“Her cat! ha! ha! a charming excuse! That virtuous young woman goes to a bachelor’s room to look for her cat!”
“I swear to you that that is the truth!”
“And another time she came to ask about her dog, I suppose?”
I made no reply, for I felt that I should lose my temper, and in such a case it is wiser to hold one’s tongue. Eugénie saw perhaps that she had gone too far, for after a moment she said to me gently:
“We shall have to move anyway when our daughter returns from her nurse’s; this apartment will be too small then. Why should we wait?”
“This apartment suits me, madame, and I propose to remain here.”
I was not in the habit of resisting my wife; but her suspicions concerning my friendship with Madame Ernest made me angry, and it annoyed me to think of leaving my apartment.
Eugénie did not insist; for several days we were on cool terms, and the question of apartments was not mentioned. I saw plainly enough that my wife longed to speak of it, but she dared not. At last I reflected that, after all, the neighbors and concierges and gossips might well have made remarks; such people care for nothing except slandering their neighbors. They had seen me go up to the young woman’s room and they might have thought that Ernest was not there.
Why should I force my wife to listen forever to the insinuations of those people? The apartment was distasteful to her. Besides, one must needs do something in order to have peace. Peace! ah, yes! I was beginning to realize that peace is a precious thing, which does not always dwell in families.
“If you will dress at once,” I said to Eugénie one morning, “we will go together to look at apartments.”