Thus did M. Bergeret fortify himself with the thought that our pride is the original source of all our misery, that we are, in fact, but monkeys in clothes, and that we have solemnly applied conceptions of honour and virtue to matters where these are ridiculous. Pope Boniface VIII, in fact, was wise in thinking that, in his own case, a mountain was being made out of a mole-hill, and Madame Bergeret and M. Roux were just about as worthy of praise or blame as a pair of chimpanzees. Yet, he was too clear-sighted to pretend to deny the close bond that united him to these two principal actors in his drama. But he only regarded himself as a meditative chimpanzee, and he derived from the idea a sensation of gratified vanity. For wisdom invariably goes astray somewhere. M. Bergeret’s, indeed, failed in another point: he did not really adapt his conduct to his maxims, and although he showed no violence, he never gave the least hint of forbearance. Thus he by no means proved himself the follower of those Milesian, Latin, Florentine, or Gallic romance-writers whose smiling philosophy he admired as being well suited to the absurdity of human nature. He never reproached Madame Bergeret, it is true, but neither did he speak a word, or throw a glance in her direction. Even when seated opposite her at table, he seemed to have the power of never seeing her. And if by chance he met her in one of the rooms of the flat, he gave the poor woman the impression that she was invisible. He ignored her, he treated her not only as a stranger, but as non-existent. He ousted her both from visual and mental consciousness. He annihilated her. In the house, among the numberless preoccupations of their life together, he neither saw her, heard her, nor formed any perception of her. Madame Bergeret was a coarse-grained, troublesome woman, but she was a homely, moral creature after all; she was human and living, and she suffered keenly at not being allowed to burst out into vulgar chatter, into threatening gestures and shrill cries. She suffered at no longer feeling herself the mistress of the house, the presiding genius of the kitchen, the mother of the family, the matron. Worst of all, she suffered at feeling herself done away with, at feeling that she no longer counted as a person, or even as a thing. During meals she at last reached the point of longing to be a chair or a plate, so that her presence might at least be recognised. If M. Bergeret had suddenly drawn the carving-knife on her, she would have cried for joy, although she was by nature timid of a blow. But not to count, not to matter, not to be seen, was insupportable to her dull, heavy temperament. The monotonous and incessant punishment that M. Bergeret inflicted on her was so cruel that she was obliged to stuff her handkerchief into her mouth to stifle her sobs. And M. Bergeret, shut up in his study, used to hear her noisily blowing her nose in the