Filled with regret at having disdained so many charms, and frequently tired of finding too often as much perfidiousness in priestesses of Venus as in honest women, the husband sometimes hurries on by his gallantry the hour of reconciliation desired of worthy people.  The aftermath of bliss is gathered even with greater pleasure, perhaps, than the first crop.  The Minotaur took your gold, he makes restoration in diamonds.  And really now seems the time to state a fact of the utmost importance.  A man may have a wife without possessing her.  Like most husbands you had hitherto received nothing from yours, and the powerful intervention of the celibate was needed to make your union complete.  How shall we give a name to this miracle, perhaps the only one wrought upon a patient during his absence?  Alas, my brothers, we did not make Nature!

But how many other compensations, not less precious, are there, by which the noble and generous soul of the young celibate may many a time purchase his pardon!  I recollect witnessing one of the most magnificent acts of reparation which a lover should perform toward the husband he is minotaurizing.

One warm evening in the summer of 1817, I saw entering one of the rooms of Tortoni one of the two hundred young men whom we confidently style our friends; he was in the full bloom of his modesty.  A lovely woman, dressed in perfect taste, and who had consented to enter one of the cool parlors devoted to people of fashion, had stepped from an elegant carriage which had stopped on the boulevard, and was approaching on foot along the sidewalk.  My young friend, the celibate, then appeared and offered his arm to his queen, while the husband followed holding by the hand two little boys, beautiful as cupids.  The two lovers, more nimble than the father of the family, reached in advance of him one of the small rooms pointed out by the attendant.  In crossing the vestibule the husband knocked up against some dandy, who claimed that he had been jostled.  Then arose a quarrel, whose seriousness was betrayed by the sharp tones of the altercation.  The moment the dandy was about to make a gesture unworthy of a self-respecting man, the celibate intervened, seized the dandy by the arm, caught him off his guard, overcame and threw him to the ground; it was magnificent.  He had done the very thing the aggressor was meditating, as he exclaimed: 

“Monsieur!”

This “Monsieur” was one of the finest things I have ever heard.  It was as if the young celibate had said:  “This father of a family belongs to me; as I have carried off his honor, it is mine to defend him.  I know my duty, I am his substitute and will fight for him.”  The young woman behaved superbly!  Pale, and bewildered, she took the arm of her husband, who continued his objurgations; without a word she led him away to the carriage, together with her children.  She was one of those women of the aristocracy, who also know how to retain their dignity and self-control in the midst of violent emotions.