If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger on her lips and he is silent.  He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to the house.  Proud of his subjection, he turns to her, like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, “If Madame approves.”  When he comes to his wife’s room, with that heavy step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she, not wanting him, calls out:  “Don’t come in!” he performs a military volte-face and says humbly:  “You will let me know when I can see you?” —­in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the banks of the Danube:  “Men, we must die, and die well, since there’s nothing else we can do!” I have heard him say, speaking of his wife, “Not only do I love her, but I venerate her.”  When he flies into a passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds, the little woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout.  But four or five hours later she will say:  “Don’t get into a passion, my dear, you might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me.”  Then the lion of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes.  Sometimes he comes into the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says:  “Don’t disturb us, he is reading to me,” he leaves us without a word.

It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war, diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a woman.  Good heavens!  I place the science of the countess’s management of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of a causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois sofa.

My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful country-house, and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park, surrounded by forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks.  Nature and its silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to which she woos me,—­all attract.  Ah! here is true literature; no fault of style among the meadows.  Happiness forgets all things here,—­even the Debats!  It has rained all the morning; while the countess slept and Montcornet tramped over his domain, I have compelled myself to keep my rash, imprudent promise to write to you.

Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a prefect, so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I supposed the tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs a month to be a fable.  Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful things,—­work and a publisher, journalism and politics.  When shall we poor fellows come upon a land where gold springs up with the grass?  That is what I desire for you and for me and the rest of us in the name of the theatre, and of the press, and of book-making!  Amen!