"Yes, yes, I know," said Edouard; "my wife spoke to me about it this morning."
"That you were a monster, a villain, a false friend!"
"And much more too! for I warn you that she is furiously angry with you. But never fear--I will pacify her; she will see that she took the thing in the wrong way when she learns that you mentioned it first."
"I am truly sorry that I amused myself by--But after all, your wife is a very strange woman!"
"It's her mother, Madame Germeuil, who has stuffed her head with romantic ideas."
"Certainly no one would ever think that she was educated in Paris."
"Oh! she will have to form herself in good society. Would you believe that she expressed a purpose not to receive you again?"
"If my presence is unpleasant to Madame Murville, I shall be careful to avoid her."
"Nonsense! that is just what I don't propose to have, or I shall be angry with you. I mean that you shall come to the house more than ever; that is my desire and it must suffice. Are you not friendly enough to me to overlook my wife's eccentric character?"
"Oh! my attachment to you has no bounds!"
"Dear Dufresne!--Look you, to prove how much confidence I have in you, and how little heed I pay to my wife's fairy tales, I am going to confide a secret to you, and I rely on your friendship to help me in the matter."
"My friend, I love, I adore, I am mad over Madame de Géran."
"Is it possible? Why, you have only known her since last night."
"That is long enough to make me love her.--What would you have--we cannot control those things. It's a caprice, a weakness, whatever you choose to call it! But I have lost my head."
"You, Murville--such a reasonable man! and married, too!"
"Oh! my dear fellow, are married men any more virtuous than bachelors? You know very well that the contrary is true; a man can't stick to his wife forever."
"Oh! so far as that is concerned, I am not alarmed; my wife is virtue personified, and she does no more than her duty; for a woman--that's a very different matter."
"As to the consequences, yes; but morally, and even according to the law of nature, I consider that the fault is absolutely identical."
"You are joking! At all events, aren't the consequences everything? Is the absurdity of it the same? Will any one ever laugh at a wife whose husband has mistresses? No, nothing is ever said then, because it is considered a very common occurrence; but if a wife makes her husband a cuckold----"