affection, and it is in writing to her and of her that we see him at
his best; or rather one might say it is almost only then that we can
distinguish the true notes of the heart through that habitual falsetto
of sentimentalism which distinguishes most of Sterne's communications
with the other sex. There was no subsequent issue of the marriage,
and, from one of the letters most indiscreetly included in Madame de
Medalle's collection, it is to be ascertained that some four years or
so after Lydia's birth the relations between Sterne and Mrs. Sterne
ceased to be conjugal, and never again resumed that character.

It is, however, probable, upon the husband's own confessions, that he
had given his wife earlier cause for jealousy, and certainly from the
time when he begins to reveal himself in correspondence there seems to
be hardly a moment when some such cause was not in existence--in the
person of this, that, or the other lackadaisical damsel or coquettish
matron. From Miss Fourmantelle, the "dear, dear Kitty," to whom Sterne
was making violent love in 1759, the year of the York publication
of _Tristram Shandy_, down to Mrs. Draper, the heroine of the famous
"Yorick to Eliza" letters, the list of ladies who seem to have kindled
flames in that susceptible breast is almost as long and more real
than the roll of mistresses immortalized by Horace. How Mrs. Sterne at
first bore herself under her husband's ostentatious neglect there
is no direct evidence to show. That she ultimately took refuge in
indifference we can perceive, but it is to be feared that she was not
always able to maintain the attitude of contemptuous composure. So, at
least, we may suspect from the evidence of that Frenchman who met
"le bon et agréable Tristram," and his wife, at Montpellier, and who,
characteristically sympathizing with the inconstant husband, declared
that his wife's incessant pursuit of him made him pass "d'assez
mauvais moments," which he bore "with the patience of an angel."