Mr Boswell employed all his rhetoric to change my resolution, but I was inflexible. 'Well, well!' said he at last, with a sigh and a shrug, 'I see how it is. The same confounded nonsense that has driven every comfort from my doors for these ten years past is driving you away too. Well, well! Hang me if I can help it. A man must submit to any thing for the sake of peace.' 'Undoubtedly,' said I, suppressing a smile; 'while he finds that he actually reaps that fruit from his submission.' 'Why as to that I can't say much. But bad as matters are, they might be worse if I were as determined to have my own way as my wife is. I have tried it once or twice, indeed; but--really her perseverance is most wonderful!' Mr Boswell pursued the subject at great length; labouring to convince me, or rather to convince himself, that where submission was unattainable on the one side, the defect ought to be supplied by the other; always inferring, from the necessary unhappiness of this situation, that I ought not, by my departure, to deprive him of his only remaining comfort. All he could obtain, however, was my consent to continue in his family for a few days longer. In return, he promised the full discharge of my claim upon Mrs Boswell, as soon as he should find means to dispose of such a sum _peaceably_; that is, as soon as he could by stealth abstract so much of his own property. I suppose the pleasures of complaint increase in proportion to the folly and impropriety of complaining. I never could otherwise account for the frequent lamentations over the perfidy of lovers and the obduracy of parents; nor imagine any other reason why Mr Boswell, having once entered on the subject of his conjugal distresses, returned to it on every possible occasion. In his wife's presence it was recalled to my recollection by cautious hints, and by significant sighs and looks. In her absence the theme seemed inexhaustible. The embarrassment inflicted on me by this continual reference to a secret was increased, when I perceived that Mrs Boswell, whose jealousy in this instance supplied her want of penetration, suspected some intelligence between her husband and myself. She was now, indeed, under a stubborn fit of taciturnity; but I had at last learnt to read a countenance which never forsook its stony blank, except to express some modification of malevolence. I alarmed Mr Boswell into more caution; but when the lady's suspicions once were roused, it was not in the most guarded prudence, nor in the most open simplicity of conduct, to lull them.