Before moving on to the tableaux I have just promised, I must nevertheless devote a few lines to relating an extraordinary adventure I had during my stay in the rue Saint- Honore, at the age of twenty and while engaged in my studies of the law.

Directly opposite the house lived an old watchmaker who had a youthful and charming wife. She was his third. The first had rendered him very happy indeed for a dozen years – life with her had been uninterrupted drunkenness, delight – the second had also done mightily well, but for only eighteen months and with the aid of a younger sister who would replace her in the marital bed whenever the wife felt in the slightest way indisposed, because she did not want to have her husband fuck under unfavorable, and possibly disgusting, circumstances. This excellent and thoughtful wife having left this life, the watchmaker, then sixty, married the pretty and gracious Fidelette, putative offspring of an architect but in reality the child of a marquis.

For mellowness and poignancy, this third wife' s beauty had no equal. Her husband idolized her, but he was no longer young. However, being wealthy, he lavished upon her everything her heart could desire. But his gifts and kindnesses failed somehow of the mark, and with every passing day Fidelette grew more despondent.

" My angel," her good husband said, " I worship you, and you know it. All the same, you are unhappy, and I fear for your days. There is nothing I would not do for you. Tell me what it is you desire – anything, no matter what, provided it is in my power to secure your happiness, I shall do as you bid me…"

" Anything? No matter what?" asked the young woman.