William was given to these disenchanting aphorisms. And, being all the same a very gallant man, he added, as he took me about the waist:
"A little girl like you is less flattering to a lover's vanity. But she is more serious, all the same."
I must say that Madame spent all her wrath and showered all her coarse words upon Monsieur; with us, I repeat, she was rather timid.
Moreover, amid the disorder of her house, amid all the reckless waste she tolerated, Madame showed queer streaks of avarice that were quite unexpected. She higgled with the cook over two sous spent for salad, economized in the matter of the servants' washing, raised objections to a bill of three francs, and did not rest until, after endless complaints and correspondence, and interminable negotiations, she had secured a refunding of fifteen centimes unwarrantably collected by an expressman for the transportation of a package. Every time she took a cab, there was a quarrel with the coachman, to whom she gave no tip, and whom she even found a way of cheating. And yet she left her money about everywhere, with her jewels and her keys, on the mantels and on the furniture. She recklessly ruined her richest costumes and her finest linen, she suffered herself to be impudently robbed by dealers in articles of luxury, and accepted with without a frown the books of the old butler, as Monsieur, for that matter, accepted those of William. And yet God knows what frauds they contained! Sometimes I said to William:
"Really, you pinch too much; some day you will get into trouble."
To which William replied, very calmly:
"Oh! let me alone; I know what I am about, and how far I can go. When one has masters as stupid as these are, it would be a crime not to take advantage of them."
But the poor fellow scarcely profited by these continual larcenies, which, in spite of the astonishing tips he had, continually went to fill the pockets of the bookmakers.
Monsieur and Madame had been married for five years. At first they went into society a great deal, and gave dinners. Then gradually they restricted their goings-out and their receptions, and lived almost alone, saying that they were jealous of each other. Madame reproached Monsieur with flirting with the women; Monsieur accused Madame of looking too much at the men. They loved each other much,—that is to say, they quarreled all day long, like a little bourgeois household. The truth is that Madame had not succeeded in society, and that her manners had cost her not a few insults. She was angry with Monsieur for not having been able to impose her upon society, and Monsieur was angry with Madame for having made him ridiculous in the eyes of his friends. They did not confess to each other the bitterness of their feelings, finding it simpler to charge their dissensions to the score of love.