“Good heavens!  I’m talking of things that don’t concern me.  I’ve said what I have because everybody ought to be happy.  We’re having a chat, eh?  Well then, you’re to answer me as straight as you can.”

But she stopped to change her position, for she was burning herself.  “It’s jolly hot, eh?  My back’s roasted.  Wait a second.  I’ll cook my tummy a bit.  That’s what’s good for the aches!”

And when she had turned round with her breast to the fire and her feet tucked under her: 

“Let me see,” she said; “you don’t sleep with your wife any longer?”

“No, I swear to you I don’t,” said Muffat, dreading a scene.

“And you believe she’s really a stick?”

He bowed his head in the affirmative.

“And that’s why you love me?  Answer me!  I shan’t be angry.”

He repeated the same movement.

“Very well then,” she concluded.  “I suspected as much!  Oh, the poor pet.  Do you know my aunt Lerat?  When she comes get her to tell you the story about the fruiterer who lives opposite her.  Just fancy that man—­Damn it, how hot this fire is!  I must turn round.  I’m going to roast my left side now.”  And as she presented her side to the blaze a droll idea struck her, and like a good-tempered thing, she made fun of herself for she was delighted to see that she was looking so plump and pink in the light of the coal fire.

“I look like a goose, eh?  Yes, that’s it!  I’m a goose on the spit, and I’m turning, turning and cooking in my own juice, eh?”

And she was once more indulging in a merry fit of laughter when a sound of voices and slamming doors became audible.  Muffat was surprised, and he questioned her with a look.  She grew serious, and an anxious expression came over her face.  It must be Zoe’s cat, a cursed beast that broke everything.  It was half-past twelve o’clock.  How long was she going to bother herself in her cuckold’s behalf?  Now that the other man had come she ought to get him out of the way, and that quickly.

“What were you saying?” asked the count complaisantly, for he was charmed to see her so kind to him.

But in her desire to be rid of him she suddenly changed her mood, became brutal and did not take care what she was saying.

“Oh yes!  The fruiterer and his wife.  Well, my dear fellow, they never once touched one another!  Not the least bit!  She was very keen on it, you understand, but he, the ninny, didn’t know it.  He was so green that he thought her a stick, and so he went elsewhere and took up with streetwalkers, who treated him to all sorts of nastiness, while she, on her part, made up for it beautifully with fellows who were a lot slyer than her greenhorn of a husband.  And things always turn out that way through people not understanding one another.  I know it, I do!”

Muffat was growing pale.  At last he was beginning to understand her allusions, and he wanted to make her keep silence.  But she was in full swing.