Là-bas by J.-K. Huysmans
CHAPTER VII
"If this continues I shall lose my mind," murmured Durtal as he sat infront of his table reperusing the letters which he had been receivingfrom that woman for the last week. She was an indefatigableletter-writer, and since she had begun her advances he had not had timeto answer one letter before another arrived.
"My!" he said, "let's try and see just where we do stand. After thatungracious answer to her first note she immediately sends me this:
"'Monsieur,
"'This is a farewell. If I were weak enough to write you any more letters they would become as tedious as the life I lead. Anyway, have I not had the best part of you, in that hesitant letter of yours which shook me out of my lethargy for an instant? Like yourself, monsieur, I know, alas! that nothing happens, and that our only certain joys are those we dream of. So, in spite of my feverish desire to know you, I fear that you were right in saying that a meeting would be for both of us the source of regrets to which we ought not voluntarily expose ourselves....'
"Then what bears witness to the perfect futility of this exordium is theway the missive ends:
"'If you should take the fancy to write me, you can safely address your letters "Mme. Maubel, rue Littre, general delivery." I shall be passing the rue Littre post-office Monday. If you wish to let matters remain just where they are--and thus cause me a great deal of pain--will you not tell me so, frankly?'
"Whereupon I was simple-minded enough to compose an epistle asambiguous as the first, concealing my furtive advances under an apparentreluctance, thus letting her know that I was securely hooked. As herthird note proves:
"'Never accuse yourself, monsieur--I repress a tenderer name which rises to my lips--of being unable to give me consolation. Weary, disabused, as we are, and done with it all, let us sometimes permit our souls to speak to each other--low, very low--as I have spoken to you this night, for henceforth my thought is going to follow you wherever you are.'
"Four pages of the same tune," he said, turning the leaves, "but this isbetter:
"'Tonight, my unknown friend, one word only. I have passed a horrible day, my nerves in revolt and crying out against the petty sufferings they are subjected to every minute. A slamming door, a harsh or squeaky voice floating up to me out of the street.... Yet there are whole hours when I am so far from being sensitive that if the house were burning I should not move. Am I about to send you a page of comic lamentations? Ah, when one has not the gift of rendering one's grief superbly and transforming it into literary or musical passages which weep magnificently, the best thing is to keep still about it.
"'I bid you a silent goodnight. As on the first day, I am harassed by the conflict of the desire to see you and the dread of touching a dream lest it perish. Ah, yes, you spoke truly. Miserable, miserable wretches that we are, our timorous souls are so afraid of any reality that they dare not think a sympathy which has taken possession of them capable of surviving an interview with the person who gave it birth. Yet, in spite of this fine casuistry, I simply must confess to you--no, no, nothing. Guess if you can, and forgive me for this banal letter. Or rather, read between the lines, and perhaps you will find there a little bit of my heart and a great deal of what I leave unsaid.
"'A foolish letter with "I" written all over it. Who would suspect that while I wrote it my sole thought was of You?'"
"So far, so good. This woman at least piqued my curiosity. And whatpeculiar ink," he thought. It was myrtle green, very thin, very pale.With his finger-nail he detached some of the fine dust of rice powder,perfumed with heliotrope, clinging to the seal of the letters.
"She must be blonde," he went on, examining the tint of the powder, "forit isn't the 'Rachel' shade that brunettes use. Now up to that pointeverything had been going nicely, but then and there I spoiled it. Movedby I know not what folly, I wrote her a yet more roundabout letter,which, however, was very pressing. In attempting to fan her flame Ikindled myself--for a spectre--and at once I received this:
"'What shall I do? I neither wish to see you, nor can I consent to annihilate my overwhelming desire to meet you. Last night, in spite of me, your name, which was burning me, sprang from my lips. My husband, one of your admirers, it seems, appeared to be somewhat humiliated by the preoccupation which, indeed, was absorbing me and causing unbearable shivers to run all through me. A common friend of yours and mine--for why should I not tell you that you know me, if to have met socially is to "know" anyone?--one of your friends, then, came up and said that frankly he was very much taken with you. I was in a state of such utter lack of self-control that I don't know what I should have done had it not been for the unwitting assistance which somebody gave me by pronouncing the name of a grotesque person of whom I can never think without laughing. Adieu. You are right. I tell myself that I will never write you again, and I go and do it anyway.
