"Madame Pigeron was very wise to leave Auxerre," said Madame Vermut;
"she was silly and wicked both. As if it were necessary to have
recourse to drugs to annul a husband! Are not there other ways quite
as sure, but innocent, to rid ourselves of that incumbrance? I would
like to have a man dare to question my conduct! The worthy Monsieur
Vermut doesn't hamper me in the least,--but he has never been ill yet.
As for Madame de Montcornet, just see how she walks about the woods
and the hermitage with that journalist whom she brought from Paris at
her own expense, and how she pets him under the very eyes of the
general!"

"At her own expense!" cried Madame Soudry. "Are you sure? If we could
only get proof of it, what a fine subject for an anonymous letter to
the general!"

"The general!" cried Madame Vermut, "he won't interfere with things;
he plays his part."

"What part, my dear?" asked Madame Soudry.

"Oh! the paternal part."

"If poor little Pigeron had had the wisdom to play it, instead of
harassing his wife, he'd be alive now," said the poet.

Madame Soudry leaned over to her neighbor, Monsieur Guerbet, and made
one of those apish grimaces which she had inherited from dear
mistress, together with her silver, by right of conquest, and twisting
her face into a series of them she made him look at Madame Vermut, who