The Celibates by Honoré de Balzac

In 1792 the citizens of Issoudun rejoiced in a doctor named Rouget, who was regarded as a very deep fox. Some bold folks asserted that he made his wife very unhappy, though she was the handsomest woman in the town. Perhaps this wife was rather a simpleton. In spite of the inquisitiveness of friends, the gossip of outsiders, and the evil-speaking of the envious, the circumstances of the household were little known. Doctor Rouget was one of the men of whom it is commonly said that "they are not easy to get on with. " And so, as long as he lived, little was said about him, and he was treated civilly.

His wife, a Demoiselle Descoings, somewhat sickly as a girl -- one reason, it was said, why the doctor married her -- had first a son, and then a daughter, born as it happened ten years after her brother, and not expected by the doctor, it was always reported, though he was a medical man. This late-born daughter was named Agathe.