"'Your own--as I cannot be in reality without wounding us both.'
"Then when I wrote a burning reply, this was brought by a maid on a deadrun:
"'Ah, if I were not afraid, afraid!--and you know you are just as much afraid as I am--how I should fly to you! No, you cannot hear the thousand conversations with which my soul fatigues yours.... Oh, in my miserable existence there are hours when madness seizes me. Judge for yourself. The whole night I spent appealing to you furiously. I wept with exasperation. This morning my husband came into the room. My eyes were bloodshot. I began to laugh crazily, and when I could speak I said to him, "What would you think of a person who, questioned as to his profession, replied, 'I am a chamber succubus'?" "Ah, my dear, you are ill," said he. "Worse than you think," said I.
"'But if I come to see you, what could we talk about, in the state you yourself are in? Your letter has completely unbalanced me. You arraign your malady with a certain brutality which makes my body rejoice but alienates my soul a little. Ah, what if our dreams could really come true!
"'Ah, say a word, just one word, from out your own heart. Don't be afraid that even one of your letters can possibly fall into other hands than mine.'
"So, so, so. This is getting to be no laughing matter," concludedDurtal, folding up the letter. "The woman is married to a man who knowsme, it seems. What a situation! Let's see, now. Whom have I evervisited?" He tried vainly to remember. No woman he had ever met at anevening party would address such declarations to him. And that commonfriend. "But I have no friends, except Des Hermies. I'd better try andfind out whom he has been seeing recently. But as a physician he meetsscores of people! And then, how can I explain to him? Tell him thestory? He will burst into a roar and disillusion me before I have gothalfway through the narrative."
And Durtal became irritated, for within him a really incomprehensiblephenomenon was taking place. He was burning for this unknown woman. Hewas positively obsessed by her. He who had renounced all carnalrelations years ago, who, when the barns of his senses were opened,contented himself with driving the disgusting herd of sin to thecommercial shambles to be summarily knocked in the head by the butchergirls of love, he, he! was getting himself to believe--in the teeth ofall experience, in the teeth of good judgment--that with a woman aspassionate as this one seemed to be, he would experience superhumansensations and novel abandon.
And he imagined her as he would have her, blonde, firm of flesh, lithe,feline, melancholy, capable of frenzies; and the picture of her broughton such a tension of nerves that his teeth rattled.
For a week, in the solitude in which he lived, he had dreamed of her andhad become thoroughly aroused and incapable of doing any work, even ofreading, for the image of this woman interposed itself between him andthe page.
He tried suggesting to himself ignoble visions. He would imagine thiscreature in moments of corporal distress and thus calm his desires withunappetizi
And his sensual resurrection was incredible--an aberrated Dog Starflaming in a physical November, at a spiritual All Hallows. Tranquil,dried up, safe from crises, without veritable desires, almost impotent,or rather completely forgetful of sex for months at a time, he wassuddenly roused--and for an unreality!--by the mystery of mad letters.
"Enough!" he cried, smiting the table a jarring blow.
He clapped on his hat and went out, slamming the door behind him.
"I know how to make my imagination behave!" and he rushed over to theLatin Quarter to see a prostitute he knew. "I have been a good boy toolong," he murmured as he hurried down the street. "One can't stay on thestraight and narrow path for ever."
He found the woman at home and had a miserable time. She was a buxombrunette with festive eyes and the teeth of a wolf. An expert, shecould, in a few seconds, drain one's marrow, granulate the lungs, anddemolish the loins.
She chid him for having been away so long, then cajoled him and kissedhim. He felt pathetic, listless, out of breath, out of place, for he hadno genuine desires. He finally flung himself on a couch and, enervatedto the point of crying, he went through the back-breaking motionsmechanically, like a dredge.
Never had he so execrated the flesh, never had he felt such repugnanceand lassitude, as when he issued from that room. He strolled haphazarddown the rue Soufflot, and the image of the unknown obsessed him, moreirritating, more tenacious.
"I begin to understand the superstition of the succubus. I must try somebromo-exorcism. Tonight I will swallow a gram of bromide of potassium.That will make my senses be good."
But he realized that the trouble was not primarily physical, that reallyit was only the consequence of an extraordinary state of mind. His lovefor that which departed from the formula, for that projection _out ofthe world_ which had recently cheered him in art, had deviated andsought expression in a woman. She embodied his need to soar upward fromthe terrestrial humdrum.
