“I married her! I loved her wildly, as
one can only love in a dream. For true lovers
only love a dream which has taken the form of a woman.
“Well, my dear fellow, the most foolish thing
I ever did was to give my wife a French teacher.
As long as she slaughtered the dictionary and tortured
the grammar I adored her. Our conversations were
simple. They revealed to me her surprising gracefulness
and matchless elegance; they showed her to me as a
wonderful speaking jewel, a living doll made to be
kissed, knowing, after a fashion, how to express what
she loved. She reminded me of the pretty little
toys which say ‘papa’ and ‘mamma’
when you pull a string.
“Now she talks—badly—very
badly. She makes as many mistakes as ever—but
I can understand her.
“I have opened my doll to look inside—and
I have seen. And now I have to talk to her!
“Ah! you don’t know, as I do, the opinions,
the ideas, the theories of a well-educated young English
girl, whom I can blame in nothing, and who repeats
to me from morning till night sentences from a French
reader prepared in England for the use of young ladies’
schools.
“You have seen those cotillon favors, those
pretty gilt papers, which enclose candies with an
abominable taste. I have one of them. I tore
it open. I wished to eat what was inside and
it disgusted me so that I feel nauseated at seeing
her compatriots.
“I have married a parrot to whom some old English
governess might have taught French. Do you understand?”
The harbor of Trouville was now showing its wooden
piers covered with people.
I said:
“Where is your wife?”
He answered:
“I took her back to Etretat.”
“And you, where are you going?”
“I? Oh, I am going to rest up here at Trouville.”
Then, after a pause, he added:
“You have no idea what a fool a woman can be
at times!”
Daddy Taille had three daughters: Anna, the eldest,
who was scarcely ever mentioned in the family; Rose,
the second girl, who was eighteen, and Clara, the
youngest, who was a girl of fifteen.
Old Taille was a widower and a foreman in M. Lebrument’s
button manufactory. He was a very upright man,
very well thought of, abstemious; in fact, a sort
of model workman. He lived at Havre, in the Rue
d’Angouleme.
When Anna ran away from home the old man flew into
a fearful rage. He threatened to kill the head
clerk in a large draper’s establishment in that
town, whom he suspected. After a time, when he
was told by various people that she was very steady
and investing money in government securities, that
she was no gadabout, but was a great friend of Monsieur
Dubois, who was a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce,
the father was appeased.
He even showed some anxiety as to how she was getting
on, and asked some of her old friends who had been
to see her, and when told that she had her own furniture,
and that her mantelpiece was covered with vases and
the walls with pictures, that there were clocks and
carpets everywhere, he gave a broad contented smile.
He had been working for thirty years to get together
a wretched five or six thousand francs. This girl
was evidently no fool.
