"'My dear fellow, you will never know the thousand-and-one fancies
that slut takes into her head. When I want to stay at home, she,
forsooth, must go out; when I want to go out, she wants me to stop at
home; and she spouts out arguments and accusations and reasoning and
talks and talks till she drives you crazy. Right means any whim that
they happen to take into their heads, and wrong means our notion.
Overwhelm them with something that cuts their arguments to pieces
--they hold their tongues and look at you as if you were a dead dog.
My happiness indeed! I lead the life of a yard-dog; I am a perfect
slave. The little happiness that I have with her costs me dear.
Confound it all. I will leave her everything and take myself off to a
garret. Yes, a garret and liberty. I have not dared to have my own
way once in these five years.'

"But instead of going to his guests, Cursy strode up and down the
boulevard between the Rue de Richelieu and the Rue du Mont Blanc,
indulging in the most fearful imprecations, his unbounded language was
most comical to hear. His paroxysm of fury in the street contrasted
oddly with his peaceable demeanor in the house. Exercise assisted him
to work off his nervous agitation and inward tempest. About two
o'clock, on a sudden frantic impulse, he exclaimed:

"'These damned females never know what they want. I will wager my
head now that if I go home and tell her that I have sent to ask my
friends to dine with me at the _Rocher de Cancale_, she will not be
satisfied though she made the arrangement herself.--But she will have
gone off somewhere or other. I wonder whether there is something at
the bottom of all this, an assignation with some goat? No. In the
bottom of her heart she loves me!'"