arithmetic, “musique,” the flageolet, use of the globes, and various accomplishments which modern girls learn at school. Mrs. Pepys imbibing all this erudition from her husband, while her pretty little dog lies snoring on the mat, forms a truly delightful picture, and no doubt our imagination of it is no more delightful than the reality was three hundred years ago. I suppose it was the same dog as he whose puppyish indiscretions had led to many a fierce quarrel between husband and wife; Pepys always carefully recorded these indiscretions, both of the dog and, alas, of himself. It is clear that the sanitary conveniences in Pepys’s house could not have been up to his requirements. Husband and wife went everywhere together, and seem really to have loved each other; the impression that I gather from Pepys’s exceedingly candid description of her is that she was a loyal and comradely wife, with a spirit of her own, and a good deal to put up with; for though Pepys was continually--and causelessly--jealous of her, yet he did not hold that he was in any way bound to be faithful to her on his own side. So they pass through life, Pepys philandering with every attractive woman who came his way, and Mrs. Pepys dressing herself prettily, learning her little accomplishments, squabbling with her maids, and looking after her house and his meals, till one day she engaged a servant, Deb Willet by name, who brought a touch of tragedy into the home. In November, 1668, Deb was combing Pepys’s hair--no doubt in preparation for the immortal “perriwig”--when Mrs. Pepys came in and caught him “embracing her,” thus occasioning “the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world,” as he puts it.