"It is those precious unworldly studies, those cloister thoughtspicturing ecclesiastical and demoniac scenes, which have prepared me forthe present folly," he said to himself. His unsuspected, and hithertounexpressed, mysticism, which had determined his choice of subject forhis last work was now sending him out, in disorder, to seek new painsand pleasures.
As he walked along he recapitulated what he knew of the woman. She wasmarried, blonde, in easy circumstances because she had her own sleepingquarters and a maid. She lived in the neighbourhood, because she went tothe rue Littre post-office for her mail. Her name, supposing she hadprefixed her own initial to the name of Maubel, was Henriette, Hortense,Honorine, Hubertine, or Helene. What else? She must frequent the societyof artists, because she had met him, and for years he had not been in abourgeois drawing-room. She was some kind of a morbid Catholic, becausethat word succubus was unknown to the profane. That was all. Then therewas her husband, who, gullible as he might be, must nevertheless suspecttheir liaison, since, by her own confession, she dissembled herobsession very badly.
"This is what I get for letting myself be carried away. For I, too,wrote at first to amuse myself with aphrodisiac statements. Then I endedby becoming completely hysterical. We have taken turns fanningsmouldering ashes which now are blazing. It is too bad that we have bothbecome inflamed at the same time--for her case must be the same as mine,to judge from the passionate letters she writes. What shall I do? Keepon tantalizing myself for a chimera? No! I'll bring matters to a head,see her, and if she is good-looking, sleep with her. I shall have peace,anyway."
He looked about him. Without knowing how he had got there he foundhimself in the Jardin des Plantes. He oriented himself, remembered thatthere was a cafe on the side facing the quay, and went to find it.
He tried to control himself and write a letter at once ardent and firm,but the pen shook in his fingers. He wrote at a gallop, confessed thathe regretted not having consented, at the outset, to the meeting sheproposed, and, attempting to check himself, declared, "We must see eachother. Think of the harm we are doing ourselves, teasing each other at adistance. Think of the remedy we have at hand, my poor darling, Iimplore you."
He must indicate a place of meeting. He hesitated. "Let me think," hesaid to himself. "I don't want her to alight at my place. Too dangerous.Then the best thing to do would be to offer her a glass of port and abiscuit and conduct her to Lavenue's, which is a hotel as well as acafe. I will reserve a room. That will be less disgusting than anassignation house. Very well, then, let us put in place of the rue de laChaise the waiting-room of the Gare Montparnasse. Sometimes it is quiteempty. Well, that's done." He gummed the envelope and felt a kind ofrelief. "Ah! I was forgetting. Garcon! The Bottin de Paris."
He searched for the name Maubel, thinking that by some chance it mightbe her own. Of course it was hardly probable, but she seemed soimprudent that with her anything was to be expected. He might veryeasily have met a Mme. Maubel and forgotten her. He found a Maube and aMaubec, but no Maubel. "Of course, that proves nothing," he said,closing the directory. He went out and threw his letter into the box."The joker in this is the husband. But hell, I am not likely to take hiswife away from him very long."
He had an idea of going home, but he realized that he would do no work,that alone he would relapse into daydream. "If I went up to DesHermies's place. Yes, today was his consultation day, it's an idea."
He quickened his pace, came to the rue Madame, and rang at an entresol.The housekeeper opened the door.
"Ah, Monsieur Durtal, he is out, but he will be in soon. Will you wait?"
"But you are sure he is coming back?"
"Why, yes. He ought to be here now," she said, stirring the fire.
As soon as she had retired Durtal sat down, then, becoming bored, hewent over and began browsing among the books which covered the wall asin his own place.
"Des Hermies certainly has some curious items," he murmured, opening avery old book. Here's a treatise written centuries ago to suit my caseexactly. _Manuale exorcismorum_. Well, I'll be damned! It's a Plantin.And what does this manual have to recommend in the treatment of thepossessed?
"Hmmm. Contains some quaint counter-spells. Here are some forenergumens, for the bewitched; here are some against love-philtres andagainst the plague; against spells cast on comestibles; some, even, tokeep butter and milk sweet. That isn't odd. The Devil entered intoeverything in the good old days. And what can this be?" In his hand heheld two little volumes with crimson edges, bound in fawn-coloured calf.He opened them and looked at the title, _The anatomy of the mass_, byPierre du Moulin, dated, Geneva, 1624. "Might prove interesting." Hewent to warm his feet, and hastily skimmed through one of the volumes."Why!" he said, "it's mighty good."
