Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/104

 placid calmness, which makes us bear patiently "the whips and scorns of time." Nay, they only irritated and aggravated each other's sufferings.

The creaking of a door was enough to jar upon their extremely hervous sensibility, to render them peevish and quarrelsome for a whole day, and finally to make them go to loggerheads in the evening.

She had made a full confession of her guilt—not to the husband - but to the priest who got his perquisites for the absolution he had given her. The church blessed the bond of two beings thoroughly unfit for one another, but their union—fortunately—was a fruitless one, as the only child which bore my grandfather's name was not of his stamp.

For a few days every month she suffered from uterine fury, but those days over she remained listless, indifferent, cold, towards all men in general and her husband in particular.

Soon she had the mortification of knowing that a scullery maid was her husband's mistress, she was humbled to think that a