Maupassant’s introduction of the lawyer’s wife as ‘insipidly chaste’ is further qualified
by such phrases as ‘unsatisfied curiosity,’ ‘some unknown longing,’ and ‘continually thinking of
Paris.’ In both the stories, Paris happens to be a common setting. It is coincidental that ‘if
Rosemary wanted to shop she would go to Paris.’ However, the lure of a city is inconsequential
vis-à-vis one’s incapacity for restraint. Rosemary being ‘amazingly well read in the newest of the
new books,’ and the vicarious fantasies of sensation in the lawyer’s wife, fuelled by her reading
the fashionable papers can be contrasted in the sense that in the latter, the act of reading is
fraught with the ulterior intent of deviance. Maupassant gauges the psyche of this character in
whom the rabid haste to experience the difference hints at a foregone violation of order. The
writer throws light on the interior of the character’s mind: