“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!”

THE ACCURSED BREAD

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.