On the page which he was reading was a discussion of the priesthood. Theauthor affirmed that none might exercise the functions of the priesthoodif he was not sound in body, or if any of his members had beenamputated, and asking apropos of this, if a castrated man could beordained a priest, he answered his own question, "No, unless he carriesupon him, reduced to powder, the parts which are wanting." He added,however, that Cardinal Tolet did not admit this interpretation, whichnevertheless had been universally adopted.
Durtal, amused, read on. Now du Moulin was debating with himself thepoint whether it was necessary to interdict abbes ravaged by lechery.And in answer he cited himself the melancholy glose of Canon Maximianus,who, in his Distinction 81, sighs, "It is commonly said that none oughtto be deposed from his charge for fornication, in view of the fact thatfew can be found exempt from this vice."
"Why! You here?" said Des Hermies, entering. "What are you reading? _Theanatomy of the mass?_ Oh, it's a poor thing, for Protestants.
"Yes, I have just come from a consultation with those whom the journalscharacterize as 'princes of science.' For a quarter of an hour I havehad to listen to the most contradictory opinions. On one point, however,all agreed: that my patient was a dead man. Finally they compromised anddecided that the poor wretch's torture should be needlessly prolonged bya course of moxas. I timidly remarked that it would be simpler to sendfor a confessor, and then assuage the sufferings of the dying man withrepeated injections of morphine. If you had seen their faces! They cameas near as anything to denouncing me as a tout for the priests.
"And such is contemporary science. Everybody discovers a new orforgotten disease, and trumpets a forgotten or a new remedy, and nobodyknows a thing! And then, too, what good does it do one not to behopelessly ignorant since there is so much sophistication going on inpharmacy that no physician can be sure of having his prescriptionsfilled to the letter? One example among many: at present, sirup of whitepoppy, the diacodia of the old Codex, does not exist. It is manufacturedwith laudanum and sirup of sugar, as if they were the same thing!
"We have got so we no longer dose substances but prescribe ready-maderemedies and use those surprising specifics which fill up the fourthpages of the journals. It's a compromise medicine, a democraticmedicine, one cure for all cases. It's scandalous, it's silly.
"No, there is no use in talking. The old therapeutics based onexperience was better than this. At least it know that remedies ingestedin pill, powder, or bolus form were treacherous, so it prescribed themonly in the liquid state. Now, too, every physician specializes. Theoculists see only the eyes, and, to cure them, quite calmly poison thebody. With their pilocarpine they have ruined the health of how manypeople for ever! Others treat cutaneous affections. They drive an eczemainward on an old man who as soon as he is 'cured' becomes childish ordangerous. There is no more solidarity. Allegiance to one party meanshostility to all others. Its a mess. Now my honourable confreres arestumbling around, taking a fancy to medicaments which they don't evenknow how to use. Take antipyrine, for example. It is one of the very fewreally active products that the chemists have found in a long time.Well, where is the doctor who knows that, applied in a compress withiodide and cold Bondonneau spring water, antipyrine combats thesupposedly incurable ailment, cancer? And if that seems incredible, itis true, nevertheless."
"Honestly," said Durtal, "you believe that the old-time doctors camenearer healing?"
"Yes, because, miraculously, they know the effects of certain invariableremedies prepared without fraud. Of course it is self-evident that whenold Pare eulogized 'sack medicine' and ordered his patients to carrypulverized medicaments in a little sack whose form varied according tothe organ to be healed, assuming the form of a cap for the head, of abagpipe for the stomach, of an ox tongue for the spleen, he probably didnot obtain very signal results. His claim to have cured gastralgia byappositions of powder of red rose, coral and mastic, wormwood and mint,aniseed and nutmeg, is certainly not to be borne out, but he also hadother systems, and often he cured, because he possessed the science ofsimples, which is now lost.
