“Why should she invite me?” I asked. “Obviously to make you talk about Camille and myself,” he said. “After my eulogy of little Favier,” I replied, “she had very little to ask me. It did not please her. That is an excellent sign for you, and a sufficient reason for not wishing to hear it again.” “Possibly,” he said. “But what do you think of the husband?” “Weak to allow himself to be spoken to like that, and I am astonished that he does so on account of his broad shoulders. He might well reply with an evil look. But he is weak, I repeat, very weak.” “Yes,” Jacques went on, “their relations are stranger than you would think. Bonnivet, you see, is a Parisian husband like many others, who by himself would not move in any circle of society, and who owes his whole position to his wife’s coquetry. Husbands of this kind do not always do this by design. But they profit by it and can be divided into three groups: the noodles, who are persuaded against the weight of evidence that this coquetry is innocent; the philosophic ones, who have made up their minds never to find out how far this coquetry goes; and the jealous ones, who wish to profit by this coquetry to have a full drawing-room and elegant dinners. Besides, they go into a cold sweat at the thought that their wife might take a lover. That was Bonnivet’s case. He accepted all the flirtations of Queen Anne with a good grace. He shook my hand. He assisted in silence like the most complaisant of men his better half’s manœuvres. Very well, I am of opinion that if he suspected this woman of the least physical familiarity beyond this moral familiarity, he would kill her on the spot like a rabbit. She knows it and is afraid, and that is the reason that she prefers him in her heart to us all, and that in my humble opinion she has not yet deceived him. But she loves to brave his anger in her moments of nerves. She has one of them every hour. Camille is too pretty. Between ourselves that was the origin of the supper: she does not want the little Blue Duchess to be in her admirer’s company this evening. I think, too, that was the reason she did not invite you. She hopes you will profit by my absence. It is high comedy. Moliére, where is your pen?” “But,” I said to him, as I thought of the two half-mute persons whose rather tragic picture he was painting to me, “if that is your opinion of M. de Bonnivet, it is not reassuring for you when you become his wife’s lover.”