“Yet it does not appear so, for you are incorrigible and will have what you want at any cost, even if your wife’s or children’s health has to suffer, or even if the sky fall.” “Yes, yes, you are right; a tough fowl will kill you. For Heaven’s sake do not let us have such pettiness.” “But it is you who are petty, thanks for the compliment; if I am petty you are egotistical, and ought not to have married.” “And you ought not to have had a husband, you chatterer, you intolerable scold!” “Go on. Haven’t you some more gentle, nice adjectives; they are so well suited to your delicate mouth?” “Yes, I have a good many left; you are foolish and have no common sense; you make a rope out of a thread of silk, and in everything you find a pretext to make scenes and torment me, and scatter gall on all you touch. Yes, you must be suffering from the liver. Call in the doctor, you must have the jaundice.” “It is you who have the jaundice, and to show you that you are the most petty of the two I will be silent and go.” “And I will go too, and will dine neither at five nor six, but at the hotel. At least I shall not hear your ugly and impertinent voice there, your chatter without sense, and I shall have an hour’s rest from the infinite sweetnesses you scatter over the time when we are obliged to be together.” He is director of some large works. He is early at his desk, for it is Saturday and he must balance the accounts of the week and pay the work people. He is in an exceedingly bad temper, for he has discovered that the cashier is not honest, that his chief superintendent is ignorant, and that a good many customers have sent in complaints of the bad quality of the goods despatched from the factory. He has both arms on the writing table, his head is between his hands, and he looks mechanically at a row of figures before him without reading them. She, on the contrary, is in the best of tempers, for she feels well, and when she was dressing her hair the glass told her how handsome she was, very handsome; and then her little boy on waking a little before had sat up in his cradle and, smiling, had said _Mamma_ for the first time. She caught him up in delight in his little white night-dress, just as he was, and ran to her husband’s office, opened the door without knocking or waiting to know if anyone was there, and rushed in hastily and happily. He had hardly time to raise his eyes before she was at the writing table, and had placed the child on a bundle of papers, and said in an agitated voice: “Give papa a kiss.” Papa loved the little fellow very much and the mother exceedingly; but at that moment he hated all and everything, even himself. What would he have given at that moment not to be unkind; what would he have done not to have had his wife and child there to make him hurt them! How many fierce, dumb, and invisible struggles are carried on in a man’s brain within a few seconds. He said nothing, but put his mouth quickly to the child’s.