“Madame, your bravi have missed me three times.”

“What do you mean, monsieur?” she said, flushing.  “I know that you have had several unfortunate accidents lately, which I have greatly regretted; but how could I have had anything to do with them?”

“You knew that bravi were employed against me by that man of the rue Soly?”

“Monsieur!”

“Madame, I now call you to account, not for my happiness only, but for my blood—­”

At this instant Jules Desmarets approached them.

“What are you saying to my wife, monsieur?”

“Make that inquiry at my own house, monsieur, if you are curious,” said Maulincour, moving away, and leaving Madame Jules in an almost fainting condition.

There are few women who have not found themselves, once at least in their lives, a propos of some undeniable fact, confronted with a direct, sharp, uncompromising question,—­one of those questions pitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives a chill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of a dagger.  It is from such crises that the maxim has come, “All women lie.”  Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood, horrible falsehood,—­but always the necessity to lie.  This necessity admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well?  French women do it admirably.  Our manners and customs teach them deception!  Besides, women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal so true in lying,—­they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in order to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might not resist,—­that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives as the cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels.  Falsehood becomes to them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it, if they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation.  According to individual character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep; others are grave; some grow angry.  After beginning life by feigning indifference to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end by lying to themselves.  Who has not admired their apparent superiority to everything at the very moment when they are trembling for the secret treasures of their love?  Who has never studied their ease, their readiness, their freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassments of life?  In them, nothing is put on.  Deception comes as the snow from heaven.  And then, with what art they discover the truth in others!  With what shrewdness they employ a direct logic in answer to some passionate question which has revealed to them the secret of the heart of a man who was guileless enough to proceed by questioning!  To question a woman! why, that is delivering one’s self up to her; does she not learn in that way all that we seek to hide from her?  Does she not know also how to be dumb, through speaking?  What men are daring enough to struggle with the Parisian woman?—­a