For the following month they continued to greet each other with studied formality like enemies meeting face to face. Then one day when they bumped into each other coming round a corner Monsieur Bonnin said, ‘I do hope I haven’t hurt you, Monsieur.’

‘Not in the least, Monsieur,’ the other replied.

From that moment on they began to exchange a few words whenever they met. Gradually they became more and more informal with each other. They got used to each other’s ways and began to get on well together. They came eventually to respect each other and forget their former misunderstandings to such an extent that they became inseparable.

But Léopold was unhappy at home. His wife kept up a stream of hideous, hurtful allusions and hidden barbs. And time was passing. It was already a year since the aunt’s death. The inheritance seemed lost forever. Madame Bonnin sitting down to a meal would remark: ‘We’ve not got much for dinner. Of course it would be different if we were rich.’

When Léopold left for the office Madame Bonnin would hand him his cane, saying: ‘If we had an income of 50,000 a year you wouldn’t have to go and slave the day away at that place, you stupid little hack.’

When Madame Bonnin was leaving to go out in the rain she would mutter: ‘If we had a carriage, we wouldn’t have to get ourselves filthy on days like this.’

In other words, every minute of the day and in every circumstance it was as if she blamed her husband for something shameful that he alone was guilty of and for which he alone was responsible, namely, the loss of that fortune. Driven beyond endurance, he took her to a famous doctor who, after a lengthy consultation, could diagnose nothing. He said he could see nothing wrong, that such cases were by no means rare, that the body was like the mind, and that he had seen as many couples riven by physical incompatibility as by its temperamental counterpart. The cost would be forty francs please.

Another year passed. It was open warfare now and an unrelenting, bitter hatred raged between husband and wife. Still Madame Bonnin continued: ‘How tragic to lose a fortune through being married to an idiot!’

Or alternatively:

‘To think that if you’d been any other sort of man I’d have 50,000 a year by now!’

Or again:

‘Some people are a misery in life. They manage to spoil everything.’

Dinner and the evenings generally became intolerable. One night, bereft of ideas and fearing a row at home, Léopold took along with him his friend Frédéric Morel, the man with whom he had almost fought a duel. Soon Morel was a friend of the family and the respected counsellor of both husband and wife alike.