"Hang your horsewhip on its hook and avoid in every way making a scandal, in which no one suffers more in the end than he at whose expense the whole spectacle is performed, I mean the husband. Then I advise you to remember that our _chronique scandaleuse_ is rich in such stories, and that, if every king among us should in each such case use his whip, there would soon not be saddlers enough in the country. Thirdly, I beg leave to advise you: abolish half of your kennel and all of your mistresses, if you have any. Let the hares eat their cabbages in peace, and the young fellows in the village kiss the pretty girls themselves; take some pains about Hortense, who, like all wives, asks for nothing better than to be beloved, and who is far too sensible not to appreciate your attractions at once, if she has any choice between yourself and Cloten; and finally, let us go again among men, for this philosophic controversy in this mystic twilight has nearly exhausted me, and I long heartily for a glass of champagne." "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the drunken host, who, as it generally happens to simple men, fell from one extreme into the other; "yes, you are right, I am a very different sort of a man from Cloten, a miserable whippersnapper, and Hortense knows that pretty well. Ha, ha, ha! you are right, I have lived rather fast of late. You see that journey to Italy has demoralized me. Those wonderful women with their bright black eyes--yes, and _à propos_ of bright eyes, I always wanted to ask you, is it all over with yourself and the Berkow?" "With me and Frau von Berkow? What a mad notion is that now! what is to be over between us?" "Why, Oldenburg, you don't want to persuade an old fox like myself that you only looked at the sweet grapes from a distance?" "Listen, my jewel," said Oldenburg, and his voice sounded like a two-edged sword; "you know I take a joke like anybody, but he who dares touch Melitta's honor, by the great God, he dies by my hand!" "Well, now, you see how you flare up again!" "I flare up! I am as cool as iced champagne.--Yes, as I told you, Barnewitz; promise me not to do anything in this matter to-day, nor to-morrow, nor at any time, till you have conferred with me; especially don't let your wife see anything--you hear, Barnewitz, not the least sign?" "Well, your good advice comes too late," said Barnewitz. "I told Hortense in passing a few words; she turned pale like a sheet. The rascal." "That was very wrong, and not very chivalrous, my good knight of the sorrowful countenance," said Oldenburg; "old women talk, but men act. Such scenes between a noisy husband and a weeping wife are beyond all measure plebeian and vulgar, and if we know that we are right and others are wrong, we should be doubly mild, delicate, and tolerant. To be wrong and to have to confess it is punishment enough."