"And can," asked the Duke, "such experiments be made without inconvenience or danger to the subjects?"
"Certainly."
"Pardieu," said the Prince, "I would like the doctor to question my daughter."
"About what?" said Matheus.
"Something interesting to us all. For a month we have had no news from my son, and are becoming uneasy about him."
"And do you wish," said the doctor, "to know what the Marquis de Maulear is engaged in now?"
"Exactly," said the Prince.
"Stop," said René, "I object. There is no reason why a wife should know what her husband is about when he is three hundred leagues away. The devil! That is dangerous, and the Marquise might some day regret it."
"Now you see," said Marie, with her soft voice, "it would be dangerous for her—she would not like it."
"I do not fear that," said the Vicomte, "but I vow there would be no marriages possible, if women had the faculty of knowing at any hour, and in any place, what their husbands are about."