She gave me a cunning wink, and put out her hand to the chair on which I had sat down, and her outstretched hands, her smile, her half-open lips, her white, sharp, and ferocious teeth, all drew my attention to the little axe which was used for cutting wood, whose sharp blade was glistening in the candle-light, and while she put out her hand as if she were going to take it, she put her left arm round me, and drawing me to her, and putting her lips against mine, with her right arm she made a motion as if she were cutting off the head of a kneeling man!

This, my friend, is the manner in which people here understand conjugal duties, love, and hospitality!

AN ARTIFICE

The old doctor and his young patient were talking by the side of the fire.  There was nothing the matter with her, except that she had one of those little feminine ailments from which pretty women frequently suffer; slight anaemia, nervous attack, and a suspicion of fatigue, of that fatigue from which newly married people often suffer at the end of the first month of their married life, when they have made a love match.

She was lying on the couch and talking.  “No, doctor,” she said; “I shall never be able to understand a woman deceiving her husband.  Even allowing that she does not love him, that she pays no heed to her vows and promises, how can she give herself to another man?  How can she conceal the intrigue from other people’s eyes?  How can it be possible to love amidst lies and treason?”

The doctor smiled, and replied:  “It is perfectly easy, and I can assure you that a woman does not think of all those little subtle details, when she has made up her mind to go astray.  I even feel certain that no woman is ripe for true love until she has passed through all the promiscuousness and all the loathsomeness of married life, which, according to an illustrious man, is nothing but an exchange of ill-tempered words by day, and disagreeable odors at night.  Nothing is more true, for no woman can love passionately until after she has married.

“As for dissimulation, all women have plenty of it on hand on such occasions, and the simplest of them are wonderful, and extricate themselves from the greatest dilemmas in an extraordinary way.”

The young woman, however, seemed incredulous. ...  “No, doctor,” she said, “one never thinks until after it has happened, of what one ought to have done in a dangerous affair, and women are certainly more liable than men to lose their heads on such occasions.”  The doctor raised his hands.  “After it has happened, you say!  Now, I will tell you something that happened to one of my female patients, whom I always considered as an immaculate woman.

“It happened in a provincial town, and one night when I was sleeping profoundly, in that deep, first sleep from which it is so difficult to arouse us, it seemed to me, in my dreams, as if the bells in the town were sounding a fire alarm, and I woke up with a start.  It was my own bell, which was ringing wildly, and as my footman did not seem to be answering the door, I, in turn, pulled the bell at the head of my bed, and soon I heard banging, and steps in the silent house, and then Jean came into my room, and handed me a letter which said:  ’Madame Lelievre begs Doctor Simeon to come to her immediately.’