the pleasures she followed so assiduously. It is never a sign of happiness to follow pleasure madly.