"The present-day physicians shrug their shoulders when the name ofAmbrose Pare is mentioned. They used to pooh-pooh the idea of thealchemists that gold had medicinal virtue. Their fine scorn does not nowprevent them from using alternate doses of the salts and of the filingsof this metal. They use concentrated arseniate of gold against anemia,muriate against syphilis, cyanide against amenorrhea and scrofula, andchloride of sodium and gold against old ulcers. No, I assure you, it isdisgusting to be a physician, for in spite of the fact that I am adoctor of science and have extensive hospital experience I am quiteinferior to humble country herborists, solitaries, who know a great dealmore than I about what is useful to know--and I admit it."
"And homeopathy?"
"It has some good things about it and some bad ones. It also palliateswithout curing. It sometimes represses maladies, but for grave and acutecases it is impotent, just like this Mattei system, which, however, isuseful as an intermediary to stave off a crisis. With its blood-andlymph-purifying products, its antiscrofoloso, its angiotico, itsanti-canceroso, it sometimes modifies morbid states in which othermethods are of no avail. For instance, it permits a patient whosekidneys have been demoralized by iodide of potassium to gain time andrecuperate so that he can safely begin to drink iodide again!
"I add that terrific shooting pains, which rebel even against chloroformand morphine, often yield to an application of 'green electricity.' Youask me, perhaps, of what ingredients this liquid electricity is made. Ianswer that I know absolutely nothing about it. Mattei claims that hehas been able to fix in his globules and liquors the electricalproperties of certain plants, but he has never given out his recipe,hence he can tell whatever stories suit him. What is curious, anyway,is that this system, thought out by a Roman count, a Catholic, has itsmost important following and propaganda among Protestant pastors, whoseoriginal asininity becomes abysmal in the unbelievable homilies whichaccompany their essays on healing. Indeed, considered seriously, thesesystems are a lot of wind. The truth is that in the art of healing wegrope along at hazard. Nevertheless, with a little experience and agreat deal of nerve we can manage so as not too shockingly to depopulatethe cities. Enough of that, old man, and now where have you been keepingyourself?"
"Just what I was going to ask you. You haven't been to see me for over aweek."
"Well, just now everybody in the world is ill and I am racing around allthe time. By the way, I've been attending Chantelouve, who has a prettyserious attack of gout. He complains of your absence, and his wife, whomI should not have taken for an admirer of your books, of your last novelespecially, speaks to me unceasingly of them and you. For a personcustomarily so reserved, she seems to me to have become quiteenthusiastic about you, does Mme. Chantelouve. Why, what's the matter?"he exclaimed, seeing how red Durtal had become.
"Oh, nothing, but I've got to be going. Good night."
"Why, aren't you feeling well?"
"Oh, it's nothing, I assure you."
"Oh, well," said Des Hermies, knowing better than to insist. "Look atthis," and took him into the kitchen and showed him a superb leg ofmutton hanging beside the window. "I hung it up in a draft so as to getsome of the crass freshness out of it. We'll eat it when we have theastrologer Gevingey to dine with us at Carhaix's. As I am the onlyperson alive who knows how to boil a _gigot a l'Anglaise_, I am going tobe the cook, so I shan't come by for you. You will find me in the tower,disguised as a scullery maid."
Once outside, Durtal took a long breath. Well, well, his unknown wasChantelouve's wife. Impossible! She had never paid the slightestattention to him. She was silent and cold. Impossible! And yet, why hadshe spoken that way to Des Hermies? But surely if she had wanted to seehim she would have come to his apartment, since they were acquaintances.She would not have started this correspondence under a pseudonym--
"H. de Maubel!" he said suddenly, "why, Mme. Chantelouve's name isHyacinthe, a boy's name which suits her very well. She lives in the rueBabneux not vary far from the rue Littre post-office. She is a blonde,she has a maid, she is a fervent Catholic. She's the one."
And he experienced, almost simultaneously, two absolutely distinctsensations.
Of disappointment, first, for his unknown pleased him better. Mme.Chantelouve would never realize the ideal he had fashioned for himself,the tantalizing features, the agile, wild animal body, the melancholyand ardent bearing, which he had dreamed. Indeed, the mere fact ofknowing the unknown rendered her less desirable, more vulgar.Accessibility killed the chimera.
