He was
very far from his story. The investigating magistrate attempted to bring
him back into the right path, "Come to the point," he said.
"I am going to, sir; but it was necessary to begin at the beginning.
I married. The evening after the wedding, and when the relatives and
guests had departed, I was about to join my wife, when I perceived my
father all alone in a corner weeping. The sight touched my heart, and
I had a foreboding of evil; but it quickly passed away. It is so
delightful during the first six months one passes with a dearly loved
wife! One seems to be surrounded by mists that change the very rocks
into palaces and temples so completely that novices are taken in. For
two years, in spite of a few little quarrels, everything went on nicely.
Claudine managed me like a child. Ah, she was cunning! She might have
seized and bound me, and carried me to market and sold me, without my
noticing it. Her great fault was her love of finery. All that I earned,
and my business was very prosperous, she put on her back. Every week
there was something new, dresses, jewels, bonnets, the devil's baubles,
which the dealers invent for the perdition of the female sex.
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