XVI

"What, child, your husband shuts himself into a room with naked women!

And you are so simple as to believe that he draws them?"

As she uttered this exclamation, the grandmother laid her spectacles

on a little work-table, shook her skirts, and clasped her hands on her

knees, raised by a foot-warmer, her favorite pedestal.

"But, mother, all artists are obliged to have models."

"He took good care not to tell us that when he asked leave to marry

you. If I had known it, I would never had given my daughter to a man

who followed such a trade. Religion forbids such horrors; they are

immoral. And at what time of night do you say he comes home?"

"At one o'clock--two----"

The old folks looked at each other in utter amazement.

"Then he gambles?" said Monsieur Guillaume. "In my day only gamblers

stayed out so late."

Augustine made a face that scorned the accusation.

"He must keep you up through dreadful nights waiting for him," said

Madame Guillaume. "But you go to bed, don't you? And when he has lost,

the wretch wakes you."

"No, mamma, on the contrary, he is sometimes in very good spirits. Not

unfrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he suggests that I should get

up and go into the woods."

"The woods! At that hour? Then have you such a small set of rooms that

his bedroom and his sitting-room are not enough, and that he must run

about? But it is just to give you cold that the wretch proposes such

expeditions. He wants to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man

settled in life, a well-behaved, quiet man galloping about like a

warlock?"

"But, my dear mother, you do not understand that he must have

excitement to fire his genius. He is fond of scenes which----"

"I would make scenes for him, fine scenes!" cried Madame Guillaume,

interrupting her daughter. "How can you show any consideration to such

a man? In the first place, I don't like his drinking water only; it is

not wholesome. Why does he object to see a woman eating? What queer

notion is that! But he is mad. All you tell us about him is

impossible. A man cannot leave his home without a word, and never come

back for ten days. And then he tells you he has been to Dieppe to

paint the sea. As if any one painted the sea! He crams you with a pack

of tales that are too absurd."

Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but Madame Guillaume

enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, which she obeyed by a

survival of habit, and her mother went on in harsh tones: "Don't talk

to me about the man! He never set foot in church excepting to see you

and to be married. People without religion are capable of anything.

Did Guillaume ever dream of hiding anything from me, of spending three

days without saying a word to me, and of chattering afterwards like a

blind magpie?"

"My dear mother, you judge superior people too severely. If their

ideas were the same as other folks', they would not be men of genius."

"Very well, then let men of genius stop at home and not get married.

What! A man of genius is to make his wife miserable? And because he is

a genius it is all right! Genius, genius! It is not so very clever to

say black one minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt

other people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know which

foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never to be amused unless

my lord is in gay spirits, and to be dull when he is dull."

"But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations----"

"What are such 'imaginations'?" Madame Guillaume went on, interrupting

her daughter again. "Fine ones his are, my word! What possesses a man

that all on a sudden, without consulting a doctor, he takes it into

his head to eat nothing but vegetables? If indeed it were from

religious motives, it might do him some good--but he has no more

religion than a Huguenot. Was there ever a man known who, like him,

loved horses better than his fellow-creatures, had his hair curled

like a heathen, laid statues under muslin coverlets, shut his shutters

in broad day to work by lamp-light? There, get along; if he were not

so grossly immoral, he would be fit to shut up in a lunatic asylum.

Consult Monsieur Loraux, the priest at Saint Sulpice, ask his opinion

about it all, and he will tell you that your husband, does not behave

like a Christian."

"Oh, mother, can you believe----?"

"Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and you can see none of these

things. But I can remember in the early days after your marriage. I

met him in the Champs-Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one

minute he was galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up

to a walk. I said to myself at that moment, 'There is a man devoid of

judgement.' "

"Ah, ha!" cried Monsieur Guillaume, "how wise I was to have your money

settled on yourself with such a queer fellow for a husband!"