was something marvelous as well as infantile.  At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to place the violin under his chin, while in one hand he held the neck; but like a spoiled child he soon wearied of a study which required skill not to be obtained in a moment and he twitched the strings without being able to draw forth anything but discordant sounds.  He seemed annoyed, laid the violin on the window-sill and snatching up the bow he began to push it to and fro with violence, like a mason sawing a block of stone.  This effort only succeeded in wearying his fastidious ears, and he took the bow with both hands and snapped it in two on the innocent instrument, source of harmony and delight.  It seemed as if I saw before me a schoolboy holding under him a companion lying face downwards, while he pommeled him with a shower of blows from his fist, as if to punish him for some delinquency.  The violin being now tried and condemned, the monkey sat down upon the fragments of it and amused himself with stupid joy in mixing up the yellow strings of the broken bow.

Never since that day have I been able to look upon the home of the predestined without comparing the majority of husbands to this orang-outang trying to play the violin.

Love is the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate.  Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.  How many monkeys—­men, I mean—­marry without knowing what a woman is!  How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the ape of Cassan did with his violin!  They have broken the heart which they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain the amulet whose secret was unknown to them.  They are children their whole life through, who leave life with empty hands after having talked about love, about pleasure, about licentiousness and virtue as slaves talk about liberty.  Almost all of them married with the most profound ignorance of women and of love.  They commenced by breaking in the door of a strange house and expected to be welcomed in this drawing-room.  But the rudest artist knows that between him and his instrument, of wood, or of ivory, there exists a mysterious sort of friendship.  He knows by experience that it takes years to establish this understanding between an inert matter and himself.  He did not discover, at the first touch, the resources, the caprices, the deficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument.  It did not become a living soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until he had studied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to understand each other like two friends, until both of them had been skillfully questioned and tested by frequent intercourse.