“I will make you understand it when I am with you. Open the door, I beg you. I can’t begin to instruct you with this door between us.”
“I’m afraid that my aunt——”
“Look you, madame, I am your husband, after all; you swore this morning to be obedient and submissive to me, and you are violating your oaths already! Come, Pélagie, I beg you, let’s not begin with a quarrel; open the door at once; if you don’t, I’ll set the house on fire.”
“Oh! mon Dieu!”
She opened the door instantly; she was in her chemise and hurried back to hide herself in her bed; but it was easy for me to find her now. I still had a few obstacles to overcome; but they were not at all disagreeable; indeed, I should have been very much distressed if I had not encountered them! On this occasion the rose was not without thorns.
Let us draw the curtain over the mysteries of hymen, although they are one of Polichinelle’s secrets.
XXXII
RETURN TO PARIS
The first days of married life are called the honeymoon. But the only honey I enjoyed was a grand row with Madame de Pontchartrain on the day after my wedding, because she perceived by her heavy eyes, her gait, in fact, by a thousand symptoms which never escape a dowager’s glance, that I had already plucked the rose of hymen. She went so far as to reproach me, to accuse me of immodesty, brutality, a purely animal passion, and declared that I wanted to kill her niece. It would have required the patience of a cherub to listen unmoved to such nonsense; and as I am no angel, I sent our aunt about her business; I forbade her to meddle in my affairs thereafter, and especially enjoined upon her to refrain from offering advice to my wife. Madame de Pontchartrain shrieked and stormed and raved; I withdrew to my apartment; and there we were at swords’ point!
Old women are great talkers, and the dear aunt was spiteful and vindictive in addition. Instead of trying to forget that scene, she thought only of revenging herself for what she called my base conduct. On the next day, the whole town knew that I was a hot-tempered, ungentlemanly libertine, and that I had begun already to make my wife very unhappy.
However, my sister, who knew me and loved me, made haste to contradict all the rumors that the old aunt put in circulation to my discredit; she fell out with Madame de Pontchartrain, because she did not share her way of looking at things. In the town, some believed the aunt, others my sister; opinions were divided; it would almost have split the community into two hostile camps, except that they were generally agreed as to the main point, that is, the pleasure of making unkind remarks and the love of scandal.