But you must not be too
strict in your judgment of him personally. After all, who is master in
his own house? Nobody. I myself am already making preparations to put
the reins of government into other hands, and Louis Napoleon, you
know, was simply a piece of wax in the hands of his Catholic wife, or
let us say, rather, of his Jesuit wife."
"Wax in the hands of his wife, who proceeded to bamboozle him.
Certainly, Innstetten, that is just what he was. But you don't think,
do you, that that is going to save him? He is forever condemned.
Moreover it has never yet been shown conclusively"--at these words his
glance sought rather timorously the eye of his better half--"that
petticoat government is not really to be considered an advantage.
Only, of course, it must be the right sort of a wife. But who was this
wife? She was not a wife at all. The most charitable thing to call her
is a 'dame,' and that tells the whole story. 'Dame' almost always
leaves an after-taste. This Eugenie--whose relation to the Jewish
banker I gladly ignore here, for I hate the 'I-am-holier-than-thou'
attitude--had a streak of the _cafe-chantant_ in her, and, if the city
in which she lived was a Babylon, she was a wife of Babylon. I don't
care to express myself more plainly, for I know"--and he bowed toward
Effi--"what I owe to German wives. Your pardon, most gracious Lady,
that I have so much as touched upon these things within your hearing."
Such had been the trend of the conversation, after they had talked
about the election, the assassin Nobiling, and the rape crop, and when
Innstetten and Effi reached home they sat down to chat for half an
hour.
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