“Good, very good, sir! I have brought youth and beauty as a dowry, and a dowry besides; yes, you insolent man, a good dowry, a large sum which was lost in the failure of the Bank of Turin. And is that my fault? And you, what have you brought me? A bald head, false teeth, and a body eaten through with vice—a fine patrimony, truly.” “Ah, you had a dowry, had you? I have never seen it; the only treasure I have seen is the gold with which your teeth are stopped. Sell that and pay the dressmaker’s bill with it.” The bill flew in the air and fell at the woman’s feet. The husband went out of the room, slamming the door so loudly as to make the little Japanese figures and the other bric-a-brac on the table tremble. And the wife, lighting a fresh cigarette, set to, with all the force of her intellect, to invent some revenge worthy of the insult received. She was alone in her boudoir, seated before a writing table of ebony inlaid with ivory. She wrote rapidly and smiled to herself, as one smiles when one is writing to one beloved, and saying a saucy thing flavoured with much tenderness. Nothing was heard in the room but the soft and rhythmical scratching of the steel pen on the paper. She was so intent on what she was writing that she had not heard someone raise the _portière_, enter the room, and stand before her. That someone was not the person to whom she was writing, for raising her graceful head for a moment as if to seek an adjective more merrily saucy to put with the others, she saw her husband, whom she believed was out, standing before her. She uttered a startled cry, and unconsciously covered the paper she was writing on with her right hand. “Ah, is it you? How you frightened me!” “Another time I will have myself announced.” These words were said without anger, and with a serene calmness; but a diabolic irony played round the mouth. The smile gradually converted itself to a real laugh, to which the nodding head seemed to beat time. “Perhaps you were writing to Count B. Who can write the better, you or he? His letters are pretty, very pretty! How much passion—no, passion is not a fit word, it is too flattering; let us say _sensuality, lasciviousness, debauchery_. Which of these words do you find most suitable?” The lady had become white as death. The pen fell from her hand and made a large blot on the elegant paper. But the husband, continuing to laugh, had approached her, and having drawn a chair to the writing table, stroked her hair lovingly.