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LADY (wringing her hands). Oh, how I wish I really had told you some lie! You would have believed me then. The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe.

NAPOLEON (with coarse familiarity, treating her as if she were a vivandiere). Capital! Capital! (He puts his hands behind him on the table, and lifts himself on to it, sitting with his arms akimbo and his legs wide apart.) Come: I am a true Corsican in my love for stories. But I could tell them better than you if I set my mind to it. Next time you are asked why a letter compromising a wife should not be sent to her husband, answer simply that the husband would not read it. Do you suppose, little innocent, that a man wants to be compelled by public opinion to make a scene, to fight a duel, to break up his household, to injure his career by a scandal, when he can avoid it all by taking care not to know?

LADY (revolted). Suppose that packet contained a letter about your own wife?

NAPOLEON (offended, coming off the table). You are impertinent, madame.

LADY (humbly). I beg your above suspicion.

NAPOLEON (with a deliberate assumption of superiority). You have committed an indiscretion. I pardon you. In future, do not permit yourself to introduce real persons in your romances.

LADY (politely ignoring a speech which is to her only a breach of good manners, and rising to move towards the table). General: there really is a woman’s letter there. (Pointing to the packet.) Give it to me.

NAPOLEON (with brute conciseness, moving so as to prevent her getting too near the letters). Why?

LADY. She is an old friend: we were at school together. She has written to me imploring me to prevent the letter falling into your hands.

NAPOLEON. Why has it been sent to me?

LADY. Because it compromises the director Barras.

NAPOLEON (frowning, evidently startled). Barras! (Haughtily.) Take care, madame. The director Barras is my attached personal friend.

LADY (nodding placidly). Yes. You became friends through your wife.

NAPOLEON. Again! Have I not forbidden you to speak of my wife? (She keeps looking curiously at him, taking no account of the rebuke. More and more irritated, he drops his haughty manner, of which he is himself somewhat impatient, and says suspiciously, lowering his voice) Who is this woman with whom you sympathize so deeply?

LADY. Oh, General! How could I tell you that?

NAPOLEON (ill-humoredly, beginning to walk about again in angry perplexity). Ay, ay: stand by one another. You are all the same, you women.

LADY (indignantly). We are not all the same, any more than you are. Do you think that if I loved another man, I should pretend to go on loving my husband, or be afraid to tell him or all the world? But this woman is not made that way. She governs men by cheating them; and (with disdain) they like it, and let her govern them. (She sits down again, with her back to him.)

NAPOLEON (not attending to her). Barras, Barras I– (Turning very threateningly to her, his face darkening.) Take care, take care: do you hear? You may go too far.

LADY (innocently turning her face to him). What’s the matter?

NAPOLEON. What are you hinting at? Who is this woman?

LADY (meeting his angry searching gaze with tranquil indifference as she sits looking up at him with her right arm resting lightly along the back of her chair, and one knee crossed over the other). A vain, silly, extravagant creature, with a very able and ambitious husband who knows her through and through–knows that she has lied to him about her age, her income, her social position, about everything that silly women lie about–knows that she is incapable of fidelity to any principle or any person; and yet could not help loving her–could not help his man’s instinct to make use of her for his own advancement with Barras.

NAPOLEON (in a stealthy, coldly furious whisper). This is your revenge, you she cat, for having had to give me the letters.