In forty years he had never had an episode with one of "the other sex," but it was not because he was impervious to the softer emotions.

An intolerable shyness had ever possessed him when in the presence of women, and even small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends with little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques.

Yet even with Zoe, who was so simple and companionable and the very soul of childish confidence, he used to blush and falter till she made him talk.
Then he became composed, and his tongue was like a running stream, and on that stream any craft could sail.

On it he became at ease with madame the Spanische, and he even went so far as to look her full in the eyes on more than one occasion.
"Answer me--ah, you cannot answer!" teasingly added the Judge, who loved his Clerk of the Court, and had great amusement out of his discomfiture.
"You are convicted.

At an age when a man should be settling down, you are gallivanting with the wife of a philosopher." "Monsieur--monsieur le juge!" protested M.Fille with slowly heightening colour.