At the same time he experienced a lively relief. He might have beendealing with a hideous old crone, and Hyacinthe, as he immediately beganto call her, was desirable. Thirty-three at most, not pretty, butpeculiar; blonde, slight and supple, with no hips, she seemed thinbecause she was sma
Then her real charm, the really deceptive enigma of her, was in hereyes; ash-grey eyes which seemed uncertain, myopic, and which conveyedan expression of resigned boredom. At certain moments the pupils glowedlike a gem of grey water and sparks of silver twinkled to the surface.By turns they were dolent, forsaken, languorous, and haughty. Heremembered that those eyes had often brought his heart into his throat!
In spite of circumstantial evidence, he reflected that thoseimpassioned letters did not correspond in any way to this woman in theflesh. Never was woman more controlled, more adept in the lies of goodbreeding. He remembered the Chantelouve at-homes. She seemed attentive,made no contribution to the conversation, played the hostess smiling,without animation. It was a kind of case of dual personality. In onevisible phase a society woman, prudent and reserved, in anotherconcealed phase a wild romantic, mad with passion, hysterical of body,nymphomaniac of soul. It hardly seemed probable.
"No," he said, "I am on the wrong track. It's merely by chance that Mme.Chantelouve spoke of my books to Des Hermies, and I mustn't jump to theconclusion that she is smitten with me and that she has been writing methese hot letters. It isn't she, but who on earth is it?"
He continued to revolve the question, without coming any nearer asolution. Again he called before his eyes the image of this woman, andadmitted that she was really potently seductive, with a fresh, girlishbody, flexible, and without a lot of repugnant flesh--and mysterious,with her concentrated air, her plaintive eyes, and even her coldness,real or feigned.
He summarized all that he really knew about her: simply that she was awidow when she married Chantelouve, that she had no children, that herfirst husband, a manufacturer of chasubles, had, for unknown reasons,committed suicide. That was all. On the other hand, too, too much wasknown about Chantelouve!
Author of a history of Poland and the cabinets of the north; of ahistory of Boniface VIII and his times; a life of the blessed Jeanne deValois, founder of the Annonciade; a biography of the Venerable MotherAnne de Xaintonge, teacher of the Company of Saint Ursula; and otherbooks of the same kind, published by Lecoffre, Palme, Poussielgue, inthe inevitable shagreen or sheep bindings stamped with dendriformpatterns: Chantelouve was preparing his candidacy for the Academie desInscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and hoped for the support of the partyof the Ducs. That was why he received influential hypocrites, provincialTartufes, and priests every week. He doubtless had to drive himself todo this, because in spite of his slinking slyness he was jovial andenjoyed a joke. On the other hand, he aspired to figure in theliterature that counts at Paris, and he expended a good deal ofingenuity inveigling men of letters to his house on another eveningevery week, to make them his aides, or at least keep them from openlyattacking him, so soon as his candidacy--an entirely clericalaffair--should be announced. It was probably to attract and placate hisadversaries that he had contrived these baroque gatherings to which, outof curiosity as a matter of fact, the most utterly different kinds ofpeople came.
He had other motives. It was said that he had no scruples aboutexploiting his social acquaintances. Durtal had even noticed that ateach of the dinners given by Chantelouve a well-dressed stranger waspresent, and the rumour went about that this guest was a wealthyprovincial to whom men of letters were exhibited like a wax-workcollection, and from whom, before or afterward, important sums wereborrowed.
"It is undeniable that the Chantelouves have no income and that theylive in style. Catholic publishing houses and magazines pay even worsethan the secular, so in spite of his established reputation in theclerical world, Chantelouve cannot possibly maintain such a standard ofliving on his royalties.
"There simply is no telling what these people are up to. That thiswoman's home life is unhappy, and that she does not love the sneakysacristan to whom she is married, is quite possible, but what is herreal role in that household? Is she accessory to Chantelouve's pecuniarydodges? If that is the case I don't see why she should pick on me. Ifshe is in connivance with her husband, she certainly ought to have senseenough to seek an influential or wealthy lover, and she is perfectlyaware that I fulfil neither the one nor the other condition. Chantelouveknows very well that I am incapable of paying for her gowns and thuscontributing to the upkeep of their establishment. I make about threethousand livres, and I can hardly contrive to keep myself going.
"So that is not her game. I don't know that I want to have anything todo with their kind of people," he concluded, somewhat chilled by thesereflections. "But I am a big fool. What I know about them proves that myunknown beloved is not Chantelouve's wife, and, all things considered, Iam glad she isn't."