And the little woman told me about some petty discussions between Ernest and herself, the merest child’s play, which could not interrupt the current of their love for an instant. I had been listening to my little neighbor for an hour, without being bored for an instant; however, I was anxious to know what was going on at home, so I rose. “I won’t try to detain you,” said Madame Ernest; “your wife is waiting for you, no doubt, and you mustn’t let her get impatient. Ernest will be sorry to have missed you.” I took leave of my former neighbor and left the house. As I stepped into the street, a woman who was leaning against a post near the porte cochère, seized my arm convulsively, and said: “You have been alone with her for an hour and a half; her Ernest wasn’t there. I know, for the concierge told me so.” It was Eugénie. Eugénie, who had followed me, no doubt, and had seen me go into that house, and had remained at the door all the time that I had been with Marguerite. I was so surprised, so thunderstruck, that I could not answer. After saying these few words, my wife left me and ran swiftly before me. I called her, I tried to overtake her, and succeeded at last. But she would not answer me, she persisted in refusing to take my arm. And thus we returned home. I tried to have an explanation with my wife, but she locked herself into her bedroom and refused to admit me. A bed was made for me in my study. So I was obliged to pass the night alone, and separate like that after the scenes of the evening! Ah! that was a very gloomy housewarming in our new apartment. XIII EUGÉNIE AND MARGUERITE After passing several weeks without speaking to each other, my wife and I came together again and became reconciled; but it seemed to me that the reconciliation was not very sincere, that it was simply a sort of smoothing over. Had these frequent scenes diminished our love? No, I still loved my wife; but when often repeated, disputes sour the temper and change the disposition. The words that people say to each other in passion, although forgotten afterward, deal a fatal blow to our illusions, and they never grow again. We went again to Livry, to our daughter’s nurse, on a superb day in June. How little that excursion resembled the other! we had no dispute, but the tranquillity which reigned between us was like that which ordinarily follows twenty years of married life; and we returned home without driving our horse to the edge of a ditch.