The next day the nephew went away. Even after the death of M. de Noce,
I tried to profit by the intimacy of those familiar conversations in
which women are sometimes caught off their guard to sound her, but I
could never learn what impertinence the viscount had exhibited towards
his aunt. His insolence must have been excessive, for since that time
Madame de Noce has refused to see her nephew, and up to the present
moment never hears him named without a slight movement of her
eyebrows. I did not at once guess the end at which the Comte de Noce
aimed, in inviting us to go shooting; but I discovered later that he
had played a pretty bold game.
Nevertheless, if you happen at last, like M. de Noce, to carry off a
decisive victory, do not forget to put into practice at once the
system of blisters; and do not for a moment imagine that such _tours
de force_ are to be repeated with safety. If that is the way you use
your talents, you will end by losing caste in your wife's estimation;
for she will demand of you, reasonably enough, double what you would
give her, and the time will come when you declare bankruptcy. The
human soul in its desires follows a sort of arithmetical progression,
the end and origin of which are equally unknown. Just as the
opium-eater must constantly increase his doses in order to obtain the
same result, so our mind, imperious as it is weak, desires that
feeling, ideas and objects should go on ever increasing in size and in
intensity.
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