I must confess she had a difficult point here upon her, though she had been really honest; for, as my head was prepossessed of her dishonesty, if she had been lavish I should have said she had spent it upon her gentlemen; and as she had been frugal, I said she had been maintained by them. Thus, I say, my head was distempered; I believed myself abused, and nothing could put it out of my thoughts night or day.
All this while it was not visibly broken out between us; but I was so fully possessed with the belief of it that I seemed to want no evidence, and I looked with an evil eye upon everybody that came near her or that she conversed with. There was an officer of the Guards du Corps that lodged in the same house with us, a very honest gentleman and a man of quality. I happened to be in a little drawing-room adjoining to a parlour where my wife sat at that time, and this gentleman came into the parlour, which, as he was one of the family, he might have done without offence; but he, not knowing that I was in the drawing-room, sat down and talked with my wife. I heard every word they said, for the door between us was open; nor could I say that there passed anything between them but cursory discourse. They talked of casual things, of a young lady, a burgher's daughter of nineteen, that had been married the week before to an advocate in the Parliament of Paris, vastly rich, and about sixty-three; and of another, a widow lady of fortune in Paris, that had married her deceased husband's _valet de chamber_; and of such casual matters, that I could find no fault with her now at all.
But it filled my head with jealous thoughts and fired my temper. Now I fancied he used too much freedom with her, then that she used too much freedom to him, and once or twice I was upon the point of breaking in upon them and affronting them both, but I restrained myself. At length he talked some thing merrily of the lady throwing away her maiden head, as I understood it, upon an old man; but still it was nothing indecent. But I, who was all on fire already, could bear it no longer, but started up and came into the room, and catching at my wife's words, "Say you so, madam?" said I. "Was he too old for her?" and giving the officer a look that I fancy was something akin to the face on the sign called the Bull and Mouth, within Aldersgate, I went out into the street.