“Well, anyhow, we cannot dine at five!”
“Ah! it is enough that I should ask a thing for you to find a thousand and one difficulties to prevent you doing what I want. It has been so ever since we were married, and will be to the end.”
“And you will always be that obstinate and infallible man who wishes to command in housekeeping where the woman ought to be mistress.”
“Go on, go on! Just because one wants dinner at five instead of at six you have your usual reproaches for me. I know them by heart already.”
“Yet it does not appear so, for you are incorrigible and will have what you want at any cost, even if your wife’s or children’s health has to suffer, or even if the sky fall.”
“Yes, yes, you are right; a tough fowl will kill you. For Heaven’s sake do not let us have such pettiness.”
“But it is you who are petty, thanks for the compliment; if I am petty you are egotistical, and ought not to have married.”
“And you ought not to have had a husband, you chatterer, you intolerable scold!”
“Go on. Haven’t you some more gentle, nice adjectives; they are so well suited to your delicate mouth?”
“Yes, I have a good many left; you are foolish and have no common sense; you make a rope out of a thread of silk, and in everything you find a pretext to make scenes and torment me, and scatter gall on all you touch. Yes, you must be suffering from the liver. Call in the doctor, you must have the jaundice.”