Again he became troubled, but, as we were separated from the house by a thick curtain of chestnut trees, he quickly recovered himself, and, growing more defiant as I became less severe, he exclaimed, with easy gestures: "Well, what? Madame? And what of her? I care nothing for Madame. I do not intend that she shall annoy me. I have enough of her. I am over my head in Madame." I declared gravely: "Monsieur is wrong. Monsieur is not just. Madame is a very amiable woman." He gave a start. "Very amiable? She? Ah! Great God! But you do not know, then, what she has done? She has spoiled my life. I am no longer a man; I am nothing at all. I am the laughing-stock of the neighborhood. And all on account of my wife. My wife? She ... she ... she is a hussy,--yes, Célestine, a hussy ... a hussy ... a hussy." I gave him a moral lecture. I talked to him gently, hypocritically boasting of Madame's energy and order and all her domestic virtues. At each of my phrases he became more exasperated. "No, no. A hussy! A hussy!" However, I succeeded in calming him a little. Poor Monsieur! I played with him with marvelous ease. With a simple look I made him pass from anger to emotion. Then he stammered: "Oh! you are so gentle, you are! You are so pretty! You must be so good! Whereas that hussy"... "Oh! come, Monsieur! come! come!" He continued: "You are so gentle! And yet, what?... you are only a chambermaid." For a moment he drew nearer to me, and in a low voice said: "If you would, Célestine?" "If I would what?" "If you would ... you know very well; yes, you know very well." "Monsieur wishes me perhaps to betray Madame with Monsieur?" He misunderstood the expression of my face; and, with eyes standing out of his head, the veins in his neck swollen, his lips moist and frothy, he answered, in a smothered voice: "Yes; yes, indeed." "Monsieur doesn't think of such a thing?" "I think of nothing else, Célestine." He was very red, his face congested. "Ah! Monsieur is going to begin again?" He tried to grasp my hand, to draw me to him. "Well, yes," he stammered, "I am going to begin again; I am going to begin again, because ... because ... I am mad over you, Célestine; because I think of nothing else; because I cannot sleep; because I feel really sick. And don't be afraid of me; have no fears! I am not a brute. No, indeed; I swear it. I ... I...." "Another word, Monsieur, and this time I tell everything to Madame. Suppose some one were to see you in the garden in this condition?" He stopped short. Distressed, ashamed, thoroughly stupid, he knew not what to do with his hands, with his eyes, with his whole person. And he looked, without seeing them, at the ground beneath his feet, at the old pear tree, at the garden. Conquered at last, he untied the bits of string at the top of the prop, bent again over the fallen dahlias, and sad, infinitely so, and supplicating, he groaned: