Left to himself, M. Rouvière returned to the chimney-piece and stood over the fire, rubbing his hands meditatively, and from time to time breaking out into words.
“Now then, Mme. Dupuis, it’s between you and me,” said he, half-aloud, with a kind of chuckle. “It’s very certain that my principal object is to make poor George something like himself again, but I really sha’n’t be sorry to try the effect of a thunder-bolt on that serene-looking lady!” Here M. Rouvière rubbed his hands gleefully and laughed heartily; picturing to himself, probably, the poor wife’s consternation and despair when he should announce the fatal news.
“I’m not a Turk,” he muttered presently—“far from it, I’m sure; until now I always believed, like every true Christian, that polygamy deserved the gallows; but, hang it! only think of a decent man condemned to perpetual communion with such a disagreeable creature as that old village sauce-pan! Such a life is clearly impossible!” A minute’s silent thought followed, and then M. Rouvière roused himself, and sat down before the fire to warm the soles of his feet. But not for long.
“I understood that woman,” he suddenly exclaimed, starting up from his seat and beginning to pace rapidly up and down the floor—“I understood her and judged her before I saw her! I knew her to be exactly what she is, from her cap to her shoes! She was always odious to me! Just see with what stupid symmetry all this furniture is arranged: two chairs here and two chairs there, everything square with its neighbor, all at equal distances—how wearisome! That old barometer, too, and these absurd curiosities”—he stopped, as he spoke, in front of the chimney: “a stuffed bird, a shell-box, spun-glass, and horrid cocoanut cups carved by galley-slaves! They absolutely give one the height and the breadth and the weight of the woman, both physically and morally. Poor George! an intelligent man, too. I was sorry for him,” he continued, taking a seat in front of the fire, “but I couldn’t help it. How I pegged into her all dinnertime! Ha, ha, ha! I was as disgusting as a Kalmuck! I really was ashamed of myself! but, the deuce take it! every one’s nerves are not made of bronze. M. du Luc! Mme. le Rendu! and her fish ... and her cat ... and her curé ... hang it! I couldn’t stand it.”
Here M. Rouvière interrupted his monologue for a minute to examine the toe of his boot; satisfied that it was intact, he resumed his train of thought.
“No, I really don’t believe that it would be possible to meet with a more perfect type of the humdrum existence, the narrow-minded ideas, and flat conversation prevalent in these provincial mole-hills than this dowdy female presents! That good fellow—how much he must have suffered before he learnt to bow his intellect beneath her imbecile yoke! God bless me! I know the whole story. He probably struggled hard at first, and then, little by little, he was bowed and bent and broken, as so many others have been, by the continued pressure of a feminine will! Thirty years’ martyrdom. But, ha! ha! Mme. Dupuis, your hour has come; he shall be avenged.”
Here M. Rouvière drew himself up straight in his chair and laughed merrily. “It reminds me,” continued he half-aloud, “of my battle with that old Indian woman when I stole her idol while she was asleep. What a good-for-nothing hussy she was! Extraordinary how much old women resemble one another all the world over.”
[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]