“Ah! Monsieur Georget, you see a man sorely vexed, sorely humiliated by his social position. My wife is my shame, I am not afraid to say so; she behaves like the lowest of the low! Just fancy, monsieur, that one of the chief clerks in my department--you know that I am employed in a department?” “Yes, you are an office boy.” “Boy! good God! I wish I was a boy! But it’s true that they call us office boys although we are married; and the day before yesterday one of my superiors, who is satisfied with my intelligence, made me a present of a bottle of absinthe,--as an extra--genuine Swiss absinthe, a liqueur that I am very fond of. So I came home with my bottle, but I took pains to tear off the label, and to say to Hildegarde, whose vicious tastes I know too well: ‘Don’t touch this bottle, don’t think of tasting what there is in it; it’s Chinese opium, and it would put you to sleep right away; but you’d never wake up.’--‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Hildegarde; ‘but I don’t see why you take it into your head to bring poison here.’ At that I says to her: ‘If I choose to do it, it’s none of your business, as I’m the master.’ Then she made some impertinent remark, I administered a healthy punishment, and we went to bed on it. Yesterday morning I started for my office as usual; I was delighted with my trick, and I said to myself that my absinthe was in no danger. Well, monsieur, I returned at night and what did I find? My bottle empty, no absinthe--Hildegarde had drunk it all, all, monsieur, and hadn’t left me a drop! That is what I can never forgive--I didn’t have a taste of it myself! As for my wife, you can judge what a state she was in, and when I undertook to reprove her, if she didn’t have the cheek to answer: ‘It’s your fault, you villain, I poisoned myself on purpose; I wanted to get away from your hard treatment; but you lied--your poison doesn’t put a body to sleep, and it ain’t bad at all, and if there was any more, I’d take another drink.’ “That, Monsieur Georget, is what the wretched creature dared to say to me; and to-day she is on her back, she can’t move, and I like to think that she’ll never get over it!” “Oh! that’s a wicked thing to say, Monsieur Baudoin--to wish for your wife’s death!” “It’s for her good, as she will not mend her ways.” “But I beg you, tell me if Monsieur Malberg is at his country house or in Paris now?” “Monsieur Malberg--why, I don’t know myself; but wait, he must be in Paris, for I saw his blackamoor going upstairs just now; indeed I believe he was carrying a bottle in a wooden case--you know the kind of bottle I mean; what there is inside must be fine!” Georget lowered his head sadly, saying to himself: “If Monsieur Malberg is in Paris now, we can’t go to his country house without his permission, without finding out whether he still wants us; but I would have liked to start to-day, for if I stay in Paris I can’t do otherwise than go out on the boulevard.”