While he thus enjoyed his success, her husband endured the tortures
of the damned. When he returned from the coffee-house, and understood
that his wife had eloped, without being perceived by any person
in the family, he began to rave and foam with rage and jealousy;
and, in the fury of distraction, accused the landlady of being an
accomplice in her escape, threatening to complain of her to the
commissaire. The woman could not conceive how Mrs. Hornbeck, who
she knew was an utter stranger to the French language, and kept no
sort of company, could elude the caution of her husband, and find
any refuge in a place where she had no acquaintance, and began to
suspect the lodger's emotion was no other than an affected passion
to conceal his own practices upon his wife, who had perhaps fallen
a sacrifice to his jealous disposition. She therefore spared him
the trouble of putting his menaces into execution by going to the
magistrate, without any further deliberation, and giving an account
of what she knew concerning this mysterious affair, with certain
insinuations against Hornbeck's character, which she represented
as peevish and capricious to the last degree.
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