The lover, that nightmare of husbands, was everywhere, except perhaps in homes, where, in point of fact, under the bourgeois regime, he was less seen than formerly.

It is not when every one rushes to their window and cries "Thief!" and lights the streets, that robbers abound.

It is true that during those years so fruitful of turmoil--urban, political, and moral--a few matrimonial catastrophes took place; but these were exceptional, and less observed than they would have been under the Restoration.

Nevertheless, women talked a great deal together about books and the stage, then the two chief forms of poesy.

The lover thus became one of their leading topics,--a being rare in point of act